NEW!! Hear it and you can play it!!!

JUST HEAR IT,

AND YOU CAN PLAY IT!!!

I am drawing this valuable information from high motivation, received from the great jazz pianist, Hal Galper. 

His inspiration was a book by George Kochevitsky (The Art of Playing the Piano), on the mental importance when playing the piano, the essence of which: your hearing is the main enabler to technical ability: “If you can hear it, you can play it.”

He then related a morning when he by chance watched the Mr. Roger’s show, in the 1980’s, when the great concert pianist Andre Watts was a guest.

Roger’s posed the question: “Well Andre, how do you play music?”.  Andre replied with this gem: “It all depends on the intensity of you concentration and the vividness of your AURAL imagination.”  That’s a treasure of information!

Later Hal tells of hearing Dizzy Gillespie at a workshop and answering a question: “Mr. Gillespie, what do you think and hear as you are playing music?”.  He answered: “Well most think I hear ‘deu be deu be deu be’,  but I’m actually hearing:

‘deu be deu be deu be’!!!!!,

because you must hear and know what you are going to play in order to play it well.  And this is for any type of performing, whether classical, jazz, country-western, ----whatever: the material must be internalized and heard in your mind in order to play it well;  you must hear it

LOUD!!!!!

And this is a treasure of truth!!!

The great Clark Terry, jazz trumpet player extraordinaire, gave as brief, but as clear of the learning/internalizing process as I have ever heard:

"IMITATION,

INTERNALIZATION,

INNOVATION!!"

Sincerely, Errol

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