8. Begin by practicing slowly at first, so as never to be obliged to stop. Always play strictly in time: rhythm and time must never be neglected for want of patience or energy. Sounds without rhythm have no more meaning than single letters of alphabet.

9. During rests, do not remove hands from keyboard, but rather utilize time, if necessary, for next position. While one hand is playing, it is quite easy to prepare other for its part to come, if you are only quite clear in your mind what it has to do. Hence, such parts as require a change in position of hand should be practiced alone, until hand has learned to assume required position and to do its work unconsciously.

10. Aim for highest, so as to attain something worth attaining. Overcome all fear or dislike of finger-exercises. Convince yourself that they are as absolutely indispensable and essential as are words and rules of grammar which must be learned by heart before knowledge of a foreign language can be acquired.

11. Be patient and persevering. Want of patience will spoil all; perseverance will overcome greatest obstacles and difficulties.

12. Be glad, if you can give others pleasure by your playing. But do not seek to excel by brilliant technique, which can never be object of true artist, whose aim must rather be acquisition of a thorough musical education. The ambition which incessantly urges on toward perfection is natural quality peculiar to those gifted with great talent and a strong character. Pride and vanity ignore, or know nothing of, ideals of true art, and are outcome of small minds.

On “The Gong Show,” you had a host who brought out acts (Chuck Barris), and three judges who rated them. Right behind judges was a gong. When an act came out and performed, judges would vote for it utilizing a one-to-ten scale. The scores would then be totaled up, and whichever act had highest total at end of show won. It was fair, simple to understand, but that wasn’t best thing about “The Gong Show.” The best thing was whenever a truly crummy act came out and performed. If it stunk to high heaven and back, any one of three judges could turn around and strike gong - that meant act had to stop performing right then and there. And since “The Gong Show” only offered a few hundred bucks to whomever won, overall quality of their acts was generally poor, which made them great fun to watch. Especially more fun to watch than these slicked up kids they’ve got on “American Idol.” They’re all too squeaky clean, not one hair out of place, and their song selections are simply atrocious. The other night I almost swallowed a whole ice cube when one of Idol contestants sang old Partridge Family hit, “I Think I Love You.” The bad thing was, young man was singing it like it was most serious song he‘d ever heard. It nearly caused me to curse out loud, which is something I’ve never done before in my life.

Folks, let me go ahead and tell y’all what’s gonna happen on Idol. Those record company execs who run show have pretty much decided that either Carrie or Bo has potential to sell most records. So Randy, Paula, and Simon are going to steer public opinion towards those two as much as they can. Just watch, I’d bet a BTO CD on it. And while I’m watching it all unfold over next few weeks, I’ll better understand why my mind keeps flashing back to “Gene, Gene, The Dancing Machine,” “The Unknown Comic,” “Larry and his drum,” and that simple little gong....