MY DREAM

I love the Bach Inventions that I'm learning, and they're great for helping me to re-establish my skills after too many years of not practicing regularly, but they're small, fingery pieces.  My hands generally stay close to the keys and move deliberately from one position to the next.

Yes, they're beautiful, and yes, they're good for me, but I dream of playing the big pieces again, pieces free from the constraints of 18th century harpsichord-rooted keyboard style, virtuosic pieces where my hands dance and fly over the keys. I dream of feeling like a real pianist.

Decades ago, when I was too young to know they were completely over my head, I learned a couple of Rachmaninoff preludes. Big chunks of them are still in my muscle memory.  One of these days when I work up to it and I'm feeling really fit at the keyboard, I'm going to return to those Rachmaninoff preludes of my youth and see what I can do with them in my maturity.

I don't know how far I'll get, but I know that however far that turns out to be, I won't regret giving it my best shot. Better that than not trying.

WHERE AM I?

I've set out to learn all 15 of Bach's Two Part Inventions. So far I've learned the notes for 9 of them, but different ones are in different conditions.  It's time to take stock of where I am.

Numbers 2 and 5 have fallen into neglect like abandoned buildings.  They're not my favorites, and I haven't been maintaining them. I really should repair them before they collapse.

Numbers 1, 4, 6, and 8 are in pretty good shape.  I'm making music with them and refining the way I play them.  Number 3 isn't far behind that group.

Numbers 7 and 9 are nearly where I want them as far as learning the notes goes, and I'm about ready to begin seriously honing and refining their musical aspects.

The bottom line: 7 coming along well, 2 in serious need of repair.

I think I'll begin learning number 10 soon.  I feel the siren song of new territory.  Maybe tomorrow. It's going to be a challenging one.  Maybe I'll begin working on some of the tough spots in the background while I review numbers 2 and 5.

NEW DIMENSION

Today I downloaded Finale Notebook, free software for creating music scores and printing them out.

I used it to write down a little composition I made for my music students.  I called the composition "Invention 1.0".  It's written more-or-less in the style of the Bach Two Part Inventions that I've been practicing so diligently for the last two months, but it's highly simplified so as to be accessible to a beginner at the keyboard.

So much of the music for early beginners isn't very interesting.  I tried to write something that had some musical structure and interest even though it uses only the five notes of the basic hand position, plus a leading tone at the end to wrap it up with a good satisfying cadence.

I tried it out on a student today and it went very well. He seemed to like it, and it was at the right level for him -- a little bit challenging, but well within reach given some practice.  I used it as an opportunity to help him get well grounded in the steps for learning a new piece, which I think I discussed in an earlier post.

I'm really excited to be composing again, even if it's only 16 bars of very simple counterpoint. I look forward to writing more things for my students.

Hmm... Now that I think about it, I got so excited that I never got around to trying out that new book of scales and arpeggios I just got.  Tomorrow.

SCALING THE HEIGHTS

I typically begin at least my first practice session of the day by playing some scales and arpeggios. It gets all of my fingers moving and warming up, helps me with the eternal quest, which all pianists face, to play evenly with fingers that are all different lengths and strengths, and eases me into the session mentally with something familiar.

But I realized the other day that I have a number of significant gaps in my practice of scales.  I only recently began playing them in contrary motion after making my piano students play them in both parallel and contrary motion.  I don't play the minor keys. I play with the hands only an octave or two octaves apart and never in 3rds or 6ths apart.  And so on.

Well, it's time to get serious about scales, isn't it?  I ordered a complete book of scales, arpeggios, and cadences in all the keys, and it arrived yesterday.  I'm going to get right on it!

Tomorrow.

AN EMERGENCY

If you've been following this blog, you know I've been working on a challenging left hand trill in Bach's Two Part Invention #7.  I practice it a little bit every day. I'm living with it, making it part of my life, part of my body.

This morning I realized that, at some point, I slipped past a threshold with it.  It no longer feels like an emergency when I play it.  It no longer saps every particle of my awareness just to be able to get through it physically.  I'm relaxing into it more and more as it becomes a routine that's solidly in my physiology.  I'm able to turn the passage it into music now, maybe shape the little melody going on in the right hand, or grow the trill louder or softer.

It makes me think of a lot of the difficult passages in things I've played over the years.  Many have felt like an emergency to me.  They take so much attention to play that I don't have any awareness left over to turn them into music.

The only answer, the always answer:  more practice.

THERE'S RETENTION AND THERE'S RETENTION

Today, I went back and reviewed Bach's Two Part Invention #2.  It's been weeks since I revisited it.  Truth be told, it's not my favorite and I've been neglecting it.

I was dismayed to discover the extent to which I had forgotten it.  I was very rusty on the fingerings and on the details of how it goes.  It'll take a bit of refurbishing to get it back up to the shape it was in when I last practiced it actively.

One thing that I didn't lose, however, was my facility in playing a little ornament with my left hand.  I developed that facility while practicing #2, and it's just as crisp today as it was weeks ago. (See the entry "Brian Grows a Neuron", posted February 12, 2012, and covering an experience from January 11.)

This got me to pondering the difference between retaining the physical skill of playing the ornament, and retaining the memory of the details of the piece.  Memory, as a cognitive skill, is more plastic, more brain-based. It comes and goes. But somehow the physical skill is more deeply ingrained in my body and, perhaps, in my peripheral nervous system.

Having once learned the piece, I know that it will be far easier for me to learn it again than it was for me to learn it the first time.  Much of it is still in there, and I can re-build on that.

Well, that's it for blogging today. Gotta run. Now, what was it I was going to do next....

PURE PLEASURE

I sat down at the piano "just for a few minutes" to do a "quick" run-through of Invention #9.

Before I knew it, more than an hour had gone past and I had played everything from Bach Inventions to a Chopin Nocturne to "Bridge Over Troubled Waters".  I was lost in the pleasures of music.

I'm so happy that I decided to go back to practicing regularly.  I can play again!  Hooray!