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 in 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. 

It's About Time!

 

You've heard me talk a great deal about rhythm in these posts. I find it to be the aspect of music that students have the most trouble with. (See my earlier posts titled Rhythm, parts I and II, for the reasons for this.)

French composer Claude Debussy wrote that "the music is not in the notes, but in the spaces between them." Rhythm is essentially the space between the notes.

I believe that rhythm should be the first priority when learning new music. I have encountered so many people who, in lessons with previous teachers and/or learning on their own, pretty much ignored the rhythm in order to concentrate on the "notes." Some are aware they are doing that but don't know how to do it differently, but some are not even aware that their rhythm is all off. They have ceased to be able to "hear" rhythm in their own playing.

If you think about it, you can see that music is really all about "time." If you look at a painting, you see everything in the painting all at once. You see the foreground, the background, and you can see what the painting is trying to portray. (I am not saying that you wouldn't see even more if you study the painting, but you get the basic idea even at the first look.)

With music, however, it unfolds and develops over time. When you hear a note, a phrase, or a section of the piece of music, you hear it in relation to the notes, phrases and sections that preceeded it. If you didn't, it would just be "one thing after another" and would make no sense. If it made no sense it probably wouldn't be very enjoyable to listen to. The more familiar you are with the piece you are hearing, and the more familiar you are with that genre of music, the more you will hear the relationship of the parts to the whole. Unfortunately, most teachers don't really know how to teach this listening skill. When you learn about musical forms (such as sonata form, etc.) you are really learning about how the parts relate to each other and to the whole. But it isn't just about intellectually understanding these forms; it's about being able to hear them as they are happening in the music. But I digress....

The music unfolds over time, but not randomly, of course. The time is "divided," if you will, into specific patterns. These patterns are what we would call the rhythm. People have a hard time defining rhythm. When I ask them to define it, they might say it's the beat, or the tempo. It is neither of these. The beat or the tempo are aspects of rhythm, at least as far as music is concerned. (You could say the steady beat of your pulse is its rhythm, but in music it is clearly more complex than that.)

Not only does the music unfold over time, but the time element is one of the key elements, if not the key element. Think of the theme of a famous piece such as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. The iconic opening of the first movement, the "da-da-da-dum," is the element upon which the whole movement is based. This rhythmic "idea" ties it all together. The rhythmic theme appears throughout on different notes, but you, the listener, recognize it as the theme because of the rhythm.

If you think you can ignore the rhythm when you are learning your pieces and somehow add it in later, you are sorely mistaken. Again, if you do that routinely, you may actually lose your ability to really hear rhythm.

If you ignore rhythm you are effectively ignoring the very core of what music is about. If you were learning to dance, no one would say "let's just do the steps but without the rhythm." If you have been ignoring rhythm, or even making it a low priority, you need to change the whole way you think about music.

Should you listen to recordings of your pieces?

 

In our modern age we can find recordings of almost any piece of music you can name, of any genre, even "beginner" pieces, online on YouTube or other sites. I have had many students and other people I meet tell me that they rountinely listen online to the music they are working on. Is this beneficial?

For new pianists, or some who have been at it for a while but not progressing well, listening to a recording to help you with your pieces is generally a bad idea, in my view. If you want to actually play by ear, start with familiar songs you know very well and just let your ear be your guide. If you need to refresh your memory of the song by listening online, that would be OK. But it could also be confusing, because you may encounter different renditions and interpretations of the song which could confuse your ear. 

When you are learning a piece from the written notation, listening to a recording is detrimental. I find that people do it because they are poor readers and are trying to avoid reading. This especially applies to rhythm. I have encountered so many students who can barely read rhythm, so they copy what they hear online. Naturally, with this approach they will never learn to read and will have to rely on the crutch of listening to recordings forever.

If you are working on developing your ear, just play by ear without jotting down the notes or other such visual aids. Then your ear will get stronger. If you are working on your sight-reading skills, your ear is still working and hopefully improving, of course, but don't try to copy what you hear in a recording, because you won't be really reading, and your reading skills will suffer.

If you are a more advanced player, you might listen to various pieces online to get a feel for them, perhaps, to see if it is a piece you might like to play. If you are a good reader you could play through them yourself (which is, of course, what people did before recordings). But to save time (and the process of having to acquire all those scores), listening online is a great resource. But once you are working on a given piece, I recommend that you cease all listening to others' playing. You will be influenced by that performer's interpretation of the piece, whether you realize it or not. You want to have your own interpretation, not someone else's. 

If you have a good teacher, you don't need to listen to recordings to make sure you have the correct notes and rhythm, because the teacher should, of course, be doing that. If you are working on your own without a teacher, try to listen very openly. If you hear something "suspicious," meaning it just sounds questionable, go back and take another good look at the passage and see if you can discover what was incorrect. It could be something as simple as a missed flat or sharp. If you still are not sure, perhaps a recording will help. But if you are needing to do that a lot, then you may be trying to play pieces which are beyond your current level. If you find you need recordings to get the notes and the rhythm, then you can be sure there are other problems as well. A recording can't help you with the physical technique to be able to play the music, or the understanding of the music. 

Even worse than just audio recordings are videos. I have encountered many people who tried to teach themselves to play the piano and/or learn new pieces by watching videos and watching the pianist's hands. You can see the problem with this. For each new piece you would have to do this, probably many times, over and over, but you wouldn't acquire actual skills to apply to the future pieces. A perfect example of giving you a fish versus teaching you to fish. 

It's easy to see why people would want to listen to recordings or watch videos. They think it will be a shortcut to learning to play, rather than spending time and money on lessons. But it isn't a short cut; it's a dead end.

Horror Stories from the Piano

 

With Halloween coming, I thought I might tell you a few spooky tales from the piano. These are really scary! And to make it worse, they are all true.

The following stories were all related to me by either my own students (about their previous teachers) or other acquaintances.

1.      The teacher who ended the lesson early with a shy and vulnerable teenager saying “You’re wasting my time. Come back when you know the notes.”

2.      The teacher who took the music book of a student (who was in her 70s), tore it up and threw it on the floor, because she used a fingering he didn’t approve of.

3.      The teacher who dealt only with the notes, no rhythm at all. This adult student would sometimes play for his friends, and they would say “your rhythm is all off, man!” When he asked his teacher about it, she just waved it off.

4.      The teacher who would sit by the student (a pre-teen) with his music in her lap (presumably he was playing from memory), but on top of his music she had a magazine which she would read while he was playing.

5.      The teacher who drew a red line horizontally across all the white keys of the piano and instructed the student that her fingers should always be on that line. When the student related this story to me, I asked “what about when you have to play on the black keys?” She replied, “we never talked about that.”

6.      The teacher who had the student work on only one piece for the entire year, so that he could play it perfectly at the end-of-year recital. Naturally, the student quit after the year ended.

7.      The teacher who had the student play scales at the lesson for the first 45 minutes, and her pieces for the last 15 minutes. When she asked if they could spend more time on music, he replied yes, but only if she took a 90-minute lesson.

8.      The teacher who had this adult student set the metronome to tick with the fastest note in the piece. So, for example, if the piece had sixteenth notes, he would set it to the sixteenth note, and if he came to a quarter note in the piece, he would listen for four ticks to go by. If he had a whole note, he would have to count 16 ticks of the metronome!

9.      Teachers who proudly show videos of their student recitals. However, in those recitals, they haven't bothered to adjust the height of the piano bench for each student’s height, and they probably don't at lessons either. Thus, little kids are sitting so low that their arms and hands are falling well below the keyboard. This is a huge risk for physical injury later on.

10.   I met a teacher who admitted her own playing was so below par that she could not play the pieces her students were working on.

11.   Teachers who would hit the hands of students for playing wrong notes, or other types of physical or verbal abuse. In previous centuries this was common practice. But it’s shocking that it still exists.

12. The teacher who encouraged the student to write the letter names above every note in the score. This means you're not actually reading the musical notation itself. This is wrong for so many reasons. The note "C" for example, occurs eight times on the piano, so just seeing "C" doesn't tell you which one. Most important, if you are looking at letters you've written in and not the notation, you probably aren't seeing the rhythm. Why would notation exist at all if just writing letter names worked? It's no surprise that this student never learned to read with any fluency, and couldn't read rhythm at all!

And from my own personal experience:

When I was a student at Manhattan School of Music I had a teacher who had been a famous pianist in his day, but sadly, didn’t really seem to want to teach. He liked to have students who were already so proficient that he could just “coach” them. (See my post on coaching vs. teaching.) But I needed actual teaching to improve my technique, among other things. My playing was a mess. One day at the lesson I was playing a difficult piece, when I became aware he was saying something (almost yelling, actually) and so I stopped and turned around to look at him. (He sat behind us in a comfy chair, smoking his pipe, not beside us, where the teacher should sit.) He had his hands over his ears and said “Please, don’t play so many wrong notes!” I was dumbfounded. He didn’t think I was playing them on purpose, did he? And if not, wasn’t he supposed to be helping me not to play so many wrong notes? The lightbulb went on for me that day, that I needed to find a new teacher. Which, luckily, I did, and everything changed for me.

If those of you reading this have horror stories of your own, I would love to hear about them. You may post them as comments at the end of this post, or email them to me at deborah@pianobrilliance.com. I may include them in a future post, Horror Stories, Part II.

 

Slurs

 

When you see a curved line over (or under) two notes it is called a slur. It's an unfortunate term for this musical effect because it is not at all like when you slur your words, for example, making them indistinct and muddled. A slur in music is not that.

When I ask students who were self-taught or had previous lessons what a slur is, they either don't know, or answer that it means the slurred notes are played legato. Legato is pretty much the "default," that is, it's what you'd assume unless the notes were marked staccato. (See my previous post.) So a slur would not mean the same thing as you would do anyway or it would be meaningless.

A slur is very specific. It is emphasis on the first note and de-emphasis on the second. So yes, they are legato (usually -- see below), but not evenly stressed. Think of how you say most two-syllable words: there is more emphasis on the first syllable than on the second. If you were to emphasize both equally it would probably sound robotic. So a slur is a very natural sound. It is often graceful, as you mind find in music of Mozart, for example. 

If you ask someone how to achieve this effect, they might say just play the first note louder. Technically, the first note would be louder, but if you try to achieve this effect with just fingers, the notes won't likely have the graceful sound that a slur should have. If you had a long quick run of slurred notes and tried to do loud-soft-loud-soft etc. with fingers alone, it would be difficult. Again, this is a technique which requires the arm. The weight of the arm on the first note gives it the desired emphasis, and the "release" on the second note gives it less than the first. You could do this motion many times in a row with consistent evenness, speed, and no strain.

Students sometimes confuse a slur with tied notes or phrase markings. A tie is between two notes that are the same note, and indicate the second note is held but not played. A curved line over a group of notes means they should sound, well, like a group! It is not the same as a slur but people will tell you, incorrectly, that it is. I like to call a grouping of notes a "phraselet" -- a mini phrase -- which would be within a larger phrase. Again, spoken language would have many instances of something like this.

Chords and octaves can also be slurred. The same concept applies: emphasis/de-emphasis.

Can a slur occur on two of the same note? Yes it can, and you'll find many instances of this. It would be essentially the same as with two different notes; the weight of the arm on the first, and the release of the arm on the second. Try doing it with fingers alone and you'll see it's very awkward, but with the arm it becomes quite simple.

I'm currently playing a piece by Ravel entitled Oiseaux Tristes ("Sad Birds"). It is an amazing and haunting piece which beautifully evokes the calls of birds. The primary motif, which opens the piece, is a slur on two of the same note. In addition, both notes are marked staccato (see my previous post for in-depth discussion of this). You might think this is a contradiction, since a slur is normally legato. To play this as Ravel intended, you would have the tiniest of detachment between notes, but it still sounds slurred because the first note is emphasized. Ravel even puts an accent over the first note, but I believe this is redundant, since a slur already has more emphasis on the first note. Throughout the piece, this motif is played ranging from soft (p) to extremely soft (ppp). The action of the arm must be delicate and extremely precise to achieve all of this together. It just can't be achieved with finger action alone. On top of all this, there would be pedal applied. You might think the "staccato" would be lost if it is pedaled, but in fact it is not; you can still hear the tiniest release of the note. As you can see, this situation has multiple layers of nuance. If you listen to a recording of the piece you will see what I mean. I give this example here to emphasize that musical terms such as "slur" are nuanced and can't be defined in an overly-simple way. Slurs require a technique which integrates the fingers, hand and arm.