Incubation: Giving Your Piece Time to Breathe

Putting your piece aside a week before the final performance can feel unsettling and even risky, but in reality this period is immensely valuable. It allows a new, freer interpretation of your piece to emerge.

Think of it like soup that tastes better the next day: with time, subtle layers of flavour and aroma reveal themselves.

In the same way, when you create a little distance between yourself and the music, both you and the piece gain space to breathe.

The main fear is that, after leaving it for a while, you’ll return to find it in fragments. And yes — that can happen with traditional study, as many of us have experienced.

But with the Pianowell system, this isn’t the case. Once sounds and movements are deeply imprinted in your mind and subconscious, they never truly disappear.

Of course, leaving a piece for more than two weeks can cause some memory lapses, but those are easily corrected with a few playthroughs and a short “weeding” stage.

So there is no reason to feel anxious about giving your piece an incubation period — not when it has been studied thoroughly, through the stages of:

• learning
• weeding
• performance practice

Allow it the gift of time and breath.

When you return to it, play through it ten times, noticing how your mind and body have absorbed the music on a new level — with greater freedom, mastery, and ease.