It's hard if you think it is
I picked a hymn to start class with today that I thought was really easy, I didn't have time to think too hard about it, there were other crises. It was "How Firm a Foundation," and everyone knows it. I knew that the usual, very talented sister who plays for us would be gone, so I figured this hymn would be an easy one for the Relief Society president who plays in a pinch. In a real pinch, I knew that, rusty as I am, I could play because I used to know this one cold.
Well, the president went towards the piano to play, and said, "You said this was easy? It has four flats!" So I ended up playing, with lots of mistakes (no preparation). The mistakes diminished in frequency as I kept going, because I remembered better. I wanted that couple of minutes of singing to gather myself in readiness to stand up and teach the class, but that's all right . I shouldn't have opened the big, looseleaf hymnbook instead of the standard size, even though it lies flat nicely, because the top of the page was that much higher up, out of range, for bifocals.
Bifocals are designed to give you a way to look down, to read, or ahead, to talk to someone, but the process of playing the piano involves moving your focus up-straight-on to the page, and down to your hands moving on the keyboard, up and down, back and forth. I discovered that I need new glasses a little bit worse than the last time I did this, and of course there is a reason that pianists and organists have a separate mid-range pair of single vision glasses for when they play. I don't own such a pair. So I couldn't see well enough to do this really well, and it was passable only because I did know this hymn so thoroughly; I had figured any pianist would know it too. So I had some challenges, and the performance wasn't perfect.
But the point that surprised me was that first reaction--this has four flats! That just means it's in the key of A-flat. The hymn is still simple, the left hand has very repetitive patterns, the music is utterly familiar to the ear. It's not in the key of C with no black notes in the scale, but it's not hard.
It's a common frame of reference, looking at the key signature and panicking at the sight of sharps and flats. It doesn't matter to me--although I have to admit that for some reason I fumble in the key of B with five sharps--because I had a teacher who started us out in C and then went to the key of F#, which has six sharps, which is to say all the ones that you can have in a normal key. She declared that people thought it was hard to play with black keys because they were taught that it was hard, but she demonstrated that it is actually easier to move the fingers through the scale than it is for the key of C, where you have to tuck and twist much more. Therefore, the difficulty was an artificial obstacle, and she would not allow us to fall into it.
I realized much later, as an adult, that the reason for the finger exercises in each key, moving up each point of the scale in that key, was so that we would be comfortable and familiar in every key no matter what place we were playing in on the keyboard. We were well drilled, and I just look at the key signature and say, oh, the key is 'this,' and I plug in 'this' to my brain and I'm fine, to the limits of my skills. (Hymns are about the limits of my skills, I am not fabulous.) I identify patterns in the phrases and learn them, but the back of my brain does not go 'aagh, aagh, there're x-number of black keys, try not to panic!'
How many things do we look at in life and go aagh, aagh, can't do this! just as a conditioned reflex, when they are not actually hard, just unfamiliar? It might do us all good to take a try at something we don't know how to do yet, and not let fear run us away. Do the drills, and gain the skills. You never know, you could have fun!
Well, the president went towards the piano to play, and said, "You said this was easy? It has four flats!" So I ended up playing, with lots of mistakes (no preparation). The mistakes diminished in frequency as I kept going, because I remembered better. I wanted that couple of minutes of singing to gather myself in readiness to stand up and teach the class, but that's all right . I shouldn't have opened the big, looseleaf hymnbook instead of the standard size, even though it lies flat nicely, because the top of the page was that much higher up, out of range, for bifocals.
Bifocals are designed to give you a way to look down, to read, or ahead, to talk to someone, but the process of playing the piano involves moving your focus up-straight-on to the page, and down to your hands moving on the keyboard, up and down, back and forth. I discovered that I need new glasses a little bit worse than the last time I did this, and of course there is a reason that pianists and organists have a separate mid-range pair of single vision glasses for when they play. I don't own such a pair. So I couldn't see well enough to do this really well, and it was passable only because I did know this hymn so thoroughly; I had figured any pianist would know it too. So I had some challenges, and the performance wasn't perfect.
But the point that surprised me was that first reaction--this has four flats! That just means it's in the key of A-flat. The hymn is still simple, the left hand has very repetitive patterns, the music is utterly familiar to the ear. It's not in the key of C with no black notes in the scale, but it's not hard.
It's a common frame of reference, looking at the key signature and panicking at the sight of sharps and flats. It doesn't matter to me--although I have to admit that for some reason I fumble in the key of B with five sharps--because I had a teacher who started us out in C and then went to the key of F#, which has six sharps, which is to say all the ones that you can have in a normal key. She declared that people thought it was hard to play with black keys because they were taught that it was hard, but she demonstrated that it is actually easier to move the fingers through the scale than it is for the key of C, where you have to tuck and twist much more. Therefore, the difficulty was an artificial obstacle, and she would not allow us to fall into it.
I realized much later, as an adult, that the reason for the finger exercises in each key, moving up each point of the scale in that key, was so that we would be comfortable and familiar in every key no matter what place we were playing in on the keyboard. We were well drilled, and I just look at the key signature and say, oh, the key is 'this,' and I plug in 'this' to my brain and I'm fine, to the limits of my skills. (Hymns are about the limits of my skills, I am not fabulous.) I identify patterns in the phrases and learn them, but the back of my brain does not go 'aagh, aagh, there're x-number of black keys, try not to panic!'
How many things do we look at in life and go aagh, aagh, can't do this! just as a conditioned reflex, when they are not actually hard, just unfamiliar? It might do us all good to take a try at something we don't know how to do yet, and not let fear run us away. Do the drills, and gain the skills. You never know, you could have fun!
Three cheers for muscle memory!
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about the problem with bifocals in some situations. Finally an ophthalmologist suggested a pair of glasses using a single correction -- the lower part of the bi's. Works great for me at the computer.