On YouTube, watching Ana Vidovic play classical guitar, I am struck by how her hands manipulate the strings seemingly independently of one another, with different kinds of finger motions—ten of them, each moving in its own way at the same time. (Well, actually nine fingers, since her left thumb is behind the neck of the instrument supporting it.)
It reminds me of watching the members of an orchestra playing a complex piece, directed, of course, by one person. Each player seems to be independent of the others, playing a different tune in different time, only occasionally glancing at the conductor. I’ve marveled for many years at how a hundred people could play music so incredibly synchronized with each other to create sublime sounds. I’m sure that it takes practice, more and more practice for each player, both individually and ensemble.
The same requirement holds for a guitar player who strives for perfection. Practice. Of course skill and talent are also required. Skill comes with practice, but talent seems to lie in a separate realm, not explainable even by the musician herself, a mysterious quality that only some people possess in differing degrees. What intrigues me is how individual fingers learn their timing, pressure, even vibrato so that these things become automatic and unconscious.
Watching Ana Vidovic’s left hand during a complicated passage is astounding. At the same time, of course, her right hand is actually strumming or plucking the different strings—the fingers of the left hand determining the length of each string and therefore the pitch of the tone produced. Harmony is produced by multiple strings plucked at the same time, each one set to its own pitch by the position of a fingertip pressing a particular fret.
I get the same feeling watching young Alexander Malofeev on the piano play Rachmaninoff: a human cannot possibly, I think, pay attention to all ten fingers, at some places in those concerti.
With practice, playing a guitar or piano, or any instrument for that matter, involves a lot of muscle memory—just as does riding a bicycle or driving a car—actions that become almost automatic, without conscious thought. Benjamin Zander, a British conductor, gave a TED Talk in 2008 in which he spoke of teaching young piano students and noticing that in the beginning they tended to nod on each note (“impulses”), but then as they progressed they tended to nod less frequently—on phrases, then on bars, and so on, with the intervening notes relegated to less conscious, perhaps muscle, memory.
Watching Ana Vidovic play her guitar makes this process evident. Listening to an orchestra and paying attention to separate instruments reveals the same phenomenon. Our bodies perform countless actions almost without us noticing. Our conscious minds, our awareness moment to moment, are but a fragment of what we do, whether we are skilled musicians or ordinary people doing ordinary things.
I’m coming to appreciate how miraculous this body of mine really is, without micro-managing. Even at my advanced age, I notice many actions that take place without my awareness.
Perhaps “my awareness” is given more importance than it deserves. Most of the activity in my body is beyond my control. My heart, for example, at its nominal rate of sixty-five beats per minute, goes through its cycle about ninety-three thousand times in a day. I can’t remember the last time I was even aware of its activity. Millions of microbes living in my gut process the food I eat every day, without my conscious help.
The activities I carry out with conscious intention may seem the most important in my life, but all the rest of the supporting functions actually make those activities possible. Were I to become proficient in playing the guitar or the piano, a huge number of separate and combined functions would come into play.
Those invisible functions enable me to live. I have no idea what neurological functions enable me to even wonder about them all.
Performing Western classical music, at least, requires a high degree of manual dexterity, as well as sensitivity to the emotional subtleties we call “artistry.” We can only be grateful that there are people who are willing to put in the time, effort and skill to bring to the rest of us one of the highest realms of human accomplishment.
