There are several layers of patience involved when you're learning to play the piano.
There's the patience of acquiring and mastering new skills to learn new pieces.
There's the patience it takes to learn the notes and rhythms on the page accurately.
The patience to add the details that make the music magical.
The patience to memorize that piece of music.
The patience to deal with the days you don't feel like practicing.
And then, there's the patience of maintaining a piece of music you've already learned and memorized. Personally, I feel this is the most difficult of all.
Many students over the years had a piece learned backwards and forwards for months, only to have a memory crash on performance day. Because they ran through it so many times at home, it became stuck in muscle memory.
And muscle memory isn't reliable with the adrenaline of a live performance kicks in.
This level of patience - maintaining a learned piece - is the deepest of all. Because when we have a piece of music learned, we want to just play and have fun.
But to really keep bringing it to the next level, we have to practice it slowly. Even when we know it very well.
And we also need the patience to continue discovering more and more nuances that take the music from good to great to breathtaking.
Patience is part of the game when it comes to learning a musical instrument. The key is making sure you know which layer of patience you're dealing with at all times.
