A Natural Process

So it has been a good week at the piano. I had a really good moment in my practicing on Monday. I was trying really hard to memorize a part of the Bach Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue and it seemed like no matter what i did I couldn't ever get it right. If you are familiar with the piece, the opening pages of the Fantasy is made up of a bunch of very fast passages, all very chromatic. (hence the name. :) anyways, Something that Dr. Shaw said in my lesson the week before came to my mind. She said, "my problem was that as soon as I heard it, i kind of knew it, and then my ear wouldn't let me play wrong notes." I realized my ear was taking a vacation. I decided that it might help if I sang in my head the note before I played it and relied a bit more on my ear. So I tried to sing the passage out loud from memory. As I tried this, I realized I couldn't hear exactly what the next note was in a few places and therefore couldn't even sing it. Whoops. I was relying totally on muscle memory to try to memorize and that is a hard way to do it. I learned a valuable lesson. Its funny. I'm pretty sure I should have learned this lesson years ago. And its not to say that some teachers never mentioned it, but if they did I obviously wasn't ready to hear it. Discovering small things like this for myself are what makes practicing exciting each day. Seriously, I couldn't wait to get to the piano the next day and try it again in another section and another piece. It doesn't work this slick every time I try it, but every little discovery helps. I have a great day today to practice, and I'm a bit curious what I will find out today. I'm sure you'll hear about it.