Piano and “The inner game of tennis,” by W. Timothy Galloway.

Learning to play piano is the same thing as learning to play a sport. W.Timothy Galloway author of “ The inner game of tennis explains this in the most wonderful way. In each person, there’s two people. We all have heard the terms ID, Ego, Super ego. The subconscious, The unconscious, The inner Self, Etc.. The The winner game of tennis was written in 1974, so it was before the new age movement of the 80s and 90s and people did not know names for different parts of their beings. So for the sake of clarity, the author Simplifies the self Into two selves. Their self one and their self two, we can call self one The talker, and self to the doer. If you ever trained for anything athletic, you’ll know what I’m talking about. The talker, self one tells the deer, self two, What to do, one to do it, how to do it, Maybe even why to do it. Self 2, the doer, Performs The action, Then back to self number one who critiques the just performed action. Sometimes it’s good, Most of the times it’s not. It says things like, You gripped too hard, You forgot to take a step, You didn’t follow through, Etc. Then in an effort to correct, self number two tries even harder, But instead just creates more tension and further complicates the problem. Bill Gates, Yes, that Bill Gates, Was inspired by this book and wrote a beautiful introduction, He titled that “getting out of your own way.”Learn piano, especially learning to improvise, To create music, Not just follow a written score, But actually creating in the moment is very much like playing a sport. You have self number one telling you what to do, self number two doing it. And then back to self number one critiquing you endlessly. When people are in flow, or athletes are in the zone, They are not really thinking. They are thinking, but in a bigger picture, not in the minute details. A good athlete, when they’re in the zone, perform with minimum efforts and spectacular results. Improvising on Piano is exactly the same. So, It will be true to say that learning piano should be very similar to learning a sport. I read” The inner game of tennis” many years ago, Along with many other wonderful books that inspired my method of teaching. The jazz pianist Kenny Werner wrote another wonderful book, Much later on than 1974, Called “ Effortless mastery. “ I believe he’s trying to describe the same process as Mr. Galloway does in his book. So I’ve developed my teaching style to follow these master coach, coaches, and teachers. You “train” on piano, rather than practice. You train as an athlete would to become an elite athlete at any sport. You train in a way, or in case of Piano learn in a certain way that ultimately leads to playing” Unconsciously.” If you’ve ever watched Vladimir Horowitz play a very difficult classical piece, You’ll see this in action. From a long shot, He looks like a guy waiting for a bus. On a close-up of his hands, it looks like he’s performing the impossible, Yet he remains relaxed, and one gets the impression that he is watching himself play. That is the ultimate goal for the Piano improviser. To get to a point where you watch yourself fly, Listen as the audience would. And like Horowitz after the piece is done, He would give himself a little nod, Kind of saying” I wasn’t too bad” Meanwhile, for us, it seems pure brilliant.

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