Battling Frankensteins And Other Demons

     Tonight is my piano students' recital.
     Playing the piano is one thing - we all love to play, once we can hit a few notes correctly,  play a song, have some music in our lives - but performing is another.
      And yet why do we play an instrument if not to perform, for ourselves and others?  And so I, like most instrument teachers,  have my  students, as part of their learning journey, perform publicly for others. 
     Because everybody loves to hear some live music.

     Even our pets who are, by the way, the greatest music lovers,

​...I'm serious,

​...and you can absolutely tell when a pet is enjoying a performance.

     Still, performing front of a crowd -even a friendly crowd like your fellow students and their families -  can be challenge.
       And then there's the challenge behind the challenge:  learning the piece.
     Nailing all the notes, then making the piece sound beautiful, which one can only begin to work on when one has the notes more or less nailed.

     I say more or less because there always seems to be, in every piece, for every pianist, what I call a Frankenstein: 

...a part of the piece, sometimes just one measure, just one chord, just one miserable note, that you  can't seem to get, the monster that's always waiting there to mess up your performance, filling you with fear and dread.
      Thus we musicians are always battling our Frankensteins.  
     We strive to conquer them by playing them over, and over, and over, throttling them with our fingers, 25 times, 50, times, 100 times, more times,

​...and, amazingly, we do manage to conquer those bad parts.

....with a ton of practicing and then some dress-rehearsing.

    But then again sometimes we just can't conquer our Frankenstiens, in which case we have another weapon in our belt:

...cutting that bad boy, like the Gordian Knot that it is, right out of the piece.  Sometimes it's the only way.

    Sometimes a piece has more than one Frankenstein to fell.  And sometimes, along with the Frankensteins, there are what I call Minor Demons:  parts of the piece that aren't the worst, but that  you're always relieved to get past without tripping over.
    But perhaps worst of all are what I call the Obscura Daemonia, the Hidden Demons.  A Hidden Demon is a part of your piece that you have down pat, that you never mess up, that you're best friends with, that  you don't even think about but then at your performance, wham, it turns on you:  this is the part you mess up on, not the horrid Frankenstien you were worried about but this easy part that you totally knew!
     Of course, a couple of wrong notes isn't the end of the world, and, as I'm always reminding my students, a few wrong notes don't spoil an over-all beautiful piece.
     Everybody  sounded good at the dress rehearsal.  I think we've taken care of all the monsters.  I think we'll all be okay.
     Excuse me now while I go on one quick last Frankenstein patrol.