Juilliard graduate helping dedicated adult pianists who love challenging repertoire practice less while learning more.
🎹 Screw perfect. 131 people agreed. also 10K
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Someone caught it. 23 seconds in, on the Gigue from the B-flat Partita, the one from my 1989 Cliburn audition. A mistake, small, just a switch in the notes. He commented so everyone would hear it. I replied without thinking twice. "My motto now is Screw Perfect. Just Make Music." 131 likes on that reply. More than the comment that started it. That reel also got me 466 new followers on Instagram which lead to celebrating 10K followers Saturday. 🎉 I keep coming back to the order those two things happened in. Nobody showed up because I played it perfectly. They showed up for this... You may have been trained to treat a mistake like something to explain, apologize for, or edit out before anyone hears it. But the people listening aren't grading you against a score. They're listening for something real. A switched note doesn't undo that. Chasing an invisible standard of perfect might. 🎼 A tiny experiment for you Next time you catch a slip in something you've recorded, don't reach for another take automatically. Ask first: does this ruin the music, or does it just remind me I'm playing it live? Those are different problems. Only one of them needs fixing. |
Lisa Spector, Piano Ninja
Juilliard graduate helping dedicated adult pianists who love challenging repertoire practice less while learning more.
We just wrapped up our annual Beyond the Keys piano retreat and I sent every pianist home with six new cards to put on their piano rack. One idea on each. Play On! 🎹Start Where It Breaks ⛓️💥Back Up Just Enough 🔙 Name It When You Play It 🔊Record Today, Listen Tomorrow 🎥Take a Break 🧘♀️ Four days of workshops, performances and conversation. And this is what I wanted them to leave with. Not a notebook full of ideas they’d never reread. Six decisions small enough to fit on a piano rack. None of...
Members of the Piano Ninja Tricksters Club are flying in from across the country for our annual Beyond The Keys piano retreat here in Monterey, California. A group of adult pianists, a lot of piano talk, and some unusual experiments. Let's just say this is not your typical adult piano camp. There's even a piano movie night. 🍿 (If we get to it. For the last two years, we've talked right through it. 🤷♀️) But the moment I keep thinking about is Friday night. That's when they'll walk into a room...
I'm wearing a back brace while a compression fracture heals, with strict orders not to lift more than 5 pounds. And I was about to fly from California to Toronto. ✈️I'm a lifelong over-packer. 🧳 🧳 Carry-on only was a stretch. Carry-on I wasn't allowed to lift? 🤦♀️ The trip was for Stu McLaren's 10-year celebration of The Membership Experience. Stu is my membership mentor and I've been meeting with him and his fabulous team for 5 years on Zoom! Before I knew Stu, my first attempt at a...