Talking to Yourself

 

When my students play at the lesson, I can't hear their inner thoughts, of course. But after decades of experience teaching and observing students, I have a pretty good idea of what's going on in their minds, at least in general terms. When a student is struggling to play fluently -- having a lot of stops and starts, hesitations, "correction" of wrong notes (which, as you've heard me say many times, doesn't actually correct them), and so on -- I suspect that they are doing a lot of talking to themselves. And when I ask them if that is what is happening, they almost always say yes. But sometimes they are barely aware they are doing it because it is such a strong habit.

In essence, they are trying to talk their way through the music, giving verbal instructions to themselves such as "now I need to move down a fourth, now I need to play this G chord in the left hand, now such and such happens...." This approach doesn't work at all. Even in simple music there is too much going on to be able to verbalize it all, but certainly in more complex music it would be impossible to narrate everything. It is also far too slow. But perhaps most important, if you have a lot of chatter going on in your mind, you can't actually be listening to your playing, and without that, you won't ever play your best. It seems to me it would also take most of the fun out of it.

Talking to yourself -- attempting to narrate what is happening -- is a way of trying to exert control. It is a response, in my opinion, to the "anxiety" of potential wrong notes. There is a fear of just letting go and letting the music flow. 

Students may think that they just need to do this in the beginning, but after a while they will stop. But as you can guess, it's more likely to become a habit that you can't just overcome by will power.

When you are a total beginner, there is a lot of information to absorb. There is some terminology to learn and concepts to understand. However, the best approach maximizes the actual playing, including training the ear and the phyical mechanisms (arms, hands, fingers). Concepts are important but should be kept to the areas that the student can use right at the present time, not just in the future. 

When learning to sight-read as a beginner, the approach should be learning to read by interval, not note-names (see my post on this subject) and the goal is to develop a direct connection between what the eyes see and what the hands feel. Too much "frontal lobe processing" (analysis) in the brain gets in the way of that direct connection. The sure way to wreck good sight-reading is to try to name every note you are playing. It's actually not possible but some students try to do just that.

When learning rhythm, the approach should be on learning to actually hear the relationships of the sounds in time (see my posts on this topic) rather than trying to just do "the math" with systems such as "counting."

Your goal while playing should be to have a quiet mind. Many disciplines such as meditation, yoga, tai chi and others, stress needing to quiet the mind of its constant chatter. I believe this is true for playing an instrument as well. The mind has a role to play, however. You might think of it as the pilot on a flight; the plane is flying on auto-pilot for the most part, but the human pilot is there to oversee everything and watch for any potential problems. In playing the piano, you may need to remember the way the first section of the piece ends versus the last section which is very similar. If you are an auto-pilot alone, you might accidentally go to the wrong one and end up in a loop. But a subtle mental note to yourself reminds you of which ending you are on, so there won't be a problem.

The chatter will inevitably pop back up. You may be thinking about the notes you need to play or you may find yourself thinking about what you'll have for dinner tonight. But each time you realize you are talking to yourself, try to just return to listening to the music. After all, if you were playing for others, you would hope that your audience would be listening, rather than talking to themselves. Try to make sure you are doing that yourself as well.

Understanding Repetition

 

Anyone you talk to about learning to play the piano -- or any instrument -- will tell you that it entails doing lots and lots of repetition. Thousands of hours. You hear this so often that most people just assume it's true. They don't tell you much about how to do the repetition, just that you must do it.

Before coming to me for lessons, one of my students would often repeat a certain measure or short passage in a piece of music fifty or more times in a row. He always thought that if he just did something enough times, one day it would just all fall into place and he would play it fluently. Sadly, this never happened for him.

What are we trying to achieve when we do something numerous times in succession? As you've read in my previous posts, learning to do any set of physical movements, whether at the piano or elsewhere, requires that neural pathways in your brain be established. This is true for learning to walk as a toddler, or playing a Chopin Etude. Every person is different in the speed at which they form these neural connections, and every person forms them differently for different activities. Someone may be very quick at forming the pathways for the piano but could be slow at forming them for golf or tennis, and, of course, vice versa.

There is no magic number of repetitions which will establish the brain connections you desire. Many people believe that if five repetitions is good then fifty must be better. Not true. The brain does not like to be bored. After a certain amount of repetition, boredom sets in and you lose focus. After that point, the repetitions are probably useless, and very likely detrimental. If you have lost focus, then your playing of that passage will be mechanical and not musical, so you are reinforcing something you don't actually want in your playing. Many students of the piano are 100% concerned with only the notes themselves and nothing else. Any student with this attitude will never play beautifully, and never up to their full potential. You wouldn't dream of learning to do public speaking by practicing just saying the words of your speech over and over, mechanically, without any inflection or nuance, and then think you will later give the speech with those nuances. That is what you are doing when you just practice "the notes."

My recommendations are as follows:

Don't do repetitions unless you have to. If you read my post about "spot work" versus playing through, you'll see I encourage playing through as much as possible; this means the whole piece, if you can, but if not, then at least meaningful sections of the piece. This, however, doesn't mean all the details, which is why I teach and emphasize the importance of outlining, that is, playing a sketch of the piece, adding details little by little. If you do this, the goal is that most of the piece may never need "spot work."

If you are consistently having trouble with a given spot, you will need to isolate it and work on it separately. First however, you need to analyze why are you having trouble. This is where a good teacher is critically important. If you don't really know the technical (or auditory) reason for your stumbling in that spot, doing a lot of repetition may not solve it. If you have been consistently playing "wrong notes," you now have some neural pathways for that, and they need to be discarded and replaced by the desired neural pathways. I recommend doing three to four repetitions. Two is definitely too few; five begins to verge on boredom. Then, when you play the piece through, see if it is better. If not, do the same process the next time you practice. Doing repetition spread out over several practice sessions and/or several days is better than trying to ram it through all at once. It is my experience that when you tell your brain that this is the action you want it to do and you are telling it that day after day, it realizes it must keep this neural pathway and not discard it. This is why when you cram for a test you may know the information the next day, but a week later and it is gone. The brain seems to know it doesn't need it anymore. On the other hand, when you study the material slow and steady over a period of time, the brain is far more likely to retain it.

Use other methods of practice besides repetition which also strengthen the neural pathways. Making the brain work harder through practices such as transposition, playing eyes closed, playing hands crossed, and other methods I have written about, are often more effective than pure repetition, and may take less time as well. Repetition is the "brute force" method of learning, but other, more subtle methods, make your practice time more effective and probably more enjoyable.