Originally published June 1, 2012
This blog is really about music. My adult study of piano in particular. It’s not going so well at the moment. I’m frustrated almost to the point of putting an ad for my Kawai grand piano in the local paper and calling it quits.
Recently I shared this mood with my piano teacher, who neither tried to talk me in or out. Instead, she sent me to a wonderful website, www.musicalfossils.com, the brainchild of Matthew Harre, a teacher with an amazing philosophy about the reasons adult piano students struggle.
He nailed them all, from wanting to play perfectly to not being spontaneous to physical tenseness and its result on the music involved. I’ve spent the past week reading his point of view and am beginning to equate music with my writing.
It’s all about the editor.
When I write I just put little black marks on a computer’s sheet of paper. I don’t think about what they really say. I just “play.” Later I go back and revise. But when it comes to piano, I never allow myself to just play the notes as if they were a first draft of an essay. I revise, edit, critique as I go.
It’s something to think about: Letting the music flow and not caring about the missed sharp or the wrong fingering. Playing as if it were a first draft. Revising later. After all, as Mr. Harre notes (no pun intended), who counts the wrong notes in a concert?
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