I had a break-through lesson last night with an adult student who is dealing with a number of issues. He’s been playing for a couple of years. Issues are “baked-in” which comes with its own set of challenges. (unlearning is a whole lot harder than learning things correctly from the get-go!) He has a great attitude and is determined to improve. Here’s what we discovered last night.

In learning new music, his eyes and his fingers were not in sync. They would meet up at certain points but were otherwise disconnected while moving through the staff notation. Unknowingly, he was often making stuff up. He was also operating on faulty information regarding the execution of some (most) embellishments.

Your eyes transmit information to your brain. Your brain processes the information and instructs your fingers on how to behave. Your fingers respond, hopefully as they are instructed. In all instances, your fingers need to follow this instructional path. You have to allow time for your brain to recognize the information sent by your eyes and then for your fingers to act on instructions sent from your brain. In my student’s case, he was allowing his fingers to move ahead of his eyes in his haste to “play the tune.” As a consequence, he was throwing in grace notes that weren’t there, playing wrong melody notes, and executing embellishments incorrectly. Bad things were being “baked” into his music. What I really wanted him to do was to play each individual note separately, distinctly, and sequentially.

We slowed things way down. If he made a mistake, I immediately stopped him and made him play the phrase over three times correctly. At the end of the lesson, he had successfully taught himself three new tunes spanning forty measures of music. I will check back with him tomorrow just to make sure that nothing ugly has appeared.

Never assume anything. Slow everything w a y t h e h e c k d o w n. Never give up! Be deliberate in everything you do. And make your fingers follow your eyes! Don’t move your fingers before receiving instructions from your brain.

Today’s picture… a new project en route to me. Clues? White hemp. Long tenons. Deep bells. And then there’s the chanter. Very thin sole. Hoping to discover the maker. Initial thought is that this is mid 19th century and not a maker that we know much about. Watch for an update in the coming weeks.