Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Anyone else have days you just can’t hit the right key?

Been studying about a year and a half now have 14 short songs/tunes memorized and adding about two per week in my lesson book. I only keep the ones I like in memory and don’t really go back to the others to often. I’m playing 2b-3a level in Faber and I’m on the adult book 2 in theory faber also. Seems this past week I’ve been fumbling a lot hitting wrong keys loosing my place and so on. I did just learn my first 3a song this week Misty in the Jazz Faber book. I spent a lot of time getting it somewhat solid maybe 5-6 hours over the course of a week and a half or so Not sure if all my focus was there instead. Anyone else have these weeks?

No never !!!

I'm kidding, it happens to everyone. My teacher told me she was in a studio recording with her band and she couldn't play anything right.

LOL that was a good one.

Absolutely! I Csll it ‘mitten hands ‘ and just recognize it will happen. What I hate is when it happens during a lesson

figured lol. Just frustrating.

About one out of every three days ...

Happens to much for my liken

If we were meant to be perfectly consistent, we would have been born as industrial robots.

Reverse that for me...I have lots of days where I just can't hit the key right. Left hand mostly. I try to play soft and either get no sound or I am doing fairly well and random notes pop out much louder than the surrounding ones. Sometimes I just give up and decide "OK, screw it...today will be a FORTE DAY!"

Honestly, could this just be a piano regulation issue?

Oh it would be lovely if it wasn't my fault, but no such luck. Happens through the full range I'm playing, intermittently, as well as my teacher's piano. It's definitely this delinquent left hand!

Actually i have pretty much accuracy problems, even with pieces played from memory.

I think it's a result of not learning or training anything besides these pieces themselves. I started practicing scales 2 weeks ago, i think that should improve my accuracy over time.

Goig to level 3 Faber is also a bit of a jump, I remember this distinctly. Go slower, and realize that pieces will be more challenging and you'll probably spend more time on them.

Curiously, while I very rarely fumble notes I do have days when I play wrong or unintentional notes. The two events are not quite the same, the first being physical and the second mental. I have noticed that after improvising for many hours my playing of pieces is liable to take all sorts of unintended directions. I hardly ever mishit physically, I just play wrong notes. It used to discourage me but doesn't bother me now.

Yes, happens still after playing for 60 years. One morning last week (bear in mind that I'm not a morning person!!), I sat at the piano and felt as free as a bird, picked up a few pieces I hadn't played for months and breezed through them. Then, in preparation of hymns for Church for the next weekend, I played and sang them through, including some harmonic improvisation.

After lunch, sat down again to follow up with the hymns - and mistake after mistake. I realised I was feeling fatigued - like tired, sat down to read again, dozed off so went to bed for a nap. After I got up - it was still not much good, not making mistakes, just didn't feel the freedom of expression of the morning, so I did some gardening instead.

In the evening, everything was working fine again.

No idea why, but it happens too often.

I'm having one of those weeks right now, actually. It stinks.

When I feel tired (sleep v badly usually anyway) I can do nothing, and have no desire to either. I either force myself to get off my **** or settle for a mid aft doze.
Usually works. Sometimes doesn't. But if you're playing for people, that motivates much better.

I only have that issue on days that end in "y".

My practise session this evening was very much that. In this case I know why, both physically and mentally tired. I think in this case it was the physical tiredness, many muscles aching from lifting and moving too many things around today. A piece I know inside out I managed to hit all the rights keys but had no control including multiple ghost notes, other pieces not only could I not play with any control I got a lot of wrong notes.

I was planning on doing another attempt at doing a recording but I decided to not even try and just did a chunk of slow practise. It was a short practise session, I suspect pushing it would not have resulted in any further improvement. Tomorrow is the lesson with the new teacher, so I am hoping that will go well.