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12/8/10
Hi, okmusik. I enjoyed your post. You mentioned "having to compute polyrhythms", and I guess that's what I most want to comment on/ask about.

I'm very poor at 'multitasking', especially in the job world, and I have a slow processing speed. People who aren't really musicians are impressed with my piano-playing. ;) But there's always been one area that I puzzled over before learning about dyscalculia, and have still been fascinated with since getting my diagnosis two years ago,... and that area is 'polyphonia'. Yeah, like Bach's two and three-voice pieces.

When I lived in South America, I took lessons from a tremendously qualified and gifted Russian concert pianist. This is one of the amazing things that an American mediocre musician gets to do when living in a small-fish-bowl place. I briefly studied theory side-by-side with an extremely gifted student, who went on to Juliard. She could play beautiful 'polyphonia', effortlessly. Although I'd played piano from 5 years old, I couldn't do this. (And 'jazz' just plain annoys me.)

What I've come to believe is that, since I can not 'go back and forth' quickly between the two sides of my brain, this is the reason that I can't play the 'two voices' (much less the 'three voices') of Bach. I sound pretty good when I stay within my range of ability.

Nice to make your acquaintance. There's more to my story, of course,... as I'm sure there is to yours. - jus'