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I am posting this as a benchmark, not because I think I'm playing very well yet.  The idea would be post a video every month for a ye...

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Can you hear it?

I found out something significant recently: if you can't play something on the piano, it means you aren't hearing it correctly. So it is incorrect to say "I can't play what I am hearing." You should say: "I can't hear what I want to hear."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My jazz piano teacher back in my high-school days required that I sing my solos while playing them on the piano. This way I could hear what I wanted to hear and then play what I was hearing on the piano, simultaneously. This was VERY hard for me to do at first - not least because I was too self-conscious to want to sing. But when the lesson kicked in, it changed everything.

Phaedrus said...

I should have written "required that I sing my *improvisations* ..." - because not all solos are improvisations, of course.

Jonathan said...

Yes. It's paradoxical because you think it is easier because the keyboard lays out all the notes for you, but you must still hear what you're going to play before you play it.