Brief music slide for your consideration...
When I was a kid, I had piano lessons. Eventually, I discovered computers and learned to type. It was difficult at first, but my piano skills lent a certain amount of dexterity. The big breakthrough was when the nerves connected in my brain and I realized that it wasn’t just letter->key, letter-> key, but ... word -> whole hand movements, etc.
Then I realized that it must be the same for music, and that all that time I had been doing it wrong. I had been focusing on the notes and rote mechanisms, when the reality was that I should have been learning the -language- and how to speak and interpret it with sweeping movements rather than just ‘hunt and peck’.
The friends and family you’ve enjoyed listening to are fluent in this language, and when you hear them play together and improvise, what you’re hearing is a conversation in music, a language that they are all so familiar with.
Vs. those of us who are like Clint in Firefox, holding our instruments and trying to tell ourselves ‘think in musician’...
Anyway, best of luck to you and your family, and I hope that this weekend has some wonderful surprises in store for us.
:)
“When I was a kid, I had piano lessons. Eventually, I discovered computers and learned to type. It was difficult at first, but my piano skills lent a certain amount of dexterity. The big breakthrough was when the nerves connected in my brain and I realized that it wasn’t just letter->key, letter-> key, but ... word -> whole hand movements, etc.
Then I realized that it must be the same for music, and that all that time I had been doing it wrong. I had been focusing on the notes and rote mechanisms, when the reality was that I should have been learning the -language- and how to speak and interpret it with sweeping movements rather than just ‘hunt and peck’.”
I, for one, find these observations of yours very spot-on and insightful! However, even as someone who’s always earned my modest living from playing music, I have to confess that I’ve always been confounded by the fact that my brain could never make the proper connections when it came to this matter of typing... Despite having had computers since the ‘80s, it’s still “hunt and peck” for me, alas ... (sigh!)
When you stop and think about it, music probably predated speech. Gives me the chills a bit.
Wow, you just blew my mind. I just responded to blu with the comment linked below. I commented about the connection(s) between the study of music and those who adopt Information Technology as a vocation.
Thanks for your insight because you described the relationship much better than I could have.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3923831/posts?page=4172#4172