Monday, January 19, 2015

Coordinate Your Two Hands at All Costs!

It comes up with alarming frequency, how the goal of so much early piano instruction is to get the kid's two hands to function in sync.  In the name of doing so music of all descriptions is rendered mechanical, boring, unbearable.

In a lesson this morning, as I try to cure a mature student of her allegiance to this ingrained objective, I recalled as a a child rebelling against this rattling-off style of playing; it seemed better to quit lessons than to kid anybody about this being a good idea.

Imagine my horror when I went to music school and heard it all around me. Fearing now that it was Haydn's fault I literally threw out every note of his that I owned.

Thank goodness I had the good sense some years later to fish those treasures back out of the trash.