Skip to main content

Sloppy ... but fun

"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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Rusty Lock and Key

I'm in a room. There's a door in front of me. On the other side of that door is a whole world of adventure and imagination and joy and delight, but for the moment, I'm locked in this gray little room. The door itself has a lock that is all rusted. I've tried to open it in the past, but I've never gotten very far. Sometimes I try to scrape the rust off the lock. I also have a rusty old key that I occasionally try to polish. Each time, after I've made a little progress, I'll put it into the keyhole in hopes of opening the door. It turns a half a millimeter or so, but the brief excitement at my progress dies quickly when I realize, once again, the lock isn't opening. I set the old key aside, and from there I can forget about the door, the lock, and the world outside, for months—years, even. But then something happens—I hear birdsong, or I catch a glimpse of color—and I pick up the key and start picking away at the stubborn rust. That dark little room is my ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Amazing Practice Tracker 2.0: Leveling Up My Piano Game

(Apologies for the cheesy clip art. I needed to come up with something, or the Blogger template would show a fuzzy, overly-enlarged snippet of the first chart below.) When I showed my husband my piano practice tracker, he said I should market and sell it. Ha. It’s not for sale, but I’m excited to share how this tool has transformed my practice—and why it might inspire all three of my readers. Since my last post about the Amazing Practice Tracker, I’ve made it even better. Here’s a peek at how it works, using my June data. All The Pretty Colors, All the Pretty Winners My tracker now sparkles with color: darker shades for active pieces, lighter ones for maintenance, technique, and sight-reading. Each day, the piece I practice most gets a bright yellow highlight—a little “gold medal,” if you will. (Click image for a slightly larger view.) A leaderboard automatically shows the day’s top piece and time. And if that isn't enough, I keep track of the month's leaders--specifically, ho...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dance of the Digits

Note: I've expanded significantly on this post over at my other blog, A Sort of Notebook . I am loving Liszt. I love the way my hands have to "share" the melody. I have so much to write on that, but I'm borrowing a computer and don't have enough time to do it justice. Suffice it to say that I've practiced three and a half wonderful hours today, and about two hours on Liszt alone. What I find wonderful about Liszt is that it pushes one hand hard, but not too hard. Then the other hand gets a turn to be pushed. But it's never both at the same time, and never one hand for too long. It's hard to explain. When I have more time to write, I'll word things rather more eloquently, I'm sure. All I can say now is that my fingers feel like they're dancing a wonderful, graceful dance. I've been trying to "play with my body," as my piano teacher says to do, so all of me is dancing. And Standchen, though it still need a lot of work (like, um...
3 comments
Read more