He Plays What He Hears

He is unaware of his previous learning

I had another surprised discovery from my perfect pitch son today.  He has been practising the second part of this song “Minuet in G” by Beethoven.  He did it by sight-reading.  This section of music piece has many slurs, where he is supposed to play group of music notes smoothly. And that’s what my son did initially, play it smoothly.  He did it for 2 days.

Then, on the second day evening, I played the CD of this song in the car, and played it repeatedly.  I think it was repeated at least 6 to 7 times.  It was night time, and the music is played with little distraction, so my son was listening to it attentively. 

On the third day, when my son practised the song, he changed his style of playing totally.  He was playing the song with slurs and staccatos.  I was surprised. I went to the piano and asked him to play the piece again.  He played the piece exactly has he heard in the CD. And the most surprising thing was, he was not aware that he has changed his style of playing.

He remembered how the song is played from the CD, and played the song accordingly, unawared that he was playing differently from the book !