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.