Check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXV0gVyrDpg
Let me know what you think.
Welcome to this day to day sharing of insights into music. My thoughts and my playing reflect my lifelong drive to integrate primary reactions to sounds with a sense of playfulness open to lyricism as to intellectual game-playing - the level of musical response endangered if not already extinct due to the endemic compilations of sameness that make up our soundworld.
Monday, April 22, 2013
Touching the Sounds We Hear In Our Heads
That's how Rubinstein described piano playing: We do not touch keys, but rather the sounds we hear in our heads.
Just how important that is cannot be overemphasized, and it is important from day one of instruction. Once a child learns to hit the keys it is truly difficult to awaken a sense of touch.
Touch is the intimate connection between sound as imagined and sound as actually produced. It makes the difference between tedium and discovery. As a student put it this morning, it is what makes it possible to play on different pianos.
I teach children to read based on touch, not assuming it. They become better readers and they do not have to learn certain refined instrumental techniques as "add-ons."
Just how important that is cannot be overemphasized, and it is important from day one of instruction. Once a child learns to hit the keys it is truly difficult to awaken a sense of touch.
Touch is the intimate connection between sound as imagined and sound as actually produced. It makes the difference between tedium and discovery. As a student put it this morning, it is what makes it possible to play on different pianos.
I teach children to read based on touch, not assuming it. They become better readers and they do not have to learn certain refined instrumental techniques as "add-ons."