Is it normal to get "rusty" at the piano?

 

Many people will say, if they've been away from the piano and from practicing for a while, that they are "rusty." It is assumed they mean that some of their skills or fluency have slipped backwards a bit. They could mean their physical agility (technique), or mental abilities (such as memory), or both. 

Is this normal? Should we assume this will happen to everyone who doesn't get to practice for a week, a month, a year?

If you have an injury, say a broken leg, and you don't use the leg for several months, the muscles will atrophy somewhat, and you will have to build them back up again. So you could be "rusty" at walking or running. The same would be true of your arms or hands. But short of muscle atrophy, it's hard to think of a scenario where your hands would get rusty, because we use them for so much and in so many ways. Yes, the piano uses them in different ways than other activities, but the muscles are still there. So what is really happening when you feel rusty?

First, we have to consider how long you've been playing the piano. If you're a beginner, and you lay off practicing for a month, you may slip backwards a noticeable amount. This has nothing to do with your actual muscles, but rather with the neural pathways in your motor cortex. The neural pathways, or "wiring," as I like to call it, have not been very well established, so they disappear. Everything that happens -- every skill you develop -- is happening in the brain. See my post titled "It's All (Neuro)Logical." When a new motor skill is performed with some degree of repetition, the pathway for that becomes more solid, more permanent. If you're a beginner, you just haven't had enough time to lay down a lot of wiring yet, so it's not surprising that it seems to disappear. 

If you've been at the piano for a number of years, certain skills or techniques, the ones you've used over and over again, should be pretty well established. So if you were able to play a scale fluently, for example, you shouldn't be losing that skill or getting rusty. 

Pianists who've been playing their whole lives -- decades, that is -- should not really get rusty at all. Our memory of a certain piece may slip if we don't play it often, but the wiring is still there; it just needs to be "woken up." 

There is one big caveat here. If your technique is faulty, that is, you've learned to play in a way which is not natural for the hands and arms, you will get rusty more easily. If you ask your hands to do something which is awkward and causes strain, they will manage to do it, but they won't retain that skill as readily. This may include playing with excess strain and tension, lifting the fingers too high, and many other movements that rely on muscle strength rather than coordination. That is why you'd have to keep practicing that skill over and over, even when you thought you'd mastered it. But unfortunately, if that skill falls off and you have no other skill to replace it, you are left with nothing. 

Many students learn their pieces at a very superficial level. They think if they have developed the muscle memory for the piece, that they "know" it. But to really know the music at a deeper level requires knowing it at the auditory level, meaning you just really know how it sounds. You may think "of course I know how it sounds!" But try transposing it, or even just a snippet of it, or even just the melody, and you will see that your ear doesn't really know it. Constantly working on the ear, through transposing and other means, will enable you to know your music at a much deeper level. Muscle memory is the first "memory" to be acquired, and the first to be lost. Ear memory can last forever.

And last, but certainly not least, you must always play with emotional involvement. Many studies have shown that we learn faster (any subject, not just music) and remember longer when we are emotionally engaged with the material. Having your emotions involved sort of super-charges the brain. If you play mechanically, thinking you just need to "learn the notes," you will find the learning is at a superficial level, and you will not retain it. 

If you find yourself using the excuse that you haven't practiced in a while and are "rusty," you may need to re-evaluate some, or all, your methods of learning.

How's that working out for you? (Your practice methods, I mean)

 

The piano is a challenging instrument to learn to play, and monumentally challenging to learn to master. I admire anyone who takes up the challenge of learning to play the piano. A child may take up the piano but probably doesn't know, or give much thought to, what they are really undertaking. Adults, however, realize (hopefully) that they are in for some serious work ahead. Yes, it will be fun and rewarding (which are the best reasons to do it) if done with the right attitude, but also will take effort.

Naturally, we want to know that our efforts are "paying off." 

Unfortunately, many people quit after trying for a while, because they just feel they aren't "getting anywhere." They struggle to play the simplest of music; they spend many hours at the piano but still make the same "mistakes." They feel maybe they have made a little progress but after a short time away from the piano they are back to square one. And many other such reasons. They often feel they should just quit because, apparently, they just don't have the "talent" for it. (But there are also those who will tell you that talent has little to do with it, but rather, it's just about putting in the hours -- the "ten thousand hours" philosophy.)

Everyone will bring a differing degree of natural ability, talent, if you will, to their endeavors. But I say, if you love music, and have a strong desire to learn to play, forget about talent. And if you are an adult, you cannot plan to spend ten thousand hours at it either. So what's left? It's all about working smart.

If you are trying to play the piano and feel you aren't making progress, I recommend the following:

1. If you are doing it on your own, you really need to get a teacher. But not just any teacher. Interview as many teachers are you can. Describe the exact problems you are having and evaluate their answers. If the answer is just to "practice more" or some vague cliche, keep looking.

2. If you already have a teacher, but you are not satisfied with your progress and your teacher gives you the same answers as above, look for a new teacher.

3. If the previous two options are simply not available to you, I urge you to do the following:

FIRST: Ask yourself whether the music you are attempting to play is too advanced for you. When people work on their own, they don't know what music is suitable for their level. (That's why it's good to have a good teacher.) Quite often people have come to me after having played on their own, and have spent months or even years trying to play something far too difficult. They may think that if they just put in the time, they will eventually get it. Not only is this not true, but you will harm your progress, and even go backwards, trying to play something too difficult. You need to be learning skills, not just pieces. Picking your way, painstakingly slowly, through a long piece, isn't going to really give you skills that you can apply to the next piece, because just "finding the notes" is so overwhelming. And you certainly won't be able to play it with the fluidity and musicality you desire. In addition, you will, without question, find that if you stop practicing the piece for even a short time, it will have evaporated, and you can no longer play it. All that work for nothing.

SECOND: you must REALLY LOOK at how you are practicing. Again, without a good teacher to show you how to practice (sadly, many teachers just don't do this), you probably won't know. But just as with other areas of life, if you are doing the same things over and over, hoping to get a different result... well, you know what they say about that.  

Ask yourself whether you have been trying (knowingly or unknowingly) to find "short cuts." These may include listening to recordings to try and copy what you hear (if your reading is weak), looking at your hands, using a metronome (because your rhythm is weak) and many others. See my earlier post on this subject.

Recently, I was trying to figure out why a student was having so much difficulty reading just four measures of a simple melody. (I should mention this student had terrible teachers previously, so he is struggling.) He said, "well, if I was at home, and I practiced it a bunch of times, then I could eventually play it." I asked him, "what happens the next day? Are you able to play it right off the first time?" He replied that no, he'd have to repeat the same process again the next day. So in other words, I said, the "bunch of times" that you "practice it" don't really do anything, if the next day you're back at square one again. He agreed. (It might be normal and expected to sometimes go a few steps forward and one step back, but if you are going three steps forward and three steps back, every time, then there is something seriously wrong with your approach.) The process he calls "practicing" is not the process I have shown him. He does all the things I warn against: stopping, "fixing," going too slowly, only focusing on notes and ignoring rhythm, looking at his hands, not attempting to play musically, not really listening, and so on. Doing those things does not lead to just being able to sit down and play something, albeit simple, the first time. The processes that many people might think are what constitutes "practicing" are, in fact, just reinforcing habits that you don't really want, and can't really use, when you want to play fluently. In your practicing, do the things that you ultimately want to be the way you play. I realize this may sound simplistic, but it's profoundly true. Everything you do has the potential to become habit. 

I am in NO WAY saying you can learn to play the piano by reading about it or watching someone. I don't include videos in this blog precisely because I do not want my readers to believe that you can learn to play the piano from an online course. But if you are not sure how to change the way you have approached your practicing up to this point, please read my blog from the beginning. Read about ear training, sight-reading, outlining, and all the other topics, and ask yourself how it compares with what you are doing now. Each time you do something in your habitual way, ask yourself "how's that's been working out for you?"