Good playing vs Perfect playing

[lostinidlewonder]

Something which I have struggled with and only now have started to see the light. As musicians we can become overly obsessed with playing something perfectly, the truth is that we may never play a piece how we would ideally like to but we can waste a lot of our life trying to achieve perfection.

Personally this malfuction in thinking had cost me 6 years of my life trying to perfect one single program and realised that most people in the audience simply do not appreciate the difference. As part of my practice I perform the program over and over again for different audiences and I realised that there was no difference in repsonse no matter how much closer to perfection I got to.

People simply enjoy to hear/see the music being created infront of them! It has taken me a while to realise that not everyone sitting in the audience is a professional musician or a music professor or an adjudicator at a competition. The reality is that 99% of concert goers are simply music lovers and are not critical listeners.

I have seen the dangers of trying to achieve perfection, notably in my students. When I do my student concerts there is a number of them who simply will not play because they don't believe they can play perfectly. So they simply never perform. I have also seen this in some aspiring musicians I teach, they never take that first step into performing because they never believe they are ready enough.

I have a video of the entire first solo concert I ever did and I squirm every time I watch it. I hear so many things which I believe could be better but at the end of the concert the people are on their feet applauding. Something finally clicked in me, that people don't care about perfection, they want to be entertained, they want to be taken away from the world just for a moment. What do you all think?

Of course I believe you must play well, you cannot perform if you hit wrong notes constantly and play with no emotion, I am talking about obsessing with perfection. Playing every single note perfect, being able to do so with no chance of error. We can practice so much that we make the error margin so small but I am questioning whether it is efficient to do so? Do we actually waste our life trying to make something perfect, where we should move on?

[ted]

Being merely a very creative amateur rather than a concert pianist or music professional, I am not worried by this issue in quite the same way. Nonetheless, it does appear in other guises. As far as playing pieces is concerned, as long as I can achieve around 95% in my own estimation I am quite happy.

However, the dilemma does present itself in other ways to do with improvisation. I have not quite learned the lesson that aural effect is not, beyond a certain point,  proportional to difficulty of execution and crude keyboard knowledge. In other words, doing something a difficult or clever way does not, in itself, imply any improvement in the musical result. Indeed, often the simplest and most thoughtlessly spontaneous processes generate sounds far superior to those made with great effort and skill.

You need a solid minimum of technique and vocabulary, of course, but I still tend to spend too much time building up the tools of execution that little bit extra when I think I would do better now, at my age,  to concentrate all effort into musical result. Old habits die hard though.

[jakev2.0]

"We no longer want 'true servants' of art; what we need are masters"

Moriz Rosenthal, 1895

[lostinidlewonder]

The message I am trying to present is that you do not have to be perfect to present a great performance. I am simply seeing more and more able pianists flee from public performance simply because they don't believe they have achieved perfection. As Ted mentions 95% would be good enough, I believe that as well.

"We no longer want 'true servants' of art; what we need are masters"

This might be in the back of the head of those who are exponents of music, not the general public. Given that there are more general public than there are musical academics we must question who are we actually playing for? This is not to say that if you play badly you should go play for an audience, not at all, but there is a fine line between perfection and great playing that is what I am trying to highlight. For those who can play great (like many people on pianoforums recordings highlight) they shouldn't feel intimidated to get out there and play for the public because someone like.... Hamelin plays so much "better" than themselves.

I still have not heard a LIVE performance which is perfect, but I have heard many recordings which are pretty much perfect because of the multiple takes and editing. There are a great deal of people who are fooled in thinking that this is how the pianist actually plays and thus believes that their own playing should emulate it.

[jakev2.0]

Oh, I totally agree with you. I'd much rather hear a conservatory student with some talent and passion thrash down the Emperor than someone like Marc-Andre Hamelin, Pollini, or Perahia.

[cjp_piano]

Something finally clicked in me, that people don't care about perfection, they want to be entertained, they want to be taken away from the world just for a moment. What do you all think?

I completely agree.  I began to get so down on myself for not playing perfect recitals and figured I wouldn't amount to much of a player, let alone a teacher. . .

I didn't play or practice that much for a while after I finished grad school.  But I naturally missed playing and figured I would just play pieces for fun, not worrying about being perfect.  People would hear me play and comment on how beautiful it was and how it was so much more musical then my prevous playing.   Wow . . . I had actually started really listening to what I was doing, and since I wasn't focused on wrong notes, the phrasing and continuity flowed easily, dynamics were natural, creating emotion in me instead of me trying to impart emotion into the piece.  I'm not trying to boast about how great I am, I'm not.  It's just that I've realized that it isn't about perfect performances, it's about having fun and being affected by the music (the performer and the audience).

I've realized that I should have realized this sooner     I remember one of my teachers never commenting on a missed note (unless she thought I mislearned/misread it), she only commented on the musicality, emotion, energy, flow, etc.    Sure, she helped me figure out how to manage certain passages and things, but it was always directly related to what kind of sound it created and how that would be effective (or not) to the listener.  

After one of her own recitals, I overheard another student who commented, "I can't believe she missed those notes in the Beethoven Sonata! She's a professor of piano with a doctoral degree in piano!"  

Is that what it's all about?  To learn how to not miss a note?  I've heard people play that same Sonata without missing a note, but I would much rather hear a few wrong notes in a performance that communicates something directly into my human soul in such a special way that my body doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.

[rc]

After the first performance I realized the perfection focus was counter productive.  It was too much mental strain, a mistake would become a downward spiral and what came out sounded stiff.  Not enjoyable at all.

Perfection is an ideal, it belongs in the head to keep us striving and improving in the practice room.  It's ridiculous to expect reality to be perfect.

A better perspective I found was to forget about the flaws and be more focused on what comes out right.  Nerves might cause me to chew up half a dozen spots in a sonata movement, but the same nerves will give an exciting energy to everything else.  In light of that, the mistakes don't matter.  I don't listen to catch peoples mistakes, that'd be backwards.

Every student should hear about how many of the greats missed notes.  Liszt turning a mistake into a progression...  Hiding mistakes is an art in itself.

[counterpoint]

Of course I believe you must play well, you cannot perform if you hit wrong notes constantly and play with no emotion, I am talking about obsessing with perfection. Playing every single note perfect, being able to do so with no chance of error. We can practice so much that we make the error margin so small but I am questioning whether it is efficient to do so? Do we actually waste our life trying to make something perfect, where we should move on?

Good point. If the pianist concentrates 100% on perfection, the music will get lost. Because music is not a series of perfect and beautiful notes, but it's something, that is hidden behind the notes. In the best moments, you forget the notes and you hear the pure music. It's a mystical experience. But you can't force this. You have to be in a state of open mind and let it happen, if it wants to happen...  (where is the smiley with the holy shine?)

[m]

 

It really depends what standards you have. If you play for public, than no worries--it'll swallow anything and everything. If you play for yourself... it is little bit more complicated matter.

P.S. Just wondering why Heifetz, once missing one day of practicing would spend the whole next day of playing scales only. Why Rachmaninov would spend 9 hours a day mastering one single Schletzer etude, which he'd never play in public. Why Richter would spend 4 hours working on a single bar from Mozart Sonata, when he could sightread it ALMOST as perfect.
Would the public really see the difference

[counterpoint]

Would the public really see the difference

Hmm, that's the tragedy of a pianist's life 

On some pieces - or even very small parts of these - you work for months or years and you are never happy with it. On others you work only very little. People will be eventually much more impressed of the pieces, you didn't work much for and they will not even notice the excellence of playing in the others. But you can never know before, and if you only want to impress the audience, there are some pieces, which will work very reliable for that effect 

[opus10no2]

Something which I have struggled with and only now have started to see the light. As musicians we can become overly obsessed with playing something perfectly, the truth is that we may never play a piece how we would ideally like to but we can waste a lot of our life trying to achieve perfection.

Technical 'perfection' doesn't exist.

Perfection only exists as an aspirational light at the end of a never ending tunnel.

Technique is the physical ability to do what you choose to do, and it should be advanced only as far as you need it to be.

Pursuing technical ability for it's own sake is a legitimate and for me, a passionate pursuit, for for many it isn't.

I think all you've discovered is the difference between working on the notes and working on the music.

The notes must be there, but your'e right, its a much lesser crime to have a few notes missing than to have the music missing

[nick]

Something which I have struggled with and only now have started to see the light. As musicians we can become overly obsessed with playing something perfectly, the truth is that we may never play a piece how we would ideally like to but we can waste a lot of our life trying to achieve perfection.

I too have thought about this alot, and realized a few things. For me, I play primarily for myself, that if there was never a performance for anyone, I would still practice daily. So how do I want the music to sound? I personally do want accuracy, not at the expense of the proper expression of the music of course. There was a time when in the past I said " ah, this it it! I have been working on notes instead of just expressing the music " and proceeded to play "musically" until I couldn't stand the sound of a flawed technique. So what I always do from then on is to prepare as technically perfect AND with all the proper dynamics and phrasing in the music, and come performance time play music, not to see how fast I can play it, but within the bounds of my technique at the time, not too slow or careful, but not beyond. To know this boundary is personal.

Nick

                                             

[danny elfboy]

Perfection is unhuman and doesn't belong to humankind.
Arts is juman expression as such it refutes perfection just like human refute it.
Perfection destroys and kills arts.

Actually not only perfection is not achievable but it's bland, dangerous, boring, stupid.
We rarely see perfection but those rare times we see it we're disgusted by it even if subconsciously. When students/researchers of eastethic show according to over the centuries criteria of perfection people who are "perfect" because their face is simmetrical, because their features are prefectly simmetrical or flawless these people are not consider "hot" "attractive" "interesting" but bland. On the other those we consider "hot" or "attractive" are very unperfect, very assimetral and have evident flaws which make them interesting.

Perfection also requires repetition, perfection doesn't have degree when something is perfect it is and period and never changes.
This alone is an evidence of how perfection can't exist in music as no honest pianist will ever claim that he/she can play the same piece twice in the same way ... it's absolutely impossible.

I'm actually very bored by perfection and the search for perfection and I prefer a lot someone who spend hours trying to destroy hinibition and erupt passion and deep rooted feelings rather than someone who spend hours on try to achieve "perfection".

Do you know the uncanny valley? It's a theory by a roboticist that explains how the more something tries to emulate a perfection we can't really obtain the more is becomes uninteresting, boring and almost scary or sickening to us humans.
It's the reason as to why we relate more with stilized characters than 3D Performance Capture characters that some find actually creeping.

I don't feel nothing for robot-players in conservatories or theaters.
And as someone said I'd rather listen someone making a lot of mistakes and having less technical mastering but shwoing off lot of passion and feelings than listening/watching a robot-player making no mistake and being a tempo all the times.

If you really take a look at those that are considered the best pianists you'll see tey made a plethora of mistakes all the time, but no one cared ... they were too entralled by the musical passion exuding from everywhere.

[pianistimo]

what astounds me is that lostinidlewonder brought up the subject.  i mean, between him and marik and many others here - who would know when they made a mistake anyways?  they don't go attempting to make mistakes - and practice very carefully.

i always read what people here say about how they practice.  i think marik pointed out his carefulness to memorize a page at a time and not get ahead of himself.  this seemed to 'bling bling' in my head as to my own problems of sometimes getting brain functions working correctly.  if i try to progress too fast - i can't remember things correctly.  but, if i am satisfied with working at what is my 'maximum' - then i can remember from day to day and keep adding to it.

perhaps it is being fully aware and keeping on challenging your own particular brain functions.  if we become stagnant - then that is not good either.  to press the limit - but not make yourself forget other things that are important in your life.  to have a balance.  and yet- when practicing - to maintain a really sharp focus.

some people rave about red bull.  i've never tried it.  or ginko.  exercise is about it.  perhaps there is more to other things.  actually, i think deep green leafy vegetables are something of a cure-all, too, for brain function.  i mean - what we're looking for is oxygenation of the brain. 

ps if you can't tell - i'm obsessive-compulsive about notes and composer's markings.  but, the thing is is that the people who try to be perfect are never perfect - and the people who need worry the least - somewhat worry.  i mean, when i go to play - i don't think - 'am i going to play this perfectly?'  i just start playing and hope for the best.

[trazom]

Like so many things in life I think this is a matter of balance.  In this case, balancing a strive for perfection with acceptance.  Lean too far in any direction and the overall quality of the performance suffers (a loss of meaning in both cases).

I have a natural tendency towards perfectionism, so I find that the more I focus on acceptance, the better my playing becomes.

[ramseytheii]

Something which I have struggled with and only now have started to see the light. As musicians we can become overly obsessed with playing something perfectly, the truth is that we may never play a piece how we would ideally like to but we can waste a lot of our life trying to achieve perfection.

Personally this malfuction in thinking had cost me 6 years of my life trying to perfect one single program and realised that most people in the audience simply do not appreciate the difference. As part of my practice I perform the program over and over again for different audiences and I realised that there was no difference in repsonse no matter how much closer to perfection I got to.

People simply enjoy to hear/see the music being created infront of them! It has taken me a while to realise that not everyone sitting in the audience is a professional musician or a music professor or an adjudicator at a competition. The reality is that 99% of concert goers are simply music lovers and are not critical listeners.

I have seen the dangers of trying to achieve perfection, notably in my students. When I do my student concerts there is a number of them who simply will not play because they don't believe they can play perfectly. So they simply never perform. I have also seen this in some aspiring musicians I teach, they never take that first step into performing because they never believe they are ready enough.

I have a video of the entire first solo concert I ever did and I squirm every time I watch it. I hear so many things which I believe could be better but at the end of the concert the people are on their feet applauding. Something finally clicked in me, that people don't care about perfection, they want to be entertained, they want to be taken away from the world just for a moment. What do you all think?

Of course I believe you must play well, you cannot perform if you hit wrong notes constantly and play with no emotion, I am talking about obsessing with perfection. Playing every single note perfect, being able to do so with no chance of error. We can practice so much that we make the error margin so small but I am questioning whether it is efficient to do so? Do we actually waste our life trying to make something perfect, where we should move on?

You are right to realize that people in the audience are not judging you like professional competition judges, piano professors, or whoever, and I think that's a stumbling block a lot of pianists don't "get", and as a result creativity suffers.

But I like this anecdote about Michelangelo, who was in his workshop carving a statue to fit inside a small grotto in the Vatican.  A cardinal was observing and noticed how much attention he paid to the back of the sculpture, and said, "Nobody will see the back," to which Michelangelo replied, "God will see it." 

To me, the idea, even though it is true, that the audience won't recognize the difference in certain levels of quality is dangerous because it will allow you to excuse yourself things which you can do better.  If you are religious, you should be thinking to yourself, "God can hear it."  If not - your conscience knows.

Walter Ramsey

[nick]

You are right to realize that people in the audience are not judging you like professional competition judges, piano professors, or whoever, and I think that's a stumbling block a lot of pianists don't "get", and as a result creativity suffers.

But I like this anecdote about Michelangelo, who was in his workshop carving a statue to fit inside a small grotto in the Vatican.  A cardinal was observing and noticed how much attention he paid to the back of the sculpture, and said, "Nobody will see the back," to which Michelangelo replied, "God will see it." 

To me, the idea, even though it is true, that the audience won't recognize the difference in certain levels of quality is dangerous because it will allow you to excuse yourself things which you can do better.  If you are religious, you should be thinking to yourself, "God can hear it."  If not - your conscience knows.

Walter Ramsey

AT the Univeristy where I was attending, my piano teacher, when I complained that my left hand tremelo was not in sink with my right hand on the Pathetique 1st move., said " nobody will hear the difference, so don't worry about it. " Absurd.

Nick

[lostinidlewonder]

To me, the idea, even though it is true, that the audience won't recognize the difference in certain levels of quality is dangerous because it will allow you to excuse yourself things which you can do better.

The problem with musicians is that we can always do better. I totally agree that we must craft the music for ourselves first, or God, but we must also give the music to society.

We can always do better but when it is good enough to present to an audience? When you have achieved your maximum of improvement? That can go on forever and you may die before you ever play for an audience. I know thats being melodramatic but the message really is we never are ready enough. We will never improved enough on a piece, as musicans we are perfectionists by nature when it comes to sound production because we are so proud of being given the gift to create sound. This can become obsession and thus shy you away from giving your music to the community.

I found myself, previously, instead of giving full attention to learning new repetoire, I would obsess over what I already knew and constantly improve upon it. I find music constantly recreates itself forever and ever, you can get totally lost in your own confusion as to what sounds best because that also freakishly changes after you strive for perfection obsessively.

... when i go to play - i don't think - 'am i going to play this perfectly?' i just start playing and hope for the best.

I can't help but think before I sit down to play for an audience: Don't you dare stuff anything up, you've practiced so hard don't muck up now! How embarassing if you play an inaccuracy!

That type of thinking can make you totally obsess about minimising the chance of error while practicing and learn to cover up errors if they creep in. It puts a lot of pressure on yourself.

When people come up to me saying it was great etc I have this little speck in the back of my head saying, yeah but what about all that crap that could have been better? It is a terrible thinking pattern to trap yourself in. I am never ready enough for a performance, I just dive head first, eyes closed, even though I'm scared if I let it control my decision making I would sit in a room and play piano for myself forever and no one else. But I see so many students of music never deal with this fear, the fear is always there you can never remove it, but you can deal with it. I know a lot of music teachers who are like this.

I start to see a way to remove this fear by understanding that the listeners are not so obsessed about the perfect sound coming out of the piano while I play as I am. When I consider about what I am thinking about when I listen to other people play in concert my thoughts are not; this could be better or that, that would take all the enjoyment out of sitting in a concert, that is doing work, being an adjudicator in a competition. Instead when I hear inaccuracies they are unimportant if the overall sound is projected beautifully.

But I myself would get infurated over inaccuracies if I where playing, this is a terrible paradox! You care about playing perfectly yourself so you get better, but you do not care when you hear other people play inaccuracies. You realise that other people also do not care if you do not produce perfect sound but you care a lot. arrrrgg!!!!

Like so many things in life I think this is a matter of balance. In this case, balancing a strive for perfection with acceptance. Lean too far in any direction and the overall quality of the performance suffers (a loss of meaning in both cases).

It is hard for me to accept anything which isn't optimal when I play myself. If even one note feels uncontrolled in a rapid arpeggio run for instance, only I can feel it, rarely will many people hear it, but you practice hours to get rid of it. Do you simply accept that little tarnish? You have to sometimes otherwise you would never move on, you have to lower your expectations of yourself if you have very high expectations or you can simply obsess with trying to achieve something unimportant to anyone else but yourself. Accepting your playing is very important, we should be proud of our sound and not feel too critical because it can hold us back more than improve us.

Perfection is unhuman and doesn't belong to humankind.
Arts is human expression as such it refutes perfection just like human refute it.
Perfection destroys and kills arts.....

Do you know the uncanny valley? It's a theory by a roboticist that explains how the more something tries to emulate a perfection we can't really obtain the more is becomes uninteresting, boring and almost scary or sickening to us humans....

I wholly believe that we can never be perfect. I believe perfection is when your mind says, right there is nothing I can hear that is wrong with your playing. I have had these moments but then after a while after you repeat the piece over and over again you start hearing things which might not actually be there and try to form it so it fits a perfect model. This actually changes the music and ruins it, the music starts playing you, not the other way around.

I think Glenn Gould said something along the lines, that he never played the same Bach piece too many times because it lost its "freshness" if played too much. There is probably some wise teaching in that, the more we repeat a piece the more it might transform itself into model of perfection which it shouldn't take. That is not to say that we shouldn't practice one piece for a long time but rather try not to totally recreate the orginal sound the composer intended, just play the music don't start experimenting with your ideal world of sound because it will change the music and waste your time.

Perfection only exists as an aspirational light at the end of a never ending tunnel.

The inspiration that the perfect model of performance gives is definately something which pushes us on when we are practicing by ourselves. There can be a difficulty for most to accept that producing this perfection all the time is impossible. There is always that little part which could have been done better. When do we actually move on to something else instead of lingering on small parts shrugging our shoulders as to why it is not coming out how we want it exactly to come out? Do we allow this model of perfection which inspires us to take control over the rate in which we move on to new parts of music?

I think all you've discovered is the difference between working on the notes and working on the music. The notes must be there, but your'e right, its a much lesser crime to have a few notes missing than to have the music missing

The difference between working on the notes and music is simply obvious, I don't believe it takes a lot of effort to see the difference, nor is the ability to see both seperately relevant. For me when I work on the notes I simultaneously work on the music, the two are inseperable, I never play simply notes without musical expression, that wastes time in my mind. Even when you play a lot of repetition on a small part we must play it as if we where playing it in concert, there is no saying "Oh I will just get the notes first then I will put in the expression", in my mind this is inefficient and slow learning. It allows you to excuse yourself if you do not play musically something which troubles you, it allows you to give yourself an excuse to extend the time require to learn a part of music. Doing everything straight away is my method, some people like to do it in layers, Left hand, right hand, together then add the dynamics, feeling etc, slow in my mind, but the only way for some.

No what I have actually discovered is trying to understand what is good enough. When do you say enough is enough and move on. I find myself as an artist who would always put on an extra brush stroke in my picture and then constantly do this every day never being completely satisfied. A good artist knows when to stop I feel. So I am starting to learn how to push through insecurity and realise that what I play is good, it doesn't have to be perfect because trying to be perfect simply wastes time and not many people appreciate perfect playing opposed to good playing. Also I find that I can learn more music and I free my mind from the mental strains of trying to be perfect if I accept very subtle inaccuracies. I am not talking about note errors, or incorrect musical expression. I am talking about the finer points of making a performance of a piece air tight. Those fine points can hound you, they can really be a demon monkey on your back if you let it.

Thankyou all for your posts. This was actually the third time I wrote this reply, the website went down on me 2 times in a row, very frustrating eheh. Reading all the experiences on this topic has be very theraputic for me

[rc]

I can relate to everything you're saying there...  On the one hand we have to be idealistic, on the other we must strike a balance and be practical.  Strangely, it's the same at my job doing drywall - I can waste hours upon hours in perfection, but I've also got to get the job done.

Thinking of everything else we do in life, it's actually pretty insane to be expecting perfect execution, especially in the earlier stages of learning.  Babies learn to walk by falling down relentlessly, kids reading in front of class haultingly sounding out and mispronouncing words, any number of mistakes learning to drive...  In all these we're comfortable with making mistakes along the way, approximating.  Learning to wakeboard last year, only after I was cool with falling on my face in front of everybody did I start to improve.

Thankyou all for your posts. This was actually the third time I wrote this reply, the website went down on me 2 times in a row, very frustrating eheh. Reading all the experiences on this topic has be very theraputic for me

Wow you're patient!  Whenever I lose a long post, it either comes back super condensed or "to hell with typing that up again!"

I've lost enough posts that I've fallen in the habit of 'ctrl+c'ing before posting.  Very useful!

[lostinidlewonder]

I can relate to everything you're saying there...  On the one hand we have to be idealistic, on the other we must strike a balance and be practical.  Strangely, it's the same at my job doing drywall - I can waste hours upon hours in perfection, but I've also got to get the job done.

Getting the job done. That is exactly the type of thinking that is coming into me nowadays. Before I would be like, the job will never get done because I want this model of perfection before I can say it is done. Now I have to take a more realistic perspective as to when is the job done. Lots of security blanket rippage.

Thinking of everything else we do in life, it's actually pretty insane to be expecting perfect execution, especially in the earlier stages of learning.  Babies learn to walk by falling down relentlessly, kids reading in front of class haultingly sounding out and mispronouncing words, any number of mistakes learning to drive...  In all these we're comfortable with making mistakes along the way, approximating.  Learning to wakeboard last year, only after I was cool with falling on my face in front of everybody did I start to improve.

I am always calculating the rate at which I learn music, drawing graphs and statistics always interest me. If you can measure your efforts you can control your efforts. The paradox is, as you get better you learn how to do things more musically, you can hear things more effectively etc, thus you get more work on your plate! So even if you do improve you actually don't get that much relatively faster because you start to pay attention to more.

It makes me think about sitting examinations, everytime I said, gee that was easy I found out I did things wrong, I was careless etc. If I came out of an exam saying, damn that was hard, I usually did very well. The same applies for piano, when I was younger it was like, gee this is easy, but then if I listen to recordings of my younger years I can hear how immature it really is; I didn't know that I didn't know. Now I think everything is hard because I know the amount of detail you can put into it but I can achieve a mastery much faster than I could when I was younger. Hopefully when I am 50 the mastery I attain now which takes me months can be done in hours, that would be nice and I can see that happening. I am just impatient!

Wow you're patient!  Whenever I lose a long post, it either comes back super condensed or "to hell with typing that up again!"

I've lost enough posts that I've fallen in the habit of 'ctrl+c'ing before posting.  Very useful!

Patient or stupid, probably more stupid. I ctrl+c ed but then when I copy pasted quotes I lost it all, duh. I was like.. site has gone down and I lost my post... mmmm.. oh no worries I copyed it, I'll just press press ctrl+v and [quote author= etc etc comes up. ARRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrr. Took me 2 days to be bothered to write it again, I wrote a lot more so the 3rd post was condensed, I probably realised I was rambling too much as I do. ;P

[rc]

The same applies for piano, when I was younger it was like, gee this is easy, but then if I listen to recordings of my younger years I can hear how immature it really is; I didn't know that I didn't know. Now I think everything is hard because I know the amount of detail you can put into it but I can achieve a mastery much faster than I could when I was younger. Hopefully when I am 50 the mastery I attain now which takes me months can be done in hours, that would be nice and I can see that happening. I am just impatient!

hahah, yeah I remember doing some recordings when I was about 17, at the time I listened to 'em and thought "wow, I'm pretty good!", now I add "...considering."

Just a few weeks ago my teacher went to this big conference in Toronto, and one day Seymour Bernstein was giving a clinic.  He was giving some technical demonstrations, I forget what the topic was, but his demonstrations were so musical my teacher was having troubles paying attention to the point...  The guy just oozed music, it was part of his being to the point where off the cuff technical demonstrations came out beautiful!

That sounds like a good place to wind up

[cjp_piano]

Just a few weeks ago my teacher went to this big conference in Toronto, and one day Seymour Bernstein was giving a clinic.  He was giving some technical demonstrations, I forget what the topic was, but his demonstrations were so musical my teacher was having troubles paying attention to the point...  The guy just oozed music, it was part of his being to the point where off the cuff technical demonstrations came out beautiful!

That sounds like a good place to wind up

I was at the conference and at that session with Seymour Bernstein  . . . amazing 

[rc]

I was at the conference and at that session with Seymour Bernstein  . . . amazing 

Cool, what were some interesting highlights for you?

I found an interview, some of the things he says sounds like the attitude of somebody who emanates music: https://pianoeducation.org/pnosbern.html

"So long as I am immersed in music, I feel protected and enriched."

"Try to make music out of even the simplest exercise. Making music means to involve yourself emotionally at every moment of your practicing."

"In other words, through an organized and consistent process of practicing, it ought to be possible to harmonize everything you think, feel and do."

I'm going to have to give his books a read