Epiphany at 4 AM

Practice makes perfect is an oft-repeated phrase, but most music teachers will add – only if you practice perfectly.   I have practiced more in the past four months than I have in YEARS!!  I took on a task that no one else wanted – all of our previous accompanists had refused the Monday afternoon job and what Chorus can function without an accompanist?  So I offered; they accepted!

One introduction – the accompanist’s solo part at the beginning of the song - had me stumped; it sounded great when I practiced at home and was always ragged when played on Monday with the director and the Chorus.  I had even penciled “beats in 2” at the beginning since the time signature was 4/4.   Early this morning I woke up “counting 1-2-3-4” as I mentally rehearsed that introduction and instantly realized the “disconnect” between my practicing and my Monday afternoon attempts!  While I was still playing the introduction, the chorus began singing – I should have realized weeks ago what the problem was!

My husband, Tom, was a computer guru all of his working life and I remember him coming home more than once frustrated with a problem on a computer system.  He would say, “If I can just get it to fail, I could fix it!”   So he would tease the system into failure mode so he could SEE what the problem was and then he could fix it!  In my sleep I was able to tease myself into failure mode and NOW I can fix my problem.  It wasn’t that I wasn’t counting, I was just counting WRONG!