Piano Blog

Thinking Ahead

 A couple posts ago, I discussed the need for chunking, especially if your playing has a "stop-start" quality to it. Being able to chunk is also essential in the process of thinking ahead, since it frees up mental resources to consider what's next. This process is like driving a car; you can't just focus on what's directly in front of you, but rather you have to divide your mental energy between what you're doing (controlling the car) and what's coming up. On the other hand, if you focus too far in front of you, you won't have enough mental energy left to focus on what's coming up or on controlling the car itself. Its an issue of mental resources and timing.  

The same applies to playing music. You have to focus just a bit in front of what you're doing, but not so far in front that you spread yourself too thin. This requires that you're able to put at least some of what you're currently playing on "auto-pilot". Just like like you can't think about every single detail of how to steer while driving, you can't focus 100 percent of your mental energy on one passage at the expense of what lies ahead. 

There's a simple way to test this autopilot. Take a half-measure or measure of something you're working on, and practice it with complete concentration. Then divert your attention away and see if you can play that section while reading a book, checking the time of a clock, etc. If you're able to divide your attention like this, you'll certainly be able to think/listen ahead to what is coming up. 

It's also interesting to note that if you try doing this with a longer stretch of music (say while reading a book), you'll probably stumble every few seconds--either with the reading or with the playing. With each stumble, you'll have to apply a "jolt" of conscious energy to whatever was lagging to keep things going. So its an interesting example of how the mind is handling information in chunks. Could it be that getting into a flow is also an issue of correctly timing these "jolts" of mental energy?

Art as Spiritual Fuel

 This morning a piece of music charged me with so much emotion that I immediately thought of one of my favorite sections from Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead-- where a boy comes upon Howard Roark's architectural masterpiece. 

"Thank you," said the boy. He knew that the steady eyes looking at him understood everything these two words had to cover. Howard Roark inclined his head, in acknowledgment.

Wheeling his bicycle by his side, the boy took the narrow path down the slope of the hill to the valley and the houses below. Roark looked after him. He had never seen the boy before and he would never see him again. He did not know that he had given someone the courage to face a lifetime."

Dealing with the arts (or teaching them) can be stressful. I know that after a day of teaching I'm wiped out. Its good to step back and realize how great it is to be involved with the things that make life worth living. 

Take what you want and pay for it

There's a Rudolf Serkin story where he and a violinist were waiting on a cab to take them to their performance. Instead of waiting, Serkin went back inside for 10 extra minutes of practice. When the cab arrived, the violinist asked, "Will that really make your performance tonight any better?" Serkin replied, "Yes. Ten minutes better." 

This anecdote epitomizes one of my favorite proverbs: "Take what you want and pay for it." I love this Spanish proverb because it addresses so many of life's conflicts. How many problems are caused by being unaware of what it is we really want or being unwilling to pay the price? 

Having values means knowing your priorities and allocating your time and effort accordingly. It means thinking hard about how to gain and keep what you really want in life, instead of just drifting and hoping for the best. The value is what we want and time and energy are the price we pay for it. And since time and energy are limited, we have to find creative ways to employ these resources, as well as make decisions about what gets precedence in our life. We also have to make sure what we want is in line with our long term goals instead of just momentary whim. I think most people, myself often included, sell themselves short by being unaware of how these ends and means align. 

If you want job fulfillment, are you willing to think hard about your long term goals and work towards them? If you want relationship fulfillment, are you willing to put in the time and attention to build something really great; to give someone else that much priority in your life? If you want robust health, are you willing to give up all that junk food and go to the gym regularly? In other words, are you willing to focus and act thoughtfully, instead of going with the flow and settling for mediocrity or worse?  

The Mental Side of Playing the Piano

There's a lot to be said about this subject, but more and more I'm aware of the important mental aspects of piano technique.

For instance, do you find that you constantly stop and start in your playing? This could be because you don't "chunk" enough. Chunking means grouping information so that your mind retrieves it in groups. 

As a simplified example, if you've got a measure with 20 notes in it, you'd have to think and execute 20 separate things to get through the measure. But if you can group those notes into 5 groups of 4, you'd only have to execute 5 commands to get through the measure. Thats a quarter of the mental workload!

A lot of what allows a seasoned pianist to play incredibly complex works is that he's practiced so many different patterns that he's able to chunk almost anything efficiently. 

There are a lot of ways to work on your "chunking abilities" but one of the best is very simple; although it involves quite a bit of self-control and concentration. It is simply this: pause every few notes and think ahead. Can you think through the next few notes as "one" thing instead of several separate notes? If not, can you repeat them until you can? Obviously if the next few notes are part of some chord or repeating pattern this task is easier, but they don't have to be. Any notes can be "chunked" as long as you practice them enough.

This is such a broad subject. I'm sure I'll have more to say on it. Hopefully this makes some sense!

The Artist

"Sviatoslav Richter strides out on the stage. His face is grim; there is anger in the set of his jaw, but not at the audience. This is a passion altogether his own, a force with which he protects what he is about to do. If it had words, it would say, "What I attempt is important and I go about it with utmost seriousness. I intend to create beauty and meaning, and everything everywhere threatens this endeavor: The coughs, the latecomers, the chatting women in the third row, and always those dangers within, distraction, confusion, loss of memory, weakness of hand, all are enemies of my endeavor. I call up this passion to oppose them, to protect my purpose." Now he begins to play, and the anger I see in his bearing I hear in the voice of Beethoven. It knows nothing of meanness or spite; it is the passion of the doer who will not let his work be swept aside. It hurts no one, it asserts life, it is the force that generates form." 

- Allen Wheelis

Piano Lesson Resources

I am currently beginning a piano lesson resource page. This should be the start of a fairly extensive bunch of stuff of use to many people studying the piano. Right now there is only one item!

Getting to know Scarlatti

I think it was Horowitz who considered Domenico Scarlatti to be the "first Romantic". I find it hard to disagree. Scarlatti's own preface to his "Sonatas" gives us a peak into his own benevolent disposition: 

"…show yourself to be more human than critical, and then your pleasure will increase…Live Happily!" 

It's hard for words to do justice to the beauty and range of emotion found in Scarlatti's music. Many of his pieces are flamboyant and playful, but one of my favorites is this beautiful introspective and tender work played here by Spencer Myer: 

Technique Checklist

A student and I were recently trying to list all the basic technique that one could do for each key. I used to have an exhaustive list provided to me by an old teacher, but over the years I lost it somehow. Anyway here are some ideas off the top of my head:

-Major and Minor Scales, hands alone and together

-Chord Inversions: Triads, triads with the octave added, Seventh Chords

-Inversions like above but with the chords arpeggiated in various ways

-Scales hands together at the third and sixth (and perhaps other intervals)

-Scales in double thirds, sixths, and octaves

-Arpeggios of triads and seventh chords

-If you like, you can invert the chords of the arpeggio and practice starting on the first   finger of the right hand (or fifth of the left) for each inversion, instead of using the standard fingering.

-Chord Progressions - There are limitless possibilities here, but the standard I-IV-V-V7-I progression in all inversions is a good place to start

-Chromatic Scale (in thirds, sixths, etc. as well if you like)

-Chromatic scale in double minor and major thirds

-Five Finger patters with a fixed hand position, or "moving" patterns such as found in the Hanon exercises

-Fixed hand position double note exercises in thirds, sixths, etc.

Last but not least:

-Trills in various finger combinations (Neuhuas argued that trills are the most important of all technical exercises!)

It seems like you could formulate a pretty extensive technical regimen from the above list -- of course focusing on what you think needs the most work. Of course finding music that works the above is always better than dry repetition. 

Any other ideas? 

On Teaching

"The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous." --Gibbon

Every teacher knows how true this is...and  I'm really lucky to be surrounded by these sort of "happy dispositions". I found this quote when reading, of all things, an article by the famous physicist and teacher Richard Feynman.

Let the Ink Dry

Apart from the technical exercises of his that I've studied, I don't know whole lot about Carl Czerny. I know that he never went on tour, that he lived alone with his cats, that we was the student of Beethoven and teacher of Liszt. I also figure that, as one pianist pointed out, the volumes of dry piano exercises he composed can only be explained by a hatred of children. 

Speaking of Czerny's compositions, I  read once that he worked so quickly that he would compose several pieces at once, so as to work on one while the ink on the others would dry. I sometimes think about this story when students come to me after a week with only a few measures of a piece learned. I wish they would "let the ink dry" in their practice sessions, just like Czerny did with his composing. 

Often a student will become so determined to perfect a certain line of music that he will spend hours and hours repeating it, to the exclusion of the rest of the piece. Now, I'm completely in favor of focused repetition, but past a certain point it becomes inefficient; your memory isn't identical to a computer in the sense that you can simply program something in and the job is done. By some mechanism or other, your subconscious needs time to "digest" all the data you feed it. (Of course, if your work is systematic and focused, there's no doubt that this digestion won't take as long.) 

Part of good practicing is developing a sense of when you need to move onto a different section and let things simmer. At the same time, moving between sections means you'll be more tempted to slop through large parts of the piece. So, a lot of discipline is necessary when shuttling back and forth like this. One method I find helpful is to make a note of what I've practiced and how. Then I can let this section sit overnight and pick up where I left off a day or two later. Meanwhile I can focus on a different part of the piece and let things settle in. 

If you want to try this, be sure to plan your practice sessions ahead of time so that you aren't trying to plan what to practice while you are actually practicing it. Then as you move around, don't go so fast that nothing at all sinks in, but get a feel for when you've reached a point of diminishing returns for a certain section. Take some notes on what you worked on and move to the next section. I think you'll find this style of practicing to be far more productive over the course of several days.