{"id":66,"date":"2013-05-22T09:11:52","date_gmt":"2013-05-22T16:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/?p=66"},"modified":"2013-06-18T13:23:22","modified_gmt":"2013-06-18T20:23:22","slug":"kind-of-sort-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/archives\/66","title":{"rendered":"Kind-of, Sort-of"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You have that new Beethoven in your hands&mdash;kind-of, sort-of. You&#8217;ve worked out the technical problems&mdash;kind-of, sort-of. And you&#8217;re getting nowhere. You have the &quot;What Now?&quot; Syndrome, and you&#8217;re wondering what to do next to improve.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Try <i>Phrasewise Memorization<\/i>: Play a phrase once, perfectly, with the score. Play it once, perfectly, without the score. Go on to the next phrase.<\/p>\n<p>That crescendo to a subito piano on the downbeat is typical of Beethoven.  Can you get its full impact by playing the crescendo as though it will go <i>through<\/i> the downbeat?<\/p>\n<p>The two-against-three sounds mechanical. It should luxuriate!<\/p>\n<p>That left-hand staccato is compromised by the pedal you use for the right-hand legato. What options do you have?<\/p>\n<p>So, there&#8217;s more to playing this phrase perfectly than you had realized; but on the fifth try, you do it. STOP! Do not do it again! Close the score, or turn the page. <i>Now<\/i> do it again. It&#8217;s perfect on the first try? STOP! Do not do it again!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/W7wRxkzi36I?start=51&#038;end=83\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Conscientiously, you point out that you almost played something wrong. That&#8217;s fine; you didn&#8217;t play it wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Or you feel that you &quot;ought to&quot; be able to play it multiple times perfectly? Quite right; but not today. Give your mind time to learn. (And tomorrow&#8217;s goal is not multiple playings, but to play again once, perfectly, on your first attempt.)<\/p>\n<p>For now, today, go on to the next phrase. And when you&#8217;re ready, do the same thing with longer sections, working up to the entire piece. Depending whether it&#8217;s an easy piece or a major one, getting through it may take from a few minutes to days. (Of course you&#8217;re practicing other things in other ways at the same time.)<\/p>\n<p>When you finish, you&#8217;ll find that the maddening kind-of, sort-of quality has disappeared. You&#8217;ll hear musical connections and interpretive possibilities as never before. Nothing lies between you and mastery now but the pleasures of deepening intimacy.<\/p>\n<p>P.S. Each phrase should include a touch of the next or preceding one, so you don&#8217;t build gaps into your playing.<span class=\"jb-end-of-post\"><img class=\"jb-end-of-post\" src=\"\/Mordent.svg\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You have that new Beethoven in your hands&mdash;kind-of, sort-of. You&#8217;ve worked out the technical problems&mdash;kind-of, sort-of. And you&#8217;re getting nowhere. You have the &quot;What Now?&quot; Syndrome, and you&#8217;re wondering what to do next to improve.<\/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\/66"}],"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=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}