Thank you for reading!
This website is primarily for communication with the studio families, posting dates for recitals, festivals, results of festivals, brilliant comments on my part, and the like.
Piano is wonderful! Creative, expressive, intriguing, interesting, moving, consuming, a world to get lost in, full of sounds that have their own direction and purpose. A world unto itself alive with color and weight and action and energy. If one can control and produce these things, they have for themselves an accomplishment for expression in life. If one can play, one can move the emotions of others while showing an understanding of ones own emotions, a sensitivity to their mysterious movement, imitated with harmonious tones of energy moving through time. Beauty abstracted and realized!
The delicate balance and fine variations required to demonstrate this control is what makes music, and piano playing in particular, a Fine Art. For it is not easy, and the sensitivity needed to express a line, a section, a movement exactly right is a matter of inward examination and exploration, then discipline to make the fingers produce what the heart and mind and ear understand the music should say. Control. Control through understanding first, but also with a technique that can produce the desired results. The needed results to express the piece so that it is "right!" And all musicians will know when it is right.
Physically, it is work. Scales, excersizes, finger strengthening through practice must occur in order to attain the highest possible level of expression. If one has power available from each finger, then one can control to the finest degree the desired results, and this is a long process of work. All the configurations of fingerings and turns of lines are many, so it takes a lot of time to discover them all, and be able to deftly articulate each one - each difficultly that one might encounter. Of course, the discovery of all the pianistic nuances that exist is one that reaches well into adulthood, with a Masters and Doctorate degree as one delves further and further into the world of pianistic expression. Developing the power of the fingers to play is integral to the final ability to express and is a physical ability that is built through daily excersize. It is the only way.
Oddly enough, to attain the highest level of performance, the pianist must "let go" and let it happen. But it is only through the pre-requisite discipline of practice that this level of ability can be attained. But in the end, freedom. Freedom to be able to do what you want with music because of the development of the facility of the fingers. The work brings the freedom. Attention while practicing brings it faster. Just like with most good things in life, work and discipline will bring results, freedom and satisfaction. What a gift to have, that anyone can sit and work to find this creative outlet and come to enjoy its fruit.
Finding this venue for expression will always serve you well and be a touching stone of relationship with yourself and your emotions, yet to the benefit of others. Enjoy!
Steve Slaughter
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