Modes

 

In a previous post I attemted to explain and clear up confusion about minor scales. Here I will explain what people refer to as "modes."

The so-called modes are simply other scales whose construction is similar to the scales you are already familiar with -- major and minor. They also have 7 tones and have mostly whole steps with half steps in two places in the scale. No two scales have the same exact construction (if they did they would sound identical!).

The modes are: Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, and Lochrian. What many people don't know is that our major scale used to be called Ionian, and our minor scale was called Aeolian. In the Western world there are these seven basic scales, upon which most of our music is based (although I personally know of no music which is based on the Lochrian scale.)

As you can tell from the names, all these scales came to us from the ancient Greeks. No one "invented" them; we have to assume that people started singing, or playing simple instruments, and someone (it is attributed to Pythagoras -- yes, the math guy) codified and wrote down what he heard people singing.  As far as we know, he identified the seven scales listed above. We don't know if some were predominant and others less so. We know that at least several of these scales continued to be used through the Middle Ages. When people hear the chants and other music from the Middle Ages they will often say it sounds "modal," and that is because many are based on the non-major and non-minor scales.

Sometime later, certain scales began to be used more and other less. I am fairly certain that this is because of the growth of the importance and complexity of harmony. Certain scales seem to work better with harmony. The Ionian scale became known as Major, and the Aeolian as Minor. In the centers of the growth of Classical music -- Germany, Austria, France and Italy -- the major and minor scales became the favored scales. However, the other five scales hung around, especially on the "fringes" of Europe such as Eastern Europe and the British Isles. 

Even into our modern age you will hear composers such as Bartok (Hungarian) using Dorian and other older scales, because he heard these in the folk music where he grew up. Even Chopin (Polish) used some, such as Lydian, for parts of his pieces (never the whole piece, however). In Celtic music you will hear Dorian. Debussy was searching for new sounds and he turned to using the modes, which, at his time and place, would have sounded very unusual and exotic.  This is just a partial list. Even the Beatles have some elements of the modes. There is a hint of Dorian in Eleanor Rigby and I think that Norwegian Wood is in Mixolydian. 

When students learn about these other scales, they are often shown them on the piano. All of you reading this know that if you play from C to C on the white keys you get C major. If you play from A to A on the white keys you get A minor. Following along with this idea, if you play from D to D on white keys you get Dorian; E to E is Phrygian, F to F is Lydian, G to G is Mixolydian, B to B is Lochrian. However, you must remember that ALL of these scales came into being hundreds of year before the first keyboard instrument, so they were in no way influenced by the idea of "white keys." (See my post titled "Do you have a white key mentality?") Any and all of the scales/modes can begin on any key, white or black. The scale is determined by where the whole and half steps fall, as mentioned above. I have found people to be confused and locked in to the idea of these modes being all white keys.

As mentioned, many composers have used the modes in their compositions. Jazz improvisors use them (but I caution you about asking a jazz musician to explain modes to you; it may be very confusing!). If you enjoy improvising, I would encourage you to try improvising in, let's say, Dorian. You may find yourself drifting to minor (since Dorian and minor are similar). Our ears are so conditioned to hear just major and minor that is is challenging to really hear the others. You can do it on white keys the first few times to make it easier, but then challenge yourself to play them starting on other keys. Most people will experience the modes as a new and "refreshing" sound. As with some other areas of life, what's old is new again.

Let's Just Play it by Ear

 

Here in the Pacific Northwest we are snowed in, with freezing temperatures -- very unusual for us. Since I'm confined at home I thought I would take the opportunity to write a light-hearted post I've been thinking about for a while.

When people are making plans to go somewhere or do something and the plans can't be finalized, they often say "let's just play it by ear." What they mean is that they are going to keep things flexible, see how the situation develops in the moment and be able to respond.

I love that a phrase about music and playing an instrument have become a part of our mainstream language and idioms. When people hear the phrase "let's just play it by ear," they know exactly what is meant, even if they have never actually played anything by ear.

However, playing by ear is not exactly the right analogy for this situation. When you play music by ear, you are attempting to reproduce the actual song or instrumental piece as closely as possible to the written music. If you are playing a melody by ear, you want to get it exactly right; otherwise, it won't be the actual song, but something similar. If you are going to harmonize the songs, you want to get the harmonies exactly right, or very close, though you may have to do it in a simplified way. For example, if the song was from a movie score and it was accompanied by an orchestra, and you are attempting to reproduce it by ear on piano, you can get the harmonies exactly right, depending on your abilities, of course, but, needless to say, it won't sound exactly like an orchestra. You may be making your own arrangement of the song, but you are still attempting to have the song sound very close the actual song, so that your listeners will recognize it.

When you improvise, you are truly making it up as you go along. The best improvisors may never play the song or piece the same way twice. You may be using a previously-written song as the basis for your improvisation, but, depending on your skills, you may embellish the song's melody and harmonies to such a large degree that is almost becomes something else entirely. And, of course, you can do free-form improv, that is, not based on anything except your own musical ideas at the moment.

So when people say "let's just play it by ear," what they actually mean is "let's improvise." Making it up as you go along is more akin to improvisation than it is to playing by ear. And sometimes people do say "we'll just have to improvise" when they realize they can't predict or plan the future.

Either way, playing by ear and improvising are great skills to have, and, as you know if you've been reading this blog, I highly recommend both!

Keep it Simple

 

Everyone who listens to music (I'm speaking here in particular of classical music) has their own preferences when it comes to performances and interpretation. One person will love a particular performance of a piece and another will not like it much at all. There is no one right or wrong way to play a piece of music; it's really all a matter of taste. So it is not for me to tell someone what to like or not like. That being said, I'm going to share one of the attributes of playing that I feel contributes to the beauty and power of a musical performance. It is this: keep it simple.

Some musicians feel they must "do something" to a piece they are playing in order to put their personal "stamp" on it, to make it different that other people's playing of the piece. They would call this their "interpretation." It would be almost impossible for two people to play identically, so you are already going to play it differently than anyone else due to the way your body moves, the way you hear things, and all the other influences throughout your life that will affect how you play. I've heard pianists say they want to "decide" on their interpretation of the piece, as if it were an intellectual decision. Personally, I'm completely mystified as to how one would "decide" that. Rather than impose my ideas on the piece, I would prefer to let the music flow through me, unemcumbered. I'm not exactly saying I would be "channeling" Beethoven, for example, but I am getting out of the way so the music can speak to the listener without a filter, so to speak.

When I listen to someone play who is trying to "interpret" the piece, I usually experience it as "fussy," that is, too oriented to small details. Their performance misses the forest for the trees. Their playing gets bogged down in details and lacks the sweep and emotional power that I want to hear.

I recall a performance of a Chopin Nocturne by someone I know. From the very first measure she was doing all sorts of extreme rubato (nuances in the timing) and fluctuations of dynamics, and then piling on more and more of that type of thing as the piece went on. The performance was, to my ears, almost a jumble of unrelated phrases. She seemed incapable of just making a simple statement, letting the beauty of the music speak for itself. Someone I knew years ago said "You don't have to try to make the music beautiful; it is already beautiful." I believe that the work we do in our practice, improving our technique and strengthening our ear, is in order to have the mastery to let the music come through. 

When you start working on a new piece, just see if you can play it simply, without trying to "do too much." It would be analogous to a sentence with a straightforward message, without a lot of flowery language. I'm not saying to play it without emotional involvement -- quite the contrary. You must be emotionally engaged, but as the listener. Just listen to the music you are producing and you may, over the course of learning the piece, instinctively add the nuances that your ear is searching for.

I realize this goes against come of the conventional "wisdom" about playing and performance in classical music. I believe that too much emphasis is placed on the performer. They become celebrities. When you hear a really great performance, in my opinion, you get carried away by the beauty of the music to the extent that you become almost unaware of the performer. I believe that we, as performers, need to get our egos out of it.

Please ready my earlier post entitled Interpretation (2/13/15) for more in-depth discussion.

As with many areas of life, it would benefit us to keep it simple.

Favorite Quotes from my Teacher, Part II

 

It's best if you read my previous post, Part I, before reading this one.

If you can reach the interval, you don't need to stretch; if you can't reach it, no amount of stretching will help you.

This seems counterintuitive at first. Don't you have to stretch to reach, say, a tenth on the piano, if your hand is not very large? Wouldn't that be the only way to manage it? Actually, the correct way to reach an interval that is just at the limits of your hand is to relax into it. Stretching actually tightens the muscles. When you stretch in yoga, for example, you don't force the body into the pose, you relax into it. That is the way to become more limber. My hands are small to normal, yet I reach a tenth, because I have learned to let the hand relax into it. Try this: close your hand in a relaxed (not tight) fist. Gradually open your hand, as if you were watching slow motion photography of a flower blooming. Then just float onto the interval you want to play. You will notice it feels much easier and reachable now, as long as your hand didn't tense up at the last second. Keep practicing this and you will train your hand to stay relaxed for the larger intervals. Since I can't reach any more than a tenth, no amount of stretching will make it happen.

How you hear will be how you play, and how you play will be how you hear.

This is actually a very profound concept. Other than my teacher, Joseph Prostakoff, I have never heard anyone else propose this idea. If you move in a stiff or choppy way when you play, your ear will become used to this sound and will not only accept it, but prefer it. It will sound normal to your ear. Because your ear expects that sound, it will continually drive you to play in that way. If you play in a very smooth, connected way, with long lines and phrases, your ear will accept and prefer this sound, and will continue to compel you to play that way. In other words, there is a feedback loop between your ear and the physical, actually your motor cortex, which sends the impulses to the hands and fingers. Think of a young child playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star; it will be quite choppy -- what I call "note-wise" -- which is basically the hallmark of a beginner's sound. To the child, this sounds perfectly fine, and the child would not be at all aware that there is a better sound to strive for. If the child receives no instruction in how to use their hands and arms differently, they would most likely continue to play in this way. They might, however, as they grow up, hear recorded or live music played in a more connected and fluid way, and could possibly try to achieve that sound. In that case, their ear would be directing their body to do something differently. 

For the teacher, this presents a singular challenge: how to get the student to play and hear differently. Which one do you start with? I start with the physical, which is easier for me to work on with them in the allotted lesson time. Through various means, including, but not limited to, having their hands lightly on mine as I play, or my manipulating their hands as they play, they get a sensation of a new way to move. When they can start moving this way, the ear gets a chance to hear the improved lines and phrases, and will, as explained above, start to seek out this sound. It's a long process. This process may go extremely quickly in a student with more natural ability, and go slowly in a student with less. Some people say you can't teach "talent," but you can teach the student how to move more beautifully, and therefore play more beautifully.

All we have to fear is fear itself.

Of course you will recognize this is actually a quote from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, from a speech about World War II. It applies to many areas of life, including playing an instrument. If you've read my posts entitled "Fear," you'll see that I strongly believe that our fears -- fear of mistakes (wrong notes), fear of not measuring up to expectations, fear of "putting ourselves out there," and many others -- govern a great deal of how we play, and how well we play. Some fears you may be aware of and others not so much. It doesn't matter how many hours you practice; if your playing is encumbered by fear, it will never be truly great. An insightful teacher can help address these fears at the piano. Mr. Prostakoff was an amazingly insightful teacher. He would often quote this FDR phrase at our lessons. It certainly bears repeating.

Favorite Quotes from my Teacher, Part I

 

If you've read my first post, you will know that after I received my degree in Piano from Manhattan School of Music, I was not happy with my playing, and sought out another teacher. By a chance conversation with an acquaintance, I learned about a teacher who seemed to have a completely different approach to playing -- especially technique -- and it sounded like he could help with some of my more significant problems, such as pain and fatigue when playing. His name was Joseph Prostakoff. I studied with him for 6 years, until his death in 1980.

He was a masterful teacher. His insights and understanding of our bodies -- our playing mechanism -- and how it interacts with the piano, were incredible. It's not as if he was all about technique, however. He enabled me to vastly improve my ear (even though I already had perfect pitch) and my expression and interpretation. Because without a masterful technique and a superb ear, you can't really "say what you want to say" at the piano.

On top of that, he was a kind and generous human being, who devoted himself without reserve to his students. I think it would be fair to say that I wouldn't be playing and teaching today had it not been for him.

He also had a great sense of humor. He had lots of little quips and sayings that he would use in our lessons. Here are some of my favorites, with explantions.

If you can really hear the rhythm, you don't need to count; if you can't hear it, no amount of counting will help you. 

If you've read my posts on rhythm, you'll see that I don't teach "counting." Instead, I employ methods which teach you to really hear units of time, and then to be able to divide those units in two or in three. All our basic rhythms boil down to that. People think of ear training as only pertaining to hearing notes (or, more precisely, intervals), but hearing intervals of time is absolutley just as critical, if not more so. Because people rely on crude tools such as counting and metronomes, they may never really learn to hear units of time with precision. The idea that counting, or assigning numbers or syllables to the beats or parts of the beat will guarantee accurate rhythm is ludicrous. Every teacher has heard their students "counting" but saying the numbers completely out of rhythm! I like to point out that the people who play the most complex rhythms (e.g. Latin or African drummers), didn't learn to play using counting. Counting might work for the absolute simplest of rhythms, but then if it's that simple, you don't need it. We all have a pulse within our bodies 24/7, so I believe we can all hear a steady beat without counting. And since counting doesn't work at all for the most complex situations, such as poly-rhythms, it's not a very good tool. 

A nuance isn't a nuance if you do it every time.

We all want to play expressively, or musically (hopefully). What does that mean? Although in Classical music, we play the notes and rhythms as the composer has notated, we still have tremendouse freedom within that to be expressive and to play the piece in a way which will be different from any other person playing it. This expression takes the form of nuances of touch, dynamics, and timing. For example, we don't play the rhythm robotically, but rather, we have an elastic feel to the rhythm; there is something of an ebb and flow. In an expert player, the listener isn't aware of these nuances per se, but the overall effect of the performance is one of great musicality. However, if these nuances become too extreme, or too frequent, they lose their expressive power and just begin to sound like distortions. I remember hearing a woman play the Chopin Nocturne in D-flat Major. The left hand has a pattern which starts on a low bass note and then plays an arpeggiated chord. Before every bass note, she had the slightest of hesitations, not enough to destroy the rhythm, but nevertheless it was noticeable. Had she done it just in certain places, to heighten the drama or the tenderness of the passage, it might have been lovely. But she did it every single time. It became tiresome and even a little annoying, to my ear. She may have thought she was being expressive, but it lost all expressive value because it became expected. A nuance isn't a nuance if you do it every time!

If the auditory image is strong enough, the body finds a way to get there.

This might sound a little confusing but you'll see why it's true. In my teaching I emphasize training the ear, and, when learning a new piece of music, I use methods of getting the student to really absorb how the piece sounds. (Of course I do this in my own practicing as well.) You might think, "well of course I'm absorbing how it sounds," but in fact you probably aren't, not at a deep enough level. I call this "forming an auditory image." The beginning and intermediate students are so absorbed in the physical aspects and just "finding the notes" that the ear is not really working hard to absorb the music. Think of it this way; if your ear absolutely knows how it sounds, you could play it by memory, at least slowly, anyway. Most approaches mostly emphasize gaining muscle memory of the piece, and, to that end, there is a lot of emphasis on fingering. If you do the same fingering every time, muscle memory should work, right? But what happens when you accidentally land on a different finger? If you have only muscle memory, you could get completely scrambled and the whole phrase (or more!) could fall apart. (You've probably already experienced this.) But if you have a strong auditory image, you know what comes next and you can recover. Think about improvisors: if they are truly improvising (playing it differently than any previous time), then they don't actually have the muscle memory for that exact passage or riff. But their ear knows the sound they want, and the body follows.

There are more great quotes to come. Stay tuned for Part II.

 

Minor Scales

 

Most people who play classical or popular music are aware of two types of scales: major and minor. Before continuing, I'd like to point out that, once again, the terms major and minor lead to a lot of misconceptions. Major scales are not more "important" than minor scales. These terms refer to something else, specifically, interval size. These scales were originally called Ionian and Aeolian, respectively, as they came down to us from the ancient Greeks. There are actually several other scales, which people now call "modes," and they are used with some frequency in various types of music. More on that in a future post.

The major and minor scales sound different from each other because of the interval relationships between their scale tones. A student once said to me, "Oh, A minor is just like C major but it starts on a different note." This is a complete misunderstanding of what the scale is all about, and by extension, what our music is all about. Music based on minor scales sounds very different than music based on major scales. They don't sound the same except "starting on a different note!"

There is a LOT of confusion about minor scales and I find that confusion is still being propagated today, even though the correct information is available if you really look. I hope to clear up that confusion for you here.

You will probably have heard there are three types of minor scales: natural or "true" minor, harmonic minor, and melodic minor. Why would we need three minors? What is their purpose? Teachers and music books tell you the "rules" for each and teachers have you practice each kind, but they almost never explain why.

There is really only one minor scale, the true or natural minor. This is what is reflected in the key signature. So, for the example of A minor, there are no sharps or flats and that is what you see in the key signature. No exceptions, ever.

Then along comes the so-called "harmonic" minor, where the 7th degree of scale is raised a half step, giving us G# in our A minor example. The reason the 7th degree is raised is because of harmonic reasons (thus the name of the "scale"). In A minor, the V (five) chord would be E minor. Chords which fall naturally in the scale would be refered to a diatonic chords. If you listen to music written before the mid 1600s (Renaissance music, for example) you would notice that if a piece or song uses the V chord, it is likely to be the E minor, or the diatonic chord. In the 1600s, people began to prefer the sound of a major V chord resolving to the I (one) chord. The resolution of G# to A -- a half step -- feels stronger and more final than the resolution of G natural to A -- a whole step. Let's say your final two chords of the piece were V to I, and the third, or middle note, of the V chord was on top (in the melody); you'd have a much stronger feeling of finality going G# to A than G to A. Remember, this really was just a matter of taste. Prior to this, Renaissance listeners were perfectly happy with their gentler resolution of the G to the A. 

So the diatonic E minor chord has been replaced with the non-diatonic E major chord. It could happen everywhere in the piece, or just in some places. Is the G sharp in the key signature? No, never. Although just about everyone will tell you the harmonic minor is a separate scale, I believe that is a backwards way of looking at it. The scale is the scale. This is just the substitution of a non-diatonic chord for a diatonic one, for expressive purposes.

Now here is where people get REALLY confused. They learn there is a so-called "melodic" minor. This involves raising the 6th and 7th degree of the scale a half step. In our A minor example, that would mean we'd have F# and G#. Why? If you play the harmonic minor, and you hear the interval of a third from the F natural to the G#, you might think it sounds a bit exotic, maybe Middle Eastern. Composers at the time (and even now) would probably not want a melody containing that sound, at least in many cases. The solution? Raise the 6th degree too and you get a smooth run up with all intervals of a second, no thirds. So if you have a passage where the chords being used are the I and the major V, your melody isn't going to be in natural minor, because the G naturals would clash with the G#s in the chords, and you're avoiding that exotic-sounding third in the harmonic minor, so you'll end up with the melody using the raised 6th and 7th, the so-called melodic minor. Once again, the reason for it is in the name: it's to make the melody more pleasing and not clash with the harmony.

You might notice that what you now have is the first half of the scale being true minor and second half being identical to major. A hybrid, if you will.

So for the past few hundred years, piano teachers have been assigning students the practice of all three types of minor. Every book of scales will include all three. I don't believe students should be spending so much time on scales in the first place. But when you play them, do them 100% from your own understanding of them, not reading them from books. I've met people who've spend hundreds of hours playing these scales but can't answer the basic question of why they exist. 

It is a complete waste of time to practice all these separate scales. If you can play an A minor scale and an A major scale, you can play the so-called melodic minor, which, as we've seen, is kind of a combination of both. It's a colossal waste of time to practice them all.

Would the melodic minor be used only in an ascending melody but not in a descending? Of course not. If the melody is going to avoid clashing with the chords and also avoid the exotic-sounding third, then it would happen in either direction. Yet for some strange reason, there evolved a convention of practicing the melodic minor, with the raised 6th and 7th, on the way up, but then for some reason coming down the scale in the natural minor. It's completely arbitrary, and is another example of the stodgy and pedantic nature of a lot of what is taught for piano technique and theory. It really irks me that we are still using these 300-year-old ideas.

Long Term Success vs. Immediate Gratification

 

Reading the title of this post, you can probably relate to it several areas of life. You may decide to pass up the pleasure of the rich dessert to achieve your weight and fitness goals, for instance. But how does it apply to learning to play the piano?

When someone is new to learning the piano -- or even if they have been at it for quite a while -- they are often surprised at how difficult it is just to play "all the right notes." It seems like every time you play you have some small -- or not so small -- slip-ups (I prefer to avoid the work "mistakes"). It can be very frustrating. The temptation is to try to practice in such as way as to "cure" those mishaps. You might decide to play the particular passage 50 times, and/or play it very slowly. Or, the one that many people think will work is to immediately "correct" the wrong note and then play the right one as you are playing. You'll find that rarely works. Instead, you'll develop a phobia about that particular passage in the piece, and every time you play you will be anxious about it, causing it to have more problems. Sound familiar?

Playing all the right notes all the time with no mishaps is a very high bar. In baseball, you are a star if you hit the ball even one out of three times. But pianists are expected to have a 100% success rate. And, sorry sports fans, but there is a LOT more complexity in piano than in baseball. Of course, even the very top tier pianists have the occasional slip, but you probably don't notice it because they are able to just go on without even a ripple.

For the beginning and intermediate student, making the demand of yourself to have "no mistakes" is likely to backfire and potentially cause you to dislike practicing. Trying the play the piece with zero wrong notes at any cost is not the best goal, in my opinion. It does give some immediate gratification. But if you had to practice that piece for hours and hours, to the exclusion of other music, you may be sacrificing long-term development. A student once told me that, as a child, his teacher had him practice the same piece for the entire year, so that it would be perfect for the recital. Of course he hated that, and quit piano as soon as the year was over. That teacher was not interested in the long-term development of the student; she was interested in how her students' performance would reflect upon her as a teacher. If they played well, people might assume she was a great teacher. But little did they know that the child learned nothing else all year and came to hate the piano. This is an extreme example of wanting immediate gratification over long-term success.

With my students, I emphasize just letting the small errors go. In some pieces we simply omit a few notes to make it a little less difficult. I'm sure the composer would forgive us! We continually work to build our technique to eventually master those tricky passages, but that takes time to acquire; so in the meantime, you need to learn to let the small things go. Choose your battles, so to speak. You'd think everyone would love this, but I find some people are reluctant to "let things go." Being a perfectionist in the early stages will work against you. Instead, try to keep the big picture in mind. I have my students play a wide range of different music so they are exposed to variety of technical and musical demands. As long as I see they are steadily acquiring new skills -- and enjoying it along the way -- I know that I am setting them up for long-term success. If I demanded -- or they demanded of themselves -- a perfect "performance," I know from long experience in teaching that they won't stay with it.

Fixed versus Movable Do

 

You've probably heard someone sing a musical scale with the syllables "do, re, mi, fa, so, la, to, do." These syllables are called solfege; they date back to the middle ages, and are derived from the beginnings of Latin words in the Catholic mass. (Some of you may think of the famous song "Do, a deer" from The Sound of Music, where Maria teaches the notes of the scale in a way that was easy to remember.) However, there is actually quite a bit of confusion about these syllables and how they are applied, or not, to the learning of music.

In Asia (including Russia) and some European countries, they teach a system of learning using a fixed do. The note "do" is always the note C; therefore D is "re," E is "mi," etc. If you want to sing a C Major scale, it is straightforward and simple. However, once you want to sing another scale, one containing sharps or flats, use have to use other terms, such as "si" for the sharp above "so." So you actually have to learn 12 syllables, not 7. In some music schools and conservatories, you'd be required to sing complex melodies, using these solfege syllables. It is thought to be a form of ear training. It is quite difficult to learn to do, and, in my opinion, there are better ways to train the ear. I have had quite a few students over the years who were brought up and attended music schools in Russia, and they have described the torture of learning to sing solfege.

Here in the U.S. we use a movable "do." Whichever scale you sing (or play), the first note is do, the second is re, etc., regardless whether the scale begins on a flat, sharp, or natural. The reason why this approach is so superior is that it makes clear that every scale (let's just say a major scale in this example) has the same relationship of its tones to every other major scale. This is the whole point of the scale, in a way. I can sing Happy Birthday in any key (i.e. based on any scale) and it still sounds like Happy Birthday because all its tones have the same relationship to each other, regardless of key. So, too, with the scale itself. With the fixed do approach, every scale would have a different combination of syllables, and therefore, singing the same song in a different key would also require a complete new set of syllables. It emphasizes the individuality of each tone rather than its relationship to other tones. (I think there's a metaphor for life here, possibly.)

The other problem with the fixed do system is that it tends to emphasize what I call a "white key mentality." (See my post with this title.) Since the system is based on C, the C scale is viewed as the basis and everything else is some sort of exception. Composers have written in every key, with no bias towards the key of C. (They may have a few hundred years ago, but not now.) So we, as musicians, must be able to play with equal ease in any key, with no bias for the key of C. For years I had an adult student who grew up in China and learned the fixed do system. He could only play in the key of C. Trying to play in any other key (even by ear!) so disoriented him, he just couldn't cope.

Another problem with the fixed do system is how chords are taught. (I only recently learned about this from one of my Russian students.) Let's take the example of 7th chords (4-note chords). A D minor 7th chord would be learned as "re-fa-la-do," (D-F-A-C). That's easy because they are all white keys. But if the chord is C diminished 7, you would have to sing do- me (lowered mi)- fi (raised fa) - la. So again, every chord would have a completely different "spelling" than every other chord, even if it's the exact same type of chord. This would mean hundreds of combinations to learn. More important, it just misses the whole point of learning chords. To learn 7th chords (or any type of chord) you need to learn how they are constructed (what intervals). Once you know that, you can build any chord on any note.

Taking this one step further, I think we should abandon the solfege system entirely. It is a relic of a bygone age. When teaching people to sight-sing, for example, I just use the numbers of the scale, 1 through 7. It's so much easier to relate to the numbers 1 and 5 being a fifth away from each other, for example, than some arbitrary syllables such as do and so. For non-scale tones, they can be referred to more as how they are functioning (e.g. raised 4 vs. flat 5), rather than fixed syllables. You can sing with equal skill in any key with this method and does more to train your ear, in my opinion, than the fixed do method.

If you happen to be with a teacher who uses the fixed do system and insists you use it, I would absolutely urge you to find another teacher. If your teacher was taught that way and perpetuates that system, they probably are using many other "300-year-old ideas" as well. You would be wise to find someone who has a more modern -- and sensible -- approach.

The Smarter I Practice, the More Talented I Get

 

"The harder I work, the luckier I get." -- Samuel Goldwyn

I always liked the above quote. While perhaps some things can be attributed to luck, there is no doubt that hard work can lead to great success. Someone might appear have just been "lucky," yet they put a great deal of effort, sacrifice, and dedication into getting where they got.

Regarding musicians, people often say that the great performers, composers, etc., were/are just "talented."  While each person may be born with greater or lesser degree of natural abilities in regards to music (or any other discipline), clearly one would need to work hard and put in many hours to achieve a very high level of musical excellence. There are some who even say there is no such thing as talent. You may have heard about the 10,000 hour principle -- that someone who puts in 10,000 hours before the age of 8 or so will achieve mastery, regardless of the innate abilities they were born with. Malcolm Gladwell wrote about this and others have embraced this idea.

When it comes to music, however, I don't believe that anyone could become a great musician just by  putting in the hours. Everyone is born with a different level of "ear," meaning the sensitivity to and awareness of musical pitch. Some are born with "perfect" or "absolute" pitch, which could be considered the highest level of ear. Others have difficulty singing on pitch and can't even tell whether a pitch goes up or down from the previous pitch. They may say they are "tone deaf," though I do not believe there is any such thing. (People who are "color blind" still see colors, just not as distinctly.) Having a great ear to start with will help someone on their musical journey, but, by itself, does not guarantee success. (And, no matter how good your ear is to start, you can, and must, continue to make it even better.)

Musicians certainly do put in the hours to get to a high level. Many who start at a young age will have a "head start" on the hours. But I am quite convinced that there are many who put in thousands of hours yet do not achieve greatness or anything even close to greatness. People might assume that they just weren't talented enough to begin with. Yet I believe it is more likely to be the quality of the hours, not the quantity.

Many people who have attempted to play the piano waste tremendous amounts of time on practices which do not help them (and can even cause harm). Some examples of this are: finger exercises that do not really improve your technique, spending too much time playing hands separately, playing everything too slowly, using a metronome, excessive repetition (which dulls the mind), playing un-musically, going through the motions while the mind is elsewhere, not really listening to your own playing, and many more. Many of these subjects have been discussed in my previous posts.

The level of achievement or mastery you attain is a direct reflection of the quality of your practice. I'm always amazed that people actually think they can practice one way (e.g. un-musically) and then flip a switch and play differently when it comes to performance time. It just doesn't happen. 

Certain "talents" that you didn't think you had may develop over time if you persistently work towards them. For example, you may think you have no talent for improvising. But if you improvise every day, really listen to what you are doing, assess what could be improved (with the help of a teacher, hopefully), you will get better. After some years of doing this, someone else might hear you play and say, "wow, you really have a talent for improvising!"

My advice to students of the piano would be this: forget about "talent." Spend your time at the piano making your playing as beautiful as you can, and your practice time as efficient and focused as you can. The smarter you practice, the more talented you'll get.

More About Fingering

 

If you read my previous post on fingering, you'll see that I disagree with a lot of the "traditional" beliefs about fingering.

I recently read the blog post of another teacher of the piano, whose advice is basically the same as the old ideas that have been passed down through generations of teachers and pianists. He doesn't offer any new ideas at all. One of his ideas was so bizarre that I want to respond with my own thoughts on this.

He said, when it comes to fingering, "always look back, never forward." Just reading that statement should make you say "huh??" To paraphrase, he says look back to the finger you used on the previous key and that will determine the finger to use on the current one. If fingering were as simple as that, one could, theoretically, determine the finger to use on the first note of the piece and the rest would be obvious. But clearly that is not even remotely the case. Consider this example: when you play a basic scale and start with thumb on the first note and then use the second and third finger, you would presume you would use the fourth finger on the next note, since that would seem to be the logical progression from the third finger on the previous note. But, as we all know, you are almost certainly going to want to get thumb on the next (fourth) note, so that your hand is positioned to complete the remaining five notes of the scale. So in fact, the exact opposite is true: your fingering is determined by where your hand needs to be next. This is such a simple truth that I can't understand how this particular blogger could have missed it. The same would be true of any arpeggio, as well as any phrase that spans more than five notes (the five fingers), which is practically all music! So my motto would be "always look forward, never back."

(The whole issue of crossing the thumb under is also a badly misunderstood concept. Once again, it is not about the thumb at all, but rather about a means of getting your hand to where it needs to be next.)

This person also said that your teacher should write in the fingerings in your manuscript and you should follow it. Sadly, this is what a lot of people do. There are several problems with this idea.

1) It makes you dependent on the written fingerings to the point that you never really know how to figure it out on your own. You will be lose the opportunity to develop your own understanding of fingering, and you will be forever dependent on the teacher. What happens when you are no longer taking lessons? 

2) Most of the fingerings should become obvious to you over time. Again, if you are aware of where your hand needs to go next, all you need is a minimal number of fingerings written in to remind you of this hand position change, and the rest will follow. Writing a finger number over every note is not only distracting, but tends to make you focus on each note separately instead of the whole phrase. It can lead to "note-wise" un-musical playing.

3) If your teacher does write fingering in, it had better be based on your hand, not theirs. In my previous post I say that fingering is not a one-size-fits-all. I have heard of teachers who write every finger number in the music before even seeing how the student would play it. Clearly, at the very least, people with small hands may do things differently than people with large hands.

4) Keep in mind that people who play by ear and/or improvise often have astounding technique and play with speed and brilliance without the "benefit" of reading written fingering. It should be obvious that this is possible. And if you are tempted to reply that "those people are just talented," I would say that you want to work towards becoming talented in that way. You will never develop those instincts in you slavishly follow the fingering prescribed by someone else.

The Torso

 

When it comes to piano technique, that is, the physical aspects of playing, you will find the discussion to be almost entirely about the fingers. Thousands of exercises have been written and given to piano students to, supposedly, strengthen and/or train the fingers. Most of the traditional methods barely address the use of the arm. In recent years, thankfully, there have been more teachers who understand the use of the arm in technique. 

However, hardly anyone talks about the torso.

In a sense, the torso is the foundation of technique. The shoulder, which is a ball-and-socket joint, enables our arms to cover the entire width of the keyboard and to move in every direction. It enables us to play octaves and myriad other types of technique which the hands and fingers could not possibly do by themselves. The shoulder joint is the connection point between the torso and the arm.

You might assume, therefore, that the torso just stays inert while the arms do the work. But this is not the case. For example, suppose you are playing a passage where both hands are in the lower register of the piano. If you were to keep your torso inert, right in the center, you would have trouble playing in that register without a significant twist in your wrist in your right hand, the one that has to reach farther. Likewise, if you are playing both hands in the upper register, the twist would be in your left hand. In order to play these types of passages successfully, and more importantly, without stress or strain, it is necessary to shift the torso towards the left or right in order to get the torso and arms in better alignment. If you shift the torso, you will see that twist in your wrist disappears. If your torso and arms are better aligned, you will have more power and better accuracy. I call this your "stance." You might think of it as where you are "centered" relative to your arms. Your torso must anticipate where your arms need to be next. Most of the time, of course, your stance is the center of the keyboard, but definitely not all the time.

You almost certainly need to adjust your stance, at least slightly, when you are playing hands crossed. Otherwise you will again have the twist in your wrist.

I recently have been playing the Bach-Busoni D minor Chaconne. In one section the two hands are in octaves in the lower register, then rapidly jump to the upper register for some big chords, all very loud, and back again. It would be impossible to do without shifting the torso back and forth. Of course I was aware of this yet still kept missing a few of the chords. I discovered that I needed to shift my torso just an inch or two more to the right than I had been doing for the chords in the upper register. Immediately the problem was solved! I had been close to shifting enough, but the additional tiny amount made the difference between missing notes and not. Amazing! It didn't take any extra hours of practice, but instead, an awareness of what the torso was doing.

If you have to shift your stance over to either side by a significant amount, you may feel you are off balance, almost like you could tip over. This is easily solved by moving your left leg farther to the left to balance yourself. You wouldn't be able to move your right leg, since it would be pedalling. I've noticed people rarely talk about how your legs can help you. Once your become more aware of them, you'll find slight adjustments have a positive effect on feeling really "grounded" at the piano.

You virtually never see a great pianist whose torso is inert. The torso wants to move with the music. As an experiment, play with a completely rigid torso and you will find it more difficult to play expressively.

It is important not to slouch or hunch over at the piano. While you'll see pianists who do hunch over, it can create back and neck problems over the years. How you sit will affect all aspects of your technique. See my earlier post entitled "First Do No Harm" for more about this important subject.

Thank Goodness I'm a Pianist!

 

As part of some health-related work I'm doing, I recently had to take a test which measures certain cognitive abilities. It involved a small hand-held device with a screen and two buttons, one on either side. On the screen were displayed one of two patterns; however, they were very similar. For one of the patterns, you were to push the button (either of the two, one for right-handed people, one for left-handed, presumably); for the other, you did not push any button. The images appeared on the screen for only a fraction of a second, so you had to be able to respond very quickly. They also flashed in quicker and quicker succession as the test went on. The test lasted 20 minutes.

Results were measured on two metrics. One was how many errors were made, meaning pushing the button when it shouldn't have been pushed, and vice versa. The other was your response time. The device measured your response time in hundredths of a second. It could also assess whether you got "bored" or weren't able to maintain your accuracy and speed throughout the 20 minutes.

On the morning I took this test I was feeling a bit tired and wasn't sure I would do my best. When the people administering the test compiled the results on the computer, they informed me that I had done "spectacularly" (their words). They said my response time was far better than average. (The score is based on your age group; I suspect that a 20-year-old who plays a lot of video games might have better response time than I do, at age 70.) In fact, they said my result was the best they had ever seen!

We discussed the results and they agreed that my high level was probably due to my training as a musician. As you've perhaps read, and heard me say in previous posts, learning to play a musical instrument, but especially piano, has powerful effects on the brain.

All I could say afterwards was "Thank goodness I'm a pianist!"

Fast playing

 

Many pieces in the piano literature are meant to be played fast, from moderately fast to lightning fast. Most students of the piano will want to work towards being able to play these pieces. However, a great majority of students will find they never get there. The main reason, in my view, is not an innate lack of ability, but rather that the technique which would allow for fast playing was never really established in the very beginning.

I recently read a blog post by someone who is a teacher and, I believe, may have a fairly large number of followers who read and heed his advice. His recent post was about "how to play fast." His main idea was that you set your metronome to a comfortable speed for the given piece, then move it up a notch at a time until you are able to play it fast. This "method" has been around for decades, if not centuries. When I was a child, I was told to do this, and that was 60 years ago! However, it doesn't work. At some point you will hit a speed which you can't manage, or at least with any accuracy. Or, you can do it, but you experience significant fatigue and even pain in your hands and arms. You don't magically acquire the proper technique just because you try to "fool" your body into going progressively faster a tiny amount at a time. The other problem with this is that using a metronome allows no possibility of any nuances of tempo and your musicality will suffer. Not to mention that this would be incredibly time-consuming. 

The other item mentioned in his blog was that, for very fast playing, you need to have your fingers stay closer to the keys. This should be obvious. If you want to go fast, you need maximum efficiency. When skiers do the slalom, they ski as close to the gates as possible; even an inch too far will cause a loss of perhaps only a 100th of a second, but that's the difference between winning and not winning. Likewise, a fast passage in piano requires that you have little or no extra unnecessary motions. The problem is that this particular blogger, and the vast majority of traditional teachers, will tell you to learn to lift your fingers high when you play. The traditional exercises such as Hanon and Czerny are supposed to be done with exaggerated finger movements. The idea was that this creates strength in the fingers. I don't believe it really creates any strength to speak of (you've heard me say before that those amazing little 6-year-old prodigies don't have much strength and yet they play the big pieces). But it also creates a technique with a total lack of efficiency. This blogger did say that, although you'd need to be close to the keys for fast playing, you could go back to higher fingers for slow playing.

It would be unrealistic, however, to think you can spend hundreds, even thousands, of hours playing with raised fingers, but then magically NOT do that when you want to play fast. Your habit of raised fingers will be too well engrained to change at will. Even if you think you are staying closer to the keys, your hands are still attempting to play in the way to which they are accustomed. The reason you may experience that pain and fatigue is due to the overuse of the small muscles of the fingers. Change to a more arm-based technique and you will have no pain.

If you play slow music with highly raised fingers, you will get an ugly, chopped up, "note-wise" sound that is devoid of subtle phrasing. I'm thinking of a gorgeous Beethoven slow movement or a Nocturne by Chopin; you want the whole thing (certainly the melody) to have a silky smooth tone, which you cannot achieve with separate, highly-raised fingers. 

Equally important, you cannot have two techniques, one for fast music and one for slow music. My approach is holistic. The principles that really work in one place will work everywhere. The fingers, hands, arms (even the torso) are used in synchrony for maximum efficiency and with individual finger movements "absorbed" into the larger motions of hands and arms. Not only will this type of technique enable you to play fast, it will make both slow and fast playing more beautiful. 

There is one other element to being able to play fast, one that almost all other teachers overlook. That is the auditory component. Most of the emphasis is on the physical, but if the auditory is weak, the hands and fingers will not be able to keep up. I like to say that "you can only play as fast as your can hear." Often, when I am having trouble with the speed of a passage -- or, I can play it fast but not with consistent accuracy -- I transpose it several times to strengthen what I call the "auditory image." After transposition, it invariably improves, even without additional "technical" work. When the ear really knows the music, the body follows. In addition to your efforts in acquiring "technique," it is imperative to remember that the ear really runs the show, and to continually work to improve your ear.

It really annoys and concerns me that many "teachers" are still repeating the same old ideas that have been around for so long and somehow are not questioned. (See my post "Are you using 300-year-old ideas?") Just as with sports, a lot has been learned about how to use our bodies to achieve given results. Playing the piano is quite athletic, if you think about it, and the training you receive should enable you to reach your maximum potential, both physically and musically. You may know of someone who thinks they followed all the traditional advice and still became quite accomplished; there are always those few exceptions. But for every one of those, there are thousands upon thousands of people who never achieved their desires at the piano. Question everything you are told, and see if the ideas really ring true.

Pedal

 

I've noticed that many bloggers about piano have posts about use of the pedal. So I will add my two cents on this subject as well.

Although people will give you explicit advice and instruction regarding the pedal, one thing to remember is that the pedal is not the same on all pianos. Pedaling on a concert grand piano is not the same as one a small upright. Not only does the pedal itself have a different feel and resistance, just as the action of the keys do, but the volume of sound produced also affects how you will pedal.

Inexperienced or poor pianists use the pedal to cover up a multitude of inadequacies in their technique. For example, if you cannot make the music sound legato with your hands, no amount of pedal will make it sound legato, at least to an astute listener. If pedal really could make up for poor technique with your hands and fingers, there would be a far greater number of good pianists than there actually are! 

With beginning students, I have them play with no pedal at all for quite a while. For intermediate and advanced students -- and for myself -- I advise learning a new piece entirely without pedal until the technical and musical challenges of the piece are starting to be mastered. While the pedal adds great beauty to the music, it also creates what I call a "blur in the auditory image." You may think you hear everything clearly, but a slight blurring of the notes can cause you to miss something important, such as the right balance between voices or between hands, slight rhythmic distortions, even an incorrect note. When you do add the pedal, you can focus your listening on the pedaling a bit more. 

Pedaling, to some extent, is a matter of taste. But there is a range that would be acceptable and enjoyable for the listener. Too much pedal and you have a blurry mess. Too little pedal and you have a dry performance which lacks resonance.

Some people believe, for example, that Bach should be played with little or no pedal, since his music would have been played on harpsichord in his day, which had no pedal. I disagree. No one would say to play Bach without dynamics, yet that is what the harpsichord had -- no ability to make the notes louder or softer. If you want Bach to sound "authentic," then play it on a harpsichord. But if you are playing it on the piano, you should use all the resources of the piano, including pedal. Of course, the pedaling will be quite different than you would use in, say, Debussy. Years of experience playing and listening to the enormous range of genres and periods within classical music will help you to know how to pedal for each of these.

One area of confusion for new piano students is the subject of the pedal markings in the music. There are three possibilities here: no pedal markings at all, pedal markings put in by the composer, and pedal markings put it by an "editor." The first situation, no pedal markings at all, does not mean you play without pedal; it simply means you will have to decide for yourself. The second situation, pedal markings original to the composer, should be taken seriously, but still need to be adapted for our modern pianos. There are places where Beethoven has the pedal held down for several measures, which might have sounded good on his piano, but would be way too much accumulation of sound on our modern pianos. The third situation, markings done by the editor, would be something you could take a look at to see if they make sense, but by no means should they be taken as "gospel." Remember, any markings -- dynamics, pedal, and especially fingering -- are just one person's opinion. If you don't even know anything about the editor (was he or she a great pianist?) then you don't need to feel compelled to follow their advice.

Another problem with many inexperienced or badly-taught students is the use of the "soft" pedal. Again, it is used to cover up the lack of ability to control the volume of sound with your hands and arms. This was never the intent of the so-called soft pedal, which is actually referred to as "una corda." Una corda means one string,  as it shifts the keyboard over so that the hammer hits only one string, instead of all three. This creates a more muted, or "flat" sound. Yes, it has less volume, but the difference in sound quality is the more important feature. Learn to create the softness you desire with your hands and arms only. The una corda should be used primarily where indicated by the composer. Debussy, for example, asks for its use with some frequency, as he wished to explore many "colors" of sound. Late Beethoven and others also call for it. However, even this you would have to take "with a grain of salt" because their pianos were far different than our modern pianos. I have noticed that some pianists keep their left foot on the una corda pedal at all times, which I believe is a mistake; they often depress it out of some reflex action and not because they really want that effect.

For either pedal, it is important to not have a "lead foot." Just as with your hands on the keys, you need to sensitize your foot (and leg) to the exact amount to depress the damper pedal. You'll notice that all pedals have some "waste," that is, even after the spot at which the dampers are lifted, the pedal can still be further depressed. That extra amount doesn't have any effect, so pressing the pedal all the way to the floor is a waste of energy, and can detract from the quickness and subtlety of the pedaling.

Who Can You Believe?

 

In just about any area of human endeavor you can think of, there are many differing opinions about what is right and what is wrong, or what is best and what is worse. Playing the piano and learning to play the piano are no exceptions. There is a wide range of ideas and opinions out there, and, understandably, it can be hard to know who and what to believe.

If someone tells you there is only one right way to do something, you may be suspicious, as probably you should be. Much of science is now accepted as fact -- gravity, for instance. Yet, who knows? Maybe one day we will learn that our understanding of gravity was all wrong. Other scientific theories are said to be proven, but they are always based on what we know up to this point in time. Science is always discovering new things. In many areas of life, we all choose what to believe, based on the information given to us, as well as our own observations and innate common sense.

Sometimes, science reverses itself completely. Nutrition is one area where this is especially true. A few decades ago, dietary fat was thought to be the cause of weight gain, and was to be avoided to a large degree. More recently, it is believed that fat is not the enemy we thought, but that excess carbohydrates are the problem. On the subject of fats, not that long ago we were told to eat margarine instead of butter; yet now, margarine and all trans fats are to be avoided completely. Back in the 50s, there were doctors who actually believed smoking was healthful! It's just amazing how much advice we received which we now know is not only incorrect, but harmful.

If you've been reading this blog, you know that I have very strong opinions on how to approach learning to play the piano. And I often reference other opinions which are in direct opposition to my approach. In fact, there are probably more people (specifically, piano teachers) who believe the ideas that are opposite of mine. You might be inclined to believe others instead of me, based on the pure number of people who believe and promote those ideas. However, as we've seen with areas such as nutrition, the number of people who believe something does not make it fact, or even desirable.

When I first began studying with my teacher, Joseph Prostakoff, in 1975, after already having played the piano for 18 years and having received my degree in piano from Manhattan School of Music, he said the following: "Many of the things I tell you and show you will seem diametrically opposed to what you have always been told and previously learned. You may have a lot of doubts about what I tell you. Yet, since you have come to me, you must put your trust in me 100% and follow my advice without reservation. Then, after a reasonable period of time, if you believe that what I have shown you is not true, or does not work for you, you are free to discontinue the lessons, and we will part friends." I saw then, and still see, the wisdom of this. What would be the point of going to someone for help and instruction, and then not doing what they instruct? In my case, I sought Mr. Prostakoff out precisely because his approach was different, and I did not feel that what I had done up to that point had worked for me. So I had no trouble accepting his terms. Yet... there was still resistance. Unconsciously, I still held on to old ideas. He was incredibly perceptive, and could always point out when I was resisting. He would say, "Why are you fighting me?" Gradually, over the years, my resistance melted away. My playing (and my teaching) changed in profound ways. I often say that I simply would not be playing at all now, 45 years later, had I not studied with him. With my previous approaches, practicing was often like banging my head against the wall. After Mr. Prostakoff, everything fell into place.

Recently I was reading some blog posts of someone who teaches piano, and who, I suspect, may have a fairly large number of followers of his blog. In post after post, he talks about finger strength, and methods of strengthening fingers. He is not alone; this is still a widely accepted belief. Yet, there are many things which poke a hole in this theory, such as, how petite child prodigies play challenging pieces of Chopin and Brahms, when they clearly have not had enough time to develop finger strength. Or how jazz players, who did not grow up with a traditional approach of doing finger exercises, still play with dazzling speed and power. Or, how when you play rapid-fire octaves, your fingers are not actually doing the work at all. Before swallowing any idea hook line and sinker, ask yourself whether there are observations you have made that seem to belie that idea.

My approach to playing and learning is a "gestalt" -- an integrated whole. Within my methods, everything is consistent. There is no case where some aspect of technique I teach you will contradict another aspect or technique. Contradictions in what the teacher tells you could be a sign that something is not right or true. If you suspect that your teacher is not right for you, or, if you have no teacher but are following principles you learned some other way, it is time to seek out something new. When your instinct tells you you have found the right teacher, give yourself over to him or her 100%. Then observe your progress. If you are happy with your progress, you can feel confident that you made a good decision. If not, it may require another search. Piano is not something where "any teacher" will do. You might think you will still learn to play, even with a mediocre teacher, but it is more likely you will find it frustrating and quit. (To be fair, people get frustrated and quit with a good teacher as well, simply because learning to play the piano well requires patience and some "grit," and some people just aren't ready for that commitment.)

If you are studying the piano and feel you are not achieving the mastery you desire -- and perhaps, more importantly, the pleasure -- it may be time to question your beliefs and assumptions about how to play the piano. Although I can't tell you who to believe, I hope this has helped you to know when to accept, and when to question, the ideas and beliefs that other people will try to assure you are "true." Just because those ideas have been around for a long time does not mean they are correct. And sometimes, the longer the idea has been around, the more we should question it.

Stayin' Alive

 

Not all of you reading this may be old enough to get my reference to the song "Stayin' Alive" from the movie Saturday Night Fever from 1977. "Staying alive" is a concept I use a lot. It means that you stay physically alert, with a feeling of energy running through you.

How does this apply to playing the piano? At all times while playing, whether in fast or slow music, you are aiming to have the feeling of the energy flowing. This means you are physically in motion from note to note, chord to chord, and so on. It is, of course, possible to play a note, then another note, without connecting them via physical movement, but if you do, you will get a sound that we immediately identify as a beginner sound, that is, mechanical and disconnected. In fact, mechanical and disconnected is the hallmark of a beginner's sound.

When you watch a great pianist, you will notice that their hands, arms, and even torso are constantly moving, even if it's only slightly. To an advanced pianist, it feels quite un-natural to just come to a standstill between notes. Many people (non-pianists) have said to me "I thought that was just for show!" There are certainly some pianists who overdo it, possibly for show. But it is inherently natural to want to be in motion. In fact, I believe you can't have emotion without motion.

The skeptics would say this can't be true. They would say that when the hammer hits the string and produces the sound, it doesn't "know" whether you have been in motion or not. This seems logical. However, we know that everything we do physically affects the sound. If you want to play extremely softly, you are doing something physically quite different from what you do when you play fortissimo. There is a wide range of nuance of "touch," as pianists call it, which creates the infinite range of sounds. And all of those nuances are created by something you've done physically.

This all has to do with the "Law of Inertia," which says: bodies in motion tend to stay in motion and bodies at rest tend to stay at rest. If you play a note from the state of inertia, there must be a tiny jolt of energy to get the arm/hand/finger moving. If you return to an inert state, even if only for a nanosecond, and then play another note following the first one, another tiny jolt is needed to overcome inertia. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to make sure these "jolts" were 100% even. If they are not even, then those notes would vary in dynamic level, and even timing, however minutely. While it may be imperceptible to the untrained ear, a musician will hear that those tones were disconnected. On the other hand, if your body (torso, arm, hand, fingers) are smoothly flowing, those separate tones will be heard as if they are on a continuum. When you are already in motion, you have momentum, and there are no individual jolts of energy to disturb the flow. Once you have momentum, it is easier to stay in momentum, provided you don't accidentally fall into inertia. (Isn't it more enjoyable to drive on a road where you can go a long way without stopping, as opposed to a street where you have to brake at every corner for a stop sign? It also uses less gas to go continuously, because all the little "jolts" to get moving again require more gas. I think this is a good analogy.)

I know this may all sound a little "New Age," but the laws of physics really do support this. You can experiment with this yourself. Play a series of tones (five is enough, or you can do a scale) in one hand. With the other hand, hold your arm so that it restricts the movement. You will still be able to play, but it will feel stiff, because of the inertia between tones. Now, play it again (remove your other hand) and try to achieve a "sweep" of the arm, carrying the hand from first note to last. You will hear an immediate difference. I should also add that playing the first way, with minimal movement, doesn't really feel very enjoyable, and in fact feels antithetical to idea of musicality. 

It is much easier to play with momentum when the music is fast. It is less likely that your physical mechanism will fall into inertia in between tones. However, when you play very slowly, you are likely to become inert. My teacher used to say "Beware long notes." If you just "sit" on a long note,  the next thing you play will have to have that little jolt. For this reason, it is extremely difficult for many people to play a beautiful slow movement of a sonata with the musical expression they desire. They say they feel the beauty of the music but can't convey it and don't understand why. I have heard this comment hundreds of times. Inertia is the reason.

Whether fast or slow, we want our playing to have momentum. A river may be rushing fast, with lots of rapids, or it may be slow, moving majestically. But either way, it has momentum to carry forward.

On sure-fire way to fall into inertia is to put your hand(s) in your lap. If you have a passage where one hand doesn't play for a few measures, don't put your hand in your lap. In a sense it will "fall asleep" and need to be woken up again. If you don't feel you like it hovering in mid-air, then let it hover lightly on your lap, but never actually rest.

Violinists can achieve flow or momentum much more easily than we pianists. They cannot just plunk the blow on the string and make a sound. Rather, the bow is constantly in motion, even if playing one long tone. Wind instrument players must keep the flow of their breath continuous. It seems like only pianists have the trap of inertia.

I work on this a lot with my students. Of course it takes many years and a great deal of dedication to train yourself to always be in motion, and not just any motion, but the ways that will produce the best results. But if you have no teacher to guide you, just try to continually remind yourself to move, and not just "sit." A good place to begin is with the torso. People think you just play with hands and fingers, but the torso needs to be active and alert. I can always tell when a student is going to play more musically, because I see his/her torso begin to move, even before playing the first note.

Ideally, this constant flow or motion should carry you from the very first note of the piece to the very last. Even if you are playing a piece with multiple movements, you can try to keep your energy flowing between movements, through the silence. I have found that when I do this, the audience continues to listen (you can just tell when you have their attention). If I "relax" and become inert, so do they. 

Some "experts" will say that you just need to strengthen and train your fingers to play perfectly evenly and that will achieve that "connected" sound. Sorry, but no amount of strength will do this. (How would strength even apply to playing a delicate, ephemeral passage in Debussy?) If it were just a matter of strength, many people could do it, if they put in the hours, like going to a gym. But playing beautifully is much more subtle than that. Remember to always "stay alive."

Hand size and shape

 

Our hands come in all sizes. Some people think there is an ideal hand size for pianists, but this is not the case. There have been great pianists with large hands and great pianists with small hands. Look at many of the incredible modern-day young pianists from Asia, and you'll see their hands are fairly small. And of course there are, and have been, child prodigies who have small hands yet play all the challenging pieces. There have been pianists with short chubby fingers and pianists with long tapered fingers. Rachmaninoff had abnormally large hands due to a genetic condition. The basics of piano technique are largely the same no matter what the size of the hand, though there will be minor adjustments that may need to be made.

When you think about it, our hands are not really "designed" for the piano at all. The fingers are all different lengths, and the thumb is entirely different, yet the piano keys are all the same size and laid out evenly. It is a miracle we can play as we do. 

Although our hands have basically the same shape, there are differences in this area too. For example, I  have a slightly larger than normal space between my fourth and fifth fingers, which makes using the fourth finger instead of the third more comfortable for me on large chords and arpeggios, in some cases.

This is why I am opposed to the idea of having the fingering written into the scores. In many cases the fingering is added by an editor (and what do we know about the editor's skill level? -- probably not much). Even if the fingering is the composer's, your hand may differ quite a lot from his, and the fingering he used may not work for you. 

We also have differences in the normal curvature of our hand. If you relax your hand with the back of the hand on your lap, you will find your normal curvature. No one has hands that are absolutely flat when relaxed, yet many (including myself) have hands that are almost flat. If you had piano lessons years ago (and unfortunately, even now), you were probably told to "curve your fingers." An illustration in one of the commonly-used beginner books shows a hand curved over a tennis ball. This is patently false, and if you try to adhere to this, you will limit the technique you can achieve. You can't possibly curve your fingers when playing even an octave, and certainly not when playing a large chord with four or five notes. The idea of curved fingers originated in the early days of keyboard music when the harpsichord was the primary keyboard instrument. The physical nature of the harpsichord, and the music that was written for it, is worlds away from the modern piano, and music of composers since Beethoven. This is one of the "300-year-old ideas" that I refer to in my earlier post of that name. When you play, you should ideally be using the natural curvature of your hand. If you need to play a very large chord, or the span of a tenth, for example, you will need to open your hand even more, which may make your hand quite flat, though still relaxed. There is no situation I can think of where you would want to, or need to, curve your fingers as if over a ball. 

I recently saw a documentary on the late pianist Vladimir Horowitz. I was again struck by how flat his fingers were when he played. Yet he clearly had huge technique. This flies in the face of what your grandmother's piano teacher would have told you, and sadly, many teachers nowadays as well, regarding curved fingers.

[When I was young, my teachers admonished me to curve my fingers. Therefore, I could never grow my nails even a little bit long, which was very disappointing. If the teachers heard the slightest click of my nails, I was told to go home and cut them even shorter. Later in life, when I learned how to play in a way more natural for my hands, I was able to grow my nails. If you are hearing your nails clicking, it is probably because you are over-curved. You want to be playing on the soft pad of your finger, not the nail tip.]

Another misconception about our hands relates to finger strength. For many years it was believed that you would need to strengthen your fingers through specifically designed exercises in order to achieve good piano technique. This, too, is another 300-year-old idea that has been thoroughly debunked. Again, I would point to child prodigies and petite adults, who do not have significant muscle strength in their hands. Along with this was the idea of "finger independence," that is, training the fingers to move independently of one another. If you play this way, the only thing you will achieve is a stilted sound (what I call "note-y"). Technique has more to do with speed and agility than it does with strength. You have all the strength you need in your arms, which is where the power comes from, for instance, for fortissimo playing. In fact, if you "bulk up" your hands with strength training, you will limit your flexibility, as well as your reach. 

Some of my students who have small hands have asked if there is anything they can do to stretch their hands. The answer is no. But you can learn to open and relax them. Just as with yoga and other forms of body work, you can learn to "let go" of the muscles in your hand so you don't hold them so tightly. I can reach a tenth, even though my hands are not large, because, as I like to joke, "I have worked very hard to be this relaxed." If you try to stretch, you will likely injure yourself. If your hands are truly too small to play a particular chord, the chord can be quickly rolled or broken, or a note can be omitted. There are lots of ways to use a little "smoke and mirrors," as many pianists with small hands have done.

Everyone who has worked towards "finger independence" has no doubt heard about the so-called problem with the fourth finger. The fourth finger has less independence than the others due to the nature of the tendons between the fingers. Many pianists have tried to figure out ways to overcome this, and some injured themselves in the process. Schumann injured is hand permanently in the quest to solve the "problem of the fourth finger." The real solution, and the only solution, is for all the fingers of the hand, and the hand itself and the arm, to work together. Not only will this achieve more beautiful playing, it was also enable you to avoid strain and injury.

If you are attempting to learn to play the piano and think that the problems you may be encountering are because your hands are too small, or the wrong shape, I encourage you to find a teacher who can support you in learning to play in a way that works with your hands, not against them.

Time Signatures and what they convey

 

All beginning students of all instruments learn about "time signatures" in the very earliest lessons. But I find that virtually all the early piano books, and many teachers, don't really explain all the information, beyond the mechanics, that time signatures are meant to convey. You might think it's simple enough.... but I have seen so much confusion around this subject, I feel compelled to explain.

The time signature appears at the very beginning of every piece. It's essential that you know it before starting to learn to play the piece. If you are somewhat experienced, you'd figure it out by just seeing the music, even if the time signature were missing, but nevertheless the composer would not omit such an important piece of information.

When you are a beginner, most of your pieces are in 4 - 4 time. (The numbers are actually written vertically. It is important to note here that my use of the dash is not actually the correct notation. Limitations of this software don't allow me to show the time signature with the numbers stacked vertically, with no line between them, which would be the correct way. See below). You learn that the top "4" means 4 beats per measure and the bottom "4" indicates that the quarter note is the unit of the beat. In a piece with this time signature, you will likely encounter one or more whole notes, which get 4 beats each. Later on, you may have a piece in 3 - 4 time; now there are only 3 beats per measure. The quarter note is still the unit of the beat, but you won't be seeing any whole notes, since those have 4 beats.

This might seem a little confusing to the beginner. Why would you have three quarters in a measure, when 3 quarters don't add up to a whole?

The answer is because our musical notation for rhythm was based on the idea of 4. If you go back to my early posts on rhythm, you will see that I use the analogy of a log, which you are chopping in 4 equal pieces. These pieces can be further "chopped" to give eighth notes, sixteenth notes, etc. This is a good representation of the 4 - 4 time signature. Our notation didn't evolve with the idea of three beats.  It is, however, very adaptable and can be used to show 3 - 4, 2 - 4 and others.

When I explain time signatures to my students, I prefer to say that they are telling you the "rhythmic organization" of the piece of music. It may be "organized" around a "log" cut in 4 pieces, or in 3, etc.

Eventually the student will see a piece in so-called "cut time," which is 2 - 2 (again, the dash is not correct). The bottom number 2 indicates that the half-note is the unit of the beat. But when the student looks at the music, it looks identical to 4 - 4. There are still 4 quarters in a measure. Why did the composer choose to write it in 2 - 2 rather than 4 - 4? The composer is telling you to "feel" it in two beats. In other words, there are fewer emphasis points in 2 - 2 than there would be in 4 - 4. Imagine you are marching to music for a marching band; you want to hear 4 strong beats, each syncing with a step. But if the piece had more of a graceful, flowing nature, you'd want fewer strong emphases. The "math" may be the same as 4 - 4, but the musical interpretation of the piece is different. This is an example of why it is important that the teacher explain the intent behind the time signatures, not just the math.

A real source of confusion comes when you get 6 - 8.  The 6 - 8 time signature arose because the composer wanted the beat (quarter note) to divide in 3. The normal division is in 2, since, again, the notation evolved around the divisions of even numbers, 2 and 4. When the beat divides in 3, it is shown as a triplet. The triplet has to be marked as such, because the division in 2 would otherwise be assumed. If the composer wants triplets for the whole piece, it is cumbersome to have to indicate it everywhere, so the idea of 6 - 8 arose. It would seem to tell you there are 6 beats in the measure and the eighth note gets the beat. However, we would never feel it as 6 beats. We would feel it as two main beats (like 2 - 4), but the beat divides in 3 rather than the normal two. The two main beats is the important point to stress. In 3 - 4 you feel 3 main beats; in 6 - 8 you feel two. A waltz would have to be in 3 - 4 time, but a jig (or gigue) must be in 6 - 8. If the teacher does not explain this, the student would have no way to understand it. Sadly, I have actually seen incorrect information in books. I once saw, in print, the explanation that "6 - 8 was the same as 3 - 4 but faster." Not true in the slightest since the time signature tells you nothing about the actual tempo (speed) of the piece (see below).

There are also time signatures such as 9 - 8 and 12 - 8, which have the beats divide in three just as with 6 - 8.

As you can see, I've gone to some pains to write the time signatures without the slash which you often see when they are written about, but not in the actual score itself. They are not fractions and have nothing to do with fractions. In the score the numbers are written vertically, but there is no line between them, as there would be if they were representing fractions. If time signatures were fractions, then 4 - 4 would equal 1 and 3-2- would equal 1.5 and those number have nothing to do with what is represented in those time signatures. And 3 - 4 and 6 - 8 would be the same, whereas, as we have seen, they are completely different. Again, I recently read a book about music and the brain. The author is a pianist and clearly quite knowledgeable about music, but even she made the mistake of referring to time signatures as fractions.

Which brings me to another misconception about time signatures by beginning students. The time signature does NOT tell you the tempo, or speed, of the piece. A piece in a given time signature can be a fast piece or a slow piece. An indication of the tempo is given at the top of the score with terms such as Allegro or Andante or Largo. (There is no exact speed for these either, which is where the musician has an opportunity for her/his own interpretation.) 

Again, if you think of the time signature as the rhythmic organization, you won't be confused. If your teacher cannot explain time signatures to you, or calls them fractions, you will know that the teacher doesn't actually understand them.

Going Away and Coming Home

 

The phenomenon that I call "going away and coming home" is present in all Western music. (It may be true of other culture's music but I cannot speak to that with any authority.) Going away and coming home is operating on all levels, micro and macro.

"Home" refers to the feeling of being settled. It might be compared to the period at the end of a sentence. "Away" refers to being unsettled, the feeling that more is to come, like a comma in a sentence. The interplay of home and away creates the feeling of movement, the feeling that the music is pulling you forward, its "dynamic" quality. It also gives music its structure. 

You are probably already aware that our music is tonal (with very few exceptions), that is to say, it is based on a scale. A scale is a subset of all available tones, and a scale has specific relationships of the tones to each other.

The scale itself is a perfect illustration of home and away. Play the first note of a major scale. (I'll call the notes of the scale 1, 2, 3, etc.) Then play 1 to 2. As you listen, does the 2 have more energy to move forward, or does it want to fall back to 1? I think you'll find it's the latter. Then play 1-2-3 and ask the same thing. You'll probably agree that 3 has more forward momentum than 2, but not enough; it, too, wants to fall backward to 2 and then 1. Now play 1-2-3-4. It's starting to feel like it finally has some forward momentum, but 4 also very easily can just relax back to 3. Now play 1-2-3-4-5. I think you'll hear immediately that with 5 we have really gotten somewhere; it feels like you have reached the crest of a hill. The note 5 really doesn't want to fall back but has a drive to go forward. As you play 1-2-3-4-5-6, the pull to go forward is stronger still, and when you play 7, the urge to go to 8 is extremely strong. (The 7th note of the scale is sometimes called the "leading tone" for this reason.) If we call the notes 1 and 8 "home" (which they must be, since they begin and end the scale), the note 5 is as "far away" as you can go before you are returning home again. Although the scale appears to be linear when you look at it, musically it is more of a circle. The tones 1 and 5 are are opposite poles of the circle. (For more about the scale itself, see my post "The Cosmic Mystery of the Musical Scale.")

It makes sense that if the scale (micro level) embodies home and away, then everything built on the scale will also have home and away.

As you might have guessed, the importance of the tones 1 (I) and 5 (V) are everywhere in our music, and specifically, the chords built on I and V. If you take the simplest of songs, let's say "London Bridge is Falling Down," you will see it is harmonized with just two chords, I and V. This is because every piece of music, no matter how short or simple, must have home (I) and away (V). Having only "home" would be boring indeed, and having only "away" would be almost impossible since, without home, away cannot even be recognized as being away and would be quite disorienting.

While everything other than 1(I) is away, 5 (V) is the most away. The chords of II, III, IV etc. are also away, but the strongest feeling of away is V. You'll find that almost all our music ends with the V and then the I chord. (The remaining ones end with IV to I, which is also a 5 to 1 relationship, but the other direction in the scale and in the circle of fifths; see my explanation in earlier posts.)

On the macro level, sections of music exhibit home-away-home as well. A tremendous amount of our music is based on the A-B-A form. The A section functions as home, where you start, the B as away, and then A as the return to home. Songs have one or more verses (section A), then usually the chorus, or "bridge" (section B), and then end with the verse (A). The simplest classical pieces will probably be A-B-A, and the B section is either different in its thematic material, or it is in a different key, or both. Going to another key is definitely felt as "going away" and the return to the original key has the satisfying feeling of coming home. Larger musical works such as sonatas, symphonies, etc. are all based on some variant of A-B-A. There are some exceptions, of course, but composers (and we listeners) have found this so satisfying that we just don't seem to be able to abandon it.  When you consider that a piece of music unfolds over time (as opposed to a painting where you see everything at once), it is imperative that the music have a structure, or architecture, that can be discerned by the listener. A-B-A does the trick.

I find it endlessly fascinating that, regardless of the complexity of a given piece of music, the going away and coming home is always operating, always pulling us forward. You can study all sorts of complex "music theory" in books or classes, but if you understand "going away and coming home," you'll understand a great deal about music.

One of my pet peeves

 

In my previous post I referred to the term "accidentals." This term is used to refer to notes which are outside the scale in which that the piece (or section of the piece) is written. I don't know how the term "accidental" originated, but it is clearly a misnomer, because they are not accidents.  Any time I hear someone use this term, I just cringe, and cannot resist explaining why it is such a misleading term. It is one of my real pet peeves.

If you are playing in the key of C Major, for example, and encounter an F# (F sharp), people might call that an accidental, because F# does not occur in the key (scale) of C. So what is it doing there? Here are some reasons.

1. The F# may appear because the piece is modulating (moving) to another key, probably the key of G, which does have an F# in its scale. If the piece is going to stay in the new key for a significant amount of time, the composer may write a new key signature for this section; but if it is just "passing through," so to speak, the key signature won't change, and the F# will just be notated as needed. The sudden presence of sharps, flats or natural signs can alert you that the piece is changing keys. Virtually all music will have a key change at some point. The exceptions would be a very short song or a piece written for beginners. A large piece will have several key changes.

2. A chromatic scale would, by definition, need to notate using addition sharps, and/or flats. A chromatic scale is one consisting of all 12 notes within the octave. While our music is not generally based on the chromatic scale (there have been some "experiments" with this), there may be a passage which is chromatic in nature. Not only will the scale be used, but melody and chord patterns which are chromatically-based are common in much of our music. Chopin, for instance, wouldn't be Chopin without it.

3. If you were to see the notes G-F#-G, for example, it could be part of a scale-like passage, but the G, instead of going to F (natural), goes to F#, which is its "chromatic neighbor." The rest of the passage may stay strictly in the scale, but it could start off with a brief "visit" to the chromatic neighbor. Chromatic neighbors would also be frequently used in a trill or mordent. The chromatic tone, as opposed to the scale tone, lends the trill a bit of dissonance, which gives it the intensity that is often the purpose of the trill. Try playing a trill that is marked with the chromatic tone with the scale tone instead, and you'll hear it sounds flat and bland.

4. Secondary dominants. If you are in the key of C, your final chords (of the whole piece and/or a section) will likely be G7 to C. This is because G is the dominant, or V (five) in the key of C. One could call this the "strongest" ending (or cadence). The G7 may be preceded by a D7 chord. The D7 chord contains an F#. The D7 is called a "secondary dominant" chord, in that it is V(five) of V(five), or dominant of the dominant. The F# in this case is not signaling a modulation to another key nor creating dissonance. It is a strong ending, using the secondary dominant to pull us toward the V7 chord, which, in turn, pulls us to the final I(one) chord.

These are just a few examples (there are others), but they represent very distinct reasons for the existence of non-scale tones. Unfortunately, I hear teachers (and their students) just lump these all together as "accidentals," which does nothing to help the student understand the reasons for their being there. The whole subject of tonality (being in a key) and movement between keys is central to all music in the Western world. If you don't understand tonality, you can still enjoy music, but you can't really understand it. Using ambiguous terms such as "accidentals" does nothing to further the student's understanding, and, in fact, creates wrong impressions.

A few years ago I was having this discussion with one of my 12-year-old students. He agreed with me completely and we decided to come up with a better term for non-scale tones, which we would use exclusively. He came up with the term "purposefuls." I think it's just perfect, and I urge you, whenever you see one or must refer to it, to use the term purposeful.

Ear Training

 

If you've been reading this blog, you know that I emphasize the importance of the ear and of training the ear in order to be a good (or great) musician. To some of you, this will be an obvious fact. To others, especially if you are a beginning student of music, you may not understand why. You may say "Don't I just play the notes I see written on the page? What does ear have to do with it?"

Suppose I wanted to become an artist, or, at least, to develop some skill at art. I am instructed to draw a picture of a tree. Clearly, I have been seeing trees all my life, but the best I would be able to come up with is some sort of stick figure of a tree. (I have no talent at art!) If I really want to draw a tree with any degree of realism, I would have to spend many hours really looking at trees, not casually, but with a higher level of attention, in order to see the intricacies of their bark, their branches, their leaves. In other words, I would need to develop my eye. Every great visual artist must have a highly-developed eye, the ability to see details the average person does not.

Likewise, we have all been hearing and listening to music all our lives, but if you ask the average person to sit down at the piano and play Happy Birthday, for example, they cannot do it, and in fact, probably don't have a clue how to even start. It is not an issue of physical skill -- they could try to do it using just one finger -- but it is a lack of ear. As with the tree analogy, they will need to spend many hours listening to music in a whole different way in order to hear what is actually happening. Luckily, with music, you can listen as you play, and play as you listen, so you get automatic and immediate feedback as to whether your ear is getting better at it. 

It is true that it is possible to just learn to read music, learn how to play the notes you see, and achieve some meaningful level of skill. But without developing the ear as well, you will always be limited. The greatest musicians have the greatest ears. The highest levels of mastery only come with the highest level of ear sensitivity. To give one of the clearest examples: people marvel at the fact that Beethoven was able to compose some of his greatest masterpieces while he was deaf. He did not need to hear the music in the physical realm; he heard everything, down to the smallest detail, in his ear.

One way that you will be limited if you neglect developing your ear is in the area of memory. Hundreds of people, from beginning students to those who are quite advanced and even doing performances, have said to me, "I just can't memorize!" That is because they have primarily muscle memory and not ear memory. (See my post on Memory.) You don't forget how to sing Happy Birthday, even if you haven't sung it in months or years, because it is "in you ear." While a piece you play on the piano is light-years more complex than Happy Birthday, the concept still applies. 

Everyone is born with some degree of ear. Some people can play by ear incredibly well at a very young age. At the other end of the spectrum, some people say they are "tone deaf." (I do not believe anyone is truly tone deaf, but their ear can be very weak.) Anyone, no matter what level, can continually work on their ear and make it stronger. (OK, maybe not Beethoven.....)

So how do you train your ear? I will outline three basic ways, for beginners through advanced students.

1. Beginners: I start all my students with playing by ear. (Most teachers start right in with reading from the first lesson, which I strongly disagree with. They probably can't play by ear themselves, so they don't know how to teach it.) You take the simplest of songs, starting with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and figure it out on the piano. I guide you a bit, if you are struggling, but you still have to do the work yourself. Some people can do it easily, some really have trouble. It doesn't matter; as long as you keep working on it, you will "hear" more than you did before, now that you are listening so intently, as opposed to casually. Then we add chords (more complex and more difficult to hear) and continue on to more and more complex songs. (Basic knowledge of theory will help in your ability to find the correct chords, though the ear is still more important.) In my view, this is the most fun way to train your ear. Why do repetitive drills when you can play actual music? It is a great joy to be able to hear a song, say, on the radio, and just go to the piano and play it, even if it's a simple rendition. Many people just assume they can't do this, but the truth is, they've probably never really tried.

2. Intermediate: If you've ever been in a choir, you know that some people are able to see a line of music notation and sing it right off. (In a professional level choir, everyone would be required to have this skill; in an amateur choir, people might largely learn by rote, that is, just listening and imitating.) This is a high form of ear development. You cannot see your vocal chords nor do you know how to manipulate them to make a given sound. Only your ear can direct them how to contract to sing a given note. When you are a toddler and begin to sing, no one can show you how; the voice and the ear have a direct connection, and the voice sings what the ear has directed. If you want to learn how to "sight-sing," as it is called, you will need to start with interval drills. I write out the scale (a major scale, to start), like this: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. You sing the scale, up and down. Then write out various patterns, such as 1-2-3-4-5-3-1, or 1-3-5-6-4-2-1, and sing them. (Later on you can do this with the minor scale as well.) There would be hundreds of patterns you can do with these eight notes. I use numbers, rather than the old "solfege" system (do, re, mi, etc.) because the numbers make the relationship between the tones very obvious. It is easier to recognize that 3 and 5 are a skip away, but not as easy using "mi" and "so." After some amount of doing these drills, take written music with which you are unfamiliar, and sing the main melody line. A Hymnal is great for this (select the ones you don't already know). You can check yourself, if you think you've gotten off, by playing a note or two on the piano, but you must not play the melody on the piano first -- then you'd just be imitating. Continue, progressing to more and more complex music. Your ear will also need to learn how to hear non-scale notes (so-called "accidentals" -- see my next post for more on this term). It should also be noted that you will need to have learned to read and understand rhythmic notation, which is a subject for another post. Although sight-singing does not address the ability to hear chords, in other words, multiple notes at once, it nevertheless strengthens the ability to hear intervals (relationships), which will help with chords indirectly.

3. Advanced. If your ear is quite good, and even if you have "perfect pitch" (also known as "absolute pitch"), which is considered the highest form of ear development, you can still strengthen your ear through transposing. I happen to have perfect pitch and for years, even during my four years at a conservatory, I was actually told there wasn't much more I needed to do. However, after I finished school and found my REAL teacher, Joseph Prostakoff, I discovered, despite my "good ear," that there were many things I couldn't do. The answer was to transpose. The reason transposing is so powerful is that it makes you hear all the relationships between tones, which is what actually makes the music, not the tones themselves. I take all my pieces and play them in other keys. I force myself to do it as much as possible relying only on the ear (as opposed to calculating by eye using the page). Start with very easy pieces and keep moving on to more challenging ones. Of course it is necessary to go slowly, and it can be quite a struggle at first, but as your ear strengthens, it get easier. I guarantee that, after transposing once or twice, you will know the piece better than if you played it 50 times through in the original key. And, after transposing 10 or more times, you will probably not have any trouble memorizing it.

For Intermediate and Advanced, you can, and should, still continue with playing by ear.

I regard these three methods as the best way to develop your ear. Plus, they are the most rewarding, because you are playing (or singing) actual music. 

It can be tempting to take the easy way out and just play the notes you read from the page and not bother with ear training. But if that's all there were to it, there would be many more good musicians than there really are. Just as the visual artist needs to see subtle shadings of color and texture, the musician needs to hear the complexities and subtleties of tone and rhythm, which goes far beyond just "playing notes." And for that, you need a highly-developed ear.