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[Asking “WHY” on problems]…. Ahh yes. I’ve heard that (probably multiple times, and promptly quickly forgot about it each time). So I’m not only trying to identify problems and deliberately solve them, but I’m also asking why they’re problems in the first place. Sounds like a good idea, but it also seems something else to figure out how/when to best integrate (I’m guessing “basically every time you have a problem, you should also ask why” is pretty close to the “when” answer ???? ) — and item #1 on that ‘change something else about how I practice’ task is actually remembering (or really: ‘make it yet another habit’) to (now also) ask “why” those problems come up — and to do it 2, 20 and 200 days from now.
Sounds like yet another example where learning music seems to get “easier” if you make it “harder” early-on in the right way. Like keeping the fingers closer to the keyboard *while* learning the notes makes getting to the final performance level run faster – or also doing analysis while learning notes to realize “it’s just a D major chord with one note slightly changed, repeated 4 times in different inversions” making 16 notes easier to learn than working on each note, one at a time.
But that first low-fingers scale is so slow before it sounds ok, the first year(s…ssss) I tried to get serious about chord analysis it felt like such a pain …. and the first time I actually work on why my 16th notes have those 4 problems it eats up the entire 5 minutes I was trying to ‘work on’ them and I didn’t get to play one note….. Leaving the old ‘just do something!’ part of me screaming inside. The recordings seem to show it, my teacher seems to be noticing it, but I don’t actually feel or even make better progress for weeks or years — making falling back into the old patterns so easy. For me that seems to be deeper challenge in all this.