Why Playing the Piano can be like eating Fish and Chips

A recording I made at the piano with the now defunct 'Paul Carter Jazz Band'. Article starts below.

Playing my instrument too much is like eating too much fish at chips, only my head in this case is the thing that starts to feel bloated and stodgy. In fact, perhaps this is not an ideal comparison in my case. When I’m in the UK, I can do fish and chips for dinner about once a month, and it’s great. Go without fried food for a long time and my body seems to crave a little grease. I say it’s an unfair comparison, because there’s no doubt I need to play and sing more than once a month. I play the piano at home most days and three gigs a month seems to be about right. Any more than this and I start to loose inspiration. Not everybody is like me of course, I’ve met musicians who are happy to go out and play everyday, and seem to go on and on like a well known brand of battery. For me, 　I need space away from music. It’s as if I need to pull the plug and let the sounds out of my metaphorical brain bath. Actually, I often take myself on walks in between sets to do just that very thing. I’m sure there are some people who see me walk out the door of the bar or restaurant and wander off half way through a performance (on my break of course) and wonder what I’m doing. To answer anybody’s curiosity, I’m clearing my head, so I can make room for new sounds in my second set. I’m like this with conversation, too. In order to enjoy a conversation, I need to have little gaps, otherwise the tide just keeps coming in and suddenly I’m flooded, with sound.

Perhaps this idea may be alien to some people, but it seems to be the way I am built, which is deeply ironic when you consider I’m a musician. I’m a musician who can’t deal with too much sound!

And yet, it’s not so daft when you think about it; musicians are ,after all, a breed of being who are sensitive to sound. It may be true to say then, that as much is our capacity to enjoy sound so to there is a similar capacity to be bothered by it.

It’s interesting, I can feel when I need to play just as I can feel when I need to stay away. If there is no desire to play, then not much good will come from my sitting at the piano; however, when I sit down at the piano hungrily, I devour the instrument wholly, self expression takes it’s own natural course and I get up from my stool feeling satisfied, you might even say healed. If I’m sleepy before I started to play, I’m awake by the end and renewed with a new energy and purpose. If I’m feeling confused or doubtful, I go to my instrument, and I come away feeling reassured. That’s what playing can do for me: It can leave me with a satisfying energy that stays with me for sometime after I get off the piano stool. And perhaps that’s where the ‘fish and chip’ analogy becomes well and truly unstuck, since, while devouring my instrument may leave me feeling elated, eating a heavy portion of chips and battered cod, usually leaves me ending up feeling like I probably shouldn’t have.