In my former life, I was pianist.
I didn't particularly like the first phase of practicing something--that's the part where you break an entire 20-page piece of music into sections of 4-8 measures and figure out how to string the notes in each one together--really, it's a drag. I also didn't especially enjoy the memorization phase, where you play each section three times with the music and then give it a whirl without (and you find out that your fingers aren't nearly as smart as you thought they were).
But I did enjoy the creation phase. Now you might say that playing music written by someone else isn't really creating, and in lots of ways you're right. But a piece of music is never, and I mean never really played exactly the same twice--not even by the same person. So the creation phase is the one where you play through the music and invest just a little of your own soul in it: a bit of rubato here, a little extra ring on the top notes there, and then just lean into it at the end of the phrase.
Now writing is a whole 'nother thing, of course, sort of like the actual composition of the music that I just pull off the shelf and play (which by the way, I could never ever do). But today when I write, I'm going to try to remember a little of what it feels like to create music. To not just tell this story in my head, but to invest a bit of my soul into the actual telling. I'll let you know how it goes.
I didn't particularly like the first phase of practicing something--that's the part where you break an entire 20-page piece of music into sections of 4-8 measures and figure out how to string the notes in each one together--really, it's a drag. I also didn't especially enjoy the memorization phase, where you play each section three times with the music and then give it a whirl without (and you find out that your fingers aren't nearly as smart as you thought they were).
But I did enjoy the creation phase. Now you might say that playing music written by someone else isn't really creating, and in lots of ways you're right. But a piece of music is never, and I mean never really played exactly the same twice--not even by the same person. So the creation phase is the one where you play through the music and invest just a little of your own soul in it: a bit of rubato here, a little extra ring on the top notes there, and then just lean into it at the end of the phrase.
Now writing is a whole 'nother thing, of course, sort of like the actual composition of the music that I just pull off the shelf and play (which by the way, I could never ever do). But today when I write, I'm going to try to remember a little of what it feels like to create music. To not just tell this story in my head, but to invest a bit of my soul into the actual telling. I'll let you know how it goes.
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