"The note didn't want to go up!" This was the reaction of an eight-year-old to her wrong note on the piano. If you ever needed proof that tone has a life of its own, this is surely it.

Allowing yourself to notice whether or not the note wants to go up (or down) is what involves you, the fully alive and responsive you, in even the simplest composition at the level at which it was conceived. The only thing that can keep you from noticing such forces at play is that you are not really listening.

Maybe you find it hard to really listen because no one ever really listened to you.

What could be funnier than a repeated note?

What's so funny about a repeated note? I already played it. Duh.

Yes, but did you listen to it? Okay, you touched the key two times. But didn't you notice that the sound was different the second time?

Aha! You weren't listening! Something happened inside the case and you missed it. Try again.

Until the piano was invented there would have been no point in repeating notes on a keyboard instrument. Someone should do a Ph.D. dissertation on the subject, though that would be pooh-poohed as equivalent to a doctorate in pixels.

What's wrong with pixels?

Once again, with feeling: What could be funnier than a repeated note?

What absolutely hysterical composition do you think prompted this post?

"You touch the sound you hear in your head." This is like touching a gentle animal: you touch it anticipating a response. What is the response in music? The next sound perhaps.

Touch is at once active and receptive.

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?