The Power of a Wrong Note

 

When I look back at what I've written on this blog since the beginning in 2010, the one post that has the most views -- approximately twice as many as the next contender -- the is one titled "Wrong Notes." Everyone wants to know how to avoid or correct wrong notes! I recommend you go back and read that early post (January 2011) before continuing here.

Among all the hundreds of students I've taught over the years, playing the "right notes" is their top priority. You might think, "well of course! You have to play all the correct notes, don't you?" Yes, that is one of the goals. But as you know, if you are learning to play, it certainly doesn't always happen and often doesn't come easily. It's not the wrong notes themselves, but how you handle them, that will make or break your progress, and most likely your enjoyment, of the process of learning to play. 

Here are some of the things NOT to do about wrong notes (even though most teachers and many things you'll read or hear from others tell you to do these).

1. When you play a wrong note, immediately correct it before moving on.
2. Stop and play that measure or passage with the correct note(s), as many repetitions as you can, with hands separately and very slowly

That's it! That's the sum total of the advice most people will give you for the problem of wrong notes.

Let's address number 1, above. If you stop and immediately follow the wrong note with the correct note, you understand intellectually which is the wrong one and which is the right one. But your "animal brain" just hears two notes, let's say and F followed by an F-sharp. As far as that part of the brain knows, the F and then F-sharp was intended, because that is what it heard. You may have had the experience of "correcting" it this way, but then the same thing happens again the next time. And the next, and so on. Far from being corrected, the problem of the missed note seems to persist, sometimes for quite a while. In addition to your ear having heard it as a two-note sequence, soon you will also have muscle memory of that as well. Intellectually knowing the right note from the wrong one does almost nothing to correct the problem. If this method worked, we'd all be playing all the right notes by now! But in reality that's not what happens.

Regarding number 2: hands separately, very slowly, and tons of repetition, is the stock answer many people give for a myriad of problems. You may think you have fixed the problem when you just play one hand, but then as soon as you add back the other hand, the wrong notes come back. The physical experience, and the workings of the brain, are quite different when playing with one hand versus two. So until you play it as it is in real life, that is, with both hands, you can't really count on it being "fixed." The same is true for very slowly; it may seem fixed when you play very slowly, but then when you go back to the original tempo, the "fix" doesn't stay. Some repetition will be needed, but it has to be done intelligently. More on that below.

So, what to do instead?

1. Ignore it! Yes, you read that right. The first time you miss a note, just ignore it, and continue playing. Of course, many people find this hard to do, but you CAN cultivate this habit. The "mistake" may turn out to be just a one-time thing. The last thing you want to do is fixate on it and turn it into a bigger problem. Stopping to "fix" it means that the other hand also has to stop, pause, and get back on track even though it had no wrong note. You may even create a problem in the other hand which wasn't there before. One hand sneezes and the other gets the cold. In addition, you've disupted the rhythm. People always seem to be willing to throw the rhythm under the bus for the sake of correcting a wrong note. Remember, your ear heard that disrupted rhythm, and doesn't know that you did it unintentionally. After the missed note, you may end up playing several wrong notes. Ignore those too! Instead of "fixing" just try to get yourself back on track. It can become a solid skill, but only if you do it consistently. And just knowing you can get back on track greatly improves your confidence.
2. Learn how to make use of a wrong note. I recently showed a student how, following a wrong note (which I did on purpose, for illustration), I continued to play that passage with all the correct intervals and patterns that followed that note. In other words, I was off for the whole passage, but within the passage, everything had all the right relationships. I got a lot of good practice on that passage because, to the hand, it felt the same, or almost the same, as if I had been on the right notes. And it's even better if you can do it with a light-hearted approach, not just as a bitter pill to swallow. Now that's the power of a wrong note.
3. Try to find the reason you missed it. It could be a technical problem. In the example of the F and F-sharp, above, if you were playing too far out at the edges of the keys, you can't comfortably reach the F-sharp, so your hand just did the next best thing, playing the nearest white key. This sounds simplistic, but I see it all the time. Of course there are thousands of reasons for the missed note to be due to inadequate technique. This is what your teacher is supposed to be helping you with. If your teacher is telling you to "fix all the wrong notes" but doesn't tell you how, get a new teacher.
4. Strengthen the auditory image. Your ear will help you play more correct notes as well as help you get back on track when you've had a mishap. See the earlier post on wrong notes for more about this.
5. If the wrong notes persist, you will need to isolate that passage and do some repetition. The reason for the repetition is to create a new neural pathway which includes the intended notes. The old neural pathway with the "wrong" note will still be there, but it will eventually disappear through lack of use. I believe small amounts of repetition done consistenly is better than huge amounts of repetition. And lastly, when you isolate the passage, you have to see the problem coming. If there were a pothole on your road and day after day you kept driving right into it rather than avoiding it, the answer is simple: you have to see it coming before you drive into it, so you can avoid it. The same is true with a persistent wrong note; you have to be aware it's coming up, so you can remind yourself of the way you want to play it. When you are reading music, looking ahead it critical. You can, if you want, circle the offending note in the score, as a reminder of what you want to do. As long as you see it in time.

Perhaps most important is to try to lose the fear of wrong notes. Wrong notes can have a lot of power over you, if you let them. They can make your body more stiff and your playing more stilted, possibly ruining some of the enjoyment of playing. Or, they can be opportunities to shift your priorities and focus on the beauty and musicality of what you are playing. 

Don't be a dummy

Most music is complex. A folk tune may be short and simple, and just to play the melody on the piano may be easily accomplished by many people. Add harmony and it's already somewhat more complex. But once you move up to jazz and classical music, there is a LOT going on in the music. If you are reading music, there is a lot to learn and absorb in order to be able to read fluently. If you are playing by ear and/or improvising, you may not need to know how to read music, but there is a great deal you would still need to understand, in order for it to sound like actual music and not just random sounds.

I think most people understand this intuitively. Yet I'm still amazed, after all these years, when I meet people who think they are going to watch a video and learn to play the piano just by copying. You're just skimming the surface that way and you will never be able to take your skills very far.

Another problem I see, even more frequently, are the people who have learned to read music, either on their own or from a teacher, and assume that now they can just play the notes they see and that's all there is to it. One woman I met was a pretty good sight-reader and had learned to play some reasonably complex pieces by Bach and Chopin. But she knew absolutely nothing about what makes the music what it is, how it's constructed, or for instance, what makes Bach and Chopin so different. She told me she really enjoyed playing the music so perhaps I am wrong to say she needs to understand more. After all, isn't enjoyment the main reason why you want to learn to play? Some people even think if you study more and know more, you might spoil the enjoyment. To which I say, if you love the music, wouldn't you WANT to know more about it? Why would you want to be a dummy?

For example, even though this person read music, she didn't have any idea what the key signature meant. As hopefully you know, if you're reading this blog, the key signature is the first thing you see on the printed score. It's telling you what KEY you are in for this piece. The "key" means what scale you are based on. If you see one sharp then you are in G Major or E minor, one flat and you are in F Major or D minor. The whole concept of tonality and keys is the foundation of our music. And yet some people just see the sharp(s) or the flat(s) and know they have to play them but they have no idea why. It must seem awfully random if you don't know the "why." What's even weirder is why they never thought to ask someone or research it. Sadly, many teachers never explain these things either, so the student doesn't even realize the questions they need to be asking. (Those teachers have no business teaching!)

Music in the Western world is highly developed in the area of harmony. Harmony consist of chords, and the chords appear in a myriad of ways. Someone who can read may notice they keep playing similar groupings of notes, but don't understand what these are or why they are important. If you are playing jazz or improvising, you would have to understand chords because they are the building blocks you need. That being said, someone could just show you where to put your fingers for certain chords, and you could still play without understanding them at all. There are even charts you can purchase which show pictures of the keys with red dots where you put your fingers for each chord. However, without any explanation of the system of how they're built, you may have a lot of difficulty memorizing them by their pictures because there would be hundreds of them. 

[All of this -- scales, chords and so on -- are part of what people mean when they refer to "music theory." However, there's nothing theortical about it. These are music facts.]

Being a dummy will absolutely have severe limitations. When people start to experience these limitations they often quit playing out of frustration with their lack of progress. (Of course there are many other reasons as well.) In addition, if you've learned without understanding any of the "whys," you will most likely forget a lot of what you have learned. The "why" is like the glue that holds it all together into one integrated whole.

Blocking

 

A learning tool that I use all the time -- for myself and for my students -- seems so obviously beneficial that I can't believe other teachers and students don't do it. It's called blocking. Whenever the piece, or part of the piece, is comprised of chords, you would intially learn the piece by blocking the chords, meaning playing the notes of the chord all at once.

[Spoiler: everything is made up of chords, even if it's not obvious.]

A prime example of when this makes total sense to do is Bach's Prelude #1 (from Book I of the Well Tempered Clavier) in C major. As you can see, the entire piece is made of arpeggiated ("broken") chords in a repeating pattern. (If you have played this piece or wanted to play it, and didn't realize these were all chords, then you definitely need to learn to use this technique to develop your chord awareness and understaning.) The first five notes of each measure -- 2 notes in the left hand and three in the right -- comprise the chord, and there are no other notes that are not in this chord in the measure. So by playing those notes all at once, blocked, you have played/learned all the notes in the measure. How much more efficient is it to play one thing, the blocked chord, instead of 16 separate notes, most of which are duplicates??? I should add that ideally you would play each chord/measure at a steady pace. And here's your chance to make it beautiful because you are not so busy finding notes. (All of this assumes that you are at a reading level that this piece requires.)

Another example that comes to mind is the last movement of Beethoven's sonata Opus 54 in F major which I was playing earlier today. The last movement is a delightful "romp" in perpetual motion (the entire movement is constant sixteenth notes in both hands). Some measures would have two basic chords, some have up to four. Again, you'd need a basic understanding of chords to see when the chords change and how to block them.  

A type of piece that would be difficult to block would be a Bach fugue, or any other polyphonic (multi-voice) piece. These have multiple melody lines happening simultaneously. However, they still form chords when the notes are heard together. It's impossible for them not to. Blocking is still possible and potentially useful, but you can't really start learning this skill with a polyphonic piece.

There are hundreds if not thousands of examples of pieces where it makes sense to block at least certain sections of the piece. In many Mozart or Haydn sonatas, for example, the left hand has what is called an Alberti bass, which is a broken chord. When you first start learning the piece, just play the chord blocked.

The advantages of doing this are many. First, you will hear what is happening in the piece better. You can hear the hamony more clearly when the chord is played all at once, because tones sounding together is the essence of harmony. Second, blocking will help you with fingering. When you play a three- or four-note chord all at once, there is probably only one fingering, maybe two, that will be comfortable and easy for your hand to manage. In the Bach Prelude, mentioned above, you will likely get better fingering than if you just pick your way through it, note by note. I like to say that blocking informs your hands where they need to be. Third, it is more efficient. It takes less time to play one entity instead of many notes, and yet you are still learning those notes. And fourth, you have the opportunity to focus more on musicality because you are not so busy processing so many notes.

After you have played the piece or the passage blocked and are finding it has become easy and fluid, then you can simply unblock and play as written. You already have the muscle memory of the chord shapes so your hands should, ideally, go right to those notes. 

Many students don't seem to realize that virtually all our music is based on chords. This is true for Classical, jazz, pop, etc. When you listen to a piece of instrumental music, and certainly a song, you are more aware of the melody. The melody is also based on chords! The melody and the harmony aren't just each doing their own thing; they are conceived together by the composer. It is the harmonies that create the structure or architecture of the piece, whether it is a three-minute pop song or an hour-long symphony. You cannot understand music -- any genre -- if you don't understand chords. Yes, if you are a decent sight-reader you can play the piece by just reading the individual notes and you'll get through it. But you won't understand it.

The idea of blocking goes well with the idea of outlining, which I have talked about in many previous posts. With outlining, you initially play a sketch of the piece -- the main "ideas" -- as opposed to all the notes. Blocking chords can and should be a part of the outline. 

Another misconception: curved fingers

 

If you've had piano lessons, you may well have had teachers who told you to "curve your fingers." You may have been told to imagine your fingers curved around a ball, such as a tennis ball. There are beginner books, for both children and adults, which show a picture of how this should look.

The problem is, it's just plain wrong. 

Challenge anyone who tells you to curve and ask them to explain why. There just isn't any good reason. Try playing an octave, or a chord spanning an octave with four notes, and you'll see you can't do it with curved fingers. The hand (the palm, actually) must open up to be able to span that distance. Look at Chopin's first etude in C major; the entire piece consists of arpeggios which span a tenth, and the whole thing is meant to go at lightning speed. There is no way to do it with curved fingers.

If your piece requires loud dramatic chords, of course this has to be accomplished with the arm (despite what some will tell you.) But if you come down hard onto curved fingers, the joints of the finger take all the impact and it can be dangerous for the joints.

Instead, you want to have the natural curvature of your hand. Lay your hand palm up (prone) on your lap, and your hand will form it's natural curvature. Move your hand to the piano without changing anything; this is how you should play. Some people naturally have more curvature, some have less. No one has a completely flat hand, and no one is naturally curved as if over a ball. You may need to flatten (open) your hand even more to play a ninth or tenth. Watch a video of the late Vladimir Horowitz; you'll see he had practically flat fingers, yet he had huge technique.

With curved fingers you contact the keys on the tip of the finger. This is why you'd hear the clicking of your nails unless you keep them extremely short. (See my post "Can Pianists Have Nice Nails?) But if you have more of an open hand, you contact the keys with the pads of your fingers, which, as that term indicates, gives you more padding. It is much more comfortable and better suited to take the impact of loud playing, and you won't hear your nails clicking.

As with many other old ideas about piano technique, curved fingers orginated in the days of the harpsichord and early pianos, which were very different from our modern piano, and the music being composed at the time was also much less demanding. Curved fingers is another example of what I call a "300-year-old idea."

Plateaus

 

If you've been playing the piano for a while, you've probably had the experience of being on a plateau -- just not seeming to improve even though you're still practicing as much as you always did. (This is a phenomenon that other discliplines, such as athletics, deal with as well.) It can be very frustrating. You wonder if you are doing something wrong. You might even have thoughts of giving up.

First of all, know that this is how learning usually works. It is often not a steady climb, as if on a hill, but more like a staircase: you make a movement upwards, then stay at the same level. Then another jump up, and level off again. You can even learn to enjoy the plateaus, knowing that your brain is preparing for the next jump up.

However, if you have a lot of plateaus that last for a long time, you're probably practicing wrong. Just playing the pieces over and over again is the worst thing to do. You can't "white knuckle" your way through a plateau. Instead, you need to find some more creative ways of practicing that challenge your brain, and cause it to form new "wiring" (neural pathways). I've blogged about many of these, but not necessarily as regards plateaus. Here are some things you can do.

Transposing. Playing the whole piece, or at least parts of the piece, in another key is supremely challenging for most people. The challenge is why it works. The goal is to transpose as much as possible by ear, but use the score as necessary. When you use the score, you are mentally calculating the distance (interval) from the original key to the new one. But doing it by ear is where the real benefit happens because it "drives the music into your ear." By that I mean that you ear will really know the music.

Playing hands crossed. Play the right hand's part with the left hand and vice versa. What this does is temporarily destroy muscle memory so the ear has to take over. Like transposing, it strengthens the auditory image of the music, that is, a deep knowledge of how it sounds.

Play with one finger, alternating hands on each note. This will obviously only work for a single line melody. You could do this with the main melody, the bass line, or any individual voice. If you are having trouble memorizing even just the melody, this would be good to do. As above, you can't rely on muscle memory so you have to use the ear.

Playing with eyes closed. You should be doing this a lot of the time anyway, as soon as you know the piece or passage by memory. If you haven't been doing this and you find yourself on a plateau, definitely include this in your practicing.

Practice the piece in sections in reverse order (assuming it is a piece of some length). Practice the last section through, then go to the next-to-last section, practice it and then play them both through to the end. Continue with each previous section until you are playing the whole piece. I can't really explain why this works, other than it is just a fresh perspective, but it does seem to help.

Take a break. Put the piece aside for a few weeks and take up some new pieces. The brain will develop new neural pathways from the new pieces that will, hopefully, assist in everything you play, including the piece you set aside. As mentioned, trying to force your way through a plateau is probably not going to work, and it certainly won't be fun. 

Does Every Good Boy Do Fine, actually?

 

Most of you will probably recognize the phrase in the title of this post. Someone came up with it decades, if not centuries, ago, as a way to learn the notes on lines in the treble clef. "All cows eat grass" was the phrase for the spaces in the bass clef. Theortically, if you know these, every other note would just be one note away from one of these. But in reality, if you see the note at the space above all the lines in the treble clef, you might have to say "every good boy does fine" to find the F on the top line, so you can find the G on the space above it. That would be too slow for real-time playing. Instead, you'd want to just know that top line is F, for example, rather than having to repeat the whole phrase to yourself. (See below for how to do this.)

But the main problem with this method is that it focuses on the absolute note names instead of the intervals, or distances, between them. Navigating by interval is the ONLY way to become proficient at sight reading. Even if you think you learned the E-G-B-D-F method (which you may very well have), your mind eventually figured out the distances between notes and switched to reading by interval.

Another problem with the E-G-B-D-F method is that it is hopeless for reading in ledger lines, the notes that are written above or below the clefs. Almost all of my students who came from other teachers still have trouble reading in the ledger lines, and have to count the notes up (or down) to the one they see, and then they often resort to writing the note name in the score so they won't have to keep counting up to it. If you are playing -- or want to play -- advanced pieces, there will be many notes on ledger lines, so it's imperative that this be just as easy as reading the notes which fall on the staff.

However great reading by interval is, sometimes you need to find a note by its absolute name, such as the first note of the piece. For this purpose I have a set of "landmarks," which are all the Cs, Fs and Gs on each clef. (Middle C is the same for both clefs.) In the treble clef there is middle C, written on a ledger line, then G on the second line (indicated by the "curl" of the treble clef symbol"), then C on the third space up, and F on the top line. In the bass clef you have middle C, then F on the second line going downwards (indicated by the two dots around that line in the clef symbol), the C on the third space down, and lastly G on the lowest line. Looking at it as a mirror image, the Cs correspond, the Fs and Gs flip. This way you are never more than two notes away from any other note, and the same system works for both clefs. With the every-good-boy-does-fine and all-cows-eat-grass, you have different systems for each clef, and they do not match up well (one is on lines, the other on spaces). 

Of course, after a period of playing, these landmarks will become internalized, and in fact, so will all the notes on the staff. You won't have to think about their names at all. And that is the point. Don't think about note names. See my post titled Sight Reading from March 2015 for a fuller discussion of these concepts.

This is Madness

 

I recently saw an article in the magazine Piano Street regarding a new device, basically a robotic hand, which, when attached to the hand, is touted as being able to increase the speed at which the pianist plays. 

Here is the link:

When Practice Stagnates: Robotic Training for Pianists

As you see, the device fits on the hand and the makes the fingers move rapidly. The hand isn't really doing the work, it is just passive. The article shows a pianist before and after using the device, and demonstrates that there is an increase in speed even after the device is removed.

Wow, there is so much that is wrong about this.

First, the device only deals with the fingers. As you've read in this blog, I don't subscribe to the common misconception that piano technique is all about the fingers. It is more about the integration of the arm, hand and fingers (and even the torso). The example shown in the video is a pianist playing "double thirds" (a slow trill on two notes) which essentially stays in one place. This, however, is not real life. All challenging music for the piano will require you to movie up and down the keyboard. Chopin's "double thirds" etude (Opus 25 #6) starts this way but then proceeds to move up and down the piano in scales and other patterns in thirds, which obviously must include the arm. ("The hand isn't going anywhere the arm doesn't take it.")

Second, the article admits that, even though the hand is passive, there is still the possibility of injury with the device. You don't say! Over-use of the small muscles is the main cause of injury and strain for pianists. The author of the original article states: "I'm a pianist, but I injured my hand because of overpracticing. I was suffering from this dilemma, between overpracticing and the prevention of injury, so then I thought, I have to think about some way to improve my skills without practicing." Instead of questioning his whole approach to technique he just looked for a workaround, a way for something else to do the work for him. Learning to use the larger muscles of the arm and less reliance on the fingers would have prevented his injury. The late pianist Leon Fleisher developed dystonia in his hands and had to stop playing altogether. After many attempts to cure it (which didn't work), he discovered he could play if he stuck to pieces that weren't so "finger-y," that is, pieces with big chords, for example, which used more of the arm. As it turns out, dystonia is a "scrambling" in the brain from over-use of the fingers, and not a physical problem with the hand at all. To me, that indicates you could have the same problem even if the robot is causing the movements. It's still affecting the brain.

Third, the playing in the article's video sounds.... well... robotic. Of course it does! The device would not allow for any nuance in the playing. If you've been reading this blog, you know I really reject the idea of practicing without musicality and then hoping you can flick a switch and play musically when you want to. Listen to a great pianist play the Chopin Double Thirds Etude and you'll hear there is a lot of nuance, and can, and should, be played very musically. To play musically, you have to practice playing musically.

One valuable thing that this experiment with the robotic device demonstrates is the power of the brain in everything related to piano technique. The article states: Surprisingly, the untrained hand also showed improved performancee, demonstrating an inter-manual transfer effect. So, in other words, it was something that happened in the brain which caused the other hand -- the one not trained with the device -- to improve as well. Wouldn't it be better to explore how to change our brains everytime we practice, rather than use a cumbersome device with potential for harm? I emphasize this in my teaching. See my posts "It's All (Neuro)logical" of December 2020, and "Practicing to Build Your Brain Power" of August 2020.

I doubt whether this device will come into common usage due to cost and other factors. But if it does, I shudder at the thought of every beginning or intermediate, or even advanced student starting to practice using this device. It is frustrating when you feel you reach a "plateau" in your piano practice and you aren't improving. Some of this is the natural learning curve. But most of it is probably how you're practicing. Some of the things pianists do to try to break through a plateau are useless and some are just plain harmful. In an upcoming post I will discuss what to do about plateaus.