How fast can you guys type...

[mediaboy]

something like that yeah.

It's called touchtyping.. and piano playing.

Look at any pianist. They all have good fingers and good with both hands.
I just carry my pianoplaying skills onto the keyboard as well.

[Washdogg]

119 wpm. pretty quick i reckon, shame its not exactly accurate...

[mediaboy]

Slow

[MadduckUK]

something like that yeah.

It's called touchtyping.. and piano playing.

Look at any pianist. They all have good fingers and good with both hands.
I just carry my pianoplaying skills onto the keyboard as well.

An average typist reaches 50 to 70wpm, while some positions can require 80 to 95 (usually the minimum required for dispatch positions and other typing jobs), and some advanced typists work at speeds above 120. As of 2005, Barbara Blackburn is the fastest typist in the world, according to The Guinness Book of World Records. Using the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, she has maintained 150 wpm for 50 minutes, 170 wpm for shorter periods of time, and has been clocked at a peak speed of 212 wpm. Blackburn failed her typing class in high school, first encountered the Dvorak keyboard in 1938, quickly learned to achieve very high speeds, and occasionally toured giving speed-typing demonstrations during her secretarial career.

care to alter your estimation?

[Dareos]

something like that yeah.

It's called touchtyping.. and piano playing.

Look at any pianist. They all have good fingers and good with both hands.
I just carry my pianoplaying skills onto the keyboard as well.

ummmm, bollox



i played piano for several years (albeit badly) i am not good with both hands, and its a completely different skillset altogether. The only similarity is actually using your hands to push buttons or keys down, nothing else. There is the ability to read type, not music, the ability to use 6 layers of keys against 2, and no typist i have ever met actually listens for the change in tones of the keys.

Musical ability and typing have very little in common, but if you disagree, i wish you well in your new career taking dictation for the royal philharmonic.

[mediaboy]

You play the piano badly. Isn't there a little difference between that and playing at the standards that are expected from me - which come, once again, from practise and hard work?

I'm working towards my Grade 8... Theoretically the highest Grade. Of course, it's also viewed as the point at which you start to play the piano properly.

Let's take a quick glance at the syllabuses for ABM... Not complete syllabuses, I can't be bothered to type up that much text, especially when not very many people would actually either bother to read it or understand it. I'm limiting myself to the ones I'm actually going to do.

Grade 8;
- The last movement of Sonta in C Minor, Op 11 no 1 (I think. Not checked Opus, but 11 sounds right... Beethoven)

- Simfonia in C Minor (1dst movement from Partita No.2. Bach BMV826)

- Consolation no.3 in D flat (Liszt)

For Diploma;

- Same as above, but the entire work, instead of just one movement.

When I learn any piece of music I learn most thigns around it. It's easier and - of course - it means that instead of just playing a piece of music I can actually play the suite. However, because of this, it means that theoretically I'm working at Diploma level. Maybe not diploma standard though. I'm not that good, I just learn everything.


However, I'm willing to accept that I play the piano badly, which I think I do - being critical of myself permamently - as I pick up imperfections in my playing every time I play, whether it be a wrong note or slightly too much emphasis, or too little emphasis on a note. A slight change in speed, maybe a little bit of dynamics over the bar, as the pattern of the notes in a bar tell you where the emphasis' should go, presuming that nothing else interferes with it, where to put the emphasis in downruns to make them sound like you know what you're doing. The little mistakes, that seperate a pianist from a concert pinaist. So let's drop the issue.

Let's instead consider what ELSE I do.

I play the church organ... the thing with lots and lots of piano keyboards and somewhere for the feet to play.

Forget saying that pianists are rubbing their tummies and patting their heads. Add in doing an irish jig with the feet and you're working towards an organist (no I can't do this...). Also, of course, on the pipe organ which I practise most regulary, we have 3 "piano" keyboards... or manuals as we call them actually.

How many layers of keys are there?

Saying that keyboards have more layers of keys will simply make me pull out a slightly different instrument which I play - this one for money, and not for as long.




Also, when I type, I have a tendency to fall into patterns of typing, and knowing what sort of clicks and noises each key would make, subconsciously knowing that this word would make that noise. Of course - I can't do it all the time, and I can't do it when other people are typing. But after typing for 30 minutes or even several hours, I will type away and before the text is on the screen (as I have a time lag between typing and the words appearing... stupid computer -.-) I will have edited out the mistakes I made in the last few sentences and start again.

I miss some though, which is why I'm not word perfect.




As for revising my estimate - I've already said that in real life, doing real things, I can't actually hit such a high wpm rate. Maybe 80-90 wpm on a good day, although 60-70 is probably an average. I don't know. I don't time myself. Just know it'll take me under an hour to do a 2000-3000 word essay, and the 30K post which I trotted out on "a few minutes of your time fuddam" didn't take me hours on end to type, but mabye 30-40 minutes (remembering, of course, that maybe 1/2-2/3 of that post is quotes, rather than answering the quotes.. I think)

600 wpm is 10/second or 100 miliseconds per word. That's 25 miliseconds per character, which is plenty of time if you know where everything is.

Look at some of the best pianists in the world play some of the fastest music.... or an organist playing some of the fastest....

ie. watch an organist playing Widor's toccata.... which is insanely hard, for a piece of music that I don't like anyway (I learnt it once.... I got bored and learnt the Gothic Suite instead after a few days of practise.)

Do they get a note wrong? Yes... do they continue? Yes. Do they look at their hands? Occasionally, to make sure that they have their hands in the right position.

Is that any different to typists? Occasionally they'll get a word wrong, or a character in the wrong place.... they don't have a nervous breakdown and stop. They continue - although they correct it, unlike musicians who shouldn't whilst performing. Some typists don't look at their hands continously, they don't need to. They just watch the screen instead.... or - in the metaphor I used, the musicians watch the music or where it used to be or just picture the music there...


As for knowing the tonal difference inbetween the keys of a keyboard... is that saying that you don't know the patterns of sound that comes out when you're typing? I know, but couldn't reproduce, the sounds that come out of the keyboard when I type. I know the difference in sound between "teh" and "the" and the differences between "and" "nad" "dna" and any other permutation of the word "and."

Simply because they are common words. There are other words as well, but I didn't learn them, like I learnt the tonal sounds of an organ or piano.

I just picked them up over the last few years when all my work was done on computers.


EDIT: Oh yeah - and thanks for the career advice! Although I don't think that the philharmonic need a typist. I'll just go and practise a concerto or three...


EDIT 2: Repeated myself. I'll leave post as it is though.

[MadduckUK]

Some typists don't look at their hands continously, they don't need to. They just watch the screen instead

really?! jeeesus. so you wrote all that to tell us you can touch type - but not brilliantly?

[mediaboy]

You mean I didn't spell "continuosly" correctly?

That's called being pedantic.

[MadduckUK]

no, because you having to listen to the key noises as your not always looking at the screen. are you looking at the keys? do you just close your eyes and drift off?

so quick to jump to conclusions.

[mediaboy]

Can't you type with your eyes closed? It's easy! Try it sometime.. you might be surrised at what you can actually do!

^Was typed with eyes closed.


I don't have to listen to key noises... it's subconscious. Like learning languages by listening to tapes of them in your sleep.

[MadduckUK]

Can't you type with your eyes closed? It's easy! Try it sometime.. you might be surrised at what you can actually do!

yes, all it changes is being able to "check as you go" as you can when watching the screen, and you end up having a glance at the end instead.

But i think unless iv got it wrong, that the long post a few up was explaining how you can type as fast as you claim. which boiled down to be being able to touch type... which is nothing out of the ordinary really. and certainly no-one needs to have ever played a keyboard in order to have typing skills.

the only help i can see it providing would be finger dexterity.

[mediaboy]

So explain then.. why can I type so fast?

I can provide a screenshot of the end of the thing at 288wpm, but I forget to get all the undefineds that stopped me at 30s, so I can't prove that bit.

[MadduckUK]

practice.

which did you do first out of interest, comp keyboard or the musical kind?

[MasterFlash]

131 points, so you achieved position 77812 of 103028 on the ranking list


You type 184 characters per minute
You have 34 correct words and
you have 1 wrong words

*cough

[Dareos]

Grade 8 is certainly impressive and way beyond my musical capabilities at any age i fear, but i still do not see the connection between playing piano and typing, although i do grant you that flexibility of fingers of a pianist would be an advantage.

But lets agree to disagree on this one

[mediaboy]

First? Dunno...

Been playing around with computers for nearly 9 years... been playing the piano for about the same.

Probably played with computers first, when I was about 6 but not sure. Too far back.


Easily Organ is last one though... only been playing it 3 or 4 years.