I have completed a grand slam of organizing lately.  I do this when I am in-between jobs or projects, suddenly inspired to clean out closets, drawers, the garage and basement.  As a result of all this clearing out of space, I have gone to the tailor three times with various items, long in need of repair.  We have our taxes done, although far from filed or paid.  (Gulp.  Self-employed folks hate tax time, don't we?).  The hall closet has been tamed and beaten into submission.  I actually have one empty drawer in the chest in the sun-room, waiting to be filled with miscellaneous items.  Life is good, or at least organized.

I'm intentionally in-between musical projects.   Earlier this year I had so many splits in my fingers caused by dry skin (I do live in the desert, after all), that during one recording session I was bleeding on the piano.  Not pretty, and extremely painful.  Coupled with these ugly, raw hands, I have been showing the early warning signs of carpal tunnel problems:  hands falling asleep at night, minor tingling on and off during the day, etc.  This comes as no great surprise given what I do, but since I have a horrible tendency to ignore physical pain (see migraines) I am trying to take stock of this now.  All said, I have had little choice but to impose a restricted piano schedule on myself.  In typical Amy fashion, this does not actually mean no piano-time, but less.  I went two weeks with little to no practicing, and am now back to a couple hours a day.  I'm trying to be disciplined and take at least one day completely away from the piano every week, sometimes more.  I'm not taking many gigs, trying to protect my time and my hands for a while and also looking ahead to a gig I have with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra in May, playing Saint-Saens' "Carnival of the Animals."  Everything about this more careful, cautious approach to my music-making goes against my nature; I find myself fighting it every time the phone rings with another potential gig.  I suffer from the fear that I will jeopardize future performing opportunities by saying no right now.  Crazily enough, I fear this more than the danger of jeopardizing my performing future by hurting my hands.  I know all too well what it feels like to not have the phone ring, and not to be on the short list for the great gigs.  I also know that work creates work, and that just doing a certain amount of work keeps my name out there and active.  Every day that the phone doesn't ring I'm afraid its a sign that I will never work again.  No, the hard thing here isn't coping with the physical symptoms, it is coping with the potential professional consequences of getting out of the game, however temporarily.

I know what the antidote to all of this is:  I need to drown myself into some new creative projects so I can stop tormenting myself with my insecurities and fears.  With enough time and attention elsewhere, my self-destructive tendencies cannot take root.  I know this.  Just like work begets work, energy begets energy.  Positive energy stirring up something--anything--will generate endorphins, if not the next great thing.  Experience has taught me that doing the work I need to do to get ready for what may come next will often cause that thing to appear as if by magic.  Getting my business cards made is the first step towards having someone request one.  Reading through intermediate literature makes it more likely that I might get a call about a talented intermediate student.  Learning a new solo recital program makes it more likely that I will be asked to play one in the near future.  I don't understand how this works exactly, but I trust in the process.  I also know that like everything else, these cycles of lack of confidence and increased anxiety come and go--the physical break from the piano hasn't brought them on, just revealed what is always there under the surface, lurking in the dark.  That I just might be as insecure and fearful and scared as the next person isn't fun to admit.  Yet there it is:  the truth, staring me in the face.

Around me, there are a thousand signs that the creative burst of spring is taking hold.  In my garden, I have the first yellow and red tulips--their cheerful colorful faces braving the elements yet again this year.  The daffodils I planted last fall are beginning to emerge.  My rose bushes are sending out hundreds of tiny new leaves, bursting into bud right before my very eyes.  There are a thousand chores to be done outside, if I can dig out an hour or two.  But lately, the wind has driven me indoors.  We have had gusts as great as 50 mph over the last few days.  My big happy red umbrella has been lying on the ground for weeks now, knocked senseless by the roaring winds.   I forget every year that spring in the desert means horrible winds.  I must repress this information because I find the wind utterly life-sucking.  I may be a girl from Kansas, but Dorothy I am not.  These winds do not bring out the adventurous side of me; if anything they make me restless and irritable.  ("That's the vata in you," my physical therapist told me, "air doesn't like wind."  I'd question the underlying validity of this statement, if it didn't ring so utterly true.)  Just last weekend, Matt and I were in Santa Fe; I had been invited to judge a competition in Los Alamos the next day, so we made a getaway of it.  I needed a day-long Julia Cameron-inspired artist date puttering around the Plaza and Canyon Road, but the wind--there were no words.  Instead, we checked into our hotel early and spent the afternoon watching college basketball.  Which, I suppose, is an afternoon outside the norm for me as artist dates are intended to be, just not what I had planned. 

But today the winds are quiet. 

This morning, while pedaling to the tailor, I saw the neighborhood roadrunner sitting in someone's birdbath, just hanging out as if he was pretending to be a duck.  Later, on my way home, I saw him again, wet and rumpled, acting as if he there was no place in the world he needed to be at that moment. For all I know, he took another dip with the sparrows before getting on with his day. 

In my courtyard, I am trying to lure the birds to my feeders, at this point to no avail.  Free food!  I feel like shouting to the skies.  If anyone knows why birds might be wary of certain feeders in particular places, do let me know.  At this point, I can only blame the cats, sitting in the windows scaring them away.  Outside my laundry hangs on the clothes line, blowing in the sunshine and the breeze.  Inside, my house is ordered, for once blessed with a real spring cleaning.  That all this cleaning would stir up debris within me is no great surprise, disheartening as it may be. 

But like all seasons, this too shall pass, and the next unknown chapter will unfold.  Next week is spring break, a blessed break from teaching.  We are headed to Denver on Wednesday for a couple of days away, then Matt will fly home and I will stay for a convention.  Recently, one of my students saw the journal advertising the convention on my desk.  "Are you going to a convention, Amy?" she asked me.  "Yep," I answered.  "Is it a piano convention?  At the end will everyone gets snacks while someone plays the piano?"  I smile just thinking about her idea of a piano convention.  As I write this, my two cats are basking in the sun-room daring the birds to just try to enjoy the birdseed scattered on the courtyard walls.  But just now, one brave bird with a reddish throat has made his way to the bird feeder.  I could just shout for joy, watching him. 

I think most beginning method books wait too long before having students play with hands together.  The delay is caused by the added complication of note-reading, but students can conquer this coordination milestone sooner by working on playing hands together in five-finger positions.  By the time students have learned all the white key five-finger positions—C and G, D and A, and the more challenging ones of E, B and F--I think they should be playing hands together in parallel direction.  Adult students or students with previous piano experience can do this immediately, while with some young children who have extremely underdeveloped hands it may take weeks or even months to perfect this skill. “But it is so hard!” a young student whines at me, trying to play C-position Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do hands together.  “Yes, but you don’t want to be one of those one-handed pianists, do you?” I gently prod him. 

As soon as students can play all the white-key major positions with hands together, I teach the five black-key positions.  Some teachers never do this, adhering to the traditional rule of no thumbs on black keys, but in my work I have needed to use my thumb on plenty of black keys.  Other teachers like to teach only the positions that students are currently facing in their music, which directly correlates the keys of the technique assignments with the keys of their literature.  There is some sense to this certainly, as it relates technique to the music at hand.  However, too often beginning literature only requires C and G major for months.  I think if students wait too long before playing black notes and black positions they become intimidated by the prospect.  Besides, I love the transposing possibilities that are immediately available if students can play any position.  Students who play all twelve positions don’t know to be scared of G-flat or B major; they do not need to know that G-flat major has six flats in order to play a piece in a five-finger position.  Above all, I get a secret thrill from the look of terror that comes over their parents’ faces when I say, “Hey!  How about playing this piece in D-flat?”

Since beginning students may not possess yet the terminology of sharps and flats, I call all the black positions “flats”:  D-flat, A-flat, E-flat, etc.  Even the littlest student can understand this basic naming, if we do not confuse the issue. My decision to call the black keys “flats” versus naming them by “sharps” is somewhat arbitrary, based mostly on the fact that the positions (except for G-flat/F-sharp which can go either way) are more easily spelled as flats.  Often we throw too much vocabulary at students, thereby confusing issues that really can be very simple.  There is plenty of time later to introduce sharps and the difference between the two.  The important thing at this point is to get the student playing all twelve major positions as soon as possible.

I encourage students to identify the notes of the black-key positions by using their ears as a guide, just as we did with the white-key positions.  Students quickly discover many devices for remembering the patterns of white and black keys, “Look!  E-flat has two white notes.  It is the opposite of E position.”  Or “D-flat and A-flat are ‘Oreo’ positions:  black cookie, white filling, black cookie.”   For many months, seven year-old Jack told me, “Amy, B-flat position tilts this way,” tilting his hand to the right, “and B position tilts this way.”  tilting his hand to the left.  “It’s a seesaw!”  This is what I most desire, for students to find their own way through all these keys and relationships.

Weekly, I vary the patterns in the simplest of ways, still writing every assignment in students’ notebooks in solfege.  First, I write out the solfege and sing the pattern, only demonstrating by playing it on the piano as a last resort.  This isn’t rote-teaching, but ear-training, for with time students learn to translate the singing of the solfege patterns onto the keyboard and often will sing the patterns as they play them. 

The following are more easy patterns to use as you are continuing to teach through the twelve positions.  As soon as possible, I require students to be playing the positions by moving chromatically through the keys.  Remember that this is not a prescribed course for teaching technique.  No student of mine has ever done all these variations; instead I pick and choose based on students’ needs.  Some adult or older students, after learning the twelve positions, only need to do the most challenging of the five-finger patterns, and then they move on to scales, chord progressions, and arpeggios.  Young children often need months and months of staying in the five-finger world to develop muscles and coordination and all kinds of musical skills before we approach more difficult technique.

The last variation begins to outline a chord.  Students don’t necessarily need to know this to play the pattern.  You can discuss how Do-Mi-Sol builds a chord, or just talk about steps and skips to teach.  In all of these, layer away dynamics and articulations as appropriate and helpful.  With students who have some piano experience, this makes sense to do early on--as the challenge of the five-finger positions alone may not be enough to keep them engaged.  With young beginning students, often just making those tiny fingers move in these prescribed patterns is enough for awhile.  You can always return to these same patterns later and assign more layers:  one hand staccato, the other legato, both hands legato, then both hands staccato, and so on.  Again, the possibilities are endless.