[Menvi-discuss] Conscious Playing Versus Muscle Memory

[Kaiti Shelton]

Hi Brandon,

I've had that happen to me too when playing with an accompanist who
wasn't familiar with my piece.  Granted, what they were playing almost
from a sight-reading perspective was an orchestral reduction which
might have had something to do with it too if their reaction time was
effected, but I guess when you have two people processing the matter
gets more complicated.

I see this a lot in myself, especially now that I'm taking piano
lessons.  I feel like learning things on my principle instrument is
more of just a continuous progression, but I really see the
development and the shift from conscious playing to reactive playing
in piano.  In the beginning when I've only had a piece for a day or
two I can maybe play the hands separately and maybe a few parts of the
piece together.  A week or so later I can play the piece no sweat
without even worrying about remembering to cross over my thumb after a
certain note, or to remember how to play a specific scale.  It really
does start to come naturally.

On 4/3/13, Brandon Keith Biggs <brandonkeithbiggs at gmail.com> wrote:
> I wonder how good this is when one thinks too fast... I have the hardest
> time when singing with a live pianist because I'm never able to link into
> their rhythm and when I go to hear their rhythm, they slow down because it
> sounds like I'm slowing down... So I wonder if this has something to do with
> the speed we are processing.
> I know my piece implicitly, but have very little knowledge of the pianist,
> and the pianist doesn't know the piece that much, but is just reacting with
> me.
> Thanks,
>
> Brandon Keith Biggs
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Smart
> Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2013 1:26 PM
> To: blind-guitarist at yahoogroups.com
> Cc: midimag at midimag.org ; menvi-discuss at menvi.org
> Subject: [Menvi-discuss] Conscious Playing Versus Muscle Memory
>
> Hi folks.
>
> I just read the following from a book by Mac
> Santiago, called Beyond the Metronome.
> www.inchronicity.com
>
> "People basically execute movement in two
> different ways (or a combination of both). These
> are cognitive responses and reactive responses.
> The cognitive response is movement that you
> consciously set in motion by telling yourself to
> perform an act. Most of the time this happens
> when executing an action for the first time. With
> cognitive response the actual signal from brain
> to muscle moves at about three meters per second
> or from head to hand in about a third of a second
> (10­11 km/hour). This is why practicing slowly at
> first helps you to learn any movement or music
> correctly, and eliminates poor or inaccurate motor responses.
>
> Now as you learn the movement and your muscles
> begin to take over (some call this “muscle
> memory”), what is actually happening is that the
> signal from your brain to your muscle becomes
> quicker, or reactive. At this point the signal is
> moving at about 70­100 meters a second, so about
> 1/100 of a second from head to hands (250­350
> km/hour). As you can see, the two responses are vastly different.
>
> With this information I believe that timekeeping
> can be viewed as an indication of how much the
> performance has become a reactive response. This
> is also a measure of how familiar one is with the
> music. The great jazz alto saxophonist Charlie
> Parker once said, “I want to be able to play as
> fast as I can think.” When one listens to Parker
> with the above science in mind, it’s apparent
> that he was, in fact, extremely reactive to every
> musical thought that came into his mind. The
> speed and clarity with which he played made it
> seem as though his mind and body were one and the same.
> This is the goal for all musicians—to unify
> thought and execution seamlessly."
>
> I've always observed that one can play something
> faster once one knows it inside and out, but it
> was fascinating to see actual numbers given.  A
> third of a second versus one one-hundredth of a
> second... That would have been good to learn
> years ago when I was starting out. :)
>
> Chris
>
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-- 
Kaiti