Is it normal to get "rusty" at the piano?

 

Many people will say, if they've been away from the piano and from practicing for a while, that they are "rusty." It is assumed they mean that some of their skills or fluency have slipped backwards a bit. They could mean their physical agility (technique), or mental abilities (such as memory), or both. 

Is this normal? Should we assume this will happen to everyone who doesn't get to practice for a week, a month, a year?

If you have an injury, say a broken leg, and you don't use the leg for several months, the muscles will atrophy somewhat, and you will have to build them back up again. So you could be "rusty" at walking or running. The same would be true of your arms or hands. But short of muscle atrophy, it's hard to think of a scenario where your hands would get rusty, because we use them for so much and in so many ways. Yes, the piano uses them in different ways than other activities, but the muscles are still there. So what is really happening when you feel rusty?

First, we have to consider how long you've been playing the piano. If you're a beginner, and you lay off practicing for a month, you may slip backwards a noticeable amount. This has nothing to do with your actual muscles, but rather with the neural pathways in your brain. The neural pathways, or "wiring," as I like to call it, have not been very well established, so they disappear. Everything that happens -- every skill you develop -- is happening in the brain. See my post titled "It's All (Neuro)Logical." When a new motor skill is performed with some degree of repetition, the pathway for that becomes more solid, more permanent. If you're a beginner, you just haven't had enough time to lay down a lot of wiring yet, so it's not surprising that it seems to disappear. 

If you've been at the piano for a number of years, certain skills or techniques, the ones you've used over and over again, should be pretty well established. So if you were able to play a scale fluently, for example, you shouldn't be losing that skill or getting rusty. 

Pianists who've been playing their whole lives -- decades, that is -- should not really get rusty at all. Our memory of a certain piece may slip if we don't play it often, but the wiring is still there; it just needs to be "woken up." 

There is one big caveat here. If your technique is faulty, that is, you've learned to play in a way which is not natural for the hands and arms, you will get rusty more easily. If you ask your hands to do something which is awkward and causes strain, they will manage to do it, but they won't retain that skill as readily. This may include playing with excess strain and tension, lifting the fingers too high, and many other movements that rely on muscle strength rather than coordination. That is why you'd have to keep practicing that skill over and over, even when you thought you'd mastered it. But unfortunately, if that skill falls off and you have no other skill to replace it, you are left with nothing. 

Many students learn their pieces at a very superficial level. They think if they have developed the muscle memory for the piece, that they "know" it. But to really know the music at a deeper level requires knowing it at the auditory level, meaning you just really know how it sounds. You may think "of course I know how it sounds!" But try transposing it, or even just a snippet of it, or even just the melody, and you will see that your ear doesn't really know it. Constantly working on the ear, through transposing and other means, will enable you to know your music at a much deeper level. Muscle memory is the first "memory" to be acquired, and the first to be lost. Ear memory can last forever.

And last, but certainly not least, you must always play with emotional involvement. Many studies have shown that we learn faster (any subject, not just music) and remember longer when we are emotionally engaged with the material. Having your emotions involved sort of super-charges the brain. If you play mechanically, thinking you just need to "learn the notes," you will find the learning is at a superficial level, and you will not retain it. 

If you find yourself using the excuse that you haven't practiced in a while and are "rusty," you may need to re-evaluate some, or all, your methods of learning.

How's that working out for you? (Your practice methods, I mean)

 

The piano is a challenging instrument to learn to play, and monumentally challenging to learn to master. I admire anyone who takes up the challenge of learning to play the piano. A child may take up the piano but probably doesn't know, or give much thought to, what they are really undertaking. Adults, however, realize (hopefully) that they are in for some serious work ahead. Yes, it will be fun and rewarding (which are the best reasons to do it) if done with the right attitude, but also will take effort.

Naturally, we want to know that our efforts are "paying off." 

Unfortunately, many people quit after trying for a while, because they just feel they aren't "getting anywhere." They struggle to play the simplest of music; they spend many hours at the piano but still make the same "mistakes." They feel maybe they have made a little progress but after a short time away from the piano they are back to square one. And many other such reasons. They often feel they should just quit because, apparently, they just don't have the "talent" for it. (But there are also those who will tell you that talent has little to do with it, but rather, it's just about putting in the hours -- the "ten thousand hours" philosophy.)

Everyone will bring a differing degree of natural ability, talent, if you will, to their endeavors. But I say, if you love music, and have a strong desire to learn to play, forget about talent. And if you are an adult, you cannot plan to spend ten thousand hours at it either. So what's left? It's all about working smart.

If you are trying to play the piano and feel you aren't making progress, I recommend the following:

1. If you are doing it on your own, you really need to get a teacher. But not just any teacher. Interview as many teachers are you can. Describe the exact problems you are having and evaluate their answers. If the answer is just to "practice more" or some vague cliche, keep looking.

2. If you already have a teacher, but you are not satisfied with your progress and your teacher gives you the same answers as above, look for a new teacher.

3. If the previous two options are simply not available to you, I urge you to do the following:

FIRST: Ask yourself whether the music you are attempting to play is too advanced for you. When people work on their own, they don't know what music is suitable for their level. (That's why it's good to have a good teacher.) Quite often people have come to me after having played on their own, and have spent months or even years trying to play something far too difficult. They may think that if they just put in the time, they will eventually get it. Not only is this not true, but you will harm your progress, and even go backwards, trying to play something too difficult. You need to be learning skills, not just pieces. Picking your way, painstakingly slowly, through a long piece, isn't going to really give you skills that you can apply to the next piece, because just "finding the notes" is so overwhelming. And you certainly won't be able to play it with the fluidity and musicality you desire. In addition, you will, without question, find that if you stop practicing the piece for even a short time, it will have evaporated, and you can no longer play it. All that work for nothing.

SECOND: you must REALLY LOOK at how you are practicing. Again, without a good teacher to show you how to practice (sadly, many teachers just don't do this), you probably won't know. But just as with other areas of life, if you are doing the same things over and over, hoping to get a different result... well, you know what they say about that.  

Ask yourself whether you have been trying (knowingly or unknowingly) to find "short cuts." These may include listening to recordings to try and copy what you hear (if your reading is weak), looking at your hands, using a metronome (because your rhythm is weak) and many others. See my earlier post on this subject.

Recently, I was trying to figure out why a student was having so much difficulty reading just four measures of a simple melody. (I should mention this student had terrible teachers previously, so he is struggling.) He said, "well, if I was at home, and I practiced it a bunch of times, then I could eventually play it." I asked him, "what happens the next day? Are you able to play it right off the first time?" He replied that no, he'd have to repeat the same process again the next day. So in other words, I said, the "bunch of times" that you "practice it" don't really do anything, if the next day you're back at square one again. He agreed. (It might be normal and expected to sometimes go a few steps forward and one step back, but if you are going three steps forward and three steps back, every time, then there is something seriously wrong with your approach.) The process he calls "practicing" is not the process I have shown him. He does all the things I warn against: stopping, "fixing," going too slowly, only focusing on notes and ignoring rhythm, looking at his hands, not attempting to play musically, not really listening, and so on. Doing those things does not lead to just being able to sit down and play something, albeit simple, the first time. The processes that many people might think are what constitutes "practicing" are, in fact, just reinforcing habits that you don't really want, and can't really use, when you want to play fluently. In your practicing, do the things that you ultimately want to be the way you play. I realize this may sound simplistic, but it's profoundly true. Everything you do has the potential to become habit. 

I am in NO WAY saying you can learn to play the piano by reading about it or watching someone. I don't include videos in this blog precisely because I do not want my readers to believe that you can learn to play the piano from an online course. But if you are not sure how to change the way you have approached your practicing up to this point, please read my blog from the beginning. Read about ear training, sight-reading, outlining, and all the other topics, and ask yourself how it compares with what you are doing now. Each time you do something in your habitual way, ask yourself "how's that's been working out for you?"

Does it pass the "smell" test?

 

I think you all know what I mean by the "smell test." Does something seem legit, or is there something fishy about it? We use this "test" in many areas of our lives.

As I wrote in my post titled "Who can you believe?" (April 2021), when it comes to playing and learning to play the piano, you will hear many different ideas or opinions regarding how to go about it, expecially regarding technique. For someone attempting to learn on their own (which I don't advise) or even someone who has teacher, it can be difficult to know who and what to believe. So, you must use the "smell test."

I often read blogs, articles, or books on the subject of the piano. Here are some recent ones I've encountered.

In one recent blog, the person said you cannot play loud chords "coming from above" because you will get a harsh sound, and he demonstrated in the video. Yes, he got a harsh sound because he used what I call a "hammer stroke," the way you would hammer in a nail, using your forearm. The reason it works for the hammer and the nail (a sharp movement) is similar to why it sounds harsh on the piano. Instead, he said, you must have your hands right on the keys and then play, giving you a "gorgeous sound," which he demonstrated (he didn't actually get them very loud or gorgeous). However, consider this: when the baseball player or tennis player or golfer wants the ball to go far, they pull their arms way back in order to have the greatest possible momentum when the bat or racket or club contacts the ball. If they want a short shot, such as a putt or bunt, they hold the club or bat right in front of their bodies and move it more slowly, and with only a little momentum. The same is true for piano; if you want it to be loud, the hammers must hit the strings at high speed, and for that you need momentum. It doesn't mean you start from above and crash down on them, but it does mean you need the whole arm, played in a motion coming towards yourself at high speed, which gives volume without harshness. Starting right on the keys and having no momentum just doesn't pass the smell test. 

However, he said that you do want to come from above for staccato playing, but using the wrist. I'm not sure how this would even work, because if you come from above, but then flex the wrist, you negated the movement you started with your arm. But any time someone says to use the wrist, I am immediately suspicious. Overuse or incorrect use of the wrist can lead to pain, fatigue, and even tendinitis and/or carpal tunnel syndrome.

This person recommends lots of exercises where you lift each finger high as you play. He says it will give you precision in your playing. However, he also says that if you want good phrasing and beautiful legato, it is necessary to learn to transfer the weight of the arm to the fingers, with the fingers close to the keys (this is correct). Does it make sense to practice "exercises" one way, when you want to play your actual music in the exact opposite way? No, it doesn't pass the smell test.

In discussing rapid playing, he says "the arms are too heavy and too slow" to accomplish it. Again, we must look at other disciplines. Are the tennis player's arms too slow? Are the ballerina's arms too heavy? I suppose you could say that they train their arms to be fast and light. But of course, so does the pianist. I'm thinking of the very end of the Chopin B-flat minor Scherzo, which has both hands on a chord in the center of the piano, and then rapidly -- as a grace note, which must be quite fast -- both hands jump to notes at the opposite ends of the keyboard. It's obvious that your fingers won't cover these distances. I could give dozens of examples like this. I like to say that "the fingers aren't going anywhere the arm doesn't take them." Arms too heavy and too slow? Nope --- doesn't pass the smell test.

This person's blog was a hodgepodge of different techniques for different types of playing. That's not how it works. Good, or great, technique at the piano, stems from some core principles, which are grounded in the physics of the piano mechanism itself and the working of the arms, hands and fingers, as well as some elements of physics, such as the momentum example, above. You don't have to study anatomy or physics to aquire good technique, but if your teacher shows you specific techniques, he or she needs to understand why they work, and why others don't work, and to be able to put them into practice at the piano. Ideas which seem to defy physics, or just common sense, for that matter, just don't pass the smell test. 

Perfect Pitch vs. Relative Pitch

 

Some people may be confused about the meanings of perfect pitch (also called absolute pitch) and relative pitch.

Having perfect pitch means that the person can identify the exact note just by hearing it, without any context. If you play the note we call A, a person with perfect pitch just knows immediately that is in an A. Perfect pitch is something of a mystery; it seems that each tone has a certain characteristic or "personality," different from other tones, which allows it to identified instantly, just as you would recognize someone's face. It is not simply that the tones were somehow memorized at some point. Clearly, perfect pitch is a high degree of sensitivity to tones and tonal quality. Either you have it or you don't; it can't be developed, or at least, no one has yet found a way to do that.

Relative pitch would mean that you would hear the relationship, but not the absolute. So hearing and A and then an E would be identified as the interval of a fifth. A fifth between two other tones would sound essentially the same.

It is estimated that approximately 1 to 5 people in 10,000 in the general population have perfect pitch . The percentage of musicians with perfect pitch, not surprisingly, is much higher, probably around 10%. It's a higher percentage because it's more likely that someone with a high degree of sensitivity to tone would be drawn to music, not because they developed it in the course of their music practice. Some people assume that all musicians must have it, but that is not the case. And you certainly do not need to have perfect pitch to be a good, or even great musician, and play your instrument well.

Relative pitch is an ability that can be strong or weak and anything in between. A musician needs to have strong relative pitch. (Having perfect pitch is a bonus.) It is essential to hear the relationship of tones to each other, since, in the context of actual music, it is the relationship of the tones that is most important. 

I've encountered many people who do not realize or understand that last statement. If I want to sing Happy Birthday, I can start on any tone and sing the song. There is no one tone that you must start on. If there were, no one except those with perfect pitch could sing it (spontaneously, without help) because, of course, they can't identify one tone from another. Yet the song is still the same regardless of where we start, because the relationships stay the same. If this concept is new to you, please read my earlier post titled "It's All Relative."

If you've been reading this blog, you know that I emphasize the importance of ear training. Ear training would mean strenghtening your relative pitch. (It can also mean strengthening your hearing of rhythm, but that is another subject.)  There are many ways to strengthen your relative pitch such as listening to and then identifying intervals, in other words, drills. But two more musical and interesting ways would be to sing at sight, and to transpose.

To sing written music at sight that is new to you (in other words, that your ear doesn't already know) entails seeing and then singing the intervals. If you are in a high-level choir, for instance, you will need to do this. If you are weak at it, listening to the people near you is a way to "cheat," but sight-singing would be part of your audition for the choir, so you have to be pretty good at it. If you play an instrument, you can transpose your music to other keys. If you transpose using your ear as much as possible (as opposed to reading and calculating the notes), your relative pitch will improve.

I happen to have perfect pitch and am glad I have it. It's fun to hear a piece on the radio and instantly know what key it is in, for example. However, having perfect pitch does not mean I'm done with ear training. I do transposing almost daily to strengthen my relative pitch. Having both is a really unbeatable combo.

Change One Thing, Change Everything

 

As I've written about in my previous posts, the issue of fear and anxiety plays a large role, unfortunately, for many students of the piano. If you are attempting to play music of any complexity, there is likely to be some level of struggle, and this creates stress, or at least, some unease.

However, it doesn't work to just tell someone, "don't worry" or "relax." The body has it's own responses to cues from the subconscious mind, and trying to change that with the "thinking" part of the mind doesn't usually work. In my teaching, I try to find another way "in," and by that, I mean into the subconscious.

With three of my students in particular (all adults), I am discovering ways to help them play better by changing their level of tension. 

With the first, I noticed that whenever he was anxious about an upcoming passage in the piece (which was a lot of the time), he would tighten his mouth, pressing his lips together. So I asked him to play with his mouth just slightly open when he played. Sure enough, when he got to that difficult passage, it went much smoother. Coincidence? No, I don't think so. By changing just one of the body's responses to stress, it changed the total level of stress.

With the second student, his reponse to stress was in his leg. He would tense his leg and lift the heel off the floor. I asked him to become aware of it and see if he could keep his leg resting on the floor. Again, his playing went much easier that way. It's best if the person can feel what they are doing by becoming more aware, and make the change themselves. However, when I gently put my foot on his and prevented it from tensing up, it helped him become aware.

The third student, my most advanced student, is playing Chopin, Schumann, Debussy and so on. She has been with me for 10 years. I've always noticed that when she plays she has a tendency to grimace. Her mouth tenses up in a particular way. To look at her, you would think she was not enjoying her playing much at all! But this is not the case; she loves the piano and the music she is playing, but her subconscious is still quite anxious about it. For a long time I didn't want to mention it, because I was concerned it would make her self-conscious and add to her stress. But recently I decided to give it a try. I've asked her to smile while she plays. At first she felt quite silly with a big grin on her face. Not surprisingly, she can't yet maintain the smile for very long before the grimace returns. It has only been two weeks since we started this, and so for someone like her who has been playing for decades, it may be a while before we see changes. But I am convinced that changing her particular stress response will help her playing, and possible even add to her enjoyment of it.

Traditional methods (and teachers) that concentrate wholly on "learning the notes" will never even notice these manifestations of stress, or think that they matter. But they do matter. You may want to have energy and even intensity when you play, but not stress and tension. Sometimes when you are struggling with something (in life, as well as at the piano), you may need to look at something that at first glance may seem unrelated, but turns out to be the key to unlock the door you have been banging your head against. Sometimes, changing one thing changes everything.

So You Want to Learn Music Theory....

 

Many people I meet tell me they would like to learn about music theory. I often quip that it's not "theory," it's fact. But theory is what people refer to as the "system" upon which our music is built. (Of course I include theory with my piano students, so I am showing them what I believe is the best way to learn.) 

They ask if they should get a book or go to the internet. The answer is no and no. A textbook is going to be quite dry. More importantly, unless you can apply what you read, it won't be much use. And the best way by far to apply what you learn about theory is to play it on the piano. When I was at Manhattan School of Music, all the non-piano majors were required to take a few semesters of piano because basic piano skills are necessary to learn theory, among other things.

If you want to learn the basics of theory, I recommend the following. It all involves basic piano skills, so if you don't have those yet, you will need to do that first.

Phase I

1. Familiarize yourself with all the major and minor keys. Our music (I am speaking of the Western World) is almost all based on "keys." To be in a given key means to be based on that scale. Therefore, you will need to get familiar with all the major and minor scales. Almost all the music you play will be based on these two types of scale. However, I do not recommend spending hours and hours on this. Even if you play a G# minor scale a hundred times, it doesn't mean you will suddenly find it easy to play a piece in G# minor. Please see my previous post on scales and do them as I suggest, which is in moderation, and not worrying about specific fingering. It does not necessitate that you read music.

2. Learn all the major and minor chords (triads). However, you must do it in a way which really shows you the "system," not just purchase a chord chart that shows you them written out. Again, please see my much earlier post on chords to learn the very specific way I teach them. My method does not require that you read music yet.

3. Get a copy of the Circle of Fifths and begin to memorize it. Keep a copy at your piano so you always have it to refer to. You can even post it on your fridge or somewhere you'll see it all the time. The Circle of Fifths is not just for learning the key signatures of all 12 major and minor keys; it is a picture of how our musical system is organized. The interval of a fifth plays a huge role in our music. When you are playing a piece of music, even a fairly simple one, you will start to notice that music likes to move by fifths. Not always, of course, but a lot. In the course of playing simple music, whether by ear or by reading, you will learn the importance of the I, IV and V chords. These are all related by fifths.

Phase II

1. Learn the other two types of triads, diminished and augmented, and all five kinds of 7th chords. Again, it is important to do this in the right way; otherwise you may never really know them well. See my earlier post.

2. In Phase I you played all the scales. But playing the E-flat minor scale doesn't mean you'll find it easy right away to play a piece in E-flat minor. Reading in a key with 6 flats may be daunting for quite a while. But what you can do to start preparing yourself is to improvise in every key. It doesn't have to be complicated. Just a melody and a few chords that would occur commonly in that key. If you can improvise in a key it means you can "think" in that key. It isn't actually thinking, of course, it's more like speaking. If you learn to speak French, at first you will always translate in your mind from English to French. But if you become fluent in French, you may find you actually start to think in French. So it is with music; you can become "fluent" in all the keys.

You will notice that neither Phase I or Phase II involves reading music. Yes, you can learn all the basics without reading actual music notation. When you learn to read music, it will help drive home some of what you have learned, but it's technically not necessary.

Voila! If you can do all of the above you have probably about 80% of what you need to know about music theory. And hopefully you applied what you learned along the way. The other 20% would involve learning about musical forms, other more complex chords, possibly the other scales that people now refer to as "modes," and a few other items. 

Can Musicality be Taught?

 

We often refer to someone who plays (or sings) very well as "talented." If they play in a way which emotionally affects the listener, which moves them, perhaps, the player or singer may be said to be "musical." What does that actually mean?

A pianist, for example, could be quite accomplished and have impressive technique. But if their playing doesn't affect people emotionally, it might be said that the pianist isn't as "musical" as one would hope. Conversely, someone might not have a big technique, and play mostly simpler pieces, but could still play them in a way which the listeners find moving.

To be "musical" means to have a high degree of sensitivity to, and awareness of, the subtleties and "inner workings" of music. They hear nuances that the average person does not. These nuances affect the person playing very deeply, and, as such, they can also project those nuances so the listener can be made aware of them as well.

We've probably all heard someone who plays without musicality. It just sounds rote, even robotic, and uninteresting. The person is playing "the notes" but doesn not seem to go any deeper than that. Unfortunately, many teachers are happy if their students can just play the notes and rhythm, and don't encourage the student to reach deeper. They might just say that student just isn't "talented" that way.

We often assume that one is just born with that intangible quality of musicality, or not. I agree that people seem to be "born" with differing levels of musical sensitivity, but nevertheless, regardless of how much you have to start out, I believe you can improve your musicality.

Over the years I have taught hundreds of beginners. While there are a small number who play with a lot of feeling right away, I have found that most do not. They are so absorbed in learning the many skills and the advanced coordination needed to play the piano that the musicality just doesn't happen. Many even believe that it is a good idea to just learn "the notes" first and put "the feeling" in later. Some so-called experts will tell you this is what you need to do. However, I disagree with that. If you don't start right away incorporating musical expression in your playing, you may never actually do it.

I find that the key to getting students to play musically is to make it more physical. That seems like a contradiction, doesn't it? The word emotion has the word motion in it. When you hear beautiful music, you may find you want to move your body to it, even in subtle ways. You probably don't want to sit as stock-still as a soldier! So when you play music, you also need to move. That doesn't mean you have to wave your arms wildly around. You will see some pianists do a lot of movements, which in fact, may not add to the musicality, but have just become a habit for that pianist. But likewise you never see a great pianist who just sits rigidly. I find that as soon as I can get my student to get their torso involved, their playing will be better. There is a feeling of wanting to "lean in" to the music.

For some students, I ask them to imagine how they would dance to the piece they are playing. For others, a visual image may be helpful. (I do not do a lot with visual imagery, because most music is intended to be just "what it is" and not a representation of something visual.) I ask them to imagine they are "speaking" to someone they love through the music. Whatever works, the student usually needs to be reminded to fully engage with the music emotionally. This needs to become the norm for them, not the exception. The more they engage, the more the music will effect them, which in turn will make them more engaged, and so on, in a self-perpetuating cycle. Like anything else, you must actually DO IT, if you want to play more musically. You can't be saving it for some time in the future.

I can't tell you how to respond emotionally to a given piece of music. That is up to you. As a teacher, I can help you develop the tools -- that is, the technique -- to say what you want to say with your music. But you must have something to say. You must bring the whole of your life's experience -- your joys and sorrows, triumphs and heartbreaks -- into your playing.