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The Missing Link Usually I reserve this column for guitar players but today's topic transcends to all musicians.  When one looks down at musical notation, what is it that is staring back. Just squiggle lines, dots and some a few words thrown on a page? Actually what is staring back at you is thoughts someone has created and then through notation devices, recorded these thoughts on a piece of paper!!! Written music is a complex beautiful language which can fill many minutes  with only a few written pages. This language is made up of many components, although many people believe it is just notes, a device used to notate pitch and rhythm.  It is very important to learn everything on the page in a slow methodical manor.        This relates to a story a  Ben Verdery had told.  He had asked  some of his Yale  students to write from memory the first 10 bars of their favorite composition from which they had  played. Although many were able to write down the pitches and rhythms, almost no one had written notation for tone and volume!!! With out these markings notes and music do not make sense!!! They are just that, notes and rhythm-not music. The dynamics of a composition are what makes it sound musical. The composer knew what he was doing when he wrote them. In order to play the music  the composer envisioned, one must do just as much work learning dynamic notation as rhythm or pitch.  If the composer does not notate the music, then it is up to the musician to color the music and learn his own colorings, not guess a new interpretation each time. In these cases were dynamic markings do not exist, such as Bach, much more emphasis is entrusted to the musician to study the work and make musical choices.        Lately I have learned that is it easier to learn music if I go slow and steady  in the beginning stages. I use the score as only a starting point. I go through the music thoroughly, ...WITHOUT AN INSTRUMENT, at first. This step is very important to make sure I see all the little tricks the music has to offer. Then I leave nothing to chance and ....WRITE IN ALL THE FINGERINGS FOR LEFT AND RIGHT   HANDS. This way as I practice it I am constantly going to the same fingers, this makes a piece much easier to learn..  If I am really having a hard time learning, I will copy the score by hand, this is a slow pain staking process-but I never forget after that. When I feel that the technical  side has been satisfied, I start on the dynamics and tonal coloring. I write all of these in and learn them just if they were notes. Not until all this is done do I attempt to practice without the music       I never used to do this much work on a musical compositions but I realized that in performances  which made me the slightest bit nervous, the first  aspect of my playing which would diminish was the ability to control volume and tone. The reason,... I was not practicing dynamics  as if they were solid concrete instructions, I was faking it and did not take them as serious as sounding the correct notes. I was only practicing half of what the composer had written on the page, and it sounded that way!         To fully learn and integrate a particular musical work into one's system three months to three years is not along time, depending on the size of the work. The only way I know music is ready to be performed, is to know it so well I am convinced I wrote it!