When pianists begin to learn a new piece, one aspect that consumes a lot of their attention is the whole matter of fingering. Many jazz pianists who play more by raw instinct perhaps do not worry about it, and simply let the the hands find their own way, so to speak, without planning it all out. But aspiring classical pianists and students of the piano, in my view, have a great deal of misunderstanding about the whole issue of fingering, which often prevents them from developing really strong technique.
You have read in my previous posts that I believe many ideas about piano technique were formed in the early days of the piano, when the piano literature was quite limited in its technical demands, the pianos themselves were quite different, and real knowledge about the physical actions of our bodies and how they produce sounds was virtually non-existent. The pieces of this era were what I would call quite "finger-y," in that they have a lot of scale passages, Alberti basses (simple broken chord patterns for the left hand), and simple melodies that span only a small section of the keyboard. Those pieces did not have the sweeping arpeggios, lush chords, and booming octaves that came later with Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, and Brahms, to name just a few. These demand an entirely different type of technique, based more on the arm. To focus on "fingering" is to approach it backwards, in my opinion.
When I begin to learn a new piece, I do an outline (see my previous post on this topic). I don't worry about deciding on fingering at all at this stage. Doing a broad sketch of the piece gives me the lay of the land; I start to know where my hands and arms need to be from moment to moment. Where my hands need to be reflects the phrasing. A passage which is a single phrase needs to be connected by long continuous movements of the arm. When a new phrase begins, the arm moves to it as naturally as you would breathe between phrases of a song. In fact, the analogy of the song and breathing is very useful to learning to play with beautiful phrasing.
As I start to fill in more detail in the outline, more detail will also come regarding the exact placement of the hand from passage to passage, measure to measure, and that will determine the fingering.
Fingering is not a "one-size-fits-all." The size and shape of each pianist's hands will make some fingerings more comfortable and others more awkward. You must develop a keen awareness of what is comfortable for your hands. I believe it is a big mistake to blindly follow the fingerings written in the musical scores, which so many students try to do. These are just one person's opinion. You do not know if that person's hands were anything like your own. You don't even really know how successful that person was at playing the piece! In most cases, the fingerings you see are put in by an editor, and not by the composer. Even if they are put in by the composer, there is no reason to assume that there is only one way to play the piece. You must find what works for you. Therefore, I suggest buying unedited versions of the music whenever possible. If the fingering is written in, either ignore it or even white it out. If a passage in the music is particularly tricky and you need to decide in more detail how you will manage it, you can write in a few finger numbers here and there, which essentially remind you of how you will transition from place to place to accomplish the passage. The rest of the fingering will be obvious and you shouldn't need to write every finger used for every note.
There are also a number of myths and arbitrary rules about fingering, such as avoiding thumbs on black keys. This is absolutely ridiculous. Try playing Chopin's "Black Key Etude" or Debussy's "Clair du Lune" without putting your thumbs on any black keys! Again this idea took hold in the early days, and may have worked for the simple music of Clementi, or even Mozart, but certainly cannot work for most of the repertoire now. I have seen people come up with bizarre, uncomfortable positions for the hand and go through all sorts of gyrations just to avoid thumbs on black keys. If your overall use of your arms, hands and fingers is based on real, solid principles, you can use almost any fingering and make something work. For example, I can play any and all scales with the same fingering you would use for the C scale (1,2,3,1,2,3,4,5); therefore, in the scale of B-flat, my thumb will fall on both black keys, the B-flat and the E-flat. I can do this, with great speed and absolute smoothness, because I don't do the traditional crossing the thumb under. Instead I employ a very quick arm movement and can transfer from one hand position to another, anywhere on the keyboard, with speed, accuracy, and perhaps most important, no strain on the hand. Researching this topic I have found several references to the fact that Liszt used this technique and Chopin taught it as well. The whole matter of crossing the thumb under, or crossing fingers in general, is often badly taught, badly applied, and creates more problems than it solves.
With a solid understanding of technique and a teacher who can help you develop your technique, you will have many more tools in your toolbox than just the old ideas about good fingering.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
It's All Relative
We live in a world where many people want to convince us that there are only absolutes: absolute good and evil, absolute truths, absolute friends and enemies. They insist on their beliefs in absolutes in the areas of politics and religion, to name a few, and, true to form, they say you must follow them absolutely or be absolutely wrong and damned forever. As I write this, election season is in full swing, so the rhetoric about absolute values bombards us constantly.
One of the things I love about music is that, unlike some other areas of our lives, very few people, especially musicians themselves, insist on absolutes. After all, just about everything you can name about music is relative. Here are some examples:
Pitch: You may think that a song or piece of music is made up of pitches, tones, which can be said to have definite and measurable frequencies (vibrations per second). However, one tone or pitch by itself does not make music; it must have other tones, and it is the relationship of these tones to each other, both horizontally (the melody) and vertically (the harmony) that make the music. You can sing a song starting on any pitch and it is still the same song. You can transpose any piece of music to a different key, essentially changing all the notes of that piece, but still preserving all the relationships. It's the relationships that make it recognizable.
Rhythm: The rhythmic patterns we find in music, the tones of shorter or longer duration and all their possible combinations, are about the relationship of these tones to each other in time. A quarter note is not an absolute value; it is a unit of time which varies from piece to piece, from section to section within a piece, and even from moment to moment when the piece slows down or speeds up. The value of that quarter note changes depending on the person playing the piece, and the same performer will likely give it a slightly different value every time he or she plays that piece. Composers give us general guidelines (allegro, andante, largo, etc.) but the rest is up to our judgement and personal tastes. It's all relative, and thank goodness for that; otherwise it would all sound robotic.
Dynamics: Composers may indicate "soft" or "loud" or "very loud" on a score, but are there any absolute values for these? Of course not. Again, it's up to the individual musician.
Musical notation: Many students of music, learning to read music for the first time, will memorize the note names on the musical staff. Various acronyms ("Every Good Boy Does Fine") are sometimes used to help students commit the notes to memory. But change the clef sign, and the notes on the staff are all different. Many musicians in the orchestra read in other clefs than pianists do, and for pianists the treble and bass clef are different from each other. So can we really say the notes have absolute values? It's a flexible, movable system, a pretty brilliant one at that.
In my teaching, I try to emphasize the relativity of the elements of music. I start students off by playing by ear and playing simple songs, with chords, in several keys, so they immediately understand that our music is based on the scale, and, since the scale can be built starting on any key, so, too, can music move to any key. This builds the ear, the knowledge of all 12 keys, and gives greater freedom and flexibility to one's playing.
I emphasize the relativity of rhythm by having my students clap units of time and then "cut" them, to hear the divisions of that unit. (See my earlier post on rhythm and my analogy of chopping logs.) No matter the size of the "unit," short or long, they can hear the relationships of the pieces to the whole. I never use a metronome or emphasize any absolute values or tell them what speed to play a piece. The choices of tempo and dynamics are up to them. I may guide them in how to make those decisions, but I don't want their choices to be my choices.
In reading music, I teach students how to read by interval and learn to "navigate" between them by how it feels in the hands (not by looking at the hands or keys) and not to even be concerned with note names as they play. It's this skill of navigation that makes for great sight-reading. The added bonus is that you can learn to transpose at sight, a valuable skill if you accompany singers or instrumentalists. It's all about seeing the relative position of the pitches, and keeping in mind what key (scale) you are in, which, again, is relative.
With every passing day and year I spend as a musician, I'm convinced that the lessons learned from playing the piano are applicable to just about every area of life. Relationships are not only important, one could almost say they are everything, in music and in life. Let's not worry about absolutes, but embrace relativity.
One of the things I love about music is that, unlike some other areas of our lives, very few people, especially musicians themselves, insist on absolutes. After all, just about everything you can name about music is relative. Here are some examples:
Pitch: You may think that a song or piece of music is made up of pitches, tones, which can be said to have definite and measurable frequencies (vibrations per second). However, one tone or pitch by itself does not make music; it must have other tones, and it is the relationship of these tones to each other, both horizontally (the melody) and vertically (the harmony) that make the music. You can sing a song starting on any pitch and it is still the same song. You can transpose any piece of music to a different key, essentially changing all the notes of that piece, but still preserving all the relationships. It's the relationships that make it recognizable.
Rhythm: The rhythmic patterns we find in music, the tones of shorter or longer duration and all their possible combinations, are about the relationship of these tones to each other in time. A quarter note is not an absolute value; it is a unit of time which varies from piece to piece, from section to section within a piece, and even from moment to moment when the piece slows down or speeds up. The value of that quarter note changes depending on the person playing the piece, and the same performer will likely give it a slightly different value every time he or she plays that piece. Composers give us general guidelines (allegro, andante, largo, etc.) but the rest is up to our judgement and personal tastes. It's all relative, and thank goodness for that; otherwise it would all sound robotic.
Dynamics: Composers may indicate "soft" or "loud" or "very loud" on a score, but are there any absolute values for these? Of course not. Again, it's up to the individual musician.
Musical notation: Many students of music, learning to read music for the first time, will memorize the note names on the musical staff. Various acronyms ("Every Good Boy Does Fine") are sometimes used to help students commit the notes to memory. But change the clef sign, and the notes on the staff are all different. Many musicians in the orchestra read in other clefs than pianists do, and for pianists the treble and bass clef are different from each other. So can we really say the notes have absolute values? It's a flexible, movable system, a pretty brilliant one at that.
In my teaching, I try to emphasize the relativity of the elements of music. I start students off by playing by ear and playing simple songs, with chords, in several keys, so they immediately understand that our music is based on the scale, and, since the scale can be built starting on any key, so, too, can music move to any key. This builds the ear, the knowledge of all 12 keys, and gives greater freedom and flexibility to one's playing.
I emphasize the relativity of rhythm by having my students clap units of time and then "cut" them, to hear the divisions of that unit. (See my earlier post on rhythm and my analogy of chopping logs.) No matter the size of the "unit," short or long, they can hear the relationships of the pieces to the whole. I never use a metronome or emphasize any absolute values or tell them what speed to play a piece. The choices of tempo and dynamics are up to them. I may guide them in how to make those decisions, but I don't want their choices to be my choices.
In reading music, I teach students how to read by interval and learn to "navigate" between them by how it feels in the hands (not by looking at the hands or keys) and not to even be concerned with note names as they play. It's this skill of navigation that makes for great sight-reading. The added bonus is that you can learn to transpose at sight, a valuable skill if you accompany singers or instrumentalists. It's all about seeing the relative position of the pitches, and keeping in mind what key (scale) you are in, which, again, is relative.
With every passing day and year I spend as a musician, I'm convinced that the lessons learned from playing the piano are applicable to just about every area of life. Relationships are not only important, one could almost say they are everything, in music and in life. Let's not worry about absolutes, but embrace relativity.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Avoiding Injury and Strain
Much has been written and taught about proper and effective technique at the piano, and, like politics and religion, passions run hot on the subject.
My approach to technique differs substantially from most traditional methods in that it focuses more on the power of the larger muscles, primarily the upper arm, and coordinated movements of arm, hand, and fingers, rather than on finger strength and "independence" of the the fingers. Much of the early development of philosophy of piano technique, as well as the exercises such as Hanon, Czerny, and the like, took place in the age of Mozart and Haydn, when pieces were less technically demanding, and the pianos of the day had a lighter action and required less strength. (Much of it even predated the piano and was based on technique for the harpsichord.) Those methods had few, if any, exercises to address the sweeping arpeggios of Chopin, the sustained passages of thundering chords and octaves of late Beethoven or Brahms, or the shimmery sounds of Ravel and Debussy. Furthermore, little was known in those days about injuries and disorders caused by repetitive muscle contractions.
The composer and pianist Robert Schumann thought his fourth finger was too weak and he developed and used his own set of exercises to strengthen it; he ended up injuring it permanently and had to stop playing. If he had known that is isn't about the strength of the fingers, but about the arm (which has plenty of power) he could have saved himself that pain and heartache.
If this were not true, how could we explain the fact that young children -- child prodigies for example -- play many of the demanding pieces that adults do, with small hands and without large muscles? Could their fingers alone have become so strong? Not likely. It is that they have discovered how to use and coordinate the power of their entire mechanism.
Watch a video of any great pianist, such as Martha Argerich, and you will see how active the arms are. Many people mistakenly believe it's "just for show." This is far from the case. The arms are what provide the power, as well as the continuity. The arm blends the smaller movements of the hand and fingers into an over-arching movement, which is how you get great phrasing, and what is known as "a long line."
Problems that befall pianists from overuse and improper use of the small muscles (i.e. the fingers) are tendinitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, and, perhaps worst of all, focal dystonia. Dystonia is "a neurological movement disorder, in which sustained muscle contractions cause twisting and repetitive movements or abnormal postures. Treatment is difficult and has been limited to minimizing the symptoms of the disorder, since there is no cure available." (Wikipedia) Dystonia of the hand is even called "musician's dystonia." Several well-known pianists developed it, and had to curtail their playing or even stop playing completely.
To avoid these problems, you must find a teacher who can show you how to develop a solid technique based on real principles of anatomy and physics, not the out-dated ideas of 300 years ago. If you already have pain or strain in your hands, forearms, or back when playing, you are on the road to having more problems in the future. Because it is such a "hands-on" experience and method, it is impossible for me to describe every aspect of my approach to technique in this blog. But there are a few things you can do right away:
1. Make sure you sit properly at the piano. Most people sit too low. The bench that came with your piano may not be the right height for you (it can't be one size fits all). Use a pillow to sit higher, or invest in an adjustable bench. Sit so that there is a continuous downward slope from your shoulder to your hand and the line is not "broken" anywhere. Neither your elbow nor your wrist should be below your hand or the keys. If your wrist is below your hand, it creates a great deal of strain on the wrist, which is a delicate area, prone to problems such as carpal tunnel. If you cut off the power from your arm by sinking your wrist, you will have to rely mostly on finger strength, which will also cause strain (not to mention not giving you a big and beautiful sound).
2. Don't do repetitive finger exercises and scales (see my earlier blog post on this subject). There are more intelligent, effective, and musical ways to work on technique. But again, you will need the guidance of a great teacher.
3. Do not ever play through pain. If you feel pain in your hands or arms, stop immediately, shake out the tension and relax for a while. Analyze what type of playing caused the pain and don't keep doing that particular piece. If you think the pain will go away if you become "stronger" you are mistaken.
4. Some teachers will tell you to depress the keys all the way to the bottom (the "key bed') in order to get a rich sound. This is wrong -- it's an old idea and the physics just don't support it. There is a point where the hammer is tripped and hits the string (you can feel where that is by depressing the key slowly and feeling the point of resistance), and pressing past that is wasted energy and can't effect the sound, since the hammer has already been tripped. You can learn to have precise delivery of your power and get a great sound without the excess strain of pushing too far and too hard. If you are feeling strain, just play with a lighter touch for a while until you hopefully cure the habit of aiming too deep in the keys.
5. Read the book "Indispensables of Piano Playing" by Abby Whiteside. Abby was one of the pioneers in debunking the old ideas on playing the piano and showing her students a brilliant new approach. Although I believe it's difficult to learn something so physical from a book, at least it will give you an idea what to look for. She was my teacher's teacher, and he, Joseph Prostakoff, saved my life. Had it not been for him I would not still be playing today. When I went to him I had constant pain in my arms. Now I have none, no matter how many hours I play (and I do play the "big" pieces of Brahms, Beethoven, Chopin, etc), even though I am petite (5'2") and have no real muscle strength.
6. Go to the Abby Whiteside Foundation website, www.abbywhiteside.org, and go to the page titled Teachers. If you are lucky, you may find a teacher in your area that can help you. There are certainly other teachers besides those who studied with Abby or her students who know about these methods, but you may have to do some digging to find them.
I can only imagine the heartbreak of having to stop playing the piano due to injuries, especially if they were caused by playing, and could have been avoided. I hope this never happens to you. Please take the necessary steps now to avoid strain and injury.
My approach to technique differs substantially from most traditional methods in that it focuses more on the power of the larger muscles, primarily the upper arm, and coordinated movements of arm, hand, and fingers, rather than on finger strength and "independence" of the the fingers. Much of the early development of philosophy of piano technique, as well as the exercises such as Hanon, Czerny, and the like, took place in the age of Mozart and Haydn, when pieces were less technically demanding, and the pianos of the day had a lighter action and required less strength. (Much of it even predated the piano and was based on technique for the harpsichord.) Those methods had few, if any, exercises to address the sweeping arpeggios of Chopin, the sustained passages of thundering chords and octaves of late Beethoven or Brahms, or the shimmery sounds of Ravel and Debussy. Furthermore, little was known in those days about injuries and disorders caused by repetitive muscle contractions.
The composer and pianist Robert Schumann thought his fourth finger was too weak and he developed and used his own set of exercises to strengthen it; he ended up injuring it permanently and had to stop playing. If he had known that is isn't about the strength of the fingers, but about the arm (which has plenty of power) he could have saved himself that pain and heartache.
If this were not true, how could we explain the fact that young children -- child prodigies for example -- play many of the demanding pieces that adults do, with small hands and without large muscles? Could their fingers alone have become so strong? Not likely. It is that they have discovered how to use and coordinate the power of their entire mechanism.
Watch a video of any great pianist, such as Martha Argerich, and you will see how active the arms are. Many people mistakenly believe it's "just for show." This is far from the case. The arms are what provide the power, as well as the continuity. The arm blends the smaller movements of the hand and fingers into an over-arching movement, which is how you get great phrasing, and what is known as "a long line."
Problems that befall pianists from overuse and improper use of the small muscles (i.e. the fingers) are tendinitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, and, perhaps worst of all, focal dystonia. Dystonia is "a neurological movement disorder, in which sustained muscle contractions cause twisting and repetitive movements or abnormal postures. Treatment is difficult and has been limited to minimizing the symptoms of the disorder, since there is no cure available." (Wikipedia) Dystonia of the hand is even called "musician's dystonia." Several well-known pianists developed it, and had to curtail their playing or even stop playing completely.
To avoid these problems, you must find a teacher who can show you how to develop a solid technique based on real principles of anatomy and physics, not the out-dated ideas of 300 years ago. If you already have pain or strain in your hands, forearms, or back when playing, you are on the road to having more problems in the future. Because it is such a "hands-on" experience and method, it is impossible for me to describe every aspect of my approach to technique in this blog. But there are a few things you can do right away:
1. Make sure you sit properly at the piano. Most people sit too low. The bench that came with your piano may not be the right height for you (it can't be one size fits all). Use a pillow to sit higher, or invest in an adjustable bench. Sit so that there is a continuous downward slope from your shoulder to your hand and the line is not "broken" anywhere. Neither your elbow nor your wrist should be below your hand or the keys. If your wrist is below your hand, it creates a great deal of strain on the wrist, which is a delicate area, prone to problems such as carpal tunnel. If you cut off the power from your arm by sinking your wrist, you will have to rely mostly on finger strength, which will also cause strain (not to mention not giving you a big and beautiful sound).
2. Don't do repetitive finger exercises and scales (see my earlier blog post on this subject). There are more intelligent, effective, and musical ways to work on technique. But again, you will need the guidance of a great teacher.
3. Do not ever play through pain. If you feel pain in your hands or arms, stop immediately, shake out the tension and relax for a while. Analyze what type of playing caused the pain and don't keep doing that particular piece. If you think the pain will go away if you become "stronger" you are mistaken.
4. Some teachers will tell you to depress the keys all the way to the bottom (the "key bed') in order to get a rich sound. This is wrong -- it's an old idea and the physics just don't support it. There is a point where the hammer is tripped and hits the string (you can feel where that is by depressing the key slowly and feeling the point of resistance), and pressing past that is wasted energy and can't effect the sound, since the hammer has already been tripped. You can learn to have precise delivery of your power and get a great sound without the excess strain of pushing too far and too hard. If you are feeling strain, just play with a lighter touch for a while until you hopefully cure the habit of aiming too deep in the keys.
5. Read the book "Indispensables of Piano Playing" by Abby Whiteside. Abby was one of the pioneers in debunking the old ideas on playing the piano and showing her students a brilliant new approach. Although I believe it's difficult to learn something so physical from a book, at least it will give you an idea what to look for. She was my teacher's teacher, and he, Joseph Prostakoff, saved my life. Had it not been for him I would not still be playing today. When I went to him I had constant pain in my arms. Now I have none, no matter how many hours I play (and I do play the "big" pieces of Brahms, Beethoven, Chopin, etc), even though I am petite (5'2") and have no real muscle strength.
6. Go to the Abby Whiteside Foundation website, www.abbywhiteside.org, and go to the page titled Teachers. If you are lucky, you may find a teacher in your area that can help you. There are certainly other teachers besides those who studied with Abby or her students who know about these methods, but you may have to do some digging to find them.
I can only imagine the heartbreak of having to stop playing the piano due to injuries, especially if they were caused by playing, and could have been avoided. I hope this never happens to you. Please take the necessary steps now to avoid strain and injury.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Memorizing
After I've given a concert, the question my audience members ask most often is "How to do memorize all of that?" Luckily, I've always had a good memory. But I don't rest on my laurels; I work at it every day. More importantly, I want to help my students with memory issues, so I've made an in-depth study of the subject of memorization as it applies to piano.
Some musicians, or people learning to play an instrument, memorize easily, some do so with a good deal of effort, and some find they can't memorize at all. The fear of memory slips, and the embarrassment of having them when playing for others, takes a lot of the pleasure out of playing in public. People who memorize easily often can't explain how they do it. For those who memorize with effort, it takes a good deal of time, and still causes anxiety and fear of memory slips.
In playing an instrument, there is not just one kind of memory, there are several: these are: "muscle" or kinesthetic memory, auditory memory, visual memory, and what I might call "intellectual" memory.
Muscle memory is what happens when you perform a physical action, or series of physical actions, repetitively. One almost cannot help developing muscle memory, but it is stronger in some people than in others. It certainly is an important tool. For my students who are beginners, I help them develop muscle memory by urging them play the music with the same "fingerings" (I prefer the concept of hand positions) consistently, so the body is not confused by doing something several different ways. Muscle memory requires a certain amount of repetition of course; this is why musicians assume they must practice hours and hours with hundred or thousands of repetitions. However, if you practice smarter, you may not need so many repetitions as you think. Instead of playing a passage over and over, play it a few times but focusing intently on how it feels to your hand, arm and torso to play it. Muscle memory will grow faster with that kind of attention. Muscle memory alone, however, is not enough. It may be somewhat quick to acquire, but it is also quick to lose. Lay off practicing the piece for weeks or months and you may find the muscle memory weak, if not gone altogether.
Auditory, or "ear" memory, could be described as the internal image of how the music sounds. You may think that you have a clear auditory memory of your pieces just from listening to them. Again, some people will pick up auditory memory quickly and others struggle. It is directly related to how strong, how well-developed, your ear is in general. A good test to see how strong your auditory image is, is to transpose the piece. After all, if you really know how the music sounds, it shouldn't matter what key you play it in, right? (A simple example of this is singing; you may not know in what key you start singing "Happy Birthday," but you don't forget how to sing the tune.) Can't transpose the whole piece? Try just the melody to start. It may be harder than you thought. If you can't do it easily, you don't yet have a clear auditory image of the music. Keep transposing, however difficult, and it will strengthen the ear memory. When this becomes easy, transpose with eyes closed and you will be amazed at the results!
You can further strengthen the ear by eliminating muscle memory temporarily: for example, play the melody by alternating hands on each note (one note in left, the next in right, and so on). This way there is no muscle memory working for you and you are relying totally on your ear. Or play the passage in question with the opposite hand than normally plays it (you will probably need to go slowly). These methods may seem odd at first and you may be wondering why you would purposely make the playing more difficult than it already is. I can tell you, however, that I have never had a student who didn't become a believer in these methods after trying them and noticing an almost immediate difference.
I find that when the auditory memory is strong, I can still play the piece after months, sometimes even years, of not practicing it.
The other advantage of ear memory is this: if in performance you have a momentary slip, muscle memory alone may not be able to save you, but with auditory memory you can always find your way and get back on track.
Visual memory comes in two forms: picturing the written page in your mind, and/or picturing the notes on the keyboard. I think both of these will hold you back and prevent you from playing your best. People who are strong visual learners (and often good sight-readers) depend on the cues from the written page and may picture it in their minds when playing from memory. People who have photographic-type memories may not be able to prevent themselves from seeing the page in their minds. But remember, the written notation is only a vehicle for learning the music, it is not the music itself. If the visual cortex and visual processing parts of your brain are most active, your auditory cortex will have to take a back seat, and that means you can't be listening as intently as if the auditory is pre-eminent.
If you have memorized the piece to the extent that you are no longer looking at the page, nor picturing it in your mind, but you are looking at the keys themselves and needing that to give you visual cues as to what notes to play next, you will never memorize with ease or assurance. And this method is simply too slow for any fast piece. It is also not always possible to watch both hands at once, if they are spread out over the keyboard. If you need to look at your hands, the muscle memory is weak. The cure for this is, once you no longer need the page, practice with eyes closed. If you miss notes, don't immediately open your eyes and look; instead, use your ear to find your way back on track. Make it a goal to play the entire piece with eyes closed, even if a bit slower than normal. It is well-known that if you want to strengthen one sense, take away the others temporarily. Thus, to strengthen muscle and ear memory, take away the visual. Then when you do have your eyes open, it will just give you a last bit of security for things such as large leaps.
The last kind of memory, intellectual memory, is where you would be able to describe what is happening in the piece, for example, harmonically and structurally. This method, even more so than the visual, is too slow for any "real time" playing. You simply cannot think and process this information as fast as your hands and arms need to go! And again, if this area of the brain is too active, and there is a lot of "chatter" going on in the brain about the music, you can't really be listening and responding to what you hear. However, this type of memory is useful, and in fact necessary, for situations such as when a part of a piece is repeated, one time leading to one section but another time leading to a different section. Both muscle memory and ear memory know both versions, so intellectual memory is needed to remind yourself which of the two repetitions you are on, and where you are headed. Many a musician has suddenly found themselves in the wrong place in the piece because they were on auto-pilot, so to speak, and lost track of which part of the piece they were in, by depending only on muscle memory.
The danger with intellectual memory, however, is that it can get it the way. The last thing you want, especially in performance, is to start "thinking" about the notes, about what note comes next. If you do, you almost surely will have a memory slip. This is because thinking interrupts the muscle and ear memory, which, hopefully, at this point are secure. You must learn to trust your body and your ear, and stay out of the way with your "controlling mind" except for a high level awareness of where you are in the piece and where you are going. Then you are free to really listen, play from your heart, respond to what you hear, and enjoy the process!
The final reason that people have trouble memorizing a piece is that they wait too long to do it. They play the piece for too long still using the written page, and then leave memorizing all for the end. You need to be memorizing as you go. I often ask people to play 4 measures of a new piece, maybe two or three times, and then memorize it right then and there. Quite often, they can do it, much to their surprise. Now, I'm not saying you should memorize a piece 4 measures at a time -- that would chop it up too much and give you an un-musical result. But you can be memorizing elements such as the melody plus the bass line, or a simplified rendering of the basic harmonic progression, very early on in the process. Get the music "into your ear" with the methods outlined above, and you may find you know the piece by memory much sooner that you thought.
Being able to sit down and play a variety of music, for yourself and for others, by memory, is a joy and a wonderful feeling of freedom. To my mind, playing with the written sheet music in front of you can never be quite the same experience. If you've been concerned or fearful about memory up until now, I hope you will try my suggestions.
Some musicians, or people learning to play an instrument, memorize easily, some do so with a good deal of effort, and some find they can't memorize at all. The fear of memory slips, and the embarrassment of having them when playing for others, takes a lot of the pleasure out of playing in public. People who memorize easily often can't explain how they do it. For those who memorize with effort, it takes a good deal of time, and still causes anxiety and fear of memory slips.
In playing an instrument, there is not just one kind of memory, there are several: these are: "muscle" or kinesthetic memory, auditory memory, visual memory, and what I might call "intellectual" memory.
Muscle memory is what happens when you perform a physical action, or series of physical actions, repetitively. One almost cannot help developing muscle memory, but it is stronger in some people than in others. It certainly is an important tool. For my students who are beginners, I help them develop muscle memory by urging them play the music with the same "fingerings" (I prefer the concept of hand positions) consistently, so the body is not confused by doing something several different ways. Muscle memory requires a certain amount of repetition of course; this is why musicians assume they must practice hours and hours with hundred or thousands of repetitions. However, if you practice smarter, you may not need so many repetitions as you think. Instead of playing a passage over and over, play it a few times but focusing intently on how it feels to your hand, arm and torso to play it. Muscle memory will grow faster with that kind of attention. Muscle memory alone, however, is not enough. It may be somewhat quick to acquire, but it is also quick to lose. Lay off practicing the piece for weeks or months and you may find the muscle memory weak, if not gone altogether.
Auditory, or "ear" memory, could be described as the internal image of how the music sounds. You may think that you have a clear auditory memory of your pieces just from listening to them. Again, some people will pick up auditory memory quickly and others struggle. It is directly related to how strong, how well-developed, your ear is in general. A good test to see how strong your auditory image is, is to transpose the piece. After all, if you really know how the music sounds, it shouldn't matter what key you play it in, right? (A simple example of this is singing; you may not know in what key you start singing "Happy Birthday," but you don't forget how to sing the tune.) Can't transpose the whole piece? Try just the melody to start. It may be harder than you thought. If you can't do it easily, you don't yet have a clear auditory image of the music. Keep transposing, however difficult, and it will strengthen the ear memory. When this becomes easy, transpose with eyes closed and you will be amazed at the results!
You can further strengthen the ear by eliminating muscle memory temporarily: for example, play the melody by alternating hands on each note (one note in left, the next in right, and so on). This way there is no muscle memory working for you and you are relying totally on your ear. Or play the passage in question with the opposite hand than normally plays it (you will probably need to go slowly). These methods may seem odd at first and you may be wondering why you would purposely make the playing more difficult than it already is. I can tell you, however, that I have never had a student who didn't become a believer in these methods after trying them and noticing an almost immediate difference.
I find that when the auditory memory is strong, I can still play the piece after months, sometimes even years, of not practicing it.
The other advantage of ear memory is this: if in performance you have a momentary slip, muscle memory alone may not be able to save you, but with auditory memory you can always find your way and get back on track.
Visual memory comes in two forms: picturing the written page in your mind, and/or picturing the notes on the keyboard. I think both of these will hold you back and prevent you from playing your best. People who are strong visual learners (and often good sight-readers) depend on the cues from the written page and may picture it in their minds when playing from memory. People who have photographic-type memories may not be able to prevent themselves from seeing the page in their minds. But remember, the written notation is only a vehicle for learning the music, it is not the music itself. If the visual cortex and visual processing parts of your brain are most active, your auditory cortex will have to take a back seat, and that means you can't be listening as intently as if the auditory is pre-eminent.
If you have memorized the piece to the extent that you are no longer looking at the page, nor picturing it in your mind, but you are looking at the keys themselves and needing that to give you visual cues as to what notes to play next, you will never memorize with ease or assurance. And this method is simply too slow for any fast piece. It is also not always possible to watch both hands at once, if they are spread out over the keyboard. If you need to look at your hands, the muscle memory is weak. The cure for this is, once you no longer need the page, practice with eyes closed. If you miss notes, don't immediately open your eyes and look; instead, use your ear to find your way back on track. Make it a goal to play the entire piece with eyes closed, even if a bit slower than normal. It is well-known that if you want to strengthen one sense, take away the others temporarily. Thus, to strengthen muscle and ear memory, take away the visual. Then when you do have your eyes open, it will just give you a last bit of security for things such as large leaps.
The last kind of memory, intellectual memory, is where you would be able to describe what is happening in the piece, for example, harmonically and structurally. This method, even more so than the visual, is too slow for any "real time" playing. You simply cannot think and process this information as fast as your hands and arms need to go! And again, if this area of the brain is too active, and there is a lot of "chatter" going on in the brain about the music, you can't really be listening and responding to what you hear. However, this type of memory is useful, and in fact necessary, for situations such as when a part of a piece is repeated, one time leading to one section but another time leading to a different section. Both muscle memory and ear memory know both versions, so intellectual memory is needed to remind yourself which of the two repetitions you are on, and where you are headed. Many a musician has suddenly found themselves in the wrong place in the piece because they were on auto-pilot, so to speak, and lost track of which part of the piece they were in, by depending only on muscle memory.
The danger with intellectual memory, however, is that it can get it the way. The last thing you want, especially in performance, is to start "thinking" about the notes, about what note comes next. If you do, you almost surely will have a memory slip. This is because thinking interrupts the muscle and ear memory, which, hopefully, at this point are secure. You must learn to trust your body and your ear, and stay out of the way with your "controlling mind" except for a high level awareness of where you are in the piece and where you are going. Then you are free to really listen, play from your heart, respond to what you hear, and enjoy the process!
The final reason that people have trouble memorizing a piece is that they wait too long to do it. They play the piece for too long still using the written page, and then leave memorizing all for the end. You need to be memorizing as you go. I often ask people to play 4 measures of a new piece, maybe two or three times, and then memorize it right then and there. Quite often, they can do it, much to their surprise. Now, I'm not saying you should memorize a piece 4 measures at a time -- that would chop it up too much and give you an un-musical result. But you can be memorizing elements such as the melody plus the bass line, or a simplified rendering of the basic harmonic progression, very early on in the process. Get the music "into your ear" with the methods outlined above, and you may find you know the piece by memory much sooner that you thought.
Being able to sit down and play a variety of music, for yourself and for others, by memory, is a joy and a wonderful feeling of freedom. To my mind, playing with the written sheet music in front of you can never be quite the same experience. If you've been concerned or fearful about memory up until now, I hope you will try my suggestions.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Music Theory: Is it Important?
I'm a theory geek. I love talking about, reading about, and teaching music theory. It's endlessly fascinating. And I believe it also has very important application to our playing and understanding of music.
Sadly, I find that most adults who come to me after having studied piano as a child (or children who come from other teachers) know next to nothing about theory. They may play a Chopin Nocturne, even quite well, but if I ask them what key it is in, or why it ends a certain way, they have no idea. One could therefore make the argument that it isn't necessary to understand theory to play well. But if you love music, listen to it, play it, maybe even devote a large portion of your life to it, wouldn't you want to understand what makes it work, in fact, what makes it possible?
Music theory is like gravity: it's not just a good idea, it's the law! (Borrowed from a t-shirt I once saw....) Theory isn't some system dreamed up by Pythagoras and imposed on us; it describes the inner laws that govern our (Western) music. Everything our music is built on, from scales and chords, to the forms such as Sonata form, follow laws based on mathematical relationships. How the composer uses those laws create the beauty and power (or lack thereof) of the piece. But he/she does not invent new laws with every composition; if that were the case, no one would understand it.
Take for example the Circle of Fifths (if you are not familiar with this concept, you can find a basic, though possibly confusing, explanation on Wikipedia, or refer to a book on music theory). Many people think the Circle of Fifths is just a convenient way to learn or memorize the key signatures of all 12 major and minor keys. But it is much more than that; the fifth is an important interval vibrationally. The closest vibrational relationship between any two tones is an octave, where the relationship of vibrations is 2 to 1 (higher to lower tone). That is why two tones an octave apart sound so similar (not to mention why our whole musical system is based on scales that span an octave). The next closest relationship is between two tones a fifth apart, where the ratio of vibrations is 3 to 2. The Greeks called this ratio (3:2) the Golden Mean and considered it the "perfect" relationship. You can find reference to it in the fields of art and architecture; it was said to be the basis of works as diverse as the Ancient Pyramids and the Mona Lisa. In classical music, jazz, and pop, we see the use of the fifth in the progression of chords from one to another and in the modulation from one key to another within a piece. (Note: some jazz players call it the Circle of Fourths, which is the same thing as the Circle of Fifths, because a fifth up is the same thing as a fourth down; to me, this always seemed to miss the point, because the relationship of the fifth is more central to music than the fourth. You get the "Circle of Fourths" by simply going counter-clockwise around the Circle of Fifths.)
My point here is that when one understands the real importance of these aspects of theory, such as the Circle of Fifths, it makes so much of what happens in our music more understandable. Music, like nature, follows certain laws, but within those laws there are infinite possibilities and tremendous variety. But without these laws it would all be chaos and cacophony.
One can learn about theory from text books or dull lecture classes. But if you can't apply it, what use is it? I find the best, and most fun, way to learn a great deal of theory (though certainly not everything) is to learn chords and play songs from fake books. To play from a fake book, you must understand scales and keys, then how chords are constructed (if you really learn how they are constructed -- see my previous post on chords -- not just memorize them from a chord chart), and how the chords progress from one to another. I find it much more fun to actually use your knowledge of harmony by playing it than just to "analyze" a piece of music. I make learning chords and playing from fake books a part of the curriculum of all my students.
Understanding, and more importantly, hearing, how our music obeys certain laws and how each composer uses those laws to create his masterpieces, can be one of those most satisfying aspects of listening to music. Far from making it dry and analytical, it makes you marvel even more at the miracle that is music.
Sadly, I find that most adults who come to me after having studied piano as a child (or children who come from other teachers) know next to nothing about theory. They may play a Chopin Nocturne, even quite well, but if I ask them what key it is in, or why it ends a certain way, they have no idea. One could therefore make the argument that it isn't necessary to understand theory to play well. But if you love music, listen to it, play it, maybe even devote a large portion of your life to it, wouldn't you want to understand what makes it work, in fact, what makes it possible?
Music theory is like gravity: it's not just a good idea, it's the law! (Borrowed from a t-shirt I once saw....) Theory isn't some system dreamed up by Pythagoras and imposed on us; it describes the inner laws that govern our (Western) music. Everything our music is built on, from scales and chords, to the forms such as Sonata form, follow laws based on mathematical relationships. How the composer uses those laws create the beauty and power (or lack thereof) of the piece. But he/she does not invent new laws with every composition; if that were the case, no one would understand it.
Take for example the Circle of Fifths (if you are not familiar with this concept, you can find a basic, though possibly confusing, explanation on Wikipedia, or refer to a book on music theory). Many people think the Circle of Fifths is just a convenient way to learn or memorize the key signatures of all 12 major and minor keys. But it is much more than that; the fifth is an important interval vibrationally. The closest vibrational relationship between any two tones is an octave, where the relationship of vibrations is 2 to 1 (higher to lower tone). That is why two tones an octave apart sound so similar (not to mention why our whole musical system is based on scales that span an octave). The next closest relationship is between two tones a fifth apart, where the ratio of vibrations is 3 to 2. The Greeks called this ratio (3:2) the Golden Mean and considered it the "perfect" relationship. You can find reference to it in the fields of art and architecture; it was said to be the basis of works as diverse as the Ancient Pyramids and the Mona Lisa. In classical music, jazz, and pop, we see the use of the fifth in the progression of chords from one to another and in the modulation from one key to another within a piece. (Note: some jazz players call it the Circle of Fourths, which is the same thing as the Circle of Fifths, because a fifth up is the same thing as a fourth down; to me, this always seemed to miss the point, because the relationship of the fifth is more central to music than the fourth. You get the "Circle of Fourths" by simply going counter-clockwise around the Circle of Fifths.)
My point here is that when one understands the real importance of these aspects of theory, such as the Circle of Fifths, it makes so much of what happens in our music more understandable. Music, like nature, follows certain laws, but within those laws there are infinite possibilities and tremendous variety. But without these laws it would all be chaos and cacophony.
One can learn about theory from text books or dull lecture classes. But if you can't apply it, what use is it? I find the best, and most fun, way to learn a great deal of theory (though certainly not everything) is to learn chords and play songs from fake books. To play from a fake book, you must understand scales and keys, then how chords are constructed (if you really learn how they are constructed -- see my previous post on chords -- not just memorize them from a chord chart), and how the chords progress from one to another. I find it much more fun to actually use your knowledge of harmony by playing it than just to "analyze" a piece of music. I make learning chords and playing from fake books a part of the curriculum of all my students.
Understanding, and more importantly, hearing, how our music obeys certain laws and how each composer uses those laws to create his masterpieces, can be one of those most satisfying aspects of listening to music. Far from making it dry and analytical, it makes you marvel even more at the miracle that is music.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Practicing by Playing Slowly -- Is it Always Best?
In just about anything you read on practicing the piano -- any book, any blog, any DVD -- and also with most teachers, you will find that the idea of playing very slowly is the way to learn a piece and to master its difficulties.
The general idea is to play extremely slowly and gradually increase the tempo until you are playing at the desired tempo of the piece. This may sound logical at first, but does it really work? More to the point, would it produce the desired musical effect, a performance with passion and dazzling brilliance?
If you wanted to run very fast, would you start by walking very slowly and gradually increasing the speed until you were running? Not really: walking and running are quite different from one another and require different coordination. Walking does not necessarily prepare you for running. Slow playing does not necessarily prepare you for fast playing.
Here are a few of the inherent pitfalls of very slow playing:
1. It can be very un-musical. Notice I say can be. Very slow playing encourages very note-wise playing. What I mean by note-wise is that familiar sound of a total beginner playing, for example, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Each note is emphasized equally, giving a very stiff, stodgy, boring effect. There is no feeling of movement or destination. In fact, the destination is always the very next note, which is not really a destination at all. There is no sense of a phrase, or what musicians call a "long line." If you speak a sentence this way, or a line of poetry, you will hear the effect -- it's very robotic. Yet this is often how people play. In fact, playing this way is encouraged by many teachers for the playing of "finger exercises." When you play a piece of music slowly, note by note, you are often playing it as if it were some kind of exercise. This will simply not translate to gorgeous, exciting playing at some later time.
2. It encourages inefficiency. If you have a piece with very challenging technical aspects, whether it be rapid scale passages, arpeggios, octaves, or whatever, you will only achieve speed and power by being physically efficient, that is, having no wasted motions. Playing each finger with a lot of articulation will not give you a dazzlingly fast arpeggio. Instead, there must be the feeling of a grand sweep with the arm with the fingers precisely in the right place at the right time, but not with each finger making a separate and distinct action. Yet when you play very slowly, you are likely to do just that -- make a separate movement with each finger, for it is difficult to get a "sweep" with the arm at a slow tempo. If you want to master the technique of playing fast, you have to play fast. You will have some stumbles and plenty of "wrong notes" at first. But you will gradually train your body (hands, arms and fingers) to be efficient. Playing the piano is very athletic, and learning to play it is very similar to athletic training. You must learn to increase your reaction time, the ability of your body to respond very quickly. You can't do that by always playing slowly. I've found that most people who try playing slowly and gradually increasing their speed never succeed at playing fast and demanding pieces. They haven't trained their bodies to respond at those speeds.
3. The sound is distorted. Imagine listening to your favorite song on a recording played at a very slow speed. It sounds warped and distorted. When you play very slowly, your ear loses the connection between tones, and can't hear the whole phrase as it should sound. You are essentially giving a false or distorted auditory image to the ear. Since I believe the ear is of the utmost importance, and is really "running the show," I don't believe it is desirable to give it a distorted image so much of the time.
How, then, do we learn a new piece, if not by playing it slowly? The first answer is outlining. For a full description, see my previous post on this wonderful, life-altering method of learning. You play a "sketch" of the piece, hands together, seeking to play the most important, structural elements, and omitting the small details. You play at the the desired tempo, or as close to it as you can, but since you are omitting notes it does not feel terribly fast or demanding at the early stages. You gradually fill in more details. Some will come easily -- more easily than you might have expected. Others may not and you will need to do some "spot work" on those passages. Spot work may involve some very slow playing, so you can observe exactly what your hands are doing and make corrections to the problems you find. But the spot work would be in small doses, only as much as is really necessary.
It is impossible to describe here how I work on every type of technical issue. But to summarize, I am making sure that the arm, hand and fingers are all working together for maximum power and speed, as well as for a focused, precise touch for slow and delicate passages. I give specifically-designed "set-ups" for the student to practice the specific technical challenge. But if the passage being worked on is a fast one, the practice will necessitate playing fast -- even faster than you may ultimately play it -- to increase efficiency and reaction times.
Ear work, through transposing, also helps you to learn the piece. When you are new to transposing you will probably find you need to go quite slowly. But here it is "worth the price." The benefits you are getting by transposing outweigh the problems with slow playing. And you need to give your ear time to really hear the relationships.
It's pretty simple, really: you become what you practice. If you want to play hands together, don't practice hands separately. If you want to play musically, don't practice mechanically. If you want to play boldly, don't practice timidly. If you want to play fast, don't practice everything slowly!
The general idea is to play extremely slowly and gradually increase the tempo until you are playing at the desired tempo of the piece. This may sound logical at first, but does it really work? More to the point, would it produce the desired musical effect, a performance with passion and dazzling brilliance?
If you wanted to run very fast, would you start by walking very slowly and gradually increasing the speed until you were running? Not really: walking and running are quite different from one another and require different coordination. Walking does not necessarily prepare you for running. Slow playing does not necessarily prepare you for fast playing.
Here are a few of the inherent pitfalls of very slow playing:
1. It can be very un-musical. Notice I say can be. Very slow playing encourages very note-wise playing. What I mean by note-wise is that familiar sound of a total beginner playing, for example, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Each note is emphasized equally, giving a very stiff, stodgy, boring effect. There is no feeling of movement or destination. In fact, the destination is always the very next note, which is not really a destination at all. There is no sense of a phrase, or what musicians call a "long line." If you speak a sentence this way, or a line of poetry, you will hear the effect -- it's very robotic. Yet this is often how people play. In fact, playing this way is encouraged by many teachers for the playing of "finger exercises." When you play a piece of music slowly, note by note, you are often playing it as if it were some kind of exercise. This will simply not translate to gorgeous, exciting playing at some later time.
2. It encourages inefficiency. If you have a piece with very challenging technical aspects, whether it be rapid scale passages, arpeggios, octaves, or whatever, you will only achieve speed and power by being physically efficient, that is, having no wasted motions. Playing each finger with a lot of articulation will not give you a dazzlingly fast arpeggio. Instead, there must be the feeling of a grand sweep with the arm with the fingers precisely in the right place at the right time, but not with each finger making a separate and distinct action. Yet when you play very slowly, you are likely to do just that -- make a separate movement with each finger, for it is difficult to get a "sweep" with the arm at a slow tempo. If you want to master the technique of playing fast, you have to play fast. You will have some stumbles and plenty of "wrong notes" at first. But you will gradually train your body (hands, arms and fingers) to be efficient. Playing the piano is very athletic, and learning to play it is very similar to athletic training. You must learn to increase your reaction time, the ability of your body to respond very quickly. You can't do that by always playing slowly. I've found that most people who try playing slowly and gradually increasing their speed never succeed at playing fast and demanding pieces. They haven't trained their bodies to respond at those speeds.
3. The sound is distorted. Imagine listening to your favorite song on a recording played at a very slow speed. It sounds warped and distorted. When you play very slowly, your ear loses the connection between tones, and can't hear the whole phrase as it should sound. You are essentially giving a false or distorted auditory image to the ear. Since I believe the ear is of the utmost importance, and is really "running the show," I don't believe it is desirable to give it a distorted image so much of the time.
How, then, do we learn a new piece, if not by playing it slowly? The first answer is outlining. For a full description, see my previous post on this wonderful, life-altering method of learning. You play a "sketch" of the piece, hands together, seeking to play the most important, structural elements, and omitting the small details. You play at the the desired tempo, or as close to it as you can, but since you are omitting notes it does not feel terribly fast or demanding at the early stages. You gradually fill in more details. Some will come easily -- more easily than you might have expected. Others may not and you will need to do some "spot work" on those passages. Spot work may involve some very slow playing, so you can observe exactly what your hands are doing and make corrections to the problems you find. But the spot work would be in small doses, only as much as is really necessary.
It is impossible to describe here how I work on every type of technical issue. But to summarize, I am making sure that the arm, hand and fingers are all working together for maximum power and speed, as well as for a focused, precise touch for slow and delicate passages. I give specifically-designed "set-ups" for the student to practice the specific technical challenge. But if the passage being worked on is a fast one, the practice will necessitate playing fast -- even faster than you may ultimately play it -- to increase efficiency and reaction times.
Ear work, through transposing, also helps you to learn the piece. When you are new to transposing you will probably find you need to go quite slowly. But here it is "worth the price." The benefits you are getting by transposing outweigh the problems with slow playing. And you need to give your ear time to really hear the relationships.
It's pretty simple, really: you become what you practice. If you want to play hands together, don't practice hands separately. If you want to play musically, don't practice mechanically. If you want to play boldly, don't practice timidly. If you want to play fast, don't practice everything slowly!
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Fear
It's a sad fact that fear dominates the lives and determines the actions of many people to one degree or another. Luckily, you who are reading this probably do not live in fear of war, famine, or other severe hardships. But we do live in fear of what others think of us, fear of speaking our minds, fear of following our hearts or our true calling, fear of making mistakes -- the list goes on and on. These fears often prevent us from achieving our full potential or full happiness in life.
I always feel that playing the piano and studying the piano is a microcosm for life itself. Many of the challenges or triumphs I have, or have had, in life, I have at the piano as well. Fear comes into play when we play the piano and when we practice. It prevents us from playing our best, our most expressively, because it makes us cautious, and cautious playing lacks the passion, the immediacy and spontaneity that inspiring playing must have. It also makes us physically tense, and that contributes to lack of physical prowess and expression.
Fear shows itself at the piano in several ways. The most common fear by far is the fear of "wrong notes." For most people learning to play the piano, even many advanced or professional pianists, playing a wrong note causes them to cringe, and usually to go back and "correct" the missed notes as quickly as possible. I say "correct," but in fact it does not change the fact that the incorrect notes were sounded, and it compounds the problem with another, and worse, problem, in that the rhythm is now incorrect as well. Sometimes the first attempt to correct the note fails and an additional attempt is necessary; after a few of these, the whole passage begins to unravel and there is no alternative but to stop completely and start the piece, or the section, over. Sound familiar?
The attempt to correct a note is usually done in a panicky way; the body is tense and the sounds created can be harsh, out of balance with the rest of the surrounding phrase, and obviously, unattractive and unmusical. If the body is tense you certainly won't have the freest or most fluid technique. If you have a fear about a large jump, for example, you will fall short of your target, because you are tense. Even if you eventually manage to get the right notes in that part, the sound will be strained and will lack excitement. To make matters worse, when we repeatedly have wrong note(s) in a particular place, we tense up when we even start to approach that point in the music. Our bodies say "Uh-oh, here comes that place I usually screw up....." and we tighten up in anticipation. What most people don't realize is that when we have anxiety about a certain place in the piece, our ear also "cuts out," or stops listening. We are so focused on what we perceive as the problem that we just don't keep listening in an open and relaxed way. This is the last thing we want, because we need the ear to be absorbing the music and guiding us. When we stop listening, we lose the most important tool we have, the auditory image of how the music sounds. Without the auditory image, we will continue having problems in that part of the piece, regardless of how much "technical" work we do. That one little "wrong" note has now caused an avalanche of problems, most of which we aren't even aware of. To many students of the piano, the whole matter of "wrong notes" and how to "fix" them becomes an ongoing and frustrating issue.
How do I address this fear? First of all, you must have a change in your attitude. You must expect that in the course of learning so complex an instrument, with the hundreds of thousands of processes in your brain and corresponding actions in your muscles at every moment, you will play MANY MANY wrong notes! Just get used to that fact! Instead of regarding them as mistakes which must be "corrected" before anyone notices, see if you can hear the beauty of the music beyond the notes. The beauty of the music is more than the sum of its parts. (My friends often tease me about the fact that I sometimes will listen to a piece of music on the car radio, for example, even with static or bad reception. "How can you listen to this?" they ask. The funny thing is that I don't hear the static, I just hear the music.) The trick here is that you also must be playing with full commitment, full emotional involvement, as I have talked about in previous posts. When you do that, you will be enjoying the experience of playing so much that you would not even THINK of spoiling it to stop and correct a note. To play beautifully, you must love the wrong notes as much as you love the right ones.
Now at this point, everyone will be asking, how do you prevent the wrong notes from becoming ingrained and permanent? I am not suggesting that note-inaccuracies be ignored. First we need to know the cause of the problem. It is probably a combination of our physical coordination and lack of clear auditory image. The physical issues are difficult to address here, because it IS PHYSICAL. Your hand position could be off, you could be using your body inefficiently (e.g. too much finger action, not enough arm) or thousands of other possibilities, which a perceptive teacher who really understands technique can help you address. The lack of auditory image can be addressed, as I have talked about in previous posts, through transposing and other forms of ear work. If you do the right kinds of practice on the piece, you will gradually see the note errors decrease, without having sacrificed your enjoyment or musicality. You need to be patient; don't expect "perfection." Even a note-perfect performance may not be "perfect" in other aspects. Maybe we could just give up the idea of being perfect altogether. People who expect themselves to be perfect are, in my experience, usually not very happy people. Instead of striving for a perfect performance, strive for one that feels authentic for you. In other words, be the "author" of your experience.
The next most common fear is that of fully expressing oneself. I find that most people are usually "holding back" when they play. It's almost as if they are conserving their "musicality" for some future performance, like conserving energy. But the reverse is true. The more you "conserve," the more conservative your playing will be. I suppose there are exceptions, but I believe very few people want to hear someone play "conservatively."
You may be holding back because you fear people will not like, or approve of, what you have to say. The more you practice "saying what you have to say," the easier it becomes. Some people will love what you have to say, others will not, in life and at the piano. If you hold back your full expression in practice, you will only know how to hold back. It's as simple as that.
You can see how these two fears -- fear of making mistakes and fear of expressing yourself -- are common in our lives today. The brilliant thing is, when you work on these fears at the piano, your life will change too! Some of my students have really taken this to heart. They regard their lessons with me, and their practice at home, as a kind of life-therapy, but more fun, and cheaper too!
I remember hearing about a man who had his hand-writing analyzed; he was told he was rigid and insensitive. He studied what kind of handwriting a flexible and sensitive person would have, and went to work changing his handwriting to be that of the kind of person he wanted to be. It took him years, but over the course of putting his heart, mind and body into the effort, he did change and become the person his handwriting now reflected. Think about the fearless and passionate person you want to be. Become that person when you play the piano and you will become that way in life too.
I always feel that playing the piano and studying the piano is a microcosm for life itself. Many of the challenges or triumphs I have, or have had, in life, I have at the piano as well. Fear comes into play when we play the piano and when we practice. It prevents us from playing our best, our most expressively, because it makes us cautious, and cautious playing lacks the passion, the immediacy and spontaneity that inspiring playing must have. It also makes us physically tense, and that contributes to lack of physical prowess and expression.
Fear shows itself at the piano in several ways. The most common fear by far is the fear of "wrong notes." For most people learning to play the piano, even many advanced or professional pianists, playing a wrong note causes them to cringe, and usually to go back and "correct" the missed notes as quickly as possible. I say "correct," but in fact it does not change the fact that the incorrect notes were sounded, and it compounds the problem with another, and worse, problem, in that the rhythm is now incorrect as well. Sometimes the first attempt to correct the note fails and an additional attempt is necessary; after a few of these, the whole passage begins to unravel and there is no alternative but to stop completely and start the piece, or the section, over. Sound familiar?
The attempt to correct a note is usually done in a panicky way; the body is tense and the sounds created can be harsh, out of balance with the rest of the surrounding phrase, and obviously, unattractive and unmusical. If the body is tense you certainly won't have the freest or most fluid technique. If you have a fear about a large jump, for example, you will fall short of your target, because you are tense. Even if you eventually manage to get the right notes in that part, the sound will be strained and will lack excitement. To make matters worse, when we repeatedly have wrong note(s) in a particular place, we tense up when we even start to approach that point in the music. Our bodies say "Uh-oh, here comes that place I usually screw up....." and we tighten up in anticipation. What most people don't realize is that when we have anxiety about a certain place in the piece, our ear also "cuts out," or stops listening. We are so focused on what we perceive as the problem that we just don't keep listening in an open and relaxed way. This is the last thing we want, because we need the ear to be absorbing the music and guiding us. When we stop listening, we lose the most important tool we have, the auditory image of how the music sounds. Without the auditory image, we will continue having problems in that part of the piece, regardless of how much "technical" work we do. That one little "wrong" note has now caused an avalanche of problems, most of which we aren't even aware of. To many students of the piano, the whole matter of "wrong notes" and how to "fix" them becomes an ongoing and frustrating issue.
How do I address this fear? First of all, you must have a change in your attitude. You must expect that in the course of learning so complex an instrument, with the hundreds of thousands of processes in your brain and corresponding actions in your muscles at every moment, you will play MANY MANY wrong notes! Just get used to that fact! Instead of regarding them as mistakes which must be "corrected" before anyone notices, see if you can hear the beauty of the music beyond the notes. The beauty of the music is more than the sum of its parts. (My friends often tease me about the fact that I sometimes will listen to a piece of music on the car radio, for example, even with static or bad reception. "How can you listen to this?" they ask. The funny thing is that I don't hear the static, I just hear the music.) The trick here is that you also must be playing with full commitment, full emotional involvement, as I have talked about in previous posts. When you do that, you will be enjoying the experience of playing so much that you would not even THINK of spoiling it to stop and correct a note. To play beautifully, you must love the wrong notes as much as you love the right ones.
Now at this point, everyone will be asking, how do you prevent the wrong notes from becoming ingrained and permanent? I am not suggesting that note-inaccuracies be ignored. First we need to know the cause of the problem. It is probably a combination of our physical coordination and lack of clear auditory image. The physical issues are difficult to address here, because it IS PHYSICAL. Your hand position could be off, you could be using your body inefficiently (e.g. too much finger action, not enough arm) or thousands of other possibilities, which a perceptive teacher who really understands technique can help you address. The lack of auditory image can be addressed, as I have talked about in previous posts, through transposing and other forms of ear work. If you do the right kinds of practice on the piece, you will gradually see the note errors decrease, without having sacrificed your enjoyment or musicality. You need to be patient; don't expect "perfection." Even a note-perfect performance may not be "perfect" in other aspects. Maybe we could just give up the idea of being perfect altogether. People who expect themselves to be perfect are, in my experience, usually not very happy people. Instead of striving for a perfect performance, strive for one that feels authentic for you. In other words, be the "author" of your experience.
The next most common fear is that of fully expressing oneself. I find that most people are usually "holding back" when they play. It's almost as if they are conserving their "musicality" for some future performance, like conserving energy. But the reverse is true. The more you "conserve," the more conservative your playing will be. I suppose there are exceptions, but I believe very few people want to hear someone play "conservatively."
You may be holding back because you fear people will not like, or approve of, what you have to say. The more you practice "saying what you have to say," the easier it becomes. Some people will love what you have to say, others will not, in life and at the piano. If you hold back your full expression in practice, you will only know how to hold back. It's as simple as that.
You can see how these two fears -- fear of making mistakes and fear of expressing yourself -- are common in our lives today. The brilliant thing is, when you work on these fears at the piano, your life will change too! Some of my students have really taken this to heart. They regard their lessons with me, and their practice at home, as a kind of life-therapy, but more fun, and cheaper too!
I remember hearing about a man who had his hand-writing analyzed; he was told he was rigid and insensitive. He studied what kind of handwriting a flexible and sensitive person would have, and went to work changing his handwriting to be that of the kind of person he wanted to be. It took him years, but over the course of putting his heart, mind and body into the effort, he did change and become the person his handwriting now reflected. Think about the fearless and passionate person you want to be. Become that person when you play the piano and you will become that way in life too.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)