Pedal... OFF!!!! A Reality Check.

I've been learning Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" for an upcoming performance in May.  It's coming along quite nicely, but I'll tell you something I have struggled with since I was a little girl when it comes to the piano.

My mother, Brooklyn_Born, always called it "concertizing."

"Concertizing" is what I find myself doing in my practice sessions once I reach a certain point of proficiency at a piece.  I've got it technically down pat, for the most part, and I'm excited to try to sound just like a recording I heard.  I find myself playing the piece the whole way through, over and over, concertizing for myself.  If I fluff a little spot, I keep going because "it's close enough."

I found myself doing this with Rhapsody.  So I recorded myself on my iPhone playing the entire thing from memory.  Hmmm.  It sounded better in my head than it did on the recording.  I marked the sections that needed extra work and tackled them with slow practice to clean them up.  As I worked a particularly tricky technical section, it occurred to me that I couldn't really hear if my hands were perfectly together due to the pedal being on.

If you've had any piano training, you know about the damper pedal.  Of the three pedals, it's the one on the far right side that blurs the notes, making everything sound more connected and smooth.  It softens the hard edges.  Think of it like a camera filter that softens all the lines.  It makes imperfections (note errors) a lot less noticeable.

So I decided to hit myself with a reality check and work on the technical sections with the pedal off.  I was much better able to hear which measures or beats needed extra attention.  I worked to get them exactly accurate.  I saw more improvement in that one session of facing reality than I did by concertizing and fluffing my way through.

Our fitness & diet habits are the same way.  It's easy to get in the habit of putting on a "filter" of sorts - by estimating calories consumed or minutes walked or miles run.  Lately I've been doing that with my food intake, and the result is the scale hasn't budged too much in a couple weeks.

Just like with the piano practice, my Spark habits need a reality check.  No more fluffing for me!