Muscle Memory

I have recently taken up blues piano. It’s quite an interesting learning experience. I took piano lessons as a child, but did not really enjoy it that much. I enjoyed making music, but I never really got into the piano lessons and practicing scales etc. was something I never got into.

I find that learning blues scales is just so much more enjoyable, especially if you have a blues backing track playing. They just sound so much better than normal major and minor scales and is so much more enjoyable to play.

I have started to notice something that I’ve noticed before from skateboarding (something that I have always made more time for in the past ). You practice something and it is quite an effort at first, but then you get to a point where you can do it almost on auto-pilot. At first you have to mentally instruct your body to do every step, but it gets to a point where you can “chunk up” and instead of saying to yourself “jump, kick the tail, move front foot forward”, you can just say “ollie”.

I am starting to experience that more with the piano now, and it is incredible how similar it is to skateboarding. I have a feeling that I could progress faster if I encourage myself to consciously chunk up in this way?

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