uncollaborative piano

In practice we are trying to get a whole bunch of notes crammed into our hands/brain, and often on a short-ish timetable. So the question is how to do that.

I’ve experimented with two modes of thinking and will share my thoughts on them. It’s my belief that they solve different problems.

Mode 1:

This is cognitive thinking. It’s like math, logic. We use it when we have to literally think about a chord ID and it’s not automatic. We use this to think about contour, step vs. leap, or to do formal analysis. When you see a chord with double flats and you can’t sightread it, mode 1 is used to parse it afterward.

When practicing, we might spend a period of time thinking literally about the theory contents of the music using Mode 1. It is a method of thinking about small things divorced from sound or perception.

Now, the thing that dawned on me was that while it is amazing to see the brain/body operate better once a name is slapped on something, I found I could speed up my learning by also getting a sonic, kinesthetic, or perceptual line of thought going. This is what I call mode 2.

Mode 2 draws on automatic abilities. It uses the pool of what you know, and what is already implicit. For example: hearing melody go up and down, the hands knowing where to be by feeling the keys, playing the notes in the context of something you know well (a scale, chords).

This is the flip side of literal knowledge. It’s where you practice based on what you know already. Instead of every note being a novel entity, you play a series of notes based on hand feel, the overall idea, and based on something you “get” already.

This is the kind of learning I’m exploring now. I’m wondering if overusing mode 1 can create slower learning. While it is very thorough, it might be too much analysis. Mode 2 can offer a way to play without being so specific, and letting the new music become familiar to you sooner.

Ultimately, these two modes blend into each other, but I am inviting a sense of favoring Mode 2 because it utilizes years of knowledge and perception instead of just last week’s analysis. Each figure should be a felt instance of something already heard, known, and accomplished.

The lesson here is that two kinds of cognition exist: thinking cognition and perceiving cognition. I am saying musicians can favor the second and be occupying their home territory when it comes to music making.