The Power of Muscle Memory: Observations of a Pianist Jumping Back Into Practicing After Years of...Not

I'm baaaack :) I guess it's been a hot minute, hasn't it? (Does that last post say May 2012? Eek....) I'm just going to dive right in.

I recently decided to get back into playing (piano - kinda hard to transport a harp across the country - that's a whole other blog post - and keep it in a shoebox sized studio apartment), and it's increased my happiness level about 120%. Here's a condensed version of what happened (oh and by the way - hi! I moved back to the USA from Australia last October, lived in Michigan, then Chicago, then San Diego, and now Carlsbad. More on that later, maybe...): 

1. A few weeks ago, I noticed that some other, clearly less cooler Mariah Gillespie out there in the world had begun tweeting and was thus STEALING my first page SERP (search engine results page) ranking. I had been quite pleased with myself in the fact that I am reasonably googable; i.e. when one googles "Mariah Gillespie," the first page of results on google is actually me (my LinkedIn profile, my business facebook page, my tweets, etc.). No more. Some silly teenage girl has decided that twitter is cool (umm welcome to the party, sweetheart - does your mommy know what you tweet?), and she is STEALING MY RANKING! Of course, I'm not about to sit around and let that happen. Therefore....

2. I decided to chop up every single musical performance that I have of myself into short video clips and post them to youtube (owned by google), keywording the hell out of myself in the process in order to reclaim what is rightfully mine - after all, the only Mariah Gillespie worth googling in this world is me! It's still a work in progress and will probably take a few more weeks to complete. 

3. In doing this, I watched myself as a 11-18 year old performing on the piano and the harp in various situations, such as harp ensembles, concerts, fundraisers, orchestras, etc. Unfortunately, the first thought that usually came to mind upon watching these clips was, "Damn. That's quite possibly the coolest I'll ever be. I practiced 6 hours a day! Look at those fingers fly - look at that technique! What have I been DOING with my life since I was a featured harpist and scholarship winner with the Great Lakes Symphony Orchestra and received a standing ovation to a full house and an article in the Detroit Free Press?!"

4. Meanwhile, I have been in communications with the local Yamaha Music School at SoCal Pianos. If you know me at all, you know what a HUGE deal teaching music is to me! I won't get into all the details now (another blog post that I may or may not write for you - hey, baby steps! I'm back, aren't I?!), but basically I have to get re-certified in the USA in order to teach Yamaha classes here. SO, long story short, my self-inspiration (is that a word? a thing? Can one inspire oneself? Check.) from watching myself perform on video combined with my upcoming Yamaha audition (I have to audition live in front of a video camera for 90 minutes, which includes performing 2 contrasting songs, sight-reading, sight-singing, transportion, improv...all sorts of fun stuff that will be sent to Yamaha Corporate Head Office), I am practicing every day! I usually squeeze in about a half hour on my lunch break and 1-2 hours after work. 

Here are some of my observations:

• It's kind of like getting back into working out after a long time. (I think. Not that I know anything about being a gymrat. That's not sarcasm - I actually don't.) The first 30 minutes was pretty brutal. I do play my keyboard quite often, but usually fun stuff, easy stuff, songs that I enjoy playing, and nothing too technically difficult (when it gets difficult, I just skim over it or power through without correcting my mistakes). When I dove into some scales and technical exercises for the first time, my fingers were NOT happy. They were quite stubborn, in fact, and it was pretty much a total mess! VERY sloppy playing. Having said that...
• Muscle memory is AMAZING! Once I gave my fingers a good work-out (brutally slow scales, finger stretching exercises at work, arpeggios, etc.) and hesitantly opened up my Schubert Improptu No. 2 in E-flat (Schubert)....it was like my fingers picked up right where they had left off (following one initial very slow read-through). After a few play-throughs, I was SPEEDING through it and my fingers seemed to know EXACTLY where to go. It's crazy - my phone would go off and I would glance over to see who it was (talk about easily distracted - I have since learned to put my phone on the other side of the room...thank goodness iPhones weren't around in high school), and in those few seconds of looking away, my fingers KEPT ON GOING. I would refocus and find that my fingers had continued on without my brain. I wrote about muscle memory a few years ago but I had no idea that it could last for years. 
• Muscle memory can also work against you! It actually made me laugh out loud while practicing. I found that the SAME problems that I had when I worked on this piece years ago, still exist. The same fingerings and flats and accents and chords that are literally circled, xed, marked in red, have "careful" written mid-measure on the page (you can see it in the photo above)...my fingers stumble upon these spots as much as they did years ago! 
• I love playing music. I LOVE playing classical music. I get high from playing classical music, and I hope that I never go this long without playing ever again! 
• I want to put on a recital soon, a full blown, solo, Mariah Gillespie at the piano, recital. There might be 3 people in the audience, but I want to do it. 
• I love playing music.