Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Asking what the music wants

The first time I hear a piece that I really want to play I always feel a deep contact with it and some sort of understanding for what it wants. So I start to practise it and it often loses that magical feel for big stretches of time as I focus on the technical aspects of it. Sometimes I am able to get back to that initial feeling but usually only shortly, and rarely when I am playing it myself. Of course it gets better and better but not quite to the level of intensity as when I heard it the first times.

Any tips on shortening that distance? Is it simply about asking the music what it wants more often? Or maybe just a function of what level you are at?

I think that you have to disassemble it and develop each part separately (polyphony, dynamics etc etc) but hopefully when you put it all back together and instantiate it as a performance (even to yourself) it will be emergent - whole greater than sum of parts. If not I guess that yes, it's all part of the learning process and that in a year or so you'll be able to add another layer of nuance/sublety and get the result you're after...

Try keyboardklutz's recommendation - after the hard work as been done, hear what you want in your head and just make the piano do it...

I left behind the approach of feeling my way into music some time ago. That is, I still do so to some extent, but I have learned to examine the music and get at its meaning and how to bring it across through analysis. That analysis gives a technical template, in a way, which if I follow it creates musicality and meaning, ironically enough. Even better, once I've mastered the basics of playing the piece I get to work more and more on those details and blend them into the music. In this way the music gets more meaning instead of less.

Supposing, for example, that a piece of music is passionate. It may call for strong crescendos, or sudden dynamic contrast. You have to plan that contrast - play the preceding part piano in order for the sudden forte to stand out. You might have a dramatic pause for effect, or plan a pause that is slightly longer - how long? How do you end that note just before it ends?

These are all technical details that will help convey musical meaning, and they are things you must become able to do i.e. practice. When you work on such details which are specific and technical, but in a musical manner, then the music doesn't fade through familiarity - it gains clarity and it grows over time. At least, having done both, this is what I'm experiencing.

Or as Lavalse said in much fewer and better words ....

Or is this actually a non-musical issue, of familiarity breeding contempt?

I am reminded of a post-op glow I had once, thanks to Fentanyl, that left me astoundingly content with my life, in absolutely every detail. Later, I came to see that "content" was actually a choice, and a goal, and the drug only made it easier to recognize but I could learn to live that way. (which I have not been able to do, completely, but accept as a desired outcome.)

Therefore: What is it about listening the first time that makes the feeling happen, and what is it about the way you think about your own playing that gets in the way of the feeling?

However, there is an enormous difference in brain processing between listening to someone else and playing yourself. Could be that your brain is not able to feel the same emotions while you are playing. Does the problem apply to listening to recordings of yourself?

Was in an episode of House, MD, with an example of a piano virtuouso with epilepsy? who was calm when playing, but listening did nothing for him? Someone else will have to provide the details.

Jacob, you have touched on something here that I totally understand. What is it that touches us the first time?

Sometimes I think the study of a piece "removes" the magic a little, like learning how a magic trick is done.

Then, the other side of the coin....Have you ever been practicing/playing real slow, and find a certain note(s) combo/progression is pure and perfect? It just rings in your soul and makes you shiver? And, that becomes your favorite part of the piece, and when you point it out to others, they don't get it?

I take this as the trade-out for the "first time" thrill being lost with study....

Yes! That's a great description, gmm1. There are certain pieces I've really outgrown but still play from time to time just because I've had that experience with them.

Was it me doh? It needs to be done from note 1, minute one. i.e. it is part of the hard work.

I was waiting for that after reading my post back apologies for misrepresenting you...

heck, I'm chuffed! Hey, and no charge.

I'll buy you a beer...

I think what happens a lot of the time is that we don't really work on the piece enough so that the technical aspects are learned enough that they can 'fall away' and we can really make what we hear in our head come out of our fingers.

We (I have been really guilty of this in the past) get frustrated and move on to another piece before we get to the stage where we can *really* play it like we hear it in our head.

My friend and teacher who's a PhD student in piano performance told me that all the music for her next recital will be 'learned' (memorized) and at tempo before the next time she sees her teacher (they're currently on summer break). *Then* they start working on it together!

Of course she's on an entirely different level but to me that speaks to the amount of work required to really play a piece...far after the notes are under your fingers and it's memorized!

Jacob, I think this is a normal part of the learning process. Playing an instrument is a fusion of your left and right brain. But the left brain has to take over for awhile so you can get the quantitative and technical aspects of a piece firmly under your control, before you can relax back into the right-brained, inspirational, paradigm. I saw this with many of my students and have gone through it myself with all of the pieces that I have fallen in love with and determined to learn and perform. It reaches a point, for awhile, where I am actually sick and tired of the piece (I call it my hate phase). But shortly thereafter, once it is technically solid and I can begin thinking about how I want it to sing, I fall in love with it all over again. My hate phase usually lasted a month or two. Maybe I"m more hateful than others