sackful of pheasants--

to deliver a good speech, you need to know what your main point is, what your sub-points are, in which order to hit those sub-points, when to pause, when to leave dramatic pauses, when to gesticulate, when to be subtle, when to hit people over the head or repeat yourself -- even what to do with your intonation and facial expressions.
put all those things in the right order and you end up with a moving address instead of a meaningless reciting of black words on a white page (that a computer program could easily do). one shows passion and impacts the audience; the other, essentially, does nothing or offers nothing.
in this way the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts and that is one of the most fascinating, impossible/paradoxical things about art - which I love.

this is what I'm talking about when I use the term "context" (which isn't really a musical term). to consider what you're doing in the whole piece; what you're doing with each phrase, bar, chord, note; what the rhythmic patterns are; what the dynamics and accents are doing - and this all has to do with knowing what has come before and is coming after. (this is why everyone sounds like a robot on their very first run through a piece. we can't know how it all fits together yet.) when you know the whole piece well, and you know what you're saying (with it) then you know how every element fits and why. the more you play, the more you sculpt and refine the elements, and effectively the whole piece. you end up with utterly unique and beautiful nuances.

sigh. that's what I was trying to say, not that you'd know that by my babbling. every other piece you play, I'm listening to notes & chords and watching the shapes & numbers (black ink on white paper) - which is also pleasant; don't get me wrong. this Melon Collie, however, THIS is the first time I couldn't see the elements with x-ray specs (part of why I asked for the manuscript) and the first time I could clearly hear what you were saying.

it's really cool.

now that I've typed this all out I realize that it certainly helps that you kinda already knew the song inside & out (listening AND playing). you see? you know what it sounded like in the big picture; you knew where it was going; how it would be shaped. helpfullish.
this email made so much sense I'm going to cut and paste it into a blog post.