The Popcorn Stand: The key to this record is persistence

Those of you who read this Popcorn Stand know my obsession for weird records. Again, I have no idea how people come up with these ideas but apparently Domingos-Antonio Gomes, a professional musician, woke up one day and said, “I’m going to set the world record for most times hitting a single piano key in one minute.”

It sounds like a pretty useless record to me but the Portuguese-American was determined. He actually practice for four months for his 60 seconds of fame and was so serious about the feat, he used a metronome to establish a rhythm. I hear how athletic teams have to establish a rhythm all the time and since Gomes is actually being called an athlete (what’s the sport, speed piano-key hitting), he literally established a rhythm.

I can actually identify with Gomes a little bit. Back in the ’80s there was a popular video game, track and field, that I loved playing. The game consisted of pounding two buttons as hard and as fast as possible to create as high as scores as possible and I was good at it. But the wear and tear on the machines was too much, so they started putting these ridges around the buttons, so that was the end of track and field.

Anyway, Gomes set the Guinness World Record for “Most piano key hits in one minute.” Again, I would have thought the record would have been “one,” but I was obviously way off. Gomes shattered the old record, hitting the B7 key 824 times in one minute to break the former mark of 765.

Gomes said he broke the record in order “to gain visibility in the international world of music by demonstrating my athletic prowess on the piano.”

I’m sorry dude, but as far as I’m concerned, Billy Joel is still the piano man.

— Charles Whisnand