I’ve noticed an extremely worrying problem with my playing.
In some of the pieces I could play from start to finish, a “stumbling block” develops at some point that I used to be able to play well. One day I just “trip over” somewhere without reason (it’s not always the most difficult bit in the works concerned). As soon as this appears, this limited problematic spot contaminates other passages, seemingly at random and including distant, unrelated ones, to such an extent that the whole piece starts unraveling and I just cannot play it anymore : I fumble whole passages, cannot find my fingerings anymore and basically have to relearn whole chunks of works or even give up on them altogether.
Just to be clear, I’m talking about pieces I’ve played every single day for months or even years, because I want to keep them in my active repertoire. Yesterday, that phenomenon even happened in a piece that I had polished enough over the past year to play it without problem in concert. I had to spend a whole hour relearning fingerings because I was basically drawing a blank at every measure. Today was almost back to normal but this is making me nervous and worried.
Well, I’ve also had a few problems with fine motor control in past couple of years (dropping things without reason for instance). It could be medical indeed, which would be much worse.
On the other hand, I’m starting to wonder whether the whole foundation of my technique is sound. As long as I practice repeatedly with a focus on polishing the technical aspects and a goal in mind (next week’s concert) I can get by. But as soon as I put the pieces in my “play this once every day just so that you don’t forget it” list, it isn’t enough and the edifice starts crumbling.
What puzzles me is the seemingly haphazard nature of the problem, though. One day everything’s as fine as ever, then the next day a minor fumble appears and next thing you know, a few weeks later I make mistakes or draw blanks at every other measure.
Are there teachers you can seek out? Or maybe a colleague at your skill level?
I can understand the difficulty in keeping pieces close to performance ready. It must require a lot of time to constantly play through a repertoire and learn new material.
Yeah, there are some professionals I can turn to. I’ll mention the issue to them as soon as possible.
As far as keeping an active repertoire AND learning new pieces, it is indeed a challenge, and perhaps not such a good idea. The thing is, there are a certain number of works I want to be always able to play at a moment’s notice, either because I love them or because they took an awful lot of effort to learn in the first place. And over the years, that list has… grown a bit. On the other hand, I still want to learn new stuff. Lots. It’s a delicate balancing act.
I guess I should accept to let some go, even if I have to relearn them later.
I’m a pianist – though not a very good one, so I’m not able to be helpful from a technique point of view. But could it be a pianist’s version of the yips?
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