I think being able to play without music is a gift. My wife is a classically trained pianist and organist. She sight reads like crazy and can play just about anything you put in front of her. If she doesn’t have music she couldn’t play twinkle twinkle little star. She has been a church organist for 40 years and still can’t play hymns without music even though she has played them a thousand times.

I, on the other hand, am only a fair sight reader. If I play a tune 4 or 5 times I can throw away the music. I will usually play it 5 or 6 times more to fine tune my arrangement. After that I rarely use the music anymore. The first professional job I played was a cocktail party in between a wedding and the reception. I got there, set up the organ and Leslie and discovered that I had no music. I played the next two hours from memory. I don’t try to memorize the music it just happens. Also when I’m kicking bass I have discovered that if my foot plays the right notes my hands will too.

It’s a gift.

Tom

Tom, I think it is a gift but I think (hope) it can be developed too.

For me it takes daily practice. Repeat the same tunes everyday. After awile, there are some tunes that I never forget and other seem to fade away.

Last summer I had two months off from my day job and I worked up about 40 tunes. It took me about an hour to get through all those tunes. However, now that I'm back working and I got out of the routine and I'm starting to forget some of the songs.

It's wierd how the brain works. The other night I was trying to play through a Bach Two Part Invention that I had memorized. I kept forgeting some of the parts. Rather than look at the score, I just took a break. The next day I played through the piece fine just fine.

I think that....wait a minute....Damn, I can't remember what we were talking about (LOL)!


Russ (the aging one) Lay