Piano Playing by Itself?

navindra

Perhaps it's been a longer day than I had realized, but I was catching up a little bit on my piano reading and had to re-read this section multiple times before I finally figured it out! 😃

I was a Suzuki kid growing up. For the first three years of lessons, I learned to play exclusively by ear. Even once I learned to read music, listening to the Suzuki recordings was the main way I learned my music. And every time I would perform in a solo recital, I played from memory. This was never a big deal for me — it's part of the Suzuki culture and playing a solo piece with music in a concert would've been like performing in my pajamas. It just wasn't done.

I never really had memory slips in performance growing up, but I did have one extremely unusual experience that has always stuck with me. I was playing a simple sonata movement in a solo recital. Halfway through, I noticed for the first time that the piano was playing the melody I had just played. Why I had never noticed this before is beyond me, but I was probably about 12 at the time, so I'll chalk it up to being a typical kid.

Despite the fact that I was on stage, performing in a solo recital, I was curious how much of the melody the piano got to play, so my entire attention was focused on listening to the piano, even though I was still playing. Unfortunately, once the piano melody finished, I realized I had no clue where I was in the piece.

But somehow, I was still playing, from memory. Amazingly, instead of stopping or getting anxious, I just listened to myself for a while. Eventually I figured out where I was and my brain rejoined my body. But how could my body just continue to play "without me" and not make mistakes?

Spoiler #1: No, it's not a Steinway Spirio.

Spoiler #2: Source of quote.

ShiroKuro

AKA the dangers of autopilot?

Sophia

This reminds me of when I was still commuting daily to a town an hour away from where we lived, it was a really busy road and you had to use all your faculties all the time. Yet, I remember that I was often baffled to find myself home - with absolutely ZERO recollection of the journey. I mean, I must have driven safely, obviously. I don't remember car horns blasting or crunching sounds or sore bones at all. But if you asked me to recall ANY single second of the trip, I would draw a total blank. A full hour driving and yet I'd remember absolutely NOTHING between getting in, and getting out.

As far as my memory went, the trip never even happened.... if someone had told me that I just teleported home, I probably would have believed them. I guess this pianist's experience is similar to that 😆

WieWaldi

Flow

thepianoplayer416

There are 2 sides to learning pieces. On 1 side people who learn to play by reading. Some can read very well. The other side we have people who rely on listening entirely and don't read at all. Many like myself are somewhere in between. I'm not a good reader but read sufficiently to get through difficult pieces. I'd let my ears fill in the gaps.

I started teaching myself the first year before getting a teacher at a local conservatory. People who are good at reading music need to be reading new pieces all the time instead of playing familiar pieces they already know. From personal experience, a lot of students tend to stick to the teacher's assigned repertoire. Suzuki students are no exception. I find that many Suzuki students don't play pieces outside the books compiled by the Suzuki Association. A while ago I joined a local music group. Forced me to read new pieces all the time.

When learning difficult pieces, there is a lot of muscle memory involved. This means many, many repetitions to drill your fingers to repeat sequences correctly. Many of us are not consciously trying to figure out how composers put pieces together such as chords, chord progressions, scale runs. When a student sees a stack of notes Eb+G+C, a note reader would be reading individual notes, someone playing by ear would listen to the sound that comes out instead of thinking this is a Cm chord in the 1st inversion.

navindra

I admit I thought of all these things, autopilot, flow, obliviousness.

The way I read it, it was like Molly Gebrian was having an out-of-body experience... how could she be playing a melody on the piano and only just notice it during the performance?

Then it dawned me, she's a violinist... as is Suzuki, for that matter. Someone else was accompanying her on piano, which is apparently not unusual for a violin solo recital.

I'm the one who hadn't been paying proper attention. 😃