The "find melodies within the melodies" skill . . . Guinean players appear to exercise it on the fly--and very quickly at that. One thought about this: Maybe the more patterns and melodies I have in my head (and hands) for a particular piece, the easier it is to find the "hidden" melodies within that piece. (Indeed, many of the patterns are simply elaborations of a hidden melody that can be found, even if only approximately, in one of the basic accompaniments.) And a second thought: I wonder if the slow practice of that skill might involve/consist of writing the patterns out and very deliberately working through the process of finding those hidden melodies (much like how written translation can in a sense be considered the "slow practice" for interpretation.)
Either way, here’s another tweak I’d like to introduce into the notation system: some sleek way of fading and highlighting so I can illustrate (whether to myself or others) some of these hidden melodies. (Eg. Fading out the LH, to pay attention just to how the RH changes. Or highlighting an interior melody [that is carried between the two hands, but then is taken over by one hand while the other begins to lay down an independent, polymeter time-feel or explore other melodic combinations*]). Ho, that would be sexy!
*Incidentally, here is where a taxonomy of cadences would be a useful tool.
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