Ithaca 've experienced what you described - my ability to hear and perceive improving, and thus my playing sounding worse, and I also quit for a few months during one of these transitions. 🙂
But that was nearly 40 years ago. Unfortunately, I'm quite certain that what I'm doing now is the result of nearly 30 years' worth of physical neglect, and mostly beating a digital piano to death, sans teacher......
Ithaca, thank you for explaining. I now have a much better picture.
Of the things you described, I could relate to some of it, though your backgrounds and realities are probably different. Your teacher back then saying "make it sound this way" and you could produce it those decades ago, the problem with that is that if you don't know how you did it and if your technique has changed, you can't get it back by doing the same thing because you don't know what you did. So getting some degree of that "knowing" might be one element to help you.
Our bodies are more forgiving when we're young, so we want to have effective movement which you may or may not have. I was told "Look for a pianist who plays well in old age - that pianist has good technique." Rubinstein was pointed out as one example.
This part:
..I also stopped listening to anything expect dynamic changes on a digital that couldn't do pp at all. My dealer and my son's piano teacher confirmed that my touch was absolute crap back in April.
That's a double whammy because you won't be aiming for sounds you can't produce, so that whole thing will wane - and the piano can be training you into actions you don't want to have. When I had my cheapish Yamaha, the pedal wouldn't engage or disengage without a huge range of motion, and I trained myself into poor reflexes that had to be undone. The keys had to be pressed down a big range to make any sound - although my new Kawai CA97 had responsive keys, my hands were desensitized; I had heavy insensitive hands.
I may exchange the Kawai for a Roland after a conversation with someone and some discussions, because my thinking was mistaken in one part. I looked for action, the physical response and movement of the instrument vis-a-vis my hands. But we don't just react and get trained by touch: it is also sound (what you wrote made me think of that). There seems to be some kind of artificial barrier in the Kawais at the upper end - you'll see a recording flatline on top at ff, and it was discussed in the digital forum. Therefore you get the habit of straining to achieve what the instrument can't do; and the sound-feedback it gives is false.
he good news is that my new-to-me acoustic has an obscenely controllable action and an ability to play so quietly that I can barely hear it, which has helped a ton in recovering some of my sense of touch. But I feel certain that I've ingrained some unfortunate habits that will have to be explicitly and deliberately undone by a very discerning (and firm, because I don't always listen to people as much as I should) teacher.
I can identify with that because of the cheap-Yamaha to high-end-Kawai experience. You say that your sense of touch has recovered somewhat - that is good news. Acquired habit is a problem because it's instant and automatic, for you to untrain. When I retaught my pedal foot (and taught it for the first time for this aspect), I had short sessions where I aimed only to find when a note starts engaging and then releasing. Play one note and the next one with pedal, keeping that going. At first only the same note or adjacent notes. It would vanish if I did too much too fast, so incremental. Playing music - noticing the old thing creeping in - stop, regroup, review - back to playing. It is not fun. A teacher helping is always good; the work is yours.
Schedule-wise: short stints a few times a day can do wonders. Since you once had all of this, it must be quite frustrating.