As usual, I found myself at work longing to get home to the Brahms and Bach I've been learning. I spent the day listening with my ears to high school students voice their dramas while my inner-brain orchestra soared playing Bach concertos. When I finally got home and started to practice, it was one of those dreaded days where nothing comes out of my hands but garbage. I have days where I play like an angel. Today was not one of them. After several aborted attempts to play decently, I smacked the keys and got up in frustration. I'm not particularly tired or edgy. I finally got to do what I've waited for all day, and now I'm bumbling. I hate that! It's a good thing I'm not a professional.

Edit: 'sorry, I just felt like griping.

Happens here all of the time too. It took me 2 hours to learn the first page of scriabin's op.11 no.1 prelude, not because it was hard....but because whenever something worked, my hands decided to forget and mess up more...

Sometimes things don't work... for me the best I can really do is take a deep breath, grab the metronome, set it to a really slow tempo, and then start again. It'll help eventually...haha.

Good luck with your work though!!

I have felt that way before, when I had a church job. All I could do was play Christian rock and complementary Christian music, and all I wanted to do was play classical. I felt musically/creatively DEAD. I'm not sure what you can do to help things out, because it only got better for me when I quit. But I've been there.

I am in a very bad mood these days and am sort of forcing myself to play, while usually it is sheer joy. It just happens for many reasons and we shouldn't take it as an indication that we have regressed or that we have lost interest...
I think we have all been there...

I've been there, too:
- What's wrong with me; I can't even play a scale today!
- Is this the real me? Am I really this bad?
- Whatever gave me the impression I thought I was any good?
- Is this revenge for feeling so smug about that last performance?
- Maybe I should give up the piano, sell it, and take up macramé!

The good news is that it doesn't last. Look forward to tomorrow; you'll be fine!

Regards,

No problem - we've all been there from time to time !!

Tomorrow is another day......

No worries, it's just Tuesday! (Use same reasoning any other day of the week )

Srsly, gotta be zen about it.

You are not really in charge of how good a session you'll have...just how well you'll cope on a 'Tuesday'.

I tend to just relax and do something else rather than beat myself up. Next day is almost always a ton better and I think it's part of the learning process.

Aww Deborah, I've definitely been there. I usually drop my fists and forearms on the keyboard to announce my frustration to the world, close the fall board, and call it a day. I also use it as an excuse to open up a nice red, and listen to some music.

It's frustrating, but don't be too hard on yourself. It's an unfortunate part of life, and it's best to just accept it as an off-day, and move on to something more productive.

-Daniel

Happens to all of us, I lost the ability to play the octaves in the Liszt without my forearms feeling like cement blocks yesterday....you can say I was pretty frustrated! When I came back today though it was all better.

I agree. Don't beat yourself up for it; that won't help matters. It happens to everyone. When this happens to me, I take a break and come back to the piano a few hours later...

When you practice just swear loudly like I do. People know I'm practicing if they hear lots of swearing from outside. =P

We all have bad days! It's nothing to worry about. Although sometimes you can't afford a bad day.. because then you lose a competition, you play badly at a concert you were paid to do, you get lost in a tutti (happened to me once because I lost focus for a split second and didn't know the piece very well), or you fail a jury.. (thankfully I never have!) >.<

Sounds good to me! I'm actually not being hard on myself, having had this experience many times before. I'm just frustrated because my practice time is so limited. There's only one thing worse than playing garbage, and that's coming home from work too tired to play at all.

Bruce, what you said really hit home. I found myself thinking, "Maybe I'm listening better today and I'm really this bad."

Angelina, you are not the only one with potty mouth at the piano!

Tomorrow I'm sure I'll be fine. I just needed to blow off some steam.

Ah yes, I do plenty of that as well.

It's a bad habit though! I once swore in a masterclass, at the end of the last movement of the Franck violin sonata, after performing the whole thing (because I missed a note at the end). I had to write "don't swear" on the last page of my score!! =)

gooddog: Did you practice on an empty stomach? Sometimes I forget to eat and practice through the night and realized my sluggishness is due to having no nutrition and calories to burn.

Angelina: you should learn to swear in a foreign, exotic language, Icelandic maybe.

There are sites with swearing and insults in different languages, including Icelandic....

The mistake I make is that I swear "inside", that's why it doesn't really help. I must learn to swear loud and clear, like Angelina. I am sure I would feel less stressed.

When that happens to me, I have a simple solution: I pick up the piano and throw it against the wall.

But seriously folks........

It happens, and often without any logic to it. So, since there's no particular reason, I get afraid it means I'm going backwards (like ChopinAddict said), or I just sukkk and whatever I ever learned was for nothing. Usually I practice frantically for a little while, until I realize it just ain't gonna happen -- today.

As the others said, tomorrow's another day.

On some days I feel drained for no apparent reason. Nothing good comes out of the piano no matter how hard I try. I usually use these times to work on my technique without hard musical practice or I try to get myself into a better mood by improvising or some sight-reading.

Well I speak Bulgarian but it's so much longer, like a whole sentence, instead of just saying ____ or ____ =)

In some high school musical I accompanied, one of the students thought his body mike was turned off and gave a "swearing seminar" durng a performance.

I can beat that. I used to type replacement checks for a large investment company. I once made a glaring mistake and, without thinking, typed a nasty four letter word beginning with F on a company check. I remember the check was made out to Chase Manhattan Bank. Any checks typed with errors went into a permanent file. I did some serious erasing.

Eating is something I never forget to do, thus the never ending diet!

When this happens to me, I pick up the guitar. I got into guitar a couple of years ago. I then quickly realize how badly I suck at guitar and this makes me feel like a virtuoso on piano, relatively speaking.....

Reminds me of an old golf buddy, who kept a 2 iron in his bag because he said it "made his 3 iron easier to hit"

My practicing fallback, if I'm feeling uninspired and nothing sounds good, is playing through something slowly with the metronome. It almost always helps, and is never a waste of time (I always learn something).

the cellist of my pianotrio couldn't play his high note in Mendelsohn's 2nd trio very comfortabely, so, every time we practised, he swore, and the 1st concert we gave after these rehearsels, he played like an angel, but he swore like a demon, and continues to do so ever after, every time we play the darn piece, J.Ch.!

One of the blessings about playing the piano is that most of us can't do that. Think if you played the violin - kindling!

If you play the trumpet you can spit at it too...
though, just my playing it occurs naturally. ha.

This used to happen to me quite often many years ago until I realised that the lamentable state never occurred during improvisation, only when playing pieces. Slowly it began to sink in that, excluding the occasional obvious physical cause, the feeling was therefore almost entirely in the mind and not in the playing mechanism. Once a positive mental state is established through improvisation I find I can play pieces without entering a negative feedback loop. I don't really know why this works. I conjecture that at times our critical function goes into overdrive and selects negative rather than positive qualities in our sounds. Once that happens it influences the physical means of playing, which in turn interferes with the music and we begin a descending cycle. As the critical faculty is necessarily absent in improvisation, at least while actually playing, presumably things can only take a turn for the better, or at worst remain neutral and objective.

I'm just speculating, my music is too different to make general comments, but I know this has worked for me over at least three decades.

That's my remedy, too (although not always with a metronome - just playing very slowly does it, too). It is like it somehow gets the mind and body into better synchronization, and that cures the problem.

I threw a metronome against the wall once and smashed it, and have thrown music around, too. Haven't figured out how to sling a piano though

A remedy I find that works for me in this frustrating situation of playing like crap is to sight read something new. It relaxes my mind.

I threw a score at my teacher once....

Jokingly of course but I was a little mad.. Haha