Musicians

davebro | 20:00 Sat 22nd Apr 2023 | Music

22 Answers

How do they do it?

How do they know what keys to hit, what strings to pluck, how hard to blow, what buttons to press. Organists - multiple keyboards, hands & feet. Are they from another planet?

Continually amazes me.

Great Britain

Cassette Tapes Making A Come Back.....apparently!

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wolf63

I think that its like touch typing, you see the letter and your fingers automatically go to the right button.

davebro

Question Author

Watching pianists at the BBC - Winnie Attwell - fingers (10 of em) flashing across the keyboard, not a single note wrong & she was looking & smiling at the camera.

Hopkirk

Practice

Practice

Practice

Old_Geezer

Perfect practice makes perfect.

Good tuition to guide you helps, until you can take it by yourself.

JimF

THECORBYLOON

I mind on an experienced pianist saying he was playing on a piano and he kept making mistakes.

It turnt out the piano had extra keys to give a greater range and they were normally hidden by a flap but it had been left open.

He was sitting in front of what he thought were eighty-eight keys but hadn't realized the usual keys were now offset a wee bit.

Barsel

Corby, sounds like he was playing all the right keys, but not necessary in the right order :-)

barry1010

Pub pianists were the best, not only playing against the hubbub noise of the pub but usually playing blind, face turned away from the piano, smiling at the punters sat behind them.

I'm in awe of musicians. My friend is a bassoonist and often plays in front of an audience with an orchestra of various sizes that she only met that day.

bhg481

TCL@23:52 reminds me of someone I worked for some 40 years ago. He was a brilliant pianist but told me a story of his student days when he was invited to a friend's house, where he was offered a chance to play the mother's piano. He found he was making a complete mess of it whilst his friend tried to hide his smirks. His friend finally admitted that his mother had small hands so had had a piano specially made with smaller keys to enable her to play chords which required a large span ie, the separation of the keys was non-standard. Like touch-typists, you don't look at the keys but just throw your fingers to where you expect the keys to be; if someone has moved the keys you're in trouble.

Hopkirk

Chipchopper

It all comes with repetition, and lots of it, look at any good musicians, and they know exactly where the keys are without having to look.
Think they have a certain flair for it to begin with, though.

barry1010

I think you're right, chip. Many pianists can play the right notes in the right order at the right time but great pianists do that with flair and it makes all the difference somehow

bhg481

I know you've only got two or three to choose from but how do you manage to use the correct pedal without looking when driving your car?

douglas9401

It's because I learned the recorder in primary school, bhg.

Old_Geezer

I think, at the primary school I went to, recorder playing was reserved for an elite group of girls. At the time I couldn't work out why they were involved but no one else were even made aware of any offer. Was the start of realising that it was a girls' world, and the boys just had to put up with it or they'd get a rep for not being manly or the like.

The Builder

Dizzy Gillespie once said that the definition of a pro player is someone who can play the same thing..... twice.
The discipline of motor/mental skills that comes from having a good teacher, then practice.

Plenty of great blind players of course. You don't need to see what you're doing (eventually.) In fact, you'd have no chance of doing that on a sax. There's just a 'home' position. As someone above said, rather like typing.
On a piano, it helps that Middle C is found right by the lock (for the lid.) Locate that, and you're 'home'.

MissTerious2

It amazes me too. My son is one of those blessed musicians who from a very, very young age could play by ear, and instinctly knows what cords to play. He can pick up most instruments and play them. We have no idea where this has come from. It's a gift. His lounge is now a music studio. But hes not made music his vocation.