I dug my flute out of mothballs after 30 years a couple of months ago. A friend who plays piano who volunteered to accompany me. After 2 or 3 days of practicing, we got together. It was comical! This piece is way above my ability, with a bunch of key changes, and timing that ranges from 1 note per beat (quarter note) to 2, 3,4,5,6,7,8, and 11 notes per beat. I was just happily playing the thing in my own sweet time while my friend tried to follow my erratic timing as best she could.

Every now & then, we'd get completely lost & discombobulated, and we'd say "Where were we?" and then we'd go figure out where we were.

"Where are we?" is a really important question when you're trying to make music with another person. I tried re-visiting the piece with a metronome when I got home. But until Doug mentioned how important moving is to rhythm, I really didn't get it. "Where am I?" in time, in the rhythm of music, is something that also relates to "where am I" in physical space. That's probably why we use the same language for both. When I started moving exaggeratedly, foolishly, almost forcefully, with this piece I finally started to understand its rhythm. Here's some of what I learned:
- rests are part of the music, not just space to ignore
- I really didn't "get" the relationships of the various timings until I moved with them. I was rushing some notes, holding some too long, and doing stuff like playing quarter notes as 8th notes or vice versa WITHOUT EVEN REALIZING IT, until I moved with it.
- With the body movement, I not only "where I am" -- I also know where I'm going. This means that I can mess up a difficult passage (which may be inevitable given my skill level vs the challenge level of this piece) - and still keep up and end up where I belong, with my pianist (instead of freaking out and getting so flummoxed that I just stop)
I've stopped worrying so much about being perfect and started having more fun. That's the whole point, isn't it? Funnily enough, I'm also making fewer mistakes.
Without ever seeing the thing, Doug is giving me flute lessons.
I will let y'all know what my pianist friend says when we try for the second time, see if she notices me being easier to play with.
Joan