That was a joke on Bewitched. Someone asked Darren that about his golf stroke. Of course Sam made sure he made a great shot anyway.
I hate it when I start thinking about the timing and mechanics of automatic breathing.
It confuses me and I end up hyperventilating.
When I played the trombone and flute there was a strict difference between music I figured out/improved and music I learned from the sheet. I could play, by ear, many, many difficult songs I’d heard by ear on my first or second try. Do NOT ask me what notes or positions I’m using, or I will not be able to play it anymore.
When still a youngster attending prep school, I was required to take piano lessons. The harder I tried, the worse the results. I did get adept at napping on piano benches. When recital time came, I was hopelessly unprepared. Three bars into my piece, I blanked out completely, but instead of stopping, continued messing around with the scales of the key I was in.
I had a thought that if I could just stay in major or minor key, eventually I would remember the ending. Noone was booing, or coughing, or shuffling papers and eventually after 10+ minutes of fiddling around, I remembered the ending to my piece. There was silence . . . and then very loud applause. I walked back to my instructor and he shook his copy of the piece at me and demanded to know what I had done.
I shrugged my shoulders and told him,“I got lost, I was just trying to find my way back.” He told me since I hadn’t actually played my piece, I couldn’t get an A, but I was very pleased with the B+ he gave me.