How Listening Informs

This morning I was doing a little viewing on Youtube for fun. In the course of things I listened to Perlmann play Paganini’s Caprice #5. I say listened because his performance of the Caprice was taken from a LP recording done some 35 years ago.

Youtube wasn’t around then, as you may recall.

And in case you don’t know the tune, the bulk of it is a running stream of 16th notes that are performed quite rapidly. The tempo indication is ‘presto.’

And the effect of a brilliant performance such as Perlmann’s on a casual listener can be quite exhilarating indeed.

Yet this morning I didn’t listen casually. I became an ‘informed listener,’ a participant, if you will. I stayed with him, in my head, playing right along side him, note for note.

And as I did so I was aware of a very pleasurable ‘tickling’ sensation inside my brain. A sensation clearly produced by the firing up of the neural networks I’ve set in place for this piece of music over the years.

There was a brief section, however, where the party stopped. It was only for some 5 seconds or so, and had I been actually playing along on my violin my fingers would have carried me right through.

But there it was, made all the more apparent by my NOT having the violin in my hands.

So after he finished I resisted the urge I had to grab my violin and play it. Instead I retrieved the music – which I haven’t looked at in quite a while, sat down, and re-entered the missing data.

Then I put the music aside and rehearsed it a few times. Again, only in my head, going back several measures in front and ‘playing’ right through the offending section.

After I became satisfied I could nail it, I hit the play button once again on the maestro’s performance.

Ah, sweet success.

Just goes to show that some of the most useful practice time you will ever spend is time where you only Think of playing. When you do so you are perfecting the art of visualization.

And you’ll really know you’re getting somewhere when that little ‘tickle’ starts flitting around inside your skull whilst doing it.

Why, I had one go through now just thinking about thinking about playing.

All the best, Clayton Haslop