What's Next?

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One of my biggest challenges in playing piano is remembering to think ahead. When I don't, it usually ends badly. I have a habit of going on autopilot. I'll be playing everything smoothly, my left hand is right on with the rhythm, my fingers are moving by themselves, and my mind drifts. Then here comes that unusual chord and...Crash! Or, I'm improvising and I'm in the groove, and I start listening and drifting, til I realize I'm repeating my ideas. I think, "OK, what now? "Crash!

I have put a post-it on my music stand. It says, "Think Ahead."

We all go on autopilot when we get comfortable at something. It's a natural that when we become competent at something we stop devoting so much attention to it. But in order to be creative, I need some things to be on autopilot and yet at the same time I need to be consciously aware and ready for what's next.

I wondered how to practice this.

I know I need to practice it a lot. My aikido sensei often says "Habit is second nature," and I need to make this second nature - turn a bad habit into a good one. I thought if I practiced the concept, not necessarily while practicing music, it might feed back into my music practice.

My first thought was: Can I practice being more conscious while driving, kind of a relaxed readiness? Now I try to do this for a little bit during every commute.

My next thought was aikido. For a while I had been dissatisfied with the quality of my demonstrations. In Kokikai, at times a student may be called up to demonstrate self-defense against any attack. The experience has some similarities to improvising. You have to be relaxed and open-minded. You don't know what's going to happen next and you're not going to have time to think when it does. Yet when the attack comes, your mind can't be so open that it's blank. You have to have some ideas at the ready. Of course, one doesn't get called up to demonstrate that often, so preparation has to be mostly by visualization and imagination. The best aikido demonstrations, just like the best musical improvisations, always combine beautiful, powerful and relaxed technique with some unexpected element: a throw you seldom see, or executed in an unusual way, or something else that demonstrates a perfect presence of mind.

Recently I was called on to do an aikido demonstration, and I think I'm seeing the fruits of my effort. I don't know if it was the driving practice, the post-it on my piano, the aikido visualization or all three, but things are definitely getting better!

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