Day 10 : It’s Very Nice to Meet You

Day 10 : It’s Very Nice to Meet You

I sit down with coffee at the Vose around 5.

The Vose has a matching bench.

It feels quite hard to sit on at first.  

The bench is a simple wood construction which doesn’t adjust at all.

I push the bench further back so that when I am sitting just at its edge, my knees touch the underside of the keybed whenever I extend the ankle.

I realize, because I am not wearing shoes, that today is the first day in a long time it’s not so cold in the studio.

I realize that today’s practice might be about the lower body.

I close my eyes.

Practice begins.

I take a moment to realize that I have never really practiced specifically centered on the lower body piano work.  

I really should get to the bottom of what’s going on down there.  Maybe today’s the day.

I’m getting a lot more information feeling through the socks I am wearing than I was getting practicing with shoes.

I plant each foot in as comfortable & sturdy as possible pushing slightly down into the surface of the rug that runs under the Vose.

I check in with the placement of hips balanced at the edge of the bench, & the possible angled positions of the hip/knee/ankle.

I find what feels like a center very near the spot where the pedals come down.

Eyes still closed, I feel around the three brass pedals with my feet.

The foot pedals make their own symmetry, very reminiscent of the keyboard.

The two left/right outer pedals feel like larger brass bells. 

These feels kind of like a doorknob designed for someone who needed to be able to open doors using their feet.

With both feet I work the pedals in rhythmic unison four flex/relax per breath.

The feedback from the pedal mechanism is a little clunky & feels left-right irregular in many ways.

I realize that I am also moving the pedals in an extremely forceful way.  

I temper my flexion so that I find the edge of what makes the pedal deform.   

I can hear the resonance wafting out of the piano’s soundboard with every pedal drop.

Applying more or less force causes a rise & fall in the level of this resonance.

It feels as though I am shaking hands with the piano.

I apply the iambic cadence of the phrase “its VE ry NICE to MEET you (rest), its VE ry NICE to MEET you (rest)…” to my quarter note pulses.

The peal starts to feel less like it’s is switching between the extremes from DOWN to UP, & more like it is oscillating slow quarter breaths.

I look for good coverage of the upside of each downbeat.

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I start to wonder how the pedals are centered on the keyboard.

I realize that my hands have been resting on the bench at my sides.

I straighten my spine & lift my arms over the keyboard, zombie style.

I lower my hands onto the key surface & the fingers deform into the yin-yang.

Still feeling the center of the pedal, I feel for how it aligns with the F-centerd yin-yang. 

They feel fairly centered.

(They are in fact perfectly centered.  See photo attached, taken after). 

I now center my whole body along this axis.  

I begin slow quarter note wrist/hand pulses with my fingers against the key surface.

I add pinky fingers to the yin-yang shape.

My thumbs, being rather unassigned in the yin-yang, explore the middle space. 

I press my thumbs sideways against the front face of the white key shelf as I continue to tap & flex 8 fingers in rhythmic unison against the symmetrical white & black surface.

I marvel at the symmetry of adding each pinky to the whole tone scale. 

Adding the pinkies exposes where the pattens overlap.   Each hand now has one tone from the other side.  

At center, the Left has 1000 & the right has 11110

I roll this 8 fingered stationary whole tone scale.  Feeling the modulatory shuffling of the 6 possible key centers.

The sound is as curious as the curved question mark shape it makes on the key surface.

I notice the unevenness between each ring & pinky.

I also notice in the sound pattern that the rings & pinkies are tonally overlapping.  

Right pinky sounds one perfect octave up from left pinky.

Right ring sounds one perfect octave up from left ring.

I make slow quarter rnote patterns using just these outsiders.

I start to audiate these two octave pairs, separated by a whole tone as Do - Re.

I find that I can easily shift some of my other 6 fingers to make the Bb major scale intervals that confirm my Do Re adiation.

I undo this shift & feel the returning sound of the whole tone scale wipe away my Do-Re bias.  

I stop sounding the middle 6 tones.  Go back to making patters with just the two octave (rings & pinkies) 

I decide to re-audiate these octaves as the whole step La-Ti.

The internal six fingers shift slightly to positions which affirm this (playing a Bb natural minor scale).

Then I undo that shift, the whole tone scale returns, asking again is that really the answer?

I attach to this 8 pitch whole tone patern the lyric.

“WILL there BE a RE So LU tion?”

YES there WILL the QUEST ion’s  WHICH one?”

Practice Ends.