In the dark

I was practicing the other night at dusk working through a piece I've played for some time. It was getting dark, but I didn't want to get up to turn on the light. I realized that some pieces I play by looking at my right hand, other piecies I play by looking at the music, and others I play not looking at anything.

I realized this because the particular piece I was playing seemed to get worse as I got darker; it was one of the pieces I need to look at my right hand for.

Some of this is based on familiarity. There are pieces i know really well and I'm used to playing them without looking at anything.

Some is technique. I find that I generally have to look at my right hand more if I'm playing with a pick, perhaps because I'm less sure of the location of the pick, than I am of my actual fingers.

I guess the oddest thing is that for the pieces I play without looking at my right hand, it's not a good idea to actually look, it makes my playing worse. That is, if it's a piece I can now play without looking at my right, looking down actually causes me to stumble.

In any case, it was an interesting realization that turning the lights on or off will help and hinder playing different songs.

Low/high strings

I was banging away yesterday -- trying hard not to, of course (see last post) -- when it occurred to me that it might not be how hard I'm hitting the strings that distresses me, but which strings I'm hitting.

Digression. It's hard to talk about which strings because the small strings, those that play "higher" notes, are the strings lower down across the instrument as you play. So if you say "low" strings, it's ambiguous between the position of the strings and the notes they play. I'm gonna try to say "high-note strings", etc. to keep it unambiguous.

Certain chords mean skipping over some of the low-note strings and I'm usually pretty good about watching out for that.

I think that I've gotten in the habit of hitting the (other) low note strings and missing some of the high-note strings though. Maybe I'm obsessing or worrying overmuch about it, but maybe my strums are, hm, "truncated", and don't reach all the high-note strings all the time.

I tried working on this yesterday and things sounded pretty good.