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Aiming for on again - Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway [entries|archive|friends|userinfo]
Marissa Lingen

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Aiming for on again [Jul. 2nd, 2011|02:35 pm]
Marissa Lingen
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Two bits of musical...offness, I guess. Last weekend my singing voice went just in time for music circles at 4th St. I bulled through a couple of them, but it was not really the best thing, and then I was froggy for the rest of the week. Last night when I reached for some range it was there, and so this is not a permanent thing, but it was unfortunate timing.

Then today I sat down to play the piano--it's been a few months since I did, since I'm deliberately trying not to make it One More Thing On The List--and...okay, I think pianists are going to get this and non-pianists it might be more opaque. I went to play my new BSG score, and...you know how your hands know how big an octave is? My hands knew that wrong. I have always known how big an octave is, "always" being nearly 25 years now, and I've never known it incorrectly before. There have been hiatuses in my playing that were much longer than a month or two, and they never resulted in this. At the end of the half-hour I spent playing, it had reapproximated, mostly, I think, but I'm kind of freaked out about this. It's like having every step be like missing the bottom step because you've forgotten how long your legs are. And as much as I am not making piano playing One More Thing On The List, I'm thinking I'm going to make a special effort the next little bit, just so that things don't go badly awry where I rely on them not to.
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Comments:
[User Picture]From: tiger_spot
2011-07-02 07:41 pm (UTC)
Whoa. That sounds really disconcerting.
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[User Picture]From: mrissa
2011-07-02 07:52 pm (UTC)
Well, and at first I was not sure what was happening, and I kept thinking, "Did I read that wrong, is it supposed to be a...wait, no, I'm playing that wrong, I'm not hitting what it is obvious that I should be hitting." It was very weird.
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[User Picture]From: cathshaffer
2011-07-02 08:23 pm (UTC)
That does sound weird. I don't play piano, but that is largely because I can't reach a full octave, and even though you can play modified and altered music and whatnot, my desire to play around that limitation is not strong.
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[User Picture]From: mrissa
2011-07-02 08:24 pm (UTC)
Wow, I can see why not! I don't think of myself as having particularly large hands, so yours must be pretty small. But yes, an octave span really seems like about the minimum for this effort to be fun.
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[User Picture]From: cathshaffer
2011-07-18 01:38 pm (UTC)
I have very short,weird thumbs. Even my extremely tiny mother can play an octave. Even my son when he was ten years old. *sigh*
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[User Picture]From: rosefox
2011-07-02 08:39 pm (UTC)
Yep, same here. Long palm, short fingers. You know what people mean when they say "hands like a musician"? My hands are the exact opposite of that.
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[User Picture]From: cathshaffer
2011-07-18 01:38 pm (UTC)
LOL. Some instruments are more forgiving. (Email ate all my LJ replies for like the past six weeks. Sorry!)
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[User Picture]From: aedifica
2011-07-02 08:26 pm (UTC)

Oh ack. I imagine that would be equivalent to my arm not knowing where 6th position on the trombone slide was. (And one can certainly work around that, but it slows one down and it's disconcerting.)

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[User Picture]From: rosefox
2011-07-02 08:39 pm (UTC)
Oh, Mris, that sounds awful! I'm glad it came back and I hope it stays around.
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From: diatryma
2011-07-02 09:09 pm (UTC)
That would freak me right out. I hope your hands remember where they're supposed to go soon.
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[User Picture]From: swan_tower
2011-07-02 10:56 pm (UTC)
Weeeeeird. As documented in my own post on the BSG score, I have more or less the same problem . . . but I haven't played regularly in years. It is to be expected that my hands would screw up octaves, as well as fifths, sixths, and very nearly every other interval I asked them to play. I totally understand you being kind of freaked out by it happening to you.
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[User Picture]From: miz_hatbox
2011-07-03 01:11 am (UTC)

So I broke into the palace with a sponge and a rusty spanner

Weird. Were your fingers spread too wide for the octave or not wide enough?
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[User Picture]From: mrissa
2011-07-03 02:25 am (UTC)

Re: So I broke into the palace with a sponge and a rusty spanner

Not wide enough, which is at least more explicable.
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[User Picture]From: mrissa
2011-07-03 12:53 pm (UTC)
No, nothing like that. I am honestly worried that messed up proprioception is a harbinger of things to come in the other direction, but I'm trying not to think about it.
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