In fact, wrong notes always have a cause. An immediate physical cause. Just before you play a wrong note, your fingers were in a position that made that wrong note inevitable. Fixing wrong notes isn't about "practicing harder" but about trying to unkink those systematically error-causing fingerings and hand motions.

This bothers me quite a lot. If there's a keyboard passage I'm having trouble with, I slow it down and play it repeatedly at the slower tempo. I'll check on whether there's a better fingering I could be using, but that's a pretty quick thing. If I started thinking hard about "unkinking those systematically error-causing fingerings" then I'd get so self-conscious about the process that I'd just make worse mistakes. This sometimes does happen to me.

It's a form of delegation. I trust my fingers to know what they're doing but recognize that they need practice before they do it will.

(Reply) (Thread)

Yeah, i'm with you on this.

The author's way of exploring the cause does not match my own, and her metaphor does not work for me.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)