Piano Blog

Recordings and Practice

There's sometimes a stigma associated with listening to recordings of pieces one is playing. The fear seems to be that a student will simply imitate the artist on the recording. 

There is a well founded basis for this fear. If you compare the varieties of interpretation now to early recordings from the past, you'll find that things have become more and more homogenized. 

But beyond this fear lies the fact that by not listening to a piece you can seriously slow down your rate of progress. The reason is simple: the better the aural picture you hold of a work, the more information your ear has at its disposal to integrate all the elements of playing. In the end, it's our knowledge of what a piece *sounds* like that holds everything together. 

A secondary benefit of recordings is that, far from limiting an interpretation, they can open you up to unconsidered possibilities; especially if you make a habit of listening to many different interpretations from different time periods. The key is to judge for yourself.

Happy listening!

Work Hard, Play Hard . . . or Play Better

"You know, I'm not a natural pianist. I never was.", said Rudolf Serkin to his student Lee Luvisi, " It always came very hard to me. If I don't work hard I can't play. I'm no different from most musicians; I don't always feel like going out there and playing, But I want to be ready when that happens so it's still above average." * 

Serkin, who by his own admission was not a naturally gifted artist, wasn't just a great pianist, but one of the most influential musicians of all time. Can we really attribute much of this success to an extraordinarily high work ethic?

Lately I've been reading a book recommended to me by a student called Talent Is Overrated. The author, Geoff Colvin, answers this question with an emphatic yes. Colvin makes a strong case for the value of consistent practice over innate talent; an idea with far reaching implications in music. He supports his argument with a host of different studies--many of them dealing with classical musicians. 

I was particularly struck by an extensive study conducted with violinists of varying playing abilities. To make a long story short, the statistically significant factor differentiating each level of player was the amount of time engaged in deliberate, goal-directed practice. By "amount of time" I mean not only average time per day, but the cumulative amount of time spent practicing in each violinist's life.

Is this surprising? Yes and no. No, because we all know that "practice makes perfect". Yes, because we also know, or think we know, that musical ability is strongly dependent on some kind of innate talent. What Colvin suggests is that what we interpret as talent is more often than not simply the result of well applied practice over the course of many years. 

In general, I agree with Colvin-- but I'd grant a little more ground to talent than he does. I've known extraordinarily gifted musicians who could do things far outside the provence of high-level abilities. For instance, people with nearly photographic musical memories from an early age. I've also observed some young children who seem to exhibit a better sense of things musically than their peers. But having said that, I've noticed that people give far too much weight to talent, sometimes too much to hard work, and not nearly enough to intelligent hard work. 

In Talent Is Overrated, Colvin does seem to conflate correlation and causation. The fact that the most talented performers practice the most doesn't  mean practice is what makes them the most talented! In many cases, people with a knack for piano end up practicing more simply because of the joy of doing something that they're good at. 

Of course the opposite is just as true. I've had tremendously talented students with such poor a work ethic that their performance was far below their potential level. Similarly, I've been astounded many times when pupils that show little early promise take off after a period of sustained work. 

I was this sort of late bloomer and, in fact, I'm fairly certain that my early teachers would be astounded at my current musical career. At 11 or 12 I was simply a mediocre piano student, and it wasn't until that age that I started practicing hard and, over the course of several years, reached a high level of playing. It occurs to me that if someone had told me at 11 or 12  that talent was simply a matter of inborn traits--something that other people had in greater degree than myself--I might have never have practiced so hard.  The best path then is just to craft your abilities as best you can. Let someone else worry about who is and isn't talented, and you can just enjoy the music!

*Quoted in "Rudolf Serkin: A Life" by Stephen Lehmann and Marion Faber. Oxford, 2003: 210.

Back to Basics

As a teacher I often try to be creative in my practice suggestions. This is a good thing of course, but in our efforts to keep things musical and interesting, its easy to forget the enormous value of careful repetition. 

The hard fact is, it will always be an enormous amount of (conscientious) repetition that makes it possible for a pianist to operate in "auto-pilot" mode. So, put the metronome on and get to work!

Coming this Sunday

I'm really looking forward to Anton Nel's concert this Sunday at the Long Center in Austin, TX. It will be the first solo piano recital in the new center and on the new Steinway! If you are in Austin, then don't miss it.

Make a list. Check it twice. Or more.

Lately I've been going to to the gym a lot. As some of my students know, I've got a bet going with a friend that  I can get a six pack! Well, one thing I've learned in doing this is the importance of listing and recording my exercises. 

Getting in peak physical condition, like learning a piece of music, is a process that takes continued effort over the long haul. And if you aren't structured in your effort, a lot of time and effort will be wasted. One simple way around this is to keep a practice notebook (like a piano workout log). 

Here was mine from this morning. (I was working on the last two lines of the Chopin B-flat minor prelude): 

- Hands alone, ghosting (mentally playing one hand while the other hand actually plays), 3x each hand

-Mental practice, hands together, 3x

-Perfect playthrough with full concentration, hands together, 3x

This is just a sample list...I used it in conjunction with "penny practice" (see my recent post) to monitor myself.

There are many values to having a written list when practicing. For one thing it keeps you on task, while allowing for flexibility. For instance, mid practice-session I realized my left hand needed special attention, so I was able to practice it without losing sight of my overall goals. 

Another important value of a list is that it allows you to keep track of your overall progress with a piece. If you keep your list in a notebook, you can even make notes about what is going well, what needs more work in future practice sessions, etc. 

Moreover, as I've mentioned in previous posts, keeping a list is a very important way of allowing yourself to fully engage in music making without having to plan the actual practice session at the same time.

Earplugs!

Here's a quick tip. If you're doing mental practice and are as easily distracted by noises as I am, try a set of earplugs. (I highly recommend the "leight-sleepers" brand.) I find that wearing them increases my ability to concentrate and audiate. 

(In case you don't know, "audiate" means to hear the music in your head...I used to say visualize but of course that's not quite right.)

Do we have practicing and performing backward?

One of my teachers used to remind me that "practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect." Sometimes though, it seems like our best attempts at perfect practice leave something to be desired in performance situations.  

Of course a myriad of factors might contribute to this, but could one of them be that we are "backward" in the way we practice? Specifically, in the way we direct our attention and the types of goals we set. This is an idea that I've been tossing around lately, and I think its worth thinking about. 

What is the difference, psychologically and physiologically, between being in a practice room and performing? Here are two major ones. First, the chemical changes in our body during a performance necessitate a heightened degree of concentration. Second, the ultimatum we give ourselves during a performance is that we "must" play as well as possible, whereas the ultimatum we give ourselves in a practice room is that we "should try" to play as well as possible. 

Some coaches have suggested running sprints before trying out a musical performance, but short of this or injecting yourself with adrenaline, there isn't much you can do to mimic the chemical change brought on by performing. But what about the second difference; the difference in ultimatums? Lately, I've been tossing around the idea that many of us might have our ultimatums reversed. Perhaps we should be setting up "must" scenarios in the practice room, and letting loose a bit in performance situations.

Practice room goals may vary from ambiguous ("practice this piece"), to specific ("practice this measure five times").  But we probably never give ourselves a performance-type ultimatum such as "Play this line perfectly 5 times with total concentration". Granted, we have *runthroughs* of a piece, but this is rather late in the game. 

What if each stage of our practice was structured around an "intense concentration" task? Perhaps such a method would make the concentration required in performance situations the norm rather than the exception. 

I think this is an idea worth exploring. The question becomes how to structure the learning stages of a piece in such a high-concentration manner. There are two aspects to this that come to mind: 1) Have detailed goals that are challenging but realistic, and 2) Set up a self-monitoring system that aides in achieving those goals. 

Let me deal with these aspects separately.

1) Setting definite, realistic, goals

In a performance situation, the goal is clear and simple, albeit tremendously difficult: perform the piece as perfectly and artistically as possible. In the practice room, things may get more complex. For instance, in the very first stages of learning a difficult piece, it would be senseless to set a goal of "play this line 3 times flawlessly". A better goal might be something like "play the right hand 3 times under tempo with perfect fingering". Of course, "flawlessly" is a good goal at later stages; and flawlessly means musically...the whole package...not just hitting the right notes. 

Note: Mental habits. Dont  lose control of your mind. If you lose your focus for even a second, you are habituating an incorrect mental habit. This includes negative or positive thoughts. Some examples: "What does the audience think?", "I hope I remember what is next." "I'm going to mess this up". "What's for lunch today?" "Man I'm really mad about that fight I had earlier". Be careful...just because something is about the music doesn't make it a good mental habit. For instance, it would be a bad habit to think about particular fingerings or notes in a way the interrupts the flow of the goal you are engaging, e.g. "Does 3 or 4 go on F?" or "Is this an F or a G coming up." Certainly you want to isolate these aspects for certain types of practice, but you don't want them all all to become a mental habit. (For more about this watch for my forthcoming post on practice techniques and mental habits.)

2) Setting up a self-monitoring system

The analytical power of the brain is awesome. But part of rational practicing is knowing when it is time to reason about something. The fact is that the analytical part of your mind will greatly interfere with the flow-producing part if you try to use it during the process of flow. The solution is to separate these two functions.

For example, if your task is to play a line perfectly 5 times, do the analysis and planning before and in between each of these 5 times. Engage the intense concentration, flow generating, part of your mind during each run-through. As easy as this sounds, generating a flow process can easily lead you astray. How many times have you been at the piano for several minutes and thought "what was I thinking about the last several minutes?" This is a result of your conscious mind losing control over the subconscious mind. 

The subconscious mind will generate flow when given a specific task, but it must be monitored, but not analyzed by, the conscious mind during that task. To do this takes enormous concentration. Typically what happens when you zone out at the piano is that your conscious mind stops monitoring the flow process, but instead starts analyzing something else...say how your love-life is going. Maybe an interesting topic for analysis, but not great for practice. 

The important point here is that the subconscious mind, left to its own devices, will fall into habitual modes of practicing, and this is not a great way to induce the level of do-or-die concentration we are looking for. A self-monitoring system will help avoid this. It will let you separate the how of practicing from the what of practicing. Or to put it more simply, it will let you get flow going in your run-throughs without losing track of your overall practice.

With so much buildup, you might think that I have some grand "self-monitoring system" in mind. Really the one I use most often is so simple as to seem childish. I call it "penny practice." First, I select the passages to practice and make a list of specific things I plan to practice for those passages (see point one). Next, I place a few pennies on one side of the piano keyboard.  For instance if I want to complete each task on my list 3 times with full concentration, I'll use 3 pennies. Then for each time I get through that task perfectly, I move the penny from one end of the keyboard to the other. 

Like I said, it seems simple but it can be powerful. You will be amazed at how much mental energy is freed up when you aren't worried about planning any monitoring the overall practice session while doing the practice itself. Everytime your subconscious tries to take over, you'll see your list of goals and your pennies and get back on task. Try it!

Practical notes: 

Here are a few practical notes that are just dangling here at the end. Forgive me if I'm getting repetitive.

Set each goal independently of engaging it. Stop, asses, think, engage. Don't mix these elements. Thinking about the goal while engaging means your concentration has been diverted from the goal. If you were actually performing the piece, you would never devote some of your mental energy to thinking "Oh I should practice this line 5 times", so don't do it in the practice room either. 

Remember that you have to give yourself something to focus on when you engage. The mind responds to positives, not negatives, so you need a positive thing to focus on. At lesser stages this could be many discrete elements such as phrasing, fingering, correct notes. But remember that the ear must integrate everything. This means that even with these discrete elements, the sound is what you're focusing on. Always, always, listen and integrate everything else with the sound! 

In this respect, keep in mind also the 3 stages of aural awareness that generate flow in music making: 1) "listening ahead" as vividly as possible (hearing something right before you play it), 2) listening to the actual sound, and 3) assessing the result and making necessary changes. Or, as one teacher of mine used to say, "past, present, future." 

Well this post really became longer than expected! I will expand on several key elements in future posts, such as particular practice techniques, more thoughts on the concept of flow, mental habits, the practice of listening, etc. I would love if some people would try this idea out in their own practice sessions and give me some feedback!

Why do we play? Part I

The motivation behind piano playing (or any musical endeavor) has long occupied my thinking, ever since I realized that one could be motivated by more than just a love of music. 

Why is motivation important? I believe that understanding our motivation, in any endeavor, can heighten our enjoyment of both that activity and our life as a whole. This is not a call to be neurotically obsessed with one's psychology while engaged in a pursuit; obviously one would want to be focused as much as possible on the task at hand. However, taking the time to step back and really ask why we are doing certain things and not others can have a drastic effect on our lives. 

I think that this sort of introspection is even more important in the realm of art. To understand why, let me explain what I think are the two most basic kinds of motivation: first-hand motivation and second-hand motivation.

In her epic novel The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand dramatizes the lives of people whose actions are motivated in reference to other people, as opposed to those whose actions are motivated by their own individual judgement. The motivation of second-handers--those whose motivation is based on the judgement of others--can take many forms. It can be a desire for praise, the need for inclusion, the fear of disapproval, or even--paradoxically--the desire to *seem* individualistic by being "contrarian". 

What unites all these motivations is that the person who acts on them is not judging things for himself, but is instead letting other people judge for him. For instance, the "contrarian" is not actually interested in what his opinion is (i.e. what he really thinks about the facts) as long as it's different from what everyone else thinks. Likewise, the praise-seeker is not actually interested in doing what he judges as quality work, but rather whether other people will approve of his work or not.

In contrast to this, the first-hander is primarily concerned with his own judgment; what he thinks is good or bad. We have all known musicians who live for the audience (praise-seekers), or who are concerned only with shock-value or being "different". But true art does not allow such thinking. The essence of true are is presenting one's own deepest world. The artists says "this is my art, take it or leave it". 

I remember reading an interview with a famous pianist (I can't recall which one) who said that before every performance, he sets his own goals. If he meets these goals, he's satisfied regardless of any audience reaction. Likewise if he thinks he could have done better--even if the audience erupts with adulation--he's back to the practice room. All other things the same, this is the psychology of a true artist.  

Now some may say: "Sure you can set standards like this, but look at how much stress is caused in the performing world by people expecting too much of themselves." I certainly agree that there are too many hyper-expectations set in the world of piano performance. But the real question is, why is this the case? I think the truth is that most of these expectations are the result of comparing oneself to others; that is of ignoring the reasonable expectations one would arrive at by considering his own context and abilities.

At its deepest level, these hyper-expectations are generated by a "thou shalt" mentality which has its roots in second-handed motivation. Let me explain. In essence, my goal when I perform or compose, is to externalize my inner world by creating something of beauty and musical value. I consider this the most awesome endeavor possible; I get to spend the bulk of my life trying to create something beautiful. This can take many forms: Through teaching, I try to help my *students* create beauty; Through playing, I  try to understand the composer's creation (its form and emotional content) and recreate it myself; Through composing, I try to give external life to my own inner world and my deepest emotions through the most beautiful (not always to be confused with "pretty" or "non-jarring") medium I know.

My own goals may not be the same as every artist's, but I think they're not too far off. Regardless, the point is that to the extent one is concerned with the judgement of others, to the extent one is a second-hander, he is unable to focus on goals like this. The reason is that placing the judgement of one's efforts in the hands of others puts one in the position of being out of control. 

As a result of this, the performer is focused not on art, but rather on not doing anything wrong; on not offending anyone; on not being criticized. Because the standard of value becomes what others think, the psychological focus moves from gaining positive values (creating beauty) towards avoiding pain (avoiding criticism). This is analogous to the obsessive compulsive who, out of a feeling of lack of control over his life, turns towards ritualized actions, obsessive cleaning, etc. simply to avoid the feeling of being out of control. 

To the person who puts judgement in the hands of the audience, there are an infinite number of ways in which he might offend the listener. What is the solution? Well, the real solution is not to put the judgement in the hands of the audience, but the "solution" most people unwittingly adopt is to be "perfect". But what does it mean to be perfect? If you have already decided that other people are the judge of your artistic merit, who is to say whose whim will dictate a perfect performance? (There is such a thing as "perfect", but only if that means as good as possible within your own context and judgement; a subject for another time.)

So, since this sort of "perfection" is impossible--since someone, somewhere, is bound to be offended by something in one's performance-- the performer is forced to resort to a list of out of context commandments. That is, a list of standards that merely serve as ways to avoid criticism. This defensive posture results in many "thou shalts" such as "Thou shalt not miss notes", "Thou shalt not disagree with thine teacher", "Thou shalt play this piece like the famous performers", "Thou shalt be different and original", "Thou shalt memorize thine music no matter what", etc. etc. 

Is it any wonder that people can be paralyzed when trying to create art? Certainly, the true artist will always strive to produce exemplary work. But there is a world of difference between doing the best one can in a given context, and trying to live up to impossible standards set by the unknowable opinions of others. What an awful way to approach art, and for that matter to lead a life!

In the next installment of this article, I will deal with the role traditional piano  education plays in encouraging a certain motivational stance, real life examples of motivational problems and how they might be helped, certain problems that bad motivation can give rise to in piano playing, baggage from childhood piano lessons (!), and general advice on moving towards a more first-handed, and thus more truly artistic, motivation.

On Country Folk and Country Pianos

A couple days ago I travelled to Fredricksburg (Fredricksburg? Fredrickburg?) Texas to play a cello recital. F-burg is a Texas town which, by the look of it, must have quite a bit of money. I've been told is has more doctors per capita than any town in the country, but I don't know if this is true. 

I have to say that with all their money, the local chapel in which we played should really invest in a finer instrument.  I may have never abused a piano so much in my life, and I could fairly judge the amount of this (upright) piano's submission by the degree to which it was out of tune during any particular part of the concert. (I had no choice by the way. No choice at all.) The concert was, by the way, about two hours long and my anger at the piano perhaps made me lose a bit control of tempo in the last movement of the Beethoven's third Cello Sonata. My cellist threatened not to drive me home afterwards. 

Still I think the audience enjoyed it. Any trip like this will quickly disabuse one of stereotypes. Ignoring the children in the audience (it was a benefit concert for a music school) everyone was incredibly well mannered and--something lacking in many city audiences--completely un-snobbish and genuinely appreciative. There was very low coughing per person, and I don't think I heard a damn wrapper or cell phone the entire time. And even more surprising to me--the average age level (again discounting the school children) seemed to be far *lower* than what I see in city audiences. 

The most heinous display of rudeness I've ever seen in a concert was, by the way, in NYC--where a proudly immature woman in spandex pants stood in an aisle at the Lincoln Center and jangled her keys for--I swear--an entire movement of a Dvorak Symphony. 

Perhaps the F-burg audience was a bit too appreciative; they clapped -- and I mean *applauded* --between every movement. Given that we played several multi-movement works, I estimate that I've never received so much cumulative applause during one concert in my life. But, really, so what? Genuine exchange of emotions the best thing one can hope for in music. 

Bach

Bach is a very humbling experience for me. You can play Rachmaninoff and Chopin and everything else that impresses the hell out of people, but you come back to something like 2 part counterpoint and the ground falls out from under you. At least it does for me! But this baroque stuff is good for the fingers at least...and great music. With all the teaching I'm doing, I just hope I have enough time to practice before the recital Friday!

But I did come across this video on youtube; one of the movements of what we are playing. If you know the piece and listen close, it sounds like the harpsichordist isn't too comfy either! Maybe I'm in good company.