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.

Walking Backwards

 

I've just read an article about walking backwards. Specifically, it has benefits for the muscles (such as the hamstrings) due to the difference of how you place your foot down (toes first versus heel first in normal walking). But what's more interesting -- to me, at least -- is the benefits it has for the brain. (You can find the article on bbc.com's Just One Thing.) The article says the Chinese have a saying that 100 steps backwards are worth 1000 steps forward. 

What does this have to do with playing the piano?

Apparently there isn't much research on the brain benefits of backwards walking yet, but it may boost memory. This comes as no surprise to me. Anytime we do things in a way which is different from our habitual ways, the brain must forge new neural pathways, and that's always a good thing. More pathways = more brain power. I view it as  similar to many of the techniques I use myself and recommend to my students, such as playing hands crossed, playing with eyes closed, and transposing. These are all challenging and require the brain to work hard. That's why I call them "desirable difficulties."

Many people mistakenly believe that practice time should be spent playing through pieces, perhaps some extra work on certain difficult spots by employing lots of repetition, and maybe some technical exercises, also with lots of repetition. Or maybe it's not so much that they believe it, it's just that no one has helped them to see other possibilities. Although you will possibly see improvement in your playing from this approach, it is also likely that at some point you will reach an impasse, a plateau in your progress, and it may seem like you're stuck and and go no further in developing the mastery of the music. This is almost certainly because the brain is in a rut; it just goes down the same pathways over and over. In addition to this type of practice being less beneficial, it can also be boring and make the practice time feel like a chore.

When I observe a student struggling with a specific passage in the music, I have many tools in my toolbox to try (a few of them are mentioned above.) Sometimes I just try something really out of left field, something that just pops into my mind at the moment. (You can imagine the looks I get from my students.) The goal is to experience the passage in a new way, mostly physically, but that also means the brain is working differently. It's amazing how often it helps.

I've done my backwards walking today, and plan to continue. My recommendation: do it indoors to start with!

There is No Backspace Key

 

When I look at the stats for all my previous posts, the post titled "Wrong Notes" has by far the most number of views. Everyone who attempts to learn to play the piano wants to know the secret for eliminating those pesky wrong notes. If only it were that simple....

Unfortunately, the way most people deal with the wrong notes is the least effective way. It might be better to say not effective at all. That is to immediately "correct" the note by playing the intended note right after playing the unintended one. The urge to do this is very strong, and most piano students do it so automatically they often don't always realize they have done it, and even when they do realize, they just cannot resist the urge to do this.

There is no backspace key on the piano! (Or any other instrument, of course.) Trying to replace the incorrect note with the correct one as you are playing doesn't mean the incorrect note didn't exist. Your ear heard it, and your hands played it, and you cannot erase that. You may intellectually know that the note you really wanted was the second one, not the first, but your "animal brain" just hears two notes in succession, not placing any value judgement on them as right or wrong. Similarly, your muscle memory (which is really the motor cortex of the brain) had the experience of playing the two notes in succession without having any sense of which one you wanted and which you didn't. Therefore, because of how both the ear and muscle memory work (developing and solidifying new neural pathways in the brain), you are more likely, not less, to just repeat the same succession, meaning the "wrong" note followed by the "right" one, again the next time. And the next time and the next time..... Haven't you all had that experience? The intellect has much less to do with how and what you play than many people think. It's the ear working together with the motor cortext that really run the show.

As I often say, if this method of "correcting" as you play really worked, we'd all be playing all the correct notes by now.

Not only is this attempt at correcting not useful, it's harmful to your playing. First, it interrupts the rhythm. In my many thousands of hours of teaching, I observe that almost everyone is willing to throw the rhythm under the bus for the sake of the notes. But the notes and the rhythm are inextricably linked; to change the rhythm is to change the sound of the music, which your ear also hears, and may lead to less security with the rhythm of that passage in the music. If you are playing hands together (which I hope you are, as close to 100% of the time as possible), if one hand has to stop to go back and "replace" the incorrect note, the other hand has to stop as well. So you may be creating a potential problem in the hand that didn't even have a problem with the note in the first place.

Instead, you must do what is necessary to prevent yourself from playing the wrong note(s) in the first place. You want to stop reinforcing the undesired nerual pathway in the brain so it will not become permanent and will be discarded. Great! you say.... but how do I do that??? 

The first step is to know whether the missed note was just a one-time slip, or whether it happens habitually. As you playing your piece, do not stop and try to correct, just do your best to remember where there was a problem. If it was a one-time slip, just let it go by. Don't make an "issue" of it because you may turn what was a one-time slip into a bigger problem. If you notice you miss notes in the same way and the same place every time, then you must isolate that passage and work on it "offline," so to speak. 

Habitual missed notes are caused by faulty technique and/or a weak auditory image, meaning the ear (auditory cortex) is not really hearing it. If you have a teacher, he/she should be observing what you are doing physically that causes you to miss the notes, and work on correcting that issue. (Unfortunately, many teachers just point out the wrong notes, maybe even circle those notes in your score, and tell you to just go home and fix them! No instruction on how to do that!) If you have no teacher, you can try to do this through careful examination of what your hands are doing. Making a video recording of yourself could help so that you see your hands and arms from a different perspective could be helpful. 

Many people will say play hands separately, go very slowly, and so on, for the spot with the missed notes. These can be helpful, to a degree, because they may allow you to really focus your attention on the problem. Focusing your attention is critical to solve a "wrong note" problem. (That's another reason why just trying to play the correct note after the incorrect one as you play is not successful -- because it's not done with a high degree of focus.) But if the problem is your technique, it will still be there after you have practicied slowly and hands separately.

Many problems that people think are technical are actually "ear" issues. You may think you really hear the passage, but at a deeper level you may not. Playing with eyes closed and transposing the passage to other keys will make the ear work harder and will strengthen the brain's auditory image of the music. See previous posts on these subjects.

Perhaps most important of all, just accept that learning to play an instrument, especially one as complex as the piano, will mean you will play many, many wrong notes along the way. It's part of learning. Try to take a "zen" approach and not get too attached to having 100% correct notes 100% of the time. If you are a concert pianist then, yes, you probably will demand that of yourself. But for the rest of us mortals, don't let wrong notes spoil your enjoyment of playing. Do everything you can to build your technique and your ear. But in the end, throw your whole self into your playing, make it as beautiful as you can, and take your focus off the notes themselves. Ironcially, when you do that, you may find the notes start to fall into place.

Horror Stories From the Piano, 2nd Edition

 

Once again, in time for Halloween, here are some really SCARY stories from piano lessons, as related to me by current or former students from their lessons with previous teachers.

The teacher who would just "show" things to the student. For example, the teacher showed him how to play certain chords as he needed them to play the music they were working on. So the student learned a G chord, a B-flat chord, etc. The student correctly guessed that there must be some "system" to all these chords, and expressed to his teacher his interest in learning that system, instead of just getting them piecemeal. The teacher kind of groaned and said, "Oh, the learning curve is just too steep." At the same time, the teacher would be working on some piece with the student and say, "you see, it's all just chords," as if that would make it easier to understand. But since the teacher never really taught chords in a meaningful way, that statement only confused the student further. The teacher did have a background in music theory so he knew about chord theory, but he was just too lazy to teach it. 

The teacher who told the student that if he struck a note hard, with extra force and emphasis, that it would create a shot of dopamine in the brain, which would make it easier to find that note in the future. His premise was that if you were having trouble with accuracy, the dopamine hit would help. There are so many problems with this! First, although dopamine does have to do with search and reward, it wouldn't have any relationship to how loud or hard you played the note. Second, what if you have trouble with accuracy on lots of notes, as this student certainly did. Are you supposed to play them all louder and harder? Are you supposed to do it once or more often? When do you stop doing it? How do you prevent it from becoming habit? When one note is hit harder, it disrupts the phrase and is not pleasant to hear. Sadly, this student did develop a habit of hitting certain random notes harder and the effect is terribly unmusical. If the "dopamine" thing had really worked, he wouldn't still be having the accuracy issue. The teacher was, quite frankly, spouting bullshit.

The teacher who dropped the student because she said the student made her nervous. The student was somewhat nervous about playing in front of the teacher (as many students are, at least in the beginning), but instead of working to encourage and calm the student, the teacher decided she couldn't be bothered and just dropped her.

A woman came to see me about lessons whose teacher had her play almost all twelve of the Clementi Sonatinas, as well as a bit of Haydn and easier Mozart, in other words, all music of the same period. She played one for me and her playing was somewhat robotic, not musical at all. (I doubt the teacher worked on the musicality.) If you just love this music then go ahead and play it, but be aware you will never gain a broad range of technical and musical skills from this one style alone. This became the student's comfort zone, and when I suggested we do some Schumann, she looked skeptical. She never did start lessons with me.

And here, I will give you, verbatim, how one of my students described her previous lessons. The lack of caring, in particular, is shocking. (This student is very musical, really loves music and the piano in particular, is very enthusiastic, fun-loving, and aims to everything she does with dedication and high quality. Thank goodness these teachers didn't ruin her love for music.)

My first piano teacher gets special mention for tearing sheet music from a book (whose binding was failing) and giving that to me to play from, and for instructing me to “move my butt” on the seat in dramatic performance while playing. I was with her less than a year. I still have that sheet music (Classical) and I ache and cringe every time I see the reminder of her destruction; I feel so bad for the music.

My second teacher caused me to miss my first recital with her studio (and my first piano recital ever) because she did not actually specify the venue and was unreachable day of. 

She did not insist I learn music theory, and did not reinforce music theory principles essential to musicality and performance, and yet thought I could learn pieces well enough to accompany singers like her; I never did learn them well enough. Her studio was her sole livelihood, so when she canceled a lesson, she did not offer a make up [or give a refund], claiming that any make ups had to be made up in the month that they were missed, regardless of who canceled them.

 Although my first three teachers assigned Hanon, the third took it to an extreme. She challenged me to play the first 20 in less than 15 minutes (no repeats at least) in the space of a few months, and after I accomplished that feat, said she’d only extended to three of the dozens of students in her “studio”, and that it was a tool for her to gauge how much to invest in the students. Imagine my surprise when after that, she still declined to provide a curriculum for me or even to field questions about my curriculum and took offense to my making my own curriculum from books that she did not have in her possession. 

She conducted my lessons at my home; she sat several feet behind me, rarely demonstrated anything, rarely provided actual feedback beyond checkboxes. 

She pressed me to take the ABRSM [Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music] exams and then forgot to register me and took offense when I elected to register independently. 

She started me with John Thompson’s grade 1, although I had been playing for decades, would listen to me play through once, and if she was content, moved me on to the next piece in the sequence. 

One memorable episode: recital season was upon us and we were evaluating a venue, and conducting the lesson there rather than my home, and she spent more time inspecting the venue and wandering around than coaching my performance; she took offense when I called her on it. Her student roster was long enough and included enough small children that she divided the group into three one-hour recitals, punctuated with students-versus-parents musical trivia questions, keeping score. I was the only adult performer in my section. She justified it or attempted to mollify me that I was inspiring to the much younger children (as in age 4 or 5).

She encouraged competition for number of minutes of “practice” time across all the students in her studio, with prizes for levels of attainment and getting most practice time. She counted as practice time not just practice at the piano with fingers on the keyboard, but also transcription, research, completing theory worksheets, arrangement, and composition. 

She had a performance heavy schedule for her students (some kind of performance recording every month) that she claimed as optional opportunities, and when I indicated that I would only participate in a very few, she took offense.

 

I eventually learned that her studio location was a tiny, tiny room sublet from another business in a large office building, furnished with an electric keyboard and camera that her students came to (if they did not have an instrument in their possession) so that she could conduct lessons remotely from her rental apartment in Korea while she spent months with Korean orphans multiple times a year. I had an instrument in my home, so we had our lessons with her on an app I’d never heard of.

 

She encouraged me to play as many pianos as possible to find out what I liked in a piano, and after I had confided my tastes, she forwarded me an advertisement that claimed to be someone giving away the type of piano that I preferred after minimal thought or investigation by her, and which turned out to be a scam advertisement. (I did not lose any money, fortunately.) She blamed the situation on a trusted associate forwarding the advertisement to her, thus bypassing any due diligence on her part.

 

When I eventually asked the hard questions about the future of our relationship and she again declined to take responsibility, she berated me (the terminating client) at length after claiming that she never berated terminating clients.

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These stories make me so sad, and so angry as well. I feel badly for these people who trusted these teachers. They lost valuable time that could have been spent more productively through no fault of their own. I wish I could say that teachers like these are a thing of the past, but unfortunately they aren't. I'll probably be writing the 3rd edition of Horror Stories next Halloween.

Caring

 

Over the years I've heard many stories, from students or other acquaintances, about their past piano teachers, and in some cases those stories included unkindness, and even a degree of cruelty, towards the student on the part of the teacher.

There is absolutely no excuse for this. In earlier times, corporal punishment and verbal cruelty were considered "necessary" for the disciplining of the students. Now we know how utterly harmful this is. Luckily, at least in the U.S., if this were to happen in a public school it would come to someone's attention and the teacher would be fired (or so we hope).

But if it happens in a private lesson, it's different story.

Thankfully, none of my students experienced physical harm during their previous lessons, but many experienced insults, criticism, and a lack of consideration from their teachers. Sometimes the teacher has such a high opinion of themself that they view their students as beneath them, which somehow entitles them to be high-handed in their approach. Besides the fact that it is just wrong, I don't know how anyone could actually learn in that environment. 

The teacher must show care and understanding towards the student. Of course this applies to both children and adults. If you don't like children, or find teaching to be too aggravating, you have no business being a teacher. Yet there are teachers who teach, from financial necessity or other reasons, but who don't really like teaching. 

Not only does your teacher need to be kind, but they should be very personally invested in your learning, your progress, and your enjoyment of the experience of making music. If they are dismissive of your efforts, or tell you that you just aren't talented enough, they are not doing their job.

If you read my post from October 2022 titled Horror Stories from the Piano, you will hear some of these sad tales. In the coming days, in time for Halloween, I will be posting my second annual Horror Stories from the Piano. Stay tuned.

I'm writing this so that any of you reading my blog who might be experiencing mistreatment from your teacher can realize that it isn't normal, and immediately find a new teacher. If you have children who are taking private piano lessons, either sit in on lessons frequently, or ask your child for details about the lessons, or both, so you can make sure your child's teacher is kind and caring towards them, at the very least.

You know the saying, "No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care."

Trills and Tremelos

 

Being able to do a trill or a tremelo is an essential technical skill if you want to play advanced music. Every era of Classical music has them. Having a really fast -- and beautiful -- trill is a worthwhile goal.

A trill is usually between two adjacent tones; a tremelo is between two tones further apart, usually an octave. But the concept is the same. They are always fast, and they are NOT measured, which means they do not fall evenly into sixteenth or thirty-second or sixty-fourth notes and do not line up in an even way with what is going on the other hand, for example; instead they are free-form. It is this free and un-measured quality which gives them their excitement and almost ecstatic quality. They often come at a part of the music that has been building to a climax. (I am referring here to a trill which goes on for several beats, not just a simple turn of three notes. Technically that is not considered a trill.)

There are many other examples in our music which are not intended to be measured, such as grace notes. You, the pianist, have the freedom to make them a little faster or a little slower, depending on the character of the music, but they are not a specific speed. If they were intended to be measured and even, the composer would simply write them that way. The small notes you see used for grace notes, mordents and other ornaments indicates that they are un-measured.

Earlier today I came across someone's blog who said a trill should measured, and needs to work out evenly so that you always have the same note coming on the beat, for example. Nothing could be more wrong! This would make your trill sound amateurish and stiff. I'm thinking of a gorgeous piece by Debussy titled L'isle Joyeuse (Isle of Joy) which opens with a long solo trill lasting half the measure. It beautifully conveys the joy that the piece is about. You don't even get a sense of the beat until the end of the measure. If it were measured it would be a completely different feeling. There is no question that Debussy would have intended it to be free ( he was once quoted as having said "I have no use for German bookkeeping.").

In the same post this person said that to get clarity in the trill, you need to lift your fingers. Again, nothing could be more wrong. If the trill is to be fast, you must be efficient. Lifting your fingers any distance off the keys will cause loss of efficiency. Think of an Olympic skier in the slalom race, where they have to ski around a series of gates. They need to get as close to the gate as possible; even a few inches too wide will cause them to lose a tiny fraction of a second and will make the difference between winning or not. Maximum efficiency means being close to the keys. It's just physics. You don't need to worry that the sound will be blurred; you want to be playing so fast that the listener doesn't really hear the trill as individual notes.

Here is how I teach trills. Take the two notes of the trill and play them blocked, meaning together at the same time. You need to use your whole arm, not just fingers. Then, think of how it feels when you are skip a stone on a lake; you have one impulse (the throw) and then several "bounces." Let there be several bounces (not too many) off the first impulse. When the bounces occur, you need to stay as close to the keys as possible. After all, it just makes sense that if you bounce high off the keys there will be too much time between bounces. After you have the hang of this, just let the notes come out separately, but try to keep it feeling almost identical to how it felt when it was blocked. You'll be tempted to try to do something to get the notes to separate, but just try to keep the feeling of one impulse. When your bounces get really fast, meaning as little time between them as possible, you have the beginnings of a fast trill. 

There are many people who will tell you the trill is done solely with the fingers. There are some who can do this. But for the average person, you will find that soon the small muscles of the fingers tire and even seize up. Using the arm gives you the power to keep going without pain or fatigue.

A tremelo is essentially the same and I recommend the same method. I've heard many people say that a tremelo with an octave requires that you use forearm rotation, which means the radius bone rotates over the ulna. They even say to exaggerate the rotation when you are practicing. However, rotation is extremely inefficient. You are tipping the forearm (and therefore the hand) towards the pinky side and then towards the thumb side, which means almost your whole hand is far away from the keys. Again, there is no way your tremelo can be fast unless you stay close to the keys. 

I want to emphasize again that, while you might want to see a video of what I am describing, I am still not including videos in my posts. I don't want my readers to think you can learn to play the piano online by watching videos. You need to have a teacher by your side who is watching your hands and arms in order to correct and refine your technique. What I present here is hopefully giving you ideas for experimentation, or perhaps to explain why you may feel you are not making progress if you are using methods that you have been taught in the past and which do not work. 

Musical Architecture

 

If you ever had a "Music Appreciation" class, or something similar, in college or elsewhere, your teacher or professor probably talked about musical forms, such as "sonata form." She/he would point out the main sections into which the piece of music is divided, and explain the names we give each section such as exposition, development, etc. Or maybe you read about this in a book on music theory. Interesting, but potentially pretty dry stuff.

Maybe you never had such a class, but if you have been playing an instrument or even just listening to classical music, you sense that there is a structure to the music. Even a very short piece, or a popular song, has a structure. You might liken it to a small simple house. A large piece, such as a symphony, by its very nature must be more complex in its structure. You might liken it to a cathedral. 

I like to call this "musical architecture."

Why does music even need architecture? If you think of a painting, you see all the elements all at once, so you can see how everything relates to everything else. You can see what is in the foreground, what is in the background, what the painter wants you to notice first, perhaps. In music, since it unfolds over time, we must have a way for our brains to tie it all together. This happens by relating what we are hearing now to what we heard earlier. The use of recurring themes, and their development, is one of the ways this happens.

You may ask, "is it necesssary to know about this to play the piano?" I could say that you could get by without knowing a thing about musical architecture. If you play with emotional engagement, and have solid technique, you could play beautifully without knowing anything about how the music you are playing is organized. But why would you?  Hopefully, you would want to know what makes it so beautiful, so fulfilling.

The musical architecture of a piece of music is one of the aspects -- arguably the most important aspect -- that makes the music great. The cathedral may have gorgeous stained glass windows and incredible carved decorations, but it is the architecture itself which makes it inspiring and awe-inducing.

Instead of studying it away from your instrument, why not learn about musical architecture as you play. One of the best ways to do this is by "outlining" the piece as you start to learn it. Essentially, you play a "sketch" of the piece by choosing to play the main elements, and omit all smaller details. 

In our music, the structure is inherently tied to the harmonies. If you play a single-line instrument such as the flute, it will be much harder to hear the harmonies because it would be other instruments (the orchestra, or a piano) who would be supplying most of it. But a pianist will always be playing the harmony. Therefore, to do an outline, you are playing the basic harmonic progressions of the piece. A good way to start, if you are new to this, is to play what comes on the first beat of every measure. You must be playing hands together to hear the full harmony. If you read my post on the measure, you will see that the measure is a meaningful unit. What happens on the first beat of the measure is likely to be an important part of the structure. There are exceptions, of course, but you can assume it's a good way to start. Gradually you add more details. See my earlier post on outlining for more on this powerful tool.

When you play a "sparse" outline, uncluttered, so to speak, by all the details (beautiful though they may be), you can start to hear the main themes that the composer is employing. These themes, as mentioned above, are the way in which the composer ties the whole thing together, makes it sound cohesive and logical, rather than rambling, or stream of consciousness.

But "wait!" you say..... aren't the themes made of the melodies rather than the harmonies? Yes, but all melodies have harmony as their basis. Think of the famous opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. In the first four notes, G-G-G-E flat, we hear a C minor chord (the I chord, since C minor is the key of the piece), and in the next four notes, F-F-F-D, we hear a G7 chord (the dominant, or V chord) of the piece. So even with just these few notes, not only has the tonality been established, but the main theme of the piece has been introduced, and this theme will be used and developed in myriad ways throughout. It is this devlopment which builds the forward momentum and fuels the dramatic climaxes that we hear in the music. In fact, it has been said (and I agree) that the particular genius of Beethoven is his architecture.

But I digress. When you start to learn a new piece, make sure you don't overwhelm yourself with so many notes that you can't hear the underlying themes and harmonies. Although I don't believe in "interpretation" as a solely intellectual activity, I do believe that hearing -- and understanding -- the architecture of the piece will influence your interpretation and make you a better musician. 

How Should I Organize My Practice Time?

 

One of the most common questions I get from new students is "how much should I practice?" I reply that the quality of the practice is far more important than the quantity. The amount of time spent would depend on how much you have available, of course, and the quantity and difficulty-level of your pieces. So there is no one answer to that question. 

People rarely ask if they should follow some sort of plan for their practice sessions, but I think it's worth considering. I write detailed notes for all of students at the lessons, not only what they are to practice, but how to practice for the most efficiency and best results. I don't specify any order to follow, because I want them to have the flexibility to adapt their practice sessions to their schedules and their own moods.

When I was young, all my teachers said to do your "exercises" first. Scales, arpeggios, Hanon, Czerny and so on. Supposedly it was to help you "warm up" and prepare for the technical challenges in your pieces. I'm quite certain that many, many teachers still recommend the same thing today.

As you might have guessed, I disagree with that idea altogether. For most students, playing a lot of scales and arpeggios is not necessary. They are skills you need, yes, but from what I see, most students just play them over and over in a mechanical way. Scales and so on are only worth practicing if you are going to really work at doing them better, that is, more smoothly, faster, in different combinations, etc. If you already have the basic skill, you don't need to keep doing it over and over. Plus, you will encounter scales and so on in your pieces, so you will still get ample chances to work on those specific skills.

I really believe most people do not need to "warm up" their hands. We do thousands of manual tasks in our daily lives and do not need to warm up for them. True, piano is much more complex than all of our normal tasks, but if you are playing with the right technique, meaning integration of the arm, hand and fingers, you won't be over-taxing your muscles. If you have arthritis or another medical condition in your hands, you need to be especially mindful of your technique, that is does not rely solely on the small muscles of the fingers. If you are relying more on your larger muscles, the arm, then they are fine without any special type of warm up.

If you really do want some sort of warm up, then those exercises mentioned would be the worst way to do it, especially if you do them in the manner that is often prescribed, with high fingers and lots of articulation and isolation of the small muscles. Those exercises could potentially cause strain, the very thing you are trying to avoid by "warming up!"

In addition, if you do exercises first and then get interrupted and run out of time, you may not get to your actual music, which is the reason you probably want to play the piano in the first place.

Some people will advise you to organize your practice in a very rigid way, even down to the level of detail such as how much time to spend playing with the metronome. I couldn't disagree with this approach more. (On that note, please see my post "Burn Your Metronome.")

Instead, start with the music you are currently working on. You could start with the newest piece, the one you know least well, so you make sure to get to it. Or you could start with the one you know better, maybe one you can play by memory, so you have a nice gentle easing into your practice session. Of course you don't have to do them in the same order every time. 

I usually recommend you play the piece through, then go back and work on "spots" that need extra attention, then end by playing through again. Playing through after spot work will tell you if, and how, your spot work was effective. I know many other teachers would disagree with this and say you need more time for trouble spots. Some even say to only do spot work. I like to emphasize the "wholeness" of the piece, rather than have it end up feeling like a patchwork of "spots." Places that were "spots" yesterday may be better today and no longer need special attention (probably because you worked on them yesterday and made progress!). Playing through first will tell you what needs work today. However, if it's a longer and/or more challenging piece, you could decide to start with spot work, but then still end by playing through.

For longer pieces, you will probably need to break them up into sections. Sometimes I like to start my practice session with the last section of the piece, then work backwards by section. Otherwise, the earlier sections tend to get more practice, so this method makes sure you get to everything more or less equally. In fact, it's a good idea to start at random places in the piece and work from there. If you find you have trouble doing that, it means you don't know the piece as well as you could. 

What if you have trouble getting yourself to the piano to practice? Even if you love it, you may be a procrastinator and put off your practice time. In that case, find a piece, maybe a short one, that you really love, and play that first. Then once you're sitting there, you'll probably be motivated to continue practicing. If you like to improvise, do that first. Improvising is a great "warm up" because there is (ideally) no stress about "wrong notes" and such. If you are playing some popular music or other non-classical that is less demanding, you could do that first to ease yourself into the practice session.

Remember, you are studying piano because you love music and love the experience of creating music. You know the saying, "if you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong." Don't let practice time become a task. Find ways to keep the practicing playful and fun. See my various posts on how to keep it creative. Avoid any advice or methods that smack of rigidity.

The Measure

 

The measure. All the stuff in between those vertical lines on the staff. If you read music, you've seen the measure in everything you've read, but probably don't give it much thought. Why do we have it? Is it necessary? If we took the measure lines (bar lines) away, would the music sound the same? Do they have some kind of meaning?

Our music (in the Western world) is metric, meaning measured. The easiest way to think of "measured" is  that the sounds you hear are grouped in some perceivable and predictable way.  The sounds of traffic outside are random, thus, not measured. Even most sounds in nature are not measured (one notable exception being birdsong). But music, being a human creation, must, by its very nature, be graspable and understandable by human brains. Apparently, we are not good at making sense of a long string of sounds without some kind of grouping of those sounds.

(Perhaps I should mention that very early music, e.g. from the Middle Ages, was not metric. It took the form of chants which were based on the words. It was more like free-form "talking," with tones, than it is like our modern music. When it first began to be written down, there was no notation to indicate the grouping or the rhythm. The chants were learned by listening to others, and the words helped indicate the "rhythm," such as it was.)

In fact, this grouping is called "chunking." In the early days of the telephone, it was found that people had trouble remembering a string of numbers, say, seven numbers. But if you divide the numbers into a group of three and a group of four, they are much easier to remember. This is how our modern phone numbers came to be as they are. 

Let's say you had a piece of music that was just a steady beat or pulse, with no variation (all quarter notes, say). Even after a short amount of time, your brain would not make any sense of the music, even if, for arguement's sake, the pitches themselves were pleasant. It would just be rambling and the brain would lose interest. If, however, the steady pulse were to be grouped in fours, it would make sense; it could even be a march, for example, something you could walk to. How would this grouping happen, if the notes were steady with no variation? There would have to be a slight emphasis, or accent, on the first note of each group of four. Our brains could then identify the beginning of each new group.

Most music, of course, is more complex and is not just a steady drone of quarter notes. All the other variations of sounds -- sounds that occur in time -- form other patterns, other groupings, which is what we call rhythm. All these other rhythmic patterns do not remove the grouping, they exist within it. You could even say they form groups within groups. 

Whether you are composing, and plan to write down your composition, or improvising it on the spot, your brain, if you have some degree of experience and sensitivity to music, will naturally group things without even thinking about it consciously. If you are new to improvising and notice that your improv is somewhat rambling-sounding, there are several reasons, but primarily that there are either no groupings or inconsistent groupings.

Remember, the ideas and inspiration for the music came first, and notation came later. Musical ideas and themes are conceived with their tones and rhythm being inextricably married. It is completely unimaginable that a composer came up with the tones of the melody and somehow added the rhythm later! After the "birth" of the theme(s), the composer would develop them, spinning them into compositions of varying complexity and length. The grouping of the tones of the themes would be built into the fiber of the composition, therefore, not added as an afterthought. 

Regarding the person playing the music, the grouping must be subtle. The forward momentum and "flow" of the music is paramount; you wouldn't want to hear it chopped up by exaggerating the first tone(s) of the groups. In fact, the grouping is so "built in" by the composer, there is nothing you need to do. The hallmark of a beginner would be the "choppy" sound that would result from over-accenting the first beats of the measure (group).

When it comes to notating the composition, it could be said that the groupings are obvious and no futher notation is necessary. However, after the Middle Ages, as mentioned above, especially when music began to break away from words, adding the measure lines, to explicitly show the groupings, was a great aid to those wanting to read the music. It also meant that, should the composer decide to change the groupings in one section of the composition, it could be shown easily, without confusion.

And so the measure was born. Theoretically, you could remove the bar lines, and the music would be played, and would sound, exactly the same. The compoer Erik Satie did just that in a few of his compositions, but you can still hear it group itself into groups of four. 

But there is an inherent problem, potentially, with the bar lines. With beginning students, I've noticed it seems to make their eyes stop at the line. The music is meant to proceed, unhampered by the bar lines, but for some it creates a subtle barrier to the next measure. The bar line itself has no time value and the listener would not be aware of where there were bar lines in the music. It is incumbent upon the teacher to notice when this is happening with the student and train the student to look ahead to the next measure, and to have a solid rhythmic training.

In a future post I will discuss the deeper meaning and purpose of the measure, how it embodies "going away and coming home" and propels the music forward.

Desirable Difficulties

 

I recently read a very good book about music and the brain where the author used the term "desirable difficulties." It seems to encapsulate the concept of many of the techniques I use, and have my students use, that improve one's command of the music one is working on.

As you've heard me say before, nothing happens in the hand, fingers, arms, etc. without first happening in the brain. Not so long ago, people believed "muscle memory" was actually in the muscles themselves; now we know it is primarily in the motor cortex of the brain. See my post "It's All (neuro)logical". We are creating and strengthening the neurons and the neural pathways that enable us to perform the movements required by the music in a somewhat automatic fashion, that is, without literally "thinking" about them.

You might think, as many people do, that the way to develop the "wiring" in the brain, as I like to call it, would be to just play the piece, or the passage, over and over again. Virtually everyone who teaches or talks or writes about learning to play the piano will tell you that copious amounts of repetition are necessary. As it turns out, recent scientific experiments with musicians' brains, as well as people from other disciplines, tell a different story. The brain seeks novelty. After a certain amount of repetition, there are diminishing returns regarding how many more neurons and/or pathways are created. 

To get the brain really working again, you need to create some new challenges or difficulties for it. It will then create new wiring that will strengthen and supplement what you already have. You may be thinking, "It's already hard enough! Why make it harder?" But that is, in fact, what is necessary. If it's hard, you probably will benefit from doing it. (Remember, when I say "hard" I mean mentally. There should never be any physical pain with any of this. Never play through pain.)

Maybe you can eventually get to where you have a solid command of the music with just the ordinary repetition, but creating desirable difficulties will get you there faster. And hopefully it will also be more fun and interesting.

Here are some of my top ways of creating desirable difficulties:

1. Tranpose. Transposing the piece, or even parts of the piece, to different keys, by ear, will challenge your ear more than you ever thought possible. And, as I always say, the ear really runs the show, so it's the first thing to work on. (Again, when I speak of the ear I mean the auditory cortex of the brain.)

2. Play with eyes closed. See my post on this topic.

3. Play with hands crossed. Again, see my post on this topic. 

4. Play the left hand's part doubled with the right, meaning they are both playing the same thing. Of course you can go slowly and possibly skip any large leaps or things you just can't reach. Then do the reverse. This way, your dominant hand helps "teach" the other hand. Ironically, the non-dominant hand also helps the dominant hand, probably because it just feels so awkward and foreign to the brain that is had to work really hard at it.

5. Play one hand's part while singing the other hand's part. This would work well for a two-voice piece such as a Bach Invention. 

There are other means of creating desirable difficulties, Experiment and see if you can come up with some of your own.

Should You Visualize the Score when Playing by Memory?

 

I've heard people say that they try to visualize the written score when playing by memory. And I've heard people advise doing that. I've also heard people say that you should even write out the piece, by memory, to help with visualization (Wow, that would be terribly time-consuming.) I don't believe that this will help with memory in the long term.

It seems like people who have photographic memories would have zero problems with memory slips when performing. I know someone who has a photographic memory, but he still has memory slips just due to nerves. It's possible to lose your place in the score while just visualizing it, and the fear of this causes the slips. More importantly, his playing is not very musical. I suspect that the involvement of the visual cortex of the brain to such a great degree detracts from the auditory and the emotional parts of the brain. 

I would imagine that trying to visualize just parts of the score, versus all of it, would be even worse, because you'd have to remember to jump to doing the visual in just those parts, and if you forgot to do that, you might have no back-up plan. I say I "imagine" because I never ever visualize the score. By the time I'm ready to play in performance, I have been playing by memory for months, and how the actual score looks is long forgotten.

Remember, the score is just a visual representation of the music, not the music itself! Before the composers set the music down in writing, they heard it all in their minds. Music notation is a wonderful thing, giving access to a whole world of music. But the goal should be to go past the notation and fully internalize the music. So how do you do that?

As you've heard me say in previous posts, the development of the ear is the number one job for the musician. The best musicians are the ones with the best ears. Even if you already have a good, or even great ear, there are ways to improve it. I've had students ask me if they should go to the internet for programs which, for example, play intervals and have you identify them. You can do that yourself, at the piano, just by playing two notes (one in each hand, so you can't feel the interval) with your eyes closed. That would just be for beginners who want to improve their ear. For the more advanced player, transposing the pieces you are working on, or simpler pieces if necessary, is the most powerful tool for making your ear work harder and thus get stronger. Transposing means you are moving the music to another place (another key), but keeping all the relationships the same. That is the essense of hearing and knowing a piece, to be able to hear all the relationships.

Remember, the transposing needs to be by ear, not by eye, which would mean just calculating each note's distance from the original one.

Another often-overlooked way to improve your ear is to sight-sing. Choirs often require that their members be able to sight sing. If you can see an interval and sing it, that means your ear knows it. To practice this, you'd need to take music with which you are not familiar, otherwise you'd already just sing it from memory.

Even if you try to visualize the score and are successful at it, you'd have to start again from scratch on every new piece. But if you develop your ear, it is there for you at all times, in everything you play.

So many people just focus on "learning the notes" of what they are playing, and perhaps mastering the physical techniques as well. But if you want to play by memory (which I hope you do), then you need to get the piece into the deep levels of the "wiring" in your brain. This means really knowing how it sounds. You may think, "of course I know how it sounds," but if you can't transpose it to another key, then you don't really know it. I believe ear and memory are essentially the same thing.

Don't Count On It

 

Once again I find myself wanting to write about rhythm. Without rhythm there would be no music. 

I am still amazed at how many people, even some who have been playing the piano for a few years, are just stumped by rhythm, and others who ignore it almost entirely.

If you are improvising (solo), you can theoretically ignore rhythm. There is no such thing as NO rhythm. But you could have a rambling, unsteady, incoherent rhythm, and, I suppose, if it doesn't bother you and no one else is listening, then who am I to say it's not good. But if you improvise with or for others, you will find no one will want to be your partners or your audience. And if you continue this way, focusing just on "the notes," your improvising will not improve.

Now we will address the more common situation, playing music from written musical notation. If you tried to teach yourself, you may have had no idea how to go about learning to read and hear rhythm. If you had a teacher, she/he should have given you the training and tools to hear the rhythm, and to understand the rhythmic notation. However, intellectual understanding is not enough; you must connect the hearing and understanding to a deep knowledge in your body to be able to actually play them. Sadly, many teachers and many books and many "methods" don't really do this. It has to be taught in a way which engages the physical, not just the mental. Knowing the "math" of rhythm is not enough.

So for hundreds of years teachers and pedagogues have searched for tools that could help with the learning of rhythm. Unfortunately, the one most commonly used is "counting," which is a blunt instrument indeed. As you are probably aware, counting involves saying (out loud) the number of the beat (e.g. one-two-three-four), and when the beat divides in two, adding a syllable between the beat (e.g. one-and-two-and etc.). If the beat divides further, more syllables are added. Proponents of this method insist you must count at all times. 

There are SO MANY problems with this, yet I am going to attempt to list them all.

1. Counting is basically putting the cart before the horse. Or perhaps it's more of a "catch-22." If you can hear the rhythm, you don't need to count or put any other words to it. If you really can't hear it, no amount of counting will help you, because you can still just say those numbers in the wrong rhythm and not even realize it. We all have a pulse within us, 24/7, moment of birth until moment of death, so I firmly believe everyone can hear (and replicate) a steady pulse. No need to say "one two three four" to hear it. (Yes, there are those few who are challenged to clap to the beat when hearing music, but they are a small minority and could improve with proper training.) Let's say our beat is a quarter note, and when the beat divides you have eighth notes. It is still like a pulse, just twice as fast. Same thing if it divides again. The problem is, of course, that actual music has these in different and ever-changing patterns. So, if your counting isn't 100% consistent, and even, it will still be a mess. With my method, I break down the more complex rhythms into a simpler ones, then "fill in" more of the "divisions" step by step, until the whole thing is fleshed out. I realize this may be unclear just from the description, but suffice it to say that, like many things we do, we start with the basic structure and add details litte by little. That being said, if the student is attempting to play a piece with really complex rhythms and is getting lost in it, then they may not be ready for that particular piece, and I would assign simpler pieces (rhythm-wise) and work up to the complex ones.

2. The system of counting began hundreds of years ago, when music was not nearly as complex as it is now. The system never really came up with an adequate method of using numbers and words when the beat divides in three instead of two or four, which is quite common. Teachers have devised all sorts of words to supposedly help with this problem, but again, it's entirely possible to say these words in a different rhythm than the one you intended. Counting is completely useless for non-standard divisions of the beat (see my post on this topic) such as five or seven, which may not have been used by early composers, but is very common in all the composers of the Romantic era and everything since then.

3. Counting is pathetic when it comes to jazz or pop. The idea of counting was formulated when the most "stressed" notes fall ON the beat. Thus, the other syllables such as the "and" and uh" are not as stressed. But what about syncopation, where the most "important" notes (or words, if it's a song) are occuring OFF the beats. Counting becomes very awkward. It was just never imagined that there would be a need for a system to accomodate this type of music.

4. Counting is totally useless for poly-rhythms, for example one hand playing in duplets (normal eighth notes) and the other in triplets. You obviously can't be saying both at once. Proponents of counting would just tell you to play each hand separately as you count, then put them together. I can assure, it's the putting them together that is the challenge. No amount of counting is going to help "wire your brain" to hear two different rhythms at once. (See my post on this topic.)

5. Counting is too slow. You can really only do it if you are playing fairly slowly. If you have to count "one-ee-and-uh two-ee-and-uh" for sixteenth notes, you can't say it fast enough for a lot of music that would actually have sixteenth notes.

6. Since counting itself is unreliable, the use of the metronome was introduced. Theoretically, having the metronome tick away in a steady pulse is supposed to help you with the rhythm. But as we have seen, the pulse is not the problem. It's all the stuff that happens within the beat that makes it complicated. Use of the metronome, making yourself a slave to an external machine, is never going to give YOU a good sense of rhythm, or help you play with rhythmic vitality. If you somehow manage to use it and get all your rhythm "correct," it will be lifeless and dull. By the time you wean yourself off it, it will be too late. Your habit of playing without any rhythmic nuance and subtelty will be too entrenched. Once again, some proponents of the metronome insist you use it almost all the time.

7. You can't really be listening to your own playing if you have to constantly hear the chatter of all those numbers and syllables. Our goal is to strengthen the connection between ear and body (arms, hands, etc.). Inserting mental and verbal activity such as counting is a distraction and is going to impede your progress.

8. Proponents of counting never do say when you can finally stop doing it! I've read the blogs and articles of many counting enthusiasts, and I have yet to find one who tells you when you don't need it anymore. Should you wean yourself off or go cold turkey? I hope you realize that concert pianists and other highly accomplished players DO NOT COUNT in their practicing. Many probably never did. If their their early teachers insisted on it, they just stopped doing it because they learned to hear the rhythm and simply realized they didn't need to count.

9. And finally, I want to point out that the people who play the most complex rhythms, such as African and Latin drummers, and many jazz musicians, never learned to play with counting nor with the metronome.

There are so many people who advocate using counting and the metronome, sternly warning you that you would ignore this at your peril! So you may be inclined to think there must be some truth in it if so many people believe it. I hope this post has convinced you otherwise. Our understanding and our methods have evolved over the years in almost every field of endeavor -- sports, science, medicine, to name a few -- yet piano methods seem largely stuck in the 1700s. If you still want to follow those methods because you are comfortable with them, or any other reason, and think you will someday play with beauty, fluency and mastery, I would say: DON'T COUNT ON IT!

Making Your Own Song Arrangements

 

You've read in my previous posts that I encourage students to play music other than classical music, at least a little, even if they are mostly interested in classical. It has a lot of skills to teach you.

When beginners start with me (and even not-so-beginners), I always start with playing by ear. They pick out the melodies for familiar songs such as Happy Birthday, Silent Night, Amazing Grace, and so on. I teach them about chords, starting with major triads, but they need to learn all twelve, not just the ones which fall all on white keys (which I've seen many students do). They harmonize the songs with the chords (just three chords for those songs), by ear, but with my guidance as necessary. We continue on to more songs, finding ones that require more chords.

Not only do you need to use your ear to determine which chords to select, you need to use your ear to tell you where they come. This will build your sense of rhythm and your understanding of musical architecture. Many people think the chord is one that has the melody note in it, but this is not necessarily the case. The musical architecture is more important here. You may not quite understand what I mean by architecture, but just for starters, read my post "Going Away and Coming Home."

Soon after, they learn all twelve minor chords, then augmented and diminished traids, then 7th chords, eventually learning all five kinds of 7th chords. At this point they know 108 chords. It is important to stress here that you must learn the chords by learning how they are built, not reading them from a book or chord chart. If you learn them by reading them or other methods which just show you which keys to play, you will never really know them well. It's the difference between giving you a fish and teaching you how to fish. If you currently have a teacher who cannot teach you this, or thinks it is not important, I strongly suggest you find a new teacher. (One of my current students had a previous teacher who told him that "the learning curve was too steep" to learn all about chords! Isn't that what a teacher is supposed to be helping you with?)

You originally learn all the chords in root position, but later your must also learn to play the inversions with ease. This means the notes of the chord are re-arranged. It is the equivalent of a whole egg vs. a scrambled egg. You must know the "egg" first, then you can scramble it.

In addition to being able to play dozens, if not hundreds of songs, you will be getting a lot of ear training and a lot of experience with chords. Not to mention that most people find this fun and satisfying. They can sit down at the piano and play for friends and family at a social gathering, playing music which many people may recognize and really enjoy.

The next step would be to play from "fake books" (also called "real books") where the melody is written in standard musical notation but the chords are written with symbols, which of course I taught them when the learned the chords. With this approach, you can learn and play many songs you might not have been able to figure out by ear. (Which doesn't mean you shouldn't still try.) You would continue playing the chords blocked (meaning all the notes at once) in root position in the left hand. This arrangement sounds perfectly fine, although it lacks something that a more complex and elaborate arrangement would have.

The next step, therefore, is moving the chords to the right hand, which frees up the left hand to play in the lower registers of the piano, which gives more richness to the arrangement, as well as being able to add some rhythmic interest. To put the chords in the right hand means that the melody note must always be at the top (the highest note). If it were not, we wouldn't identify it as the melody. (You don't want to "bury" the melody note inside the chord.) That means the chord tones will fall underneath the melody note. Therefore, many, if not most, of the chords will end up being an inversion (as opposed to root position). It takes a while (for many students) for the hand to just find those chords quickly, but eventually it will.

The left hand arrangement will differ if it is a slow, lyrical song, vs. an upbeat faster song. It is beyond the scope of this post to describe the myriad things the left hand can do. But even if it is simple, having chords in the right hand and even just one note (probably the root of the chord) in the left, will give you  a very pleasing result. And remember, if you can do this, without having read the chords in notation, from a book, it means you really know your chords.

Even if you think you want to play 100% classical music, I believe it's wise to devote some time to doing this as well. I've had many people come to me for lessons, and they may play a Chopin Nocturne, but when I ask them to play a simple rendition of Happy Birthday they can't do it. They ask to see the sheet music! Or I will point to a place in their classical piece and ask what chord it is, and they don't have a clue. Even though I've seen it dozens of times, I'm still shocked when this happens. Chords are one of the building blocks of our music. If you play clarinet or any single-line instrument, you don't have many opportunities to learn about harmony (chords), unless you go to a good music school or conservatory, in which case you absolutely are required to learn them. But as pianists, we are virtually never NOT playing chords. So it behooves you to at least understand what you are playing, but even better, to achieve mastery of it.

Are We Having Fun Yet?

 

When people contact me to inquire about starting piano lessons with me, they often say "I'm just doing this for my own enjoyment," to which I reply, "what other reason is there?"

All of my students are adults. Some are total beginners, and many are returning to the piano after an absence. Either way, it is quite clear to them that they aren't going to become concert pianists or make a career of music. This is virtually impossible. (I say "virtually" because there was the case of a man who was a doctor by profession, was struck by lightning on the golf course, and when he woke up in the hospital he had an overwhelming desire to devote his life to music. He became a composer and conductor with a succesful career. But I'm sure you don't want to be struck by lighting to achieve this result for yourself!)

Having fun is goal number one. Yes it's going to be work and effort to make progress and play really well. There are days that will be frustrating and even discouraging. But it will all be ultimately worth it if the majority of the time you find it to be FUN.

Hearing a piece of music come to life under your hands can be very exciting. Opening up a page of music and playing it through is very gratifying. Improvising and/or playing with others can be a great experience. So what are the things that prevent your piano studies from being fun? Here are the main ones.

1. Turning your practice sessions into drudgery. Many people believe that drudgery, endless repetition, and grueling or boring exercises are just part of the territory in learning to play the piano. Not true!! Playing scales, arpeggios or other "finger exercises" for hours is not the way to learn, and certainly not the way to learn to play with emotion and expression. Yet many teachers still will tell their students to do these things. Some repetition is needed, but it must be very targeted to solve an actual problem.

2. Having too limited a "diet." A woman came to see me last week who had been studying piano on and off for several years. She told me she had played almost all the Clementi Sonatinas, as well as some Haydn and Mozart, but not much else. Nothing written in the last 200 years. Since she didn't know anything else, she may not realize what potential fun she is missing out on. But someday she may realize it, and then it will be lot of time lost. In addition to a wide range of classical music, I urge my students to also play some jazz, pop, and Broadway, as well as to improvise. All of these will make you a better pianist, not to mention being fun.

3. Adherence to a rigid method or routine. There are a large number of "methods" (e.g. Suzuki) or curriculums (e.g. ABRSM -- Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music), and others developed by schools or individuals, too numerous to list here. In Suzuki there must be a strict following of the methods and there is no room for individual differences. In APRSM, there is a curriculum of exercises and pieces which must be practiced and learned in the prescribed order, followed by exams which must be passed before moving on. I really believe this is absurd. Every student is different. Some have a good ear but can't sight-read, others the reverse. Some have good coordination but cannot play with emotion, others the reverse. I find some students keep practicing things they can already do reasonably well, just out of habit, but then ignore other aspects of playing because no one "told" them to do it. I tailor all my lessons to each individual, working more on their weaker areas, but still continuing to improve their stronger ones. Most importantly, all students do not play the exact same music. Before assigning a piece, I want to make sure they enjoy the sound of it. If not, we choose something else that will develop the same skills. You wouldn't expect a doctor to give the same exact medical advice to every patient. Learning to play the piano is not a "one-size-fits-all." Following a rigid plan or schedule makes it easier for the teacher because they don't have to put a lot of thought into each lesson, but it's not better for the student.

4. Bad teachers. By this I mean a teacher who insists you do all of the above mentioned items. Or it could just be the teacher is cold, critical, un-caring, or seems bored with teaching. Or they could be un-professional, unrealiable (e.g. cancelling a lot of lessons). Some are just unqualified: they can't play well themselves and can neither demonstrate nor explain the many aspects of music theory, technique, etc., and wave their students' concerns off with statements like "you don't really need to know that." I have had many students describe their previous teachers as doing all of the above. The relationship with the teacher is critically important. The teacher must be very invested in the student's progress, yet also kind and caring. They need to be "friendly" but not be "casual" about the lessons or expect you to be their friend. Sadly, there are a great number of incompetent and un-kind teachers out there.

I'm sorry if I paint a bleak picture. Of course there are many excellent teachers as well. But sometimes the student has to kiss a lot of frogs before finding the prince.

Hands Crossed

If you are at the level where you are playing advanced or moderately advanced classical pieces, you may have encountered passages where one hand crosses over the other. A notable example is the third movement of Beethoven's Sonata Opus 53 ("Waldstein"), where the left hand crosses over the right to play the main melody. It continues this way for quite a few measures, and returns again every time the main theme returns. The right hand is busy with an arpeggiated chord pattern, so it's more practical for the left hand to cross, than it would be to keep switching which hand plays the chord pattern. It sounds much more smooth as well. 

Perhaps the very first time you try this you find it slightly awkward, but soon you will be used to it and will have no problem, assuming the piece is at the right level for your general abilities. The first time I suggest it to my students they think I am kidding --- or crazy. But then they find it is a fun challenge.

Although Beethoven and the other composers probably would not have known this, crossing the midline of your body with your arms has benefits for the brain. You probably know that the left hemisphere of the brain controls the right side of the body, and vice versa. This is an over-simplification (the brain is far more complex than that), but in general it is true. So when the right half of the brain is sending signals to the left hand at the piano, but the left hand is not where it usually is, but in fact is now on the opposite side, the brain has to develop additional pathways to accomplish the task. If you do an internet search on benefits to the brain of crossing hands, you will find numerous scientific articles which confirm this. It's not just a theory but is borne out by many tests and studies. And who doesn't want a bigger, better brain? It benefits every area of your life, and certainly is important for aging well.

The Waldorf School, a private school for children, has all its students learn a string instrument, such as violin or cello. Of course they want the children to experience the joys and benefits of playing music, but they specifically select string instruments because moving the bow over the strings involves crossing the midline of the body, which has the benefits mentioned above. Unfortunately, brass and wind players do not get this opportunity. Nor do singers.

It is now recommended that parents do games and exercises with their babies and young children that involve crossing the midline with their arms (or legs) to advance brain development.

If you find that you rarely, if ever, have a piece which involves crossing the hands, you can still get all the benefits by simply playing with hands crossed on your own. Select a passage from a piece you are working on that is not too technically difficult, and just cross hands, meaning you will play the left hand's part with the right hand, and vice versa. (You would not be playing each hand's own part but just in a higher or lower register. They each have to play the part they are not familiar with.) Of course you can read the music, and of course you can go slowly. Each hand has no muscle memory for the part it is playing, so it feels like learning it from scratch. However, your ear knows the sound of the music, so it will be assisting you. Don't worry about mistakes; you'll have lots of them. Just continue on.

After you have done this, go immediately to playing it in the normal way, and see if it doesn't feel easier. Don't wait for a later time; do it when the new neural pathways are "fresh." 

To take things one step further, use the hands-crossed method on a passage you are having trouble with. If you have tried other forms of creative problem solving (that is, not just playing it over and over) and it still hasn't improved as much as you hoped, play it hands crossed, and then immediately afterwards play it normally.

I can't promise that every technique I talk about in the blog will work for absolutely everyone, 100% of the time. But I do know that they work. Hands crossed is another tool to have in your toolbox. 

Can Pianists Have Nice Nails?

 

You may think this is a trivial subject, but you will see that it is not.

Even if you are male and have no interest in having longer nails, read on.

When I was a young piano student, my teachers always insisted that I keep my nails trimmed very short, almost no visible white part at all. As a teenager, I was envious of my friends who had longer, lovely manicured nails. If I dared to let them grow a bit, I would get a lecture from my teacher. Alas....

But the reason for needing to have your nails very short is a bogus one. It stems from the idea that you must curve your fingers when you play. Some books say to curve your fingers as if holding a tennis ball. With this curvature, you end up playing on the tips of your fingers. If the nails protrude past the finger at all, they will produce a clicking sound on the keys.

This idea of curved fingers is another example of what I call "300-year-old ideas." It originated with the harpsichord. The harpsichord has a completely different action than the piano. Even then, the idea really had no basis in reality, but they believed it was required to achieve the right sound. And so the idea persisted right up until today, where most teachers will still tell you to curve your fingers.

If your fingers are curved, how can you play an octave or larger? Or a large chord with several notes? With fingers curved you simply cannot open your hand enough to play those. Try it and you'll see. When the idea first arose, with the harpsichord, there simply were no pieces that had the big chords of Chopin, Brahms and Rachmaninoff.

Over-curving the fingers also makes the whole hand tighter and less flexible. We want our hands to be supple and elastic, not muscle-bound and tight. (Once again, another 300-year-old idea says you must build the strength of the fingers, which is not true.)

What we should be doing is playing with the natural curvature of our own hands, which varies between individuals. Turn your hand prone (upside down) on your lap in a relaxed way. Then just turn it over and place your hand on the keys; that is your natural curvature. No one has a completely flat hand, and almost no one has a very curved hand. With a natural curvature, you end up playing on the pads of the finger (where your fingerprint is). 

Generally speaking, you can't play well with very flat fingers. This is because they can't transfer the power of the arm to the keys in this position. However, even though I am a petite woman, I can reach a tenth when I let my hand open up naturally, without stretching, and my hand will be practicially flat. But for someone whose hands are that way naturally, that is how they will play. I recommend you watch some videos of the late great Vladimir Horowitz, who was known for his technical prowess. His hands are practically flat. This obviously was his natural curvature. In fact, you'll see that most professional pianists' fingers are not excessively curved. If your teacher insists you curve your fingers, ask him/her how Horowitz managed to have a huge technigue without curving.

Now that you are playing on the pads of the last joint of the finger, there is no problem for the nails to be longer. Of course, there is a limit. If they are like talons, they are going to bump into the keys and the fallboard, and you will end up with a lot of broken nails.

I keep my nails slightly longer, and I get a manicure regularly. My nails don't "click" nor do they chip or break, and I play many difficult pieces.

Once again, beware of 300-year-old ideas. They don't stand up to scrutiny.

Skim or Dive?

 

In many areas of life, especially when learning something new, you may choose to be a skimmer, or you may choose to be a diver. A skimmer would learn the new skill or subject "well enough," but not at a deep level. You might need to give a talk on the subject, so you study it, but you don't intend to become an expert on it. If you're a diver, you want to go deep into the subject and perhaps attain some level of mastery of it. If you're a skimmer, you can expose yourself to a wide range of material, since you'll spend less time on each skill or topic, but if you're a diver, you'll have to be more selective so you can have the time to acquire the mastery.

Regarding the piano, being a skimmer doesn't necessarily mean you learn superficially. However, many people do just that. They start learning a piece, maybe sight-read through it, but then, when it starts to get difficult to conquer the technical challenges, for example, they lose interest and move on to another piece. There could be some valid reasons to do this: perhaps you want to see if you enjoy the sound of the piece enough to actually work on it. If you don't, you can move on. However, virtually every piece of music affords opportunities to improve your skills; if you don't pursue those, you won't get much out of the time you spent on it. And you'll still have to acquire those skills in another piece in the future. Just "learning the notes" is, by definition, skimming. If you don't imbue the music with expression, nuance, and energy, you are just skating on the surface. No one would want to hear such a rendition, and neither should you.

A concert pianist would have to be a diver. They would need to master every piece they perform, not just in terms of notes, but in order to create as much beauty as possible. However, outside the concert hall, they may enjoy skimming from time to time, to explore new music, perhaps.

Those of you reading this blog are probably neither concert pianists nor aspiring concert pianists. That is fine! Piano is a skill that can be enjoyed at any level, any age, any phase of life. It is my belief that people enjoy it more if they improve and make progress as opposed to repeating the same things over and over. So, for the beginning or intermediate level pianist, let's explore how skimming and diving might apply.

I start my students playing by ear, and add reading later. Whether by ear or reading, the pieces I assign necessitate that the student learn some very basic skills, such as just being able to move your hands around the keyboard (not as easy as it sounds, as any beginner will attest). When they basically have it, we move on. It doesn't need to be "perfect." Trying to get each of these very short beginner pieces perfect would mean you will progress far too slowly. Forget about perfection. You've probably heard the phrase "perfect is the enemy of the good." It definitely is true here. (However, having the correct rhythm is non-negotiable. Once you start cutting corners on rhythm, you may never develop a good sense of rhythm.) So, in a sense, they are skimming, but with a purpose.

Once they are out of the beginner books, I assign pieces that hone primarily one main skill in each piece. For example, Bach's C major prelude from the Well Tempered Clavier, Book I, is a piece where every measure has the same technical skill: broken chords split between hands, which need to be played smoothly connected. Just by working on this piece you would get a lot of practice on this one skill. Of course, it's not just a matter of learning the notes: the teacher needs to show and teach the skill of being able to do this in a way which is legato and well-phrased. This would be a piece which I recommend they "dive" into. We would continue to work on it until it had a "long line" (not be choppy), and had meaningful dynamics, and where the student really engages with it emotionally. It would also be memorized. I have found over the years that my students derive a great deal of satisfaction in playing this staple of piano literature really well.

As the student progresses, we select some pieces to semi-skim, that is, to use as vehicles primarily to attain new skills. Of course I still want them to play with emotional engagement and make it lovely to listen to, but they won't spend long enough on the pieces to really master them. We will choose other pieces that we want to take to a deeper level, to really explore the possibilites for nuance and expression. I feel this approach is best for several reasons. Most students have busy lives and need to practice smart, not long hours. This is the most efficient use of practice time. It is also the most enjoyable. You spend less time on the pieces you like but don't love, yet still get valuable benefits from them. And you spend more time on the pieces you really love.

I once had an adult student who told me that when he was young, his teacher had him work on one piece only for the whole year (yes you read that right!) so that he could play it perfectly at the recital. The teacher wanted "perfection" so it would reflect well on her, of course. Do you think the student played "perfectly?" Of course not; he was so bored and sick of the piece it was probably mechanical and dull. She had him do 100% diving and no skimming. He would have acquired a very limited range of skills from just one piece. And of course he hated the lessons and quit right after the recital. 

It's important for the teacher and student to understand the difference between skimming and diving, and when to employ each.