And we're on Step 5

A month to the day after I started PlayPianoFluently Step 4, I started Step 5.

I think what was holding me in Step 4 for a while was worrying about keeping my fingers' "sense of space" or "proprioception" permanent. That is, as soon as I walked away from the piano and then walked back, my fingers' "sense of space" in the keyboard should have persisted. Also, I think it was wrong to expect to never have to look at the keyboard at all...EVER... and keep the sense of where my fingers were after just walking up to any keyboard. Pretty absurd!

I realized a few days ago that I could keep the sense of where my fingers were, once I orientated myself in front of the keyboard and got an initial key played (like playing "middle C" or something). Then, while I was sitting at the piano, the proprioceptive sense in my fingers would stick (as long as I focused on it).

Letting go of the idea that I had to keep that sense "permanent" (even after walking away) allowed me to finally move beyond Step 4 to the next step.

I'm really enjoying the current step. It has memorization in it (remembering tonal blocks). I have all the tonal blocks from this step memorized already; just need to make them permanent. Also, I haven't started the improvisation portion of step 5... where you improvise over the tonal blocks. 

I'll probably be on step 5 for at least a few weeks. Currently, I don't forsee any roadblocks to mastering the step.