Sometimes I am just amazed at how close the distance between failure and success is. As a pianist, a C chord is millimeters away from a B chord. Drop your hand a quarter inch to the left and there's dissonance and a cringing panic in the chest as you try to adjust.
You've played this piece a hundred times, probably more, at various tempos, in so many different ways, taking apart the voicing and the nuances, studying in such detail the way your piano part fits with the voice parts, and still, when you put it all together, there is a surprise. "How fascinating!" one of my mentors advises me to think when the unthinkable occurs in performances. "OMG!" or "what the F#ck" is what really goes through my head when the unexpected happens.
Yes, those of us who know the piece in such great detail know exactly where we have fallen short, while those listening may only hear a momentary pause, a slight hesitation, or a moment of awkwardness. Sometimes the failure is barely noticeable, sometimes not.
But we who perform know.
And we care outrageously.
It's a good thing, in that the knowing and the caring spurs us on to greater practice, greater precision, greater efforts that eventually produce greater results.
But at the moment of failure, and the remembrance of it, even with many many many successes on its heels, it still feels like *shit*. We go home, we cry, we kick ourselves, we replay the failure many times more than we replay the success.
And we ask ourselves [again, and again, and again], am I going to give up or am I going to go on?
And we take a nap, and then we go on.
Showing posts with label performing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label performing. Show all posts
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Monday, December 20, 2010
Beyond Avoidance: What should you have done this year but didn’t because you were too scared, worried, unsure, busy or otherwise deterred from doing? (Bonus: Will you do it?)
I've been struggling with these reverb10 writing prompts. Seemed like a fun idea when I started, but either I'm overwhelmed by my schedule, or too tired to write, or the prompts feel too personal to put on a blog, of all places.
But this one's easy.
What I should have done this year was practice organ.
For a couple years, my church has been working toward the goal of building a pipe organ for our sanctuary, to replace the old electronic organ that is held together by twine and spit, has all kinds of surprises each week for the organist and congregation. In this last year, the forces in the benevolent universe that govern such things began to align, and I knew we were going to get our organ someday soon.
And as choir accompanist, I know that when we have a decent instrument, our choir director will be selecting more anthems accompanied by organ. I better get prepared to play.
I've had some little training on the organ, and I can do it if I have to, given plenty of preparation time and some help deciding on which stops to use.
But I feel so gangly and uncoordinated at the organ. There's the feet to get moving, there's no damper pedal to help connect big reaches from chord to chord, there's the difference in touch at the keyboard, there's the issue of reading three staves or rearranging the voicing between the hands. All stuff that makes me feel awkward.
And then there's the big, big sound that comes out.
I don't have the experience yet to judge how the sound I hear at the console sounds to the rest of the room. Sometimes I'm too loud and don't know it, often too soft.
So all of this makes organ playing tops on my avoidance list. I suppose you could call it living in denial, knowing that the organ was coming and knowing I would occasionally be called on to play it and still not preparing. I had chances. I thought about taking lessons again a few years ago. And last spring, after playing organ for some choir anthem, the director encouraged me to play any little thing over the summer--some Bach for a random Sunday prelude, or some quiet stuff for offertory--just to increase my comfort level. But I didn't do it.
I have a couple pieces I always come back to when I do play organ. Bach, Franck. I like them well enough and can get them up to competent if not great.
So will I practice organ in 2011?
Probably. Maybe. If I have to. We'll see.
I've been struggling with these reverb10 writing prompts. Seemed like a fun idea when I started, but either I'm overwhelmed by my schedule, or too tired to write, or the prompts feel too personal to put on a blog, of all places.
But this one's easy.
What I should have done this year was practice organ.
For a couple years, my church has been working toward the goal of building a pipe organ for our sanctuary, to replace the old electronic organ that is held together by twine and spit, has all kinds of surprises each week for the organist and congregation. In this last year, the forces in the benevolent universe that govern such things began to align, and I knew we were going to get our organ someday soon.
And as choir accompanist, I know that when we have a decent instrument, our choir director will be selecting more anthems accompanied by organ. I better get prepared to play.
I've had some little training on the organ, and I can do it if I have to, given plenty of preparation time and some help deciding on which stops to use.
But I feel so gangly and uncoordinated at the organ. There's the feet to get moving, there's no damper pedal to help connect big reaches from chord to chord, there's the difference in touch at the keyboard, there's the issue of reading three staves or rearranging the voicing between the hands. All stuff that makes me feel awkward.
And then there's the big, big sound that comes out.
I don't have the experience yet to judge how the sound I hear at the console sounds to the rest of the room. Sometimes I'm too loud and don't know it, often too soft.
So all of this makes organ playing tops on my avoidance list. I suppose you could call it living in denial, knowing that the organ was coming and knowing I would occasionally be called on to play it and still not preparing. I had chances. I thought about taking lessons again a few years ago. And last spring, after playing organ for some choir anthem, the director encouraged me to play any little thing over the summer--some Bach for a random Sunday prelude, or some quiet stuff for offertory--just to increase my comfort level. But I didn't do it.
I have a couple pieces I always come back to when I do play organ. Bach, Franck. I like them well enough and can get them up to competent if not great.
So will I practice organ in 2011?
Probably. Maybe. If I have to. We'll see.
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