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Phase Two

Phase Two is that stage of learning a piano piece where you've learned the fingering, the notes, the rhythms, and the harmonic structure, but you haven’t yet started making music.

It’s the stage of slow practice, dynamics work, chunking, rhythmic variations, and slowly, ever so slowly, bringing up the tempo.

Phase Two is where the metronome comes into its own.

And Phase Two is a grind.

It’s hard. It’s nitty-gritty detail work. It feels like one step forward and two steps back, every day, every measure. It comes after the excitement of Phase One, when everything is new and progress feels obvious.

Phase Two isn’t exciting the way Phase One is.

But it is exciting.

It’s a grind, and a grind, and a grind, until suddenly:

  • You play through that difficult passage at 80 bpm five times in a row.
  • You stop consciously thinking about what you’re doing, but your hands still know where to go.
  • The tricky cadence at the end of the section becomes automatic.
  • The runs you drilled and drilled and drilled begin to flow on their own.
  • The left hand remembers what to do whether you’re playing at 60 or 120.

And you start to think: Maybe I really can do this.

There are no dramatic victories early in Phase Two, but there are small victories, and they feel dramatic. Maybe they really are.

They’re the result of careful, focused work: drilling, rhythmic practice, variable practice, and long sessions of interleaved clicking up. They’re the moments when the brain finally relaxes a little and realizes we’re making music.

I’m still early in Phase Two, and I’m back at the piano after several days off to rest my right hand.

It’s an adventure the way bird-watching is an adventure: probably boring to an observer, but genuinely fascinating to the person doing it.

I’m happy to be in Phase Two. It’s a grind, but I love the work. This is where the notes stop being marks on a page and sounds from a piano and start truly becoming music.

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