Have you ever been horrified to discover rhythmic or voicing errors in music you have known and performed for some time? It happens. A case in point for me is Copland’s Four Piano Blues. The changing meters in these pieces evoke the improvisatory rhythm and rubato of solo blues—the best Copland could do to write this music using traditional notation.

From the time I first learned these wonderful pieces, I have had to sit down and count them aloud pretty often just to be certain that, in the heat of the moment, I haven’t added or shorted an eighth note.

Another time this problem manifests itself in my playing is in chord voicings. I remember a studying a certain sonata which shall remain nameless as a graduate student. I had to really stay on the inversions and voicings in those chords or I would change the order of the notes within the chords. It was quite frustrating for both me and my teacher.

It took me a while to realize that all this is pretty normal. It wasn’t and isn’t a personal fail. When you memorize something like a speech, poem, or bible verse, eventually your brain starts changing the order of words or substitutes like words without telling you. You go back to the source and suddenly realize that at some point you started quoting it wrong.

Gee thanks brain… Actually, this is the same mechanism that allows you to keep going after a memory slip. So, lets cut the brain some slack here. Who’s to say that the reason your brain substituted a voicing or rhythm in the first place wasn’t correction for a memory slip that was dealt with automatically so that you never even realized it?

Just say oops and leave. And, by that I mean go practice.

 

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