July 9, 2015: practice Thursday

A few of the pieces I've been working on lately have passages where my hands are in the extreme upper and lower registers of the piano, as far apart as possible. When I practice piano, I work to develop kinesthetic memory, so that in a rehearsal or performance my hands will automatically know what to do next.  I've been noticing that as my hands are further apart, the feeling of that kinesthetic memory being at work begins to dissolve a bit. I'm guessing there is a scientist somewhere who could explain exactly what it is I'm experiencing; for now, I need to spend a bit more time on these few passages.

Pianists spend quite a bit of effort from an early age developing hand and finger independence; this type of coordination is essential for our work. There is evidence that the work we do encourages our brains to develop a bit differently, resulting in a different approach to the brain's control of right- and left-handedness for pianists. This evidence makes sense to me ... I started piano lessons at the age of six, and I'm ambidextrous.