I usually have a wide-open morning for practicing on Saturdays, but that hasn't been the case today, mainly because I was exhausted after a long, stressful week and slept in (a rare thing for me) this morning.
But I did have time for some scales and Bach. At my lesson on Thursday, Carol said that I'm going to need to play more lightly if I ever want to get this prelude up to speed. I'm "punching" the keys and playing them with more weight than I need to. I think this is partly because I'm going at such a slow speed (♪=40). It's a plodding pace, and I'm tempted to plod and "punch."
So today I practiced playing it more lightly, but with equal intensity, starting at ♪=40. My goal at this point—now that I have the notes and the fingering figured out—is to play it perfectly at this tempo. Once I can play it perfectly at ♪=40 (and by that, I mean that I can do it consistently, not just once), I'll move to ♪=42. I won't move to ♪=44 until I have it perfectly at ♪=42. And so on, until I'm at ♩=72, or whatever it needs to be.
I love this phase of learning a piece. I love working toward perfection. I think perfection has gotten a bad name in this era of mediocrity-worship we're now living in. It's too often wrapped up with perfectionism in its unhealthy sense. But I think perfection is a good thing to strive for, and to achieve on occasion if you can. So with this piece, and with the others, I'll be working toward slow perfection. And then a faster perfection. I may never have any of them to a professional level, which is fine—and not something I expect anyway. But I want to play these as well as I possibly can. No laziness, and no excuses.
I upped the tempo to ♪=42 this morning and encountered a few stumblings at that tempo, not so much with the notes but with the fingering. I tend to get lazy with fingering: Oops, that was supposed to be a 5 and I played a 4. Oh well, I'll get it right next time.
This morning, I wasn't lazy. When I played the 5 by accident, I stopped and thought about why I played the 5—and, in this case, why I kept playing the 5 instead of the 4 that I'd specified. This actually happened in a few places:
As I've been learning this, I've played the 4 maybe 60% of the time, but the rest of the time I've played the 5. Why?
Well, It's maybe a little bit of a stretch for my hand? If it is, why did I write the 4 in, in the first place?
I tried changing the 4's to 5's, but that didn't feel right either. The transition from one grouping to the next felt, somehow, like it was more work. When I used the 4, it felt like less work. I realized it was because playing the 4 pulls my hand slightly to the right. When I play the 1 that follows (all of the lower notes in the RH are being played with 1), it's easier to transition my thumb to the step up.
And that's why I must have opted for the 4 in the first place. In each case, the 1 has to move up a step, and using the 4 in the preceding note makes that just a little smoother.
So at the slow pace, I drilled using the 4 and not the 5. And from now on, when I'm playing the piece, if I use the 5 as is my old habit, I'll stop ... and drill.
Slow perfection. It's not just about playing the right notes, or using the right dynamics. It's also about using the right fingering ... consistently.
But I did have time for some scales and Bach. At my lesson on Thursday, Carol said that I'm going to need to play more lightly if I ever want to get this prelude up to speed. I'm "punching" the keys and playing them with more weight than I need to. I think this is partly because I'm going at such a slow speed (♪=40). It's a plodding pace, and I'm tempted to plod and "punch."
So today I practiced playing it more lightly, but with equal intensity, starting at ♪=40. My goal at this point—now that I have the notes and the fingering figured out—is to play it perfectly at this tempo. Once I can play it perfectly at ♪=40 (and by that, I mean that I can do it consistently, not just once), I'll move to ♪=42. I won't move to ♪=44 until I have it perfectly at ♪=42. And so on, until I'm at ♩=72, or whatever it needs to be.
I love this phase of learning a piece. I love working toward perfection. I think perfection has gotten a bad name in this era of mediocrity-worship we're now living in. It's too often wrapped up with perfectionism in its unhealthy sense. But I think perfection is a good thing to strive for, and to achieve on occasion if you can. So with this piece, and with the others, I'll be working toward slow perfection. And then a faster perfection. I may never have any of them to a professional level, which is fine—and not something I expect anyway. But I want to play these as well as I possibly can. No laziness, and no excuses.
I upped the tempo to ♪=42 this morning and encountered a few stumblings at that tempo, not so much with the notes but with the fingering. I tend to get lazy with fingering: Oops, that was supposed to be a 5 and I played a 4. Oh well, I'll get it right next time.
This morning, I wasn't lazy. When I played the 5 by accident, I stopped and thought about why I played the 5—and, in this case, why I kept playing the 5 instead of the 4 that I'd specified. This actually happened in a few places:
Well, It's maybe a little bit of a stretch for my hand? If it is, why did I write the 4 in, in the first place?
I tried changing the 4's to 5's, but that didn't feel right either. The transition from one grouping to the next felt, somehow, like it was more work. When I used the 4, it felt like less work. I realized it was because playing the 4 pulls my hand slightly to the right. When I play the 1 that follows (all of the lower notes in the RH are being played with 1), it's easier to transition my thumb to the step up.
So at the slow pace, I drilled using the 4 and not the 5. And from now on, when I'm playing the piece, if I use the 5 as is my old habit, I'll stop ... and drill.
Slow perfection. It's not just about playing the right notes, or using the right dynamics. It's also about using the right fingering ... consistently.
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