"That was sloppy ... but fun!"
That's not what one should say after flying through a Bach prelude.
This is one of my favorite pieces I've ever played. I picked it up a few days ago after my decade-long hiatus from regular practice. At first, it was as if I'd never learned it; beyond the first few measures, I was having to re-learn everything as if for the first time. But after a couple of run-throughs, everything came back to me surprisingly quickly.
A few days later, I can play it again! It's sloppy, though. And I'm going on mostly muscle memory.
So I know I need to slow down, re-learn it by memory s-l-o-w-l-y, concentrate on evenness of tone, and work my way back up to my previous tempo.
This is Bach. It could take a while.
So today I sat down and decided, "Okay. Just this once, I'm going to fly through the piece, just as if I'd never stepped away from it."
And I did.
I literally did not miss a note. My muscle memory is fully intact.
But it could have sounded a lot better.
So when I finished, I felt a little breathless, a little high, and a lot happy.
Happy because I'd just sailed through a piece I love, but also happy because my work is cut out for me.
Sloppy ... but fun.
It was both, and the process of cleaning up the sloppiness is going to be fun, too.
That's not what one should say after flying through a Bach prelude.
This is one of my favorite pieces I've ever played. I picked it up a few days ago after my decade-long hiatus from regular practice. At first, it was as if I'd never learned it; beyond the first few measures, I was having to re-learn everything as if for the first time. But after a couple of run-throughs, everything came back to me surprisingly quickly.
A few days later, I can play it again! It's sloppy, though. And I'm going on mostly muscle memory.
So I know I need to slow down, re-learn it by memory s-l-o-w-l-y, concentrate on evenness of tone, and work my way back up to my previous tempo.
This is Bach. It could take a while.
So today I sat down and decided, "Okay. Just this once, I'm going to fly through the piece, just as if I'd never stepped away from it."
And I did.
I literally did not miss a note. My muscle memory is fully intact.
But it could have sounded a lot better.
So when I finished, I felt a little breathless, a little high, and a lot happy.
Happy because I'd just sailed through a piece I love, but also happy because my work is cut out for me.
Sloppy ... but fun.
It was both, and the process of cleaning up the sloppiness is going to be fun, too.
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