A Magic Pill

 

If I told you I had a magic pill that would improve your rate of progress at the piano, you'd want to know about it, right? And if it had no down-side or unwanted side effects, you'd almost certainly want to take it.

I do have such a pill. It's called "playing without looking at your hands."

I've talked about this in previous posts, but I want to emphasize again how important this is. I'm speaking largely to beginner and intermediate students; advanced pianists almost certainly already do this.

Playing without looking at your hands helps you develop your kinesthetic sense. I call it "knowing the geography of the keyboard." When you look at your hands, you bypass the opportunity to develop the kinesthetic. Anyone who has seen a great pianist, or even just a good one, can see that the act of playing the piano is very physical, and that physical ability must be acquired though excellent training, just as it would for an athlete.

When you start out as a beginner, you probably will use a book for beginners to learn to read music. These books all start you in a "five-finger position," meaning each hand is over just five notes, so everything you need to play will be right under your hands, so to speak. Even using this very limited range of notes, there are still plenty of challenges as you develop the coordination you need, not to mention reading rhythm correctly, etc. The book should be emphasizing reading by interval, so that your hand learns to navigate by interval, meaning it feels the distance between notes. If you first learned to read, whether by teaching yourself, or with a bad teacher, then you may have learned to read using note names (E,G,B,D,F etc.) then you very likely started looking at your hands right from the start, because, presumably, if you wan to find G, you'd need to look down at the keys to see where G is. This is a terrible way to start. If you can't master just a five-note range without looking, you will find it extremely difficult to move on to more complex and more interesting music. You may eventually play the more complex music, but it will take you MUCH longer to learn and master, because of the constant looking back and forth between the score and the keyboard, but mostly because you just aren't developing the kinesthetic skills you'll need. In more complex music it will be impossible to look at both hands at once because of where they are on the keyboard. Trying to search and find every note by eye is far too slow, except maybe for simple -- and slow -- music.

Soon the books will expand the range to six or maybe eight notes in each hand. Then it will have you play pieces where it is necessary to move your hand(s) to a new position, that it, to different notes. The books won't have you doing large jumps (that comes later), but you can't just "cling" to the five or six notes where you started. The sooner you do this the better, because many students like to cling to that five-finger hand position -- it becomes a kind of security blanket.

When you move to each new challenge, the urge to look at your hands becomes very strong. It is all about the fear of wrong notes. Yes, in learning to play the piano, you will play many, many wrong notes. Instead of cringing, getting frustrated, and immediately wanting to look at your hands, you must recognize this is part of the learning process. A figure skater, in learning to do those amazing jumps, is going to fall a great number of times. If a skating student said "but I just don't want to fall!" they will never become an advanced skater. So it is with piano and wrong notes. 

Not looking at your hands has other benefits as well. When you hear a wrong note, you want to be able to identify by ear what the problem is, so you can adjust and move on. So your auditory sense will also get stronger. When you hear a wrong note, if you always, stop, look, try to "correct" it before moving on, this WILL become your habit. You can't just think that one day you will suddenly play with fluidity if this is how you have practiced.

I should mention that if you are playing by ear, or improvising, or playing a piece that you have memorized, you don't need to stare off into space. You will look at the keyboard just to keep a general eye on things, but certainly not looking for every note. You can't imagine that a great jazz improvisor is looking at his hands to see what notes to play!

I believe that playing without looking at your hands is one of the most important keys to unlock the ability to make the progress. Unfortunately, many people find my "magic pill" difficult to swallow. Nevertheless, I urge you to persevere. Looking at your hands to find the correct notes may seem like an obvious solution in the moment -- you may think, hey, aren't we supposed to play the right notes??  Getting the right note because you looked at the keyboard to find it is equivalent to winning the battle, but I assure you, you will lose the war. You may get the immediate gratification from the "correct note," but you are hampering your long term success." 

Singing

 

I find it somewhat sad that many people don't sing. Or they sing very softly and timidly because they believe they don't have a good voice and/or don't sing on key. Singing is universal -- all cultures do it -- and singing most likely emerged right along with speech in human evolution. We need to exercise our human right to sing!

Singing is so natural that, regardless of how well (or badly) you think you sing, you can see that there is a direct connection between the brain (auditory cortex) and the vocal chords. When you want to sing Happy Birthday, you just sing it. No one ever taught you how exactly to contract your vocal chord muscles to sing each of the notes. In a sense, the ear just tells the voice what to do, and it does it!

If you think you sing badly, the solution is to sing more, not less. That is the way to strengthen the ear/voice connection. You don't need to take singing lessons; instead, play a note on the piano (or other instrument) and try to match it with your voice. When you really are singing the same note, you will experience it "lock in" with the note you are playing. If it doesn't sound right, try to determine whether you are too low or too high and try to adjust until you lock in. (Obviously, try to play a note that is within your vocal range -- lower if you are a man and highter if you are a woman.) Many people struggle with this, but I believe everyone can improve. This is a good first step.

I do teach ear development as well as sight-singing (which you'd need to do in a choir, for example), and have many methods to help students with this. However, it's beyond the scope of this post to detail it all here.

What does this have to do with the piano? As you've read in previous posts, the importance of the ear cannot be over-stated. 

Specifically, I often have students sing the melody line of the piece they are working on. (You can also sing the bass line or any of the other lines, if it is a multi-voice piece, but start with the melody line.) If you find you can't quite do it, that means the music is not "in your ear" yet, meaning the ear/brain doesn't really know how it sounds. It's imperative that the ear knows it. (By the way, ear and memory are essentially the same; see my post on Memory.) After you have sung it, try playing it again and you will most likely feel it is easier. 

Of course, piano music has a lot more than just melody going on, and since you can't sing more than one note at a time, you can't sing the complete piece. There are many ways to approach that, such as playing everything except the melody on the piano while you sing the melody. 

When you're away from your piano, waiting at a red light,say, sing the melodies from the pieces you're working on. It will help you when you get back to the piano.

Another big advantage to singing the melody is for hearing the phrasing. When you sing, you automatically take your breaths at places that make sense for the music. If there are lyrics, you would breathe where there would be a comma or a period in the lyrics. You wouldn't want to take the breath in the middle of a word, for example. Likewise, in instrumental music, even though there are no lyrics to guide you, you can sense where a musical "thought" ends and where another begins. The equivalent of a breath would be a release of the key(s), so that there is a clear sense of one phrase ending and another beginning. I've heard students, even those with a lot of natural ability, just elide phrases together, which sounds like the equivalent of a long run-on sentence, and doesn't make for a very musical rendition. If you cling to the keys (read my previous post on being "clingy") and you are fearful of picking up your hand(s), you will almost certainly end up eliding the phrases. Whenever a student has the tendency to do this, I write "p.u." in their music, which stands for "pick up." But again, singing the phrase will probably be the most helpful tool.

Don't Be So Clingy

 

Many beginning students -- and some not-so-beginners who have tried to teach themselves -- tend to develop a habit of clinging to the keys. They hold on to a key they have just played, not because it's indicated in the score to do so, but because they are unconsciously using it as an "anchor." Their brain is saying "I've found this note and I'm not letting go until I find the next one!" The unconscious mind thinks that holding onto a note will help them find the next note, which may or may not be the case, but it is a limiting technique. Your playing will never be free and expressive if you are employing fear-based techniques.

Beginners usually start out using a book which starts you in what we call a 5-finger hand position in each hand. The five fingers are placed over 5 notes, usually C to G, and the very earliest pieces just use those 5 notes. This is actually a good method. It enables you to learn to "navigate" from note to note, without looking at your hands (this is perhaps the most important part). The downside of this method is that just playing five keys becomes a kind of "comfort zone" and the student just doesn't wan to leave it. 

When you have some ease with this, the book will introduce another note in each hand, so you will learn to cover a span of six keys. Even though it is still a very limited range, the hands need to learn to move around slightly; they can't just keep one finger over each of the five notes, as before. Then the span of keys will increase again. When you begin to have the interval of an octave, for example, it is tempting to keep your thumb on the lowest note while you "stretch" for the top note. But keeping your hand in this position will limit you from developing the fluidity and ease you need for future music you'll encounter. More advanced music will require jumps of more than your hand can reach by "stretching." After all, the piano has 88 keys, and you can't play intermediate or advanced pieces while unconsciously trying to keep your hands in one place. And of course, holding onto one note means it will continue sounding, which, if not indicated by the composer, may create a sound you don't want.

Most students aren't even aware they are doing this, until I point it out, of course. Becoming aware of what your hands are doing is critical (see my previous post on body awareness). Your body is going to learn how to move to accomplish moving from place to place. This actually happens in the arm, not the fingers. (I often say, the hand isn't going anywhere the arm doesn't take it.) This is because we all have proprioception, that is, the body's ability to sense its own position and movement in space without relying on visual input. It's an automatic, subconscious process that allows us to do virtually everything we do, such as walking, driving, and of course sports and playing an instrument. It goes without saying the great athletes, dancers, and top musicians have highly developed proprioception. (I suppose it doesn't really apply to singers.)

There are "exersices" I give my students to help develop this ability, such as doing large jumps with eyes closed, focusing on the feeling of where your arm is in space. They are always amazed that they can do a jump with accuracy several times in a row, without looking of course, just from putting their awareness on the arm, rather than the keys themselves. 

You just can't develop advanced proprioception if you "cling" to the keys. Clinging is antithetical to progress. 

When you notice you are clinging, just try to let go of the fear of wrong notes and let the hands and arms move. You WILL hit wrong notes when you are learning, that's for certain. But you will improve.  Trying to avoid wrong notes by being fearful won't really work, and it also takes all the fun out of it. 

Body Awareness

 

To the casual observer it might appear that playing the piano is mostly about the fingers. This is absolutely not the case. The arms and hands, and the torso to a lesser extent, are very active, and without them the fingers wouldn't be able to do what they do. Unfortunately, this myth is perpetuated by many people, including teachers and so-called "experts." If you've been reading this blog, you know that I talk about the entire mechanism and the importance of knowing how to use it to achieve good technique, but also to be able to play without strain or pain. Most of the physical ailments that pianists are prone to -- tendinitis, carpal tunnel, etc. -- are due to over-taxing the small muscles of the fingers.

What about the rest of the body? The feet are used for the pedals. of course, but the legs are involved in that as well. If you're not using pedal -- in practicing, for example -- your legs should be firmly planted on the floor, not tucked behind you. This helps you feel grounded. I've seen people practice with legs crossed. This is a real no-no. You may know that crossing your legs affects your blood pressure. It also affects how your brain works. It will cause the torso to be out of balance as well. 

The areas where some pianists tend to have a problem are the shoulders, neck and face. Hunching up the shoulders is common. This actually pulls your power away from the hands. You want to power to flow down from the shoulder to the hands at all times. But you absolutely need it for loud and powerful playing. In addition, you will probably have sore back and neck muscles if you spend a long time with shoulders hunched. Another problem is hunching over the piano. You've probably even seen pictures or videos of some famous pianists doing this. I feel like this is an unconscious attempt to get "closer" to the music. They may have adapted to this position and play at a high level, but it's not actually helping them. If you're hunched over you do not have the same freedom with your arms. And, again, you will likely develop tightness or worse in your back and neck. If you develop physical problems in those areas, it will almost certainly begin to impact your playing in a negative way.

The face is an interesting situation. The music you are playing while at the piano is beautiful (hopefully), possibly passionate and dramatic. You are doing your utmost to play expressively. Your face may respond to this by making a variety of expressions. You may have seen professional pianists (some, not all) show their emotions on their faces as they play. Is this a bad thing? No. But let's be clear: the facial expressions are a response to the music; they are not causing the music to sound expressive. If you feel you just cannot play expressively without contorting your face, you might want to experiment with keeping your face relaxed and channeling that emotion into your arms and hands. I used to be one of those who couldn't play without "making a lot of faces," but now I find I don't need to do that.

There is also the issue of involuntary tightening of muscles in the face while playing particularly difficult passages in a piece or just when concentrating hard. Two of my adult students tighten up their jaws or press their lips together when playing difficult passages. The thing is, tightening any muscle is contagious, so to speak, and other muscles may also tighten. It doesn't usually work to say "try to relax." Instead, I have had them experiment with playing with their mouth slightly open, or with a smile. Yes, they feel a little silly at first, but it does work. Their playing doesn't suffer at all when they relax their faces, in fact it may be slightly improved. Any bodily tension which doesn't positively affect your playing should probably be let go.

If I hadn't pointed out to these students that they were tightening their facial muscles, they probably wouldn't have noticed it on their own, because, of course, they have become used to it.  We just aren't very aware of the things we do habitually. There is a whole field of what might be called "body awareness." Yoga, tai chi and many other disciplines teach "tuning in" to your body. I'm sure this is also necessary for athletes. Whether you aspire to be an athlete at the piano (meaning a masterful command of piano technique), or just play simpler music for pleasure, it is important to devleop body awareness. Unfortunately, a lot of what you hear and read about learning to play the piano emphasizes "finger strength" and doing piano exercises for hours and hours. Neither of these will help you -- period. They won't help you develop body awareness, and may worsen any body awareness you had, due to extreme repetition and mechanical playing. Whatever you do, and whenever you play, try to do it with awareness of what your body is doing and how it feels.

Is Your Teacher a Professional?

 

You've read many times on this blog that I complain bitterly about some of the teachers who I have encountered in my many years of teaching. Some I've known, but most I have heard about from my students who have told me "horror stories" from their previous lessons. (See earlier posts of that title.)

The main problem is that many, if not most, people learn to play the piano with private lessons versus in a school. Virtually anyone can claim to be a "piano teacher" and begin giving lessons. I've met teachers who, by their own admission, played piano as a child and thought teaching would be a good way to pick up a little extra income. Often they just have a small number of students, but sometimes they have a full slate. However, just having played as a child does not necessarily mean they know how to teach. How long ago did they take lessons? How advanced did they get? Do they teach in the same way that they were taught, and, if so, how do we know that they had good teachers?

You wouldn't want to send your child to math or science lessons given by someone who learned a little math or science when they were young and then assumed they could teach it, would you? Teachers in a school must be accredited, having had to pass tests to prove their knowledge and competence. Many are required to take continuing education to keep up with new knowledge or methods in their field. But there are no such requirements for someone teaching privately in their home. 

I've even met people who took piano lessons from a friend or relative who agreed to teach them as a favor. The student probably thought they were getting a great deal to not have to pay much -- or anything at all -- to receive lessons. However, these lessons usually didn't last long. Either the student or the teacher -- or both -- became frustrated with the lack of progress or other interpersonal issues, and the arrangement ended, sometimes with bad feelings. Someone who didn't really plan on teaching and took it on "as a  favor" to someone is not serious about teaching.

Hopefully you want your teacher to be a professional. I believe that, in most situations, the teacher should have a college degree in music. At least it shows they are serious and that music is not just a hobby or a way to pick up a little extra money on the side. Of course, having a degree still doesn't necessarily make them a great teacher. Maybe they just don't have the patience or the communication skills or other attributes that make for a good teacher. But at least, in their degree program, they would have been required to take classes on music theory, for example, in addition to the instrument, and should have the basic knowledge to teach it.

Ideally the teacher you select should have years of experience. What about brand new teachers, just starting out? Everyone has to start somewhere. However, you'd want to think carefully about lessons with someone who has little or no experience. If that is the case, you'd need to ask a lot of questions about their approach to teaching, what and where they studied, as well as asking them to play for you. If any teacher tells you they can't really play, for whatever reason, that should be a red flag. 

Many private teachers teach in their homes. If that is the case, the studio should look professional. There should be no distractions from family members, pets, phone calls, etc. during the lesson. Some teachers rent a studio in, for example, a piano store. If the teacher doesn't have a quality piano at home  or some other reason for not wanting to have students come to his/her house, you should ask questions about that. Personally, I find those spaces somewhat dreary and uninspiring. They also will probably not have a high quality piano.

Although not strictly necessary, I believe the teacher should have a website, at least a basic one. On the website you should be able to read about the teacher's background, education, etc. It would be good if they had some student testimonials to post. Samples of their playing would be a real plus. Many teachers just rely on word of mouth to find new students, but a website is perhaps the best marketing tool. Again, it shows that the teacher is serious about his/her profession and is not doing it as a hobby.

You wouldn't want to take advice from a doctor or lawyer or financial planner who is not a professional. Why should piano be any different? If you don't have a good teacher, you may find you don't enjoy it and don't make progress. You might even think it was your fault -- that you didn't have "what it takes" to play the piano. But the burden is on the teacher to do their utmost to help you make progress while having fun. Hopefully this post, and all the others, have helped you learn what to look for in a teacher.

Lesson Notes

 

At every lesson with every student, I write notes for them, in a notebook solely for this purpose, about what they need to practice during the week, and most important, how they need to practice. I explain the steps they should do (I call them stepping stones) to build towards being able to play the piece well. This will almost always include some amount of "outlining" (see previous posts), that is, starting with the skeleton of the piece and gradually adding the details. It may include some "set-ups" which are brief technical exercises, derived from the piece itself, to gain experience with a particular technical skill. I also remind them what other areas to focus on. I may remind them which measures need note corrections or a fingering change, or attention to the dynamics, phrasing, etc. I make sure they understand everything I wrote before we conclude the lesson.

The notebooks will contain all previous weeks, as well as instructions about how to learn chords, etc., so we can always refer back to earlier material as needed.

If the student is quite advanced and has been with me many years, I no longer write notes for them, because they are familiar with my approach, and, hopefully, have been practicing for enough years that they know what to do. But for intermediate and beginners, it is essential to write notes. Otherwise, after they go home from the lesson, I guarantee they won't remember everything that was said and done at the lesson.

You wouldn't expect your elementary or middle or high school student to come home from classes with no written instructions regarding their home work. It's the same with music lessons.

I recently took on a 14-year-old, who had 7 years of lessons with another teacher. Apparently the teacher seldom wrote any notes at the lesson. Perhaps the teacher was a bit lazy, or didn't understand the importance of writing them. But the more likely problem was that the lessons themselves did not go into enough depth or detail to have much to write. Many teachers just assign pieces, go over them briefly at the lesson, and then just instruct the student to "learn" them at home. The next week the teacher may correct note or rhythm errors by circling them in the sheet music, maybe tweak a few other things, and so on each succeeding week. This approach does not lead to high-level playing, or even the possiblity of playing at one's potential, in all but a very few rare students.

An adult student of mine told me that his teacher of many years ago wrote out the list of pieces he was currently playing and all the pieces he had played in the past -- at every lesson! That's it -- just the names of the pieces and nothing else. Crazy, right? She could have had a running list and added it once a month or so. Or the student could have easily kept the list himself. Instead, she used lesson time to write this list, by hand, which means she wasn't spending that time on something more productive.

Sometimes the student might be confused about what I have written. In those cases, I urge them to email me for clarification. I don't want them to struggle or go off on the wrong path for a whole week when a simple explanation would help them.

I don't teach younger children anymore, but when I did, I could always tell if they even read my notes during the week. (They often didn't.) Of course if they didn't read the lesson notes, their progress was much slower, maybe non-existent. At home they just opened their sheet music and started playing "the notes." Obviously I tried to nip this habit in the bud, but sometimes the child just didn't seem to have the ability to stick to the plan of reading my notes first. It even happened with adults sometimes.

It seems like a small thing, for the teacher to just write down some notes based on what she observes at the lessons and what needs to be done. But without it, a great deal of the benefits of lessons are lost.

Top Down and Inside Out

 

How we approach our practicing, our technique, and all aspects of learning and playing the piano, will make the difference between great results and mediocre or poor results. There are certain principles which need to be understood and put into practice. Two principles I stress in my teaching are Top Down and Inside Out.

Top Down:

I believe in starting with the whole and then moving down to the parts or smaller details later. For example, starting with an outline when starting a new piece gives you a sense of the whole piece. (See my post titled Outlining for a full explanation.) This process is a cornerstone of my own playing and my teaching. Unfortunately, most people would just start with the first note(s) they see on the page and proceed to the next and the next and so on. This would be like driving without any sense of the destination. If you are a great sight-reader you might manage it this way with some degree of ease, but if your sight-reading is not quite up to snuff, this will be a very long, laborious process, and you will tend to get lost in the weeds, so to speak. As you've heard me say before, virtually everyting we do, from building a house to writing an essay, requires starting with the main structure first and gradually filling in details (assuming you don't want the house to collapse or the essay to be incomprehensible). 

Another example of top down is the teaching and understanding of rhythm. If you read my posts on rhythm, you will see that I start with the larger unit (such as a measure), which will, of course, vary with the tempo of the piece, and then train the student to hear that unit of time, and then hear it divide in two, then in four, etc. (or in three). The important skill you get from this is learning to actually hear a unit of time, and then hear it divide into smaller units. If you can reliably hear any unit of time, you will not have difficulty with rhythm. Most methods start with, say, a quarter note, and then try to hear a unit which is twice as long (a half note), etc. External tools such as a metronome and/or "counting" are employed to help you with this, but unfortunately they often don't work. In addition, focusing on the smaller rhythmic units first (essentially going "bottom up") can tend you make your playing sound stiff, and what I call "note-wise." 

Inside Out:

This concept applies to many aspects, but most importantly, the physical ways in which we move around the keyboard. Almost everyone you talk to and anything you read will focus on the fingers, and on techniques for training and strengthening the fingers. It is important to realize, however, that the hands and fingers aren't going anywhere that the arm doesn't take them! We can play the piano, with its expanse of 88 keys, only because we have a ball-and-socket joint at the shoulder, which enables us to move our arms laterally, towards the fallboard and towards our body, in circular motions, etc. If you were playing a clavichord (pre-dating the harpsichord), you might get away with using mostly just your fingers. But that would be impossible on our modern pianos, with the range of techniques and the range of dynamics required by all piano literature since the 1700s.

Movement goes from center to periphery. This is a basic rule of physics. You may see the bicycle tire move in a circle and propel the bike forward, but the movement starts at the center, where the pedal is attached to the hub of the tire, which attaches to the spokes, and finally to the rim of the tire. I would challenge you to think of any exception to this rule. When sitting at the piano, the shoulder joint is our center, and the movement travels down the arm to the hand and fingers. (One could argue that the torso is actually the center; see my post titled The Torso.) You may not even realize this is happening, because the movements at the center are small. The hub of the bicycle wheel hardly seems to move, because the movement at the center is smaller than at the periphery. You might ask, if it's happening anyway, why should I care? Because if you understand the role that is played by each area of the pianist's anatomy, it stands to reason you can train it better, use it with more finesse or power or efficiency.

People who have seen or learned with my approach often comment that it is very "holistic," or even very "Zen." While that may be true, what I know for certain is that everything I do or teach is firmly based in that place where the human anatomy meets the laws of physics meets the physical properties of the piano itself.