Practicing Feelings

We are creatures of our senses- we feel before we can slow down to think and analyze.  When we perform a piece, it’s not the notes that are most challenging, but the requirement that we arouse a certain passion, a certain feeling, with only those notes.  It follows then, that how we approach our practice time emotionally is paramount to our ability to deliver at will in the performance.  If every time we sit down, we think, “This piece is so hard”, or “I’m never to going to play it like Argerich”, then we condition our bodies to be paralyzed before we even start.  On the other hand, if we prepare ourselves by slow stretching and intentional scale work to open up awareness, and by getting in touch with the precise emotion of the piece before playing a single note, then we will have already succeeded with how to embody the music and how to get our fragile egos out of the way.  These associations become more powerful with repetition, until they are part of our evolved identity...

-excerpt from a new Conscious ListeningTM seminar, Hsing-ay Hsu ©2019