Cincinnati Bengals Line Coach takes up piano
What's interesting about this is that he took up the instrument to get inside the mind of a performer. Money quote:
Because, over the course of a night, if (a concert pianist) plays 20,000 notes, and he misses a couple, he's had a bad night. And that's kind of the business I'm in - teaching people how to perform, particularly under pressure.
Never quite thought about it that way, although, with public recital #2 coming up in about 5 weeks, I should. I knew piano would teach me about music and preparation It has re-affirmed a lot of what I already knew, mainly having to do with HOW we learn things. But it never occurred to me to think of approaching piano from the perspective of a performer.
I'm going to have to think about this a little while more, but wanted to share it with you anyway.
- Aw2pp, recalcitrant perfectionist
3 comments:
Have you read "The Inner Game of Music" by Barry Green & Timothy Gallwey? Gallwey wrote "The Inner Game of Tennis."
Funny to be relating backwards from music to sports to music!
And I don't think missing a few notes is a bad night; coach has it wrong there.
I have that same "perfectionist" streak in my nature. For me, a big part of learning to perform is coming to grips with that.
I know my teacher would say "nobody cares about those wrong notes." Well, even if I don't quite believe that the idea behind it is right -- to play musically I have to ignore the mistakes and keep going.
It took me about three years of lessons before I was satisfied with the way I performed a piece. Coming up on 7 years now I still get butterflies but I have come to enjoy playing for others to hear. Like everything else, it requires practice.
That's what I'm working on now, to be able to keep going without that huge pause that screams "I made a mistake!" Because really, if people don't know the piece, and you don't point it out, but keep playing musically, who's going to know?
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