Learning and burning

To learn a piece of music you have to memorize it (of course) but more than that you must understand it. This means you have to figure out the tempo, all those marks denoting dynamics, notations telling you to play faster or slower, louder or softer, to accent certain notes, all that stuff. It takes time. And in the meantime--unless you're a kid or rich or retired-- real life with all its attending responsibilities keeps interrupting you with annoying insistence.

It's fascinating to me that when you look at a piece of paper covered with all those dots and lines and chicken scratches that--if you're not hip to the secret code--look like some esoteric calculus formulae-- you're looking at a written description of the same piece of music the symphony or the pianist or the violinist is playing. Isn't this magical? People figured out a way to transpose the sounds they heard in their heads onto paper in a way that others could interpret and recreate them. Hoorah for human ingenuity. Now if we can only quit using it to destroy ourselves.

But more than just interpreting the written language, each player has leeway to make choices in the interpretation, which is why no two players will sound exactly alike. This is why unless you're a fan, you may not understand why I have five different DVDs of Wagner's Tannhauser, or seven of Tristan und Isoulde. Different interpretations, you see.

I discovered long ago that learning, for me, isn't a progressive process. I have what seems to be instantaneous breakthroughs--"Aha" moments. I'll plug away at something for a long time, with no discernible progress, then suddenly, I can do it. It's as if my mind absorbs the information but holds off until it completely understands it, then it allows me access to it. I think the first time I consciously became aware of this was when I took Driver's Ed in school. My teacher told me "I almost gave up trying to teach you how to drive. Then one day, you were driving." Looking back, I realized some teachers had given up on me, deciding I was either hard-headed or unteachable. Perhaps if my math teachers had stuck with me a little longer, I would have had similar breakthroughs and might have surprised them.

This could be for a variety of reasons. I have some slight brain damage from a car wreck I was in as a small child. I was unconscious for several days and the Docs weren't sure whether or not I would wake up. Apparently I did, as you're reading this via the Internet and not channeled by a Spirit Medium. I think my brain rewired, as there are some holes in it when I try to learn certain things. I'll run into walls, where I draw blanks, and I have to stop and work around these "dead spots" until I can make new connections. I think this is why my sense of humor and creativity, especially in my writings, forms non-linear connection the way it does; it's the way my mind works because it has to.

So how this relates to music follows. I'll find there are certain passages in piano pieces I find extremely difficult. I simply cannot play them. There were a couple in the Minuet in G that completely threw me. And they weren't the most difficult passages either. There was just something about the combination or arrangement of notes that my mind couldn't comprehend. I couldn't grasp the connection between them or something. I can't explain it. I learned these passages hands separate, and could play them just find--as long as I kept my hands separate. But as soon as I tried to play them hands together, my mind fell apart.

I knew from past experience that this was a temporary problem, and if I stuck with it eventually the problem would fix itself. The first few times this happened in piano practice, I could see my teacher couldn't comprehend it, as I seemed to be learning very quickly, then all of a sudden I would reach a back hole and my brain would freeze. I just asked her to be patient with me and it would work itself out. And it did. In its own time. The only problem is, I never know how much time; sometimes it can happen in a few seconds, a few minutes, or days. Or weeks. I recall it took weeks before I understood one card sleight.

In the case of the passages from the Minuet, it took four days and probably almost a hundred iterations before the blessed"Aha" occurred. And it literally happened between one playing and the next. I stumbled though the six-note passage once, then -- oh, I get it--it was so simple! I played it perfectly. And it was no longer fractured away from the rest of the piece.

So that's my story this week. The Minuet is coming along, still stubbly and unshaven but I have confidence that I'll be able to play it eventually.