Think for a moment about your hands and their habits. It's hard not to take hands for granted as they are so habit driven. This is probably even more the case for pianists than for any other instrumentalists because the piano invites the pursuit of efficiency.

But consider this: The sound of the piano is incredibly complex and all sound is infinitely variable. Everything affects the way your instrument sounds, even who is listening. Your fingertip is your connection to the myriad details of the sound--your finger may touch the key but the fingertip gives access to the subtle colors emanating from the strings.

Give your hands a break. Take something into your hand that you haven't thought about recently: a few pebbles from a planter, a leaf or some grasses perhaps. Close your eyes and let your fingertips explore as if they are your eyes.

Next time you play let your fingertips become your ears.

What holds the attention of two feisty teenagers who work with increasing delight on a Dvorak Slavonic Dance for piano four hands? What keeps it from becoming hopelessly boring even after months of slogging away at it?

I listen essentially out of curiosity to answer that question, as I would not have been capable of such sustained interest at their age. Today I could tell that it is not just the composition that holds their interest with its surprising variation of eight rhythm and tone events in every bar. It is also that they hear completely differently from one another and that they are mutually fascinated by the differences.

One, by nature a composer, responds to register changes in the bass as if orchestrating. He cannot simply play a bass line an octave lower because the sound is fundamentally different, almost to the point where he does not see how he can make so much happen with just one hand. His intuitive response to every nuance of color and resonance affects his sense of timing and challenges his sense of control. The two of them have been collaborating at the piano off and on for the past six years, learning to be flexible in every aspect of their playing. By now accustomed to one other's idiosyncracies, they are mature enough to get beneath the surface to the place where their subjective experience meets the composer's genius.

When their time is up I have to pry them off their chairs.

Surely this is a music teacher's best reward.

Yesterday a student playing Schumann's Sheherezade (No. 32 in Album for the Young) clarified for me two things that I had never previously understood: First, that the eighth notes spin out each chord change, accounting for that mysterious tempo marking: "Ziemlich langsam, leise."

Second, that at the final double bar the piece can't possibly end.

Can there be a more vivid evocation of "A Thousand and One Nights," in which the life of Sheherezade, the storyteller, depends on her ability to hold her listener in such suspense that he cannot put her to death. And so she keeps the story going.

As my student said: "I turned the page, thinking that there must be something else.

My first thought on waking up this morning: Killer Scales. The trouble is that scales have seven, not eight tones and that we have five, not four fingers on each hand.

Why not get interested in the scale as a potential source of endless fascination?

Play or sing any major scale, dividing it into two parts of four tones each -- i.e., two tetrachords. If playing use the fingering 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4. Don't be afraid of the shift in the middle. Notice that the tetrachords are balanced: each tone in the upper tetrachord is exactly a perfect fifth higher than each tone in the lower.

Now change one tone in one of the tetrachords and sing or play the scale both rising and falling. What happens?

Keeping the change, add a change -- any change -- in the other tetrachord. Now play or sing the scale, rising and falling. Continue in this manner until ....

Is there an end to the sentence?

Nancy Garniez

Welcome to the Nancy Garniez blog - an adventure in day to day sharing of insights into music, life and a few other things. Each day's teaching and learning brings forth ideas inspired by the curiosity and responsiveness of my students, young and old, whose love of music and of the piano most impressively reinforces my own.

The experiences, being ephemeral, are too good to remain unchronicled. So let's begin.

I welcome your comments and questions and invite you to visit my website:
www.tonalrefraction.com

This morning began with a question in Bartok's Waves from the Mikrokosmos, Vol. II. Is the second note in the left hand a G-flat or G-natural? What a good question! Having so far heard only a descending A-flat major scale a sensible player would expect a G-natural. The question, which arose from listening rather than theory, is one of artistic subtlety--relevant to the sense of potential that every mature artist allows to penetrate in piano playing. It is this awareness of potential that keeps piano playing fresh. In a nano-second the artist hovers between the black key and the white key, stretching ever so slightly the time it takes to decide for one or the other, allowing the quality of mystery to affect the way the fingertip touches the key. It is not the intellect that controls the touch, but the deep sense of open-ended possibility.

Does this seem like too small a detail to be worthy of so much attention? I believe it is exactly the kind of detail that makes a performance unforgettable.

Do you permit yourself the relishing of such moments?