A breakthrough of sorts? A leap forward!

And grrr... I had completed my entire blog post last night and lost it completely when I went to add in a photo. I had forgotten my Chromebook at work and was using my iPad. Ipad and Google don't always play nicely together and Blogger is one of them that has problems. I had such a nice, timely, as it was happening, post... that disappeared and no "back button", refresh, close and re-open could retrieve the body of the post. It still shows as an empty draft post on the iPad, but not even that on my Chromebook. Sigh...

So, what I was posting about last night was a significant leap in playing last night. I started with how I find the learning process quite fascinating. I remember how fascinated I was when my boys were young at how they couldn't do something one day and the next day they could. I told a story of how my son "chose" his right hand one day. It was such an obvious thinking process. His whole infancy his left side seemed dominant. He kicked harder with his left leg. All skills he acquired began with left side and then he would switch to right side. This included using his spoon. My son had been using the spoon for a few months with his left hand. Then one day while sitting in his high chair he looked at the spoon in his left hand. He looked at his spoon-less right hand. He transferred the spoon to his right hand, looked back and forth at his two hands, and then started eating with his right hand and from then on out, he favored his right side for everything. That process is forever etched in my brain.

Learning to read is a great example of how a switch in the brain just happens. Until that switch happens, natural, smooth reading will not occur. Our oldest son was "reading" sight words and sound it out words when he two years old - self-taught. We never forced it. He could sound out books, but that was sounding out words, not reading. Then one day around  4 1/2 he just got it and started reading books for meaning and it just took off quickly from there.

My younger son knew all his letters, upper and lower case by 20 months (self-taught), and was learning sight words (never by sound it out) when he was two. He learned how to truly read by 4.5 by linking sight words together in a story making, meaningful way. 

Neither of them did anything to make it happen. We didn't practice anything to make it happen. It just needed a brain development connection to happen, even with two different approaches of learning how to read.

That is kind what I felt like with last night's practicing on the melodeon. Something in my brain just clicked last night. Of course, I had been practicing, so it wasn't just a growth developmental change, but a brain connection was made last night because of the practicing I had been doing and overnight something clicked in my brain to make the next day easier.

Now, it's still plain dreadful playing. Just ask my 11 year old. He'll gladly tell you it's awful, but something clicked when I picked up the instrument this Sunday. Mindful of a bad habit I was forming (of reading fingering hints for the notes to play), I discovered, that while I still wanted to do that, I was beginning to sense where the note would be on the box and if it were push or pull. It's hard to describe, but I was beginning to fully realize, "Oh, that's a half step, so it's going to be pull pull when in this key and octave". Of course, this is at super rudimentary stage and while I'm practicing/learning different parts of the box piece by piece, but I just moved to G Row yesterday and it clicked almost immediately.

Another, more significant change was that I am beginning to move my hands independently. When I tried a week ago when I first got the box I could not disconnect the two hands at all. (When I was typing this up yesterday I thought it had been two weeks of learning already, when it had only been a week. Man, last week was long!)

The first week it had me playing Gg or Cc. When I went to G row it started me with Dd or Gg either in 2/4 or 4/4 time. It sort of makes you play your hands separately, but not really as it's a simple back and forth between the two fingers at the same tempo either Cc/Gg or CcCc/GgGg while treble had quarter, half, and eighth notes following a similar pattern on both hands - if a treble note changed, so did a bass note. Only difference being if a treble note were sustained in the right hand but continued in the same pattern in the left hand.

Last night they introduced 3/4 time which is not a simple back and forth in the basses, but Ggg and Ddd, while in the right hand it continued the same pattern of quarter, half note, or all quarter notes or all eighth notes. Anyway, I had tried to do an Oompa pah pattern on the first day I got the box and no way Jose could I do that! But a week in and I could with no problem at all with these exercises.

As I said, it's all rudimentary, but so far, everything I've had to do, it was slow everything down to snail's pace and just work it through with no seeming moments of, "I got it!". Until last night.

I didn't really "need" to know that E was push or pull and played by my 4th finger, I could sense it could be. It made learning the exercises a bit faster.

With that said, everything is full of mistakes and hesitation, but with far less feeling of "What is this new thing they are throwing at me" feel to it. I still go back through most of the exercise to try to master them all better so that they get cleaner, but whereas the first day I used the book I did 3 exercises, last night I did 8! I stopped because of time and realizing I was mastering none, but it is beginning to click... which is great.

I didn't record anything because of leaving my computer and phone at work, and the changes I feel are probably not hearable, but it felt like something bigger was happening. Now it is keeping my pace and not trying to move on too quickly before I really master anything. Though, maybe that isn't as relevant for this instrument as I think.