{"id":394,"date":"2013-07-03T14:30:25","date_gmt":"2013-07-03T21:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/?p=394"},"modified":"2013-07-23T09:02:27","modified_gmt":"2013-07-23T16:02:27","slug":"playing-softly-part-3-of-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/archives\/394","title":{"rendered":"Soft Piano Playing, Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Lessons with a Lady<\/i><\/p>\n<p>So I went to the lady with the dancing pianissimo, and told her I wanted my soft playing to be like hers; and she gave me that old-lady smile and an ordinary pencil to hold vertically in a snug fist, with the eraser sticking down an inch. I was to play a note three times, pianissimo. Shoulder and elbow free, wrist with no &#8220;give.&#8221; To my surprise, I did fine. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Next, I did the same with the side of the hand, fingers together, no pencil; a sort of slow-motion karate chop. Then with the hand in a more or less normal position, using index finger with thumb bracing it; like an &#8220;OK&#8221; sign but with the thumb one joint from the end.<\/p>\n<p>She said, &#8220;You generate pianissimo playing-force at will. So we conclude that your pianissimo problem is due to what?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I said, &#8220;Due to something that&#8217;s prevented by these weird ways of playing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She was amused. &#8220;And what do the weird ways, as you call them, have in common?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I said, &#8220;Well, they&#8230;. They all&#8230;. Hmm. They all what?&#8221; My brain was beginning to kick in. &#8220;Oh! They all pass the playing-force&#8230;all the playing-force&#8230;to the key! They don&#8217;t lose anything.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Exactly,&#8221; she said; and continued, &#8220;But we can&#8217;t play pieces with pencil-erasers,&#8221; while playing the first Two-Part Invention with  pencil erasers.<\/p>\n<p><i>to be continued&#8230;.<\/i><\/p>\n<center class=\"jb-trill\"><img src=\"\/trill.svg\" \/><\/center>\n<p><i>Now Practicing:<\/i> Sonata in B minor by the #1 Underrated Famous Composer, Joseph Haydn. (Hob. XVI:32.) <span class=\"jb-end-of-post\"><img class=\"jb-end-of-post\" src=\"\/Mordent.svg\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lessons with a Lady So I went to the lady with the dancing pianissimo, and told her I wanted my soft playing to be like hers; and she gave me that old-lady smile and an ordinary pencil to hold vertically in a snug fist, with the eraser sticking down an inch. I was to play [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":568,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions\/568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}