Zez Confrey - Greenwich Witch 1921 (Novelty Ragtime Piano Synthesia)

Greenwich Witch sparkles with the keyboard tricks that made Zez Confrey famous, shown here as a novelty ragtime piano Synthesia video. Confrey wrote it in 1921, the same year his Kitten on the Keys, inspired by his grandmother's cat walking across the keyboard, became a national hit. Trained at Chicago Musical College and enthralled by the French impressionists, he brought real sophistication to novelty piano. Watch the falling notes and marvel at those glittering figures. 🎼 ABOUT ZEZ CONFREY Edward Elzear "Zez" Confrey (1895-1971) more or less invented the novelty piano genre. Born in Peru, Illinois and trained at the Chicago Musical College, he combined ragtime's syncopation with the rippling textures he admired in Debussy and Ravel, and the result sparkled. "Kitten on the Keys", written in 1921 after he watched his grandmother's cat wander across a keyboard, sold over a million copies of sheet music and made him famous overnight; "Dizzy Fingers" followed in 1923 and became almost as ubiquitous. He appeared on the same celebrated 1924 Aeolian Hall concert where Gershwin premiered "Rhapsody in Blue", performing his own pieces alongside it. Confrey wrote for the player-piano age, when brilliance sold, and that is exactly why students love him: these are dazzling showpieces that sound far harder than they are once the patterns settle under the fingers. Novelty piano: crisp, machine-precise right-hand figuration built on broken chords, chromatic thirds and three-against-four patterns, over a light, tidy stride or oom-pah left hand. Bright even tempos, whole-tone colour, and a clean, barely pedalled music-box sparkle. 🎹 TURN ANY PIANO RECORDING INTO MIDI Want to learn this piece — or any recording — with falling notes like in this video? I built Transcribe by Midiverse: upload audio and it becomes MIDI with left/right hand separation, a falling-notes practice mode, slow-down and looping. Free to start: ► https://transcribe.midiverse.ai 🎧 HOW TO PRACTISE THIS PIECE Ragtime rewards patience: keep the left-hand bass-chord alternation strictly in time and let the right hand's syncopation float against it. Practise hands separately first, set the tempo to around 60% until the leaps are safe, and resist rushing — Joplin famously warned that ragtime should never be played fast. 🔎 MORE PIANO SYNTHESIA ON THIS CHANNEL ► Zez Confrey Piano Synthesia Playlist (5 videos):    • Zez Confrey Piano Synthesia Playlist (itsR...   ► Ragtime piano Synthesia:    / @itsremco   ► All videos:    / @itsremco   📸 Instagram:   / its.remco   🤖 Reddit:   / its_remco   🎹 Midiverse on Instagram:   / midiverse.official   ABOUT THIS CHANNEL itsRemco is a piano Synthesia channel dedicated to ragtime piano, the syncopated style of Scott Joplin, James Scott and Joseph Lamb that set the stage for early jazz. Every video shows the notes falling in real time so you can see exactly what both hands are playing, learn by ear and eye together, and practise along at your own pace. Subscribe for new piano transcriptions every week. #ragtimepiano #synthesia #noveltyragtime #zezconfrey #greenwichwitch #noveltypiano #ragtime #earlyjazz #pianotutorial #pianocover #fallingnotes #midipiano #pianosolo #piano #itsremco