“Hearing only left hand, but practicing with both”. Several months ago, I had been feeling pain in my right arm a burning sensation that I attributed to overworking it. Violin playing and typing especially irritated it. The first day I noticed it was about a week before a concert, so I figured no big deal, I just need rest that afternoon. But, over the days I continued to ice it and still pain. The day of our Sonshine Ensemble concert arrived. The concert was great but afterwards I definitely used some ice. Over the next few weeks, I used my left hand and arm mostly and giving my right a rest. This was rather frustrating for my piano practice as I had assignments to finish, etc. In hope that I could keep some right hand practice up without actually practicing, I played the right hand mentally. Then I would try playing the left hand while right hand was playing mentally. And have you ever tried memorizing one hand without playing it…that was hard? After finally being able to add some right hand I found that practicing the right hand mentally did help keep it up. It wasn’t nearly as good as if I had physically practiced right hand. And the mental challenge was quite something…to hear left hand but also play right hand and not hear it. But the left hand also got some practice totally alone and the sections, pieces, and left hand were much stronger for it. For, violin I substituted just finger tapping the strings to practice sight reading and a new piece as I was learning. Obviously I couldn’t do the bow techniques and practice that required but I also listened to my working pieces. After a couple months of treating my music practice with right hand care, these last few weeks have been great to practice with both hands on the piano and violin.
-Maranatha