Time for a change?

It feels like I've gotten too comfortable with the left hand exercises I've set for myself. Hard to tell, though. I still face the same technical and mechanical hurdles that made me start doing them. So maybe the exercises are not helping me address the hurdles. Or maybe I'm just impatient; maybe I haven't done them enough.

Anyway, I'm going to change what I'm doing a little. I'll work with melodies rather than the more mechanical note patterns I've been using. I’ll still focus on the mechanics of note production, though. The trick about working with melody is that it's very tempting to focus on getting the melody right, rather than on developing the motions that it takes to play the melody. Targets of my attention will be:

• hand position

• strength

• tone

• flexibility

• light touch

• relaxed hands

• doing this all without thinking about it.

Because I’m practicing rather than playing or performing, producing a beautiful melody is a desirable outcome, but not a target.

What hitting these targets means for my playing is (I hope):

• better tone

• better time/groove/feel

• more variety in my playing

• greater ability to play whatever I want to play

• looser feel, whether I'm improvising or playing something I've written

• more satisfaction

• more fun.

(None of this stuff is measurable. You can measure notes per minute; you can't really measure whether your hands are more relaxed this month than last month. But you can observe these things; I can certainly monitor, as I play, whether my hands seem relaxed, or whether my tone is good. And, although I've never done it, I can imagine writing down, in some organized way, how often I observe my hands being relaxed, or my tone being good.)

For now, though, my attention needs to me on simple matters of mechanics. Can I make the intended, effective, efficient, relaxed movement of my hands subconscious? Or, to put it in simpler terms: can I do exactly what I intend to do, over and over, until it's automatic?

Wouldn't that be nice?