Do the Hard Work on the Front End

Learning a new piece from a written score is, for most of my students, fairly challenging. There is the challenge of reading itself, coupled with the technical skills to be able to play. Even if you become a good sight-reader, there are still challenges. Of course, you could play easier pieces, but then you won't develop new skills and technique. Ideally, the pieces you and your teacher select should present challenges, in order for you to grow as a pianist and as a musician.

I have many methods I employ to help students approach a new piece initially. One of them is outlining, or playing a "sketch" of the piece, then filling in details as you get more comfortable. See my post on this topic. Another method is blocking, or taking groups of notes (e.g. in the melody) that form a chord, and playing them as a chord. See my recent post on this topic. These are just two examples.

However, many students also find these two methods challenging as well. They often think, "wouldn't it just be easier to read the notes, one by one, hands separately? In a sense, that would be easier. But it wouldn't be better. You would likely need to go very slow, and just finding one note at a time does not inform your hand of where it needs to be next, and how to get there. In addition, it would likely be very choppy and unmusical. Not to mention the challenge of putting hands together after you have practiced them separately. Virtually everyone finds this to be the most challenging aspect. That is why outlining is so beneficial: you are playing hands together always, but just not all the notes. With blocking, you train you eye to take in a group of notes all at once, and translate that group to the "shape" your hand must form to play them.

Learning both these skills does take effort of course. But you will achieve a better long-term result. Just like learning to skim a document and notice the most important words, skipping over every "the" and "to" and "of" etc., outlining and blocking get you playing what is most important right from the start. 

Another challenging skill is learning to play without looking at your hands. I have talked about this in many of my posts. Even though students know that this is what they should be doing, sometimes at home they just give up, and resort to what I call "note-by-note processing," and looking at their hands. Then they come to the lesson and wonder why they aren't progressing more. I don't really have to ask (because I already know from decades of experience) how they are practicing at home, and, invariably they say they got frustrated with the not looking at hands, blocking, etc. Yesterday a student asked why he can seem to make good progress on a given piece one day, but the next day he feels like he is back to square one. When questioned, he admitted he had just gone back to looking at his hands because he thought this way he could at least "get all the notes." But as he experienced, that method often doesn't stick. 

 The moral of this story is: do the hard work on the front end. If you set yourself up for success, the rest of the process will go more smoothly. If you take short cuts, you will pay for it in one or more ways in the end: not playing as musically as you want, not being able to memorize, and simply not progressing.