Just one thing
When you have an unexpected variation occur (less charitable people might refer to this as a mistake) what do you do?
If you’re like most people, you might do a bunch of things all at once. You wince, you stop playing, you look at your hands, you look at your harp, you look at the music, you look at your teacher (or other audience), and you panic a little.
And then you might try to fix everything – all at once. But is this the best thing to do? Probably not. Because what’s the most important thing to come away from a mistake with?
The lesson that was buried in it.
To learn the lessons the “variation” can teach you, you need to unpack it from all the detritus in which you found it. And to do that, you have to look at each thing – just one thing at a time.
What things are you going to look at? Well you need to know how you ended up there. Were you going too fast? Was your fingering not solid? Did you lose focus? What happened once you ended up there? Was it a trainwreck or were you just off a little? Did you know where you were? Were you able to quickly determine what happened or were you completely lost? Were you surprised or did you know it was coming and were hoping you could ride it out? Did you have a solution immediately or did you need to figure a bunch of stuff out?
Of course, there are a nearly infinite pool of possible questions but to get at the answers, try to answer one question at a time – don’t try to solve everything at once. Parse the problem and identify solutions. And then go from there. The solution for going too fast is a very different than for losing focus, for example.
So, the next time you have an “opportunity to excel” try doing one thing at a time in pursuit of an answer or a way forward. Stop! Don’t move. Be still. Rather than be a flurry of activity, take a breath. Because being a flurry of activity works well – until it doesn’t and something doesn’t go right. Now you can think, observe, and assess what’s happened.
Give it a try yourself – it does take a little practice to pause, but that gets you time to replay in your mind’s ear what you heard and feel where you are in space. Commit to only doing one thing to get your bearings! Don’t fall prey to the impulse to fix everything – because you probably don’t know what is wrong, so how can you fix it? If you forge ahead you’ll just confuse yourself and make it more difficult to find the solution.
Next time you find you’re in a “variation” give yourself a beat to stop, be still, think, and decide what to fix first. Give it a try and let me know what you learn in the comments!
I struggle with the mistake derailing the muscle memory which is the foundation of the way I naturally memorize. I’m curious how unusual this method is… I memorize quickly but it’s not a very flexible way to hold onto a tune.
My brain does not hold a visual map of where the tune is headed despite my trying multiple different strategies to build a map. So when my fingers slip and my muscle memory gets tangled up I am lost.
I’m trying to teach my ear to recognize the identification of the notes (ie: what each labeled tone sounds like) so that the auditory map in my head is more useful in terms of figuring out how to proceed but that is slow going as well.
Do you have any suggestions for strengthening the ability to create an internal map of a tune to support muscle memory?
Thanks!
So many people are so visual that we talk about everything as though it can be seen! I get, I’m not very visual either. Your “map” probably needs to be earconic (made of sounds) and proprioceptive (made of your body in space). I’ll look into a better answer for you, but as a placeholder, try interval exercises. There are some in thr Alfred Theory book (and other places) – you could start by listening and then add in placing the intervals and playing them back. I don’t listen well so I know this can be a slow and laborious (painful?) process, but it (like everything else) gets easier with practice.
Thank you Jen! I recently downloaded an app called Ch!Ear that challenges you to identify a series of chords (I, II, IV, V) by listening and recognizing them in relationship to each other. I’m finding it really difficult to do! I like the idea of working on intervals… I’ll add that to my mix!
Kate suggested singing the tunes; it’s not that I can’t hear the tune in my head and remember it but rather that once my hands fall off I can’t yet pick it back up in relationship to where I was. I’m practicing starting midway through the tune at various and sometimes illogical places to try and gain fluency too.
Thanks for the help!
Leslie
Intervals can be hard at first – probably because they feel kind of untethered. Another way to approach them is to find real examples. The biggies are Over the Rainbow (starts on an octave), Jaws theme (2nd), Here Comes the Bride (4th), NBC (1, 6, 4). Once individual intervals are less mysterious, the chords get a little easier to find. To follow up Kate’s point about singing – remember that you’re trying to build linkages between all the pieces – the fingers go in a pattern that is made of intervals of notes that go in a certain pattern to make a song. Sometimes the singing is the glue that helps hold all that together while you strengthen the connections. It’s worth a try!
i heard an interview with Yo-Yo Ma. he said that muscle mem is the first to desert you.
nice that your hands are so trainable!
i respectfully suggest you practicing Singing the piece. then you’ll Hear it when you play.
I have found that a “variation” can be a fun way to explore. I try not to do anything, and keep going to see where it leads me!! Great if you are playing alone. Not so much with others.
agree. i played in church and had to start over. it was fine.
also- i played a well known piece at a recital. it was NOT what was on that page At ALL. another harper commented; you kept going!
indeed, a rather unusual variation of Eli Gheal!
Good point – it was FINE! And sometimes those off the cuff improvisations are really good!