More on Piano Muscles

 Along the lines of the previous post, here's a quick tip:

If your practice isn't "sticking", maybe you aren't doing enough "reps". Many people will take my advice on working in small sections, but won't repeat enough. They'll figure out how to get through a section, repeat it maybe once, and then move on. But really, they ought to play it through several more times. These "reps" are where the real muscle gets built. Don't spend several minutes figuring out how something goes without repeating it. If you do that you are wasted most of your time! 

Alternately, if you're moving at a glacial pace, learning a measure a week or something like that, maybe you are doing too many reps. Its much better to cycle small sections. Maybe repeat a two-measure bit 6 times, move on to the next bit, and then after a few minutes review the first bit again. You have to find your sweet spot - a good balance between repeating and covering a decent area. There's an art to this kind of practice.

Now go pump up your piano muscles. 

Comments

[Squareberry]

Yes, I added your blog to my feed. So nice to read bout teaching technique and all.

Anw, hope you don't mind the many comments recently, but to add to this, one can also practice backwards- beginning from the last section and moving section by section until the start. Both forward and backward practising helps reinforce what is learnt, and also overcomes the common situation where one is really familiar with the front (because we start our learning from there), but not the back.

Alternatively, one can start from a difficult section and move forward or backward from there.

I guess you probably already know this, but oh well. :)

Do check out my blog too at http://andante-favori.moi-nonpl.us I don't exactly blog about piano only, but I blog about music quite frequently.

[Matthew Roy]

I enjoy your insights. I taught piano to elementary school children right out of college and it was a huge learning experience. I'm just beginning a masters in music history at EWU in Spokane, Washington and am very excited to have lessons again. What is your opinion on warm-ups or finger exercises, such as Czerny or Dohnanyi? I've received conflicting reports.
All the best.

[Squareberry]

Good on your masters. That is cool, I'd want to do a Masters in Music/performance or something if I have sufficient savings/time off my work schedule.

Anyway, I assume you are referring to short/repetitive warm up exercies (rather than music written as studies) used before playing?

I personally do not have a strong opinions on what is best/whether they are useful- I think if done with the right method and discipline, most methods are effective.

Nevertheless, my most favoured warm-up exercise for my students/myself are scales (legato/stacatto), playing four notes to a beat with the metronome. My teacher taught me that and I recently discovered that it is very effective- probably because a scale is simple in noation, so one can focus alot on precision of rhythm/technique. And there's some saying that if you cannot play something simple as a scale well, you can't possibly play something else securely. I do that at the start of every lesson.

Besides that, i do not frequently use short warm-ups because they frequently bore students, especially the young ones. Occassionally, I do pull them out and get my students to do them with a metronome during class- and try to motivate the young ones by starting at a slow tempo and then raising it gradually, and giving them a sticker with each tempo they master. =D

I much prefer longer exercises written as studies (Czerny and the likes)-I feel it enables me to check on technique while teaching elements of musicality by getting students to pay attention to phrasing, dynamics, as well as changes in key etc.

You should write a blogpost on this. I am sure many pple will be interested in this, and so am I. In my own playing, I sometimes struggle with wondering how much time to spend on warm up exerises vs. practising my repetoire. I am not a full time teacher, so I havent taught THAT many students and would like to hear more opinions!

[Matt]

Hi Matthew - My experience with finger exercises is that it all depends on context. Obviously, knowing your scales, chords, arpeggios, etc. is tremendously helpful.

To a degree, I think stuff like Czerny can be good. If nothing else, he took the time to catalogue some various technical problems. I don't go overboard with these things unless I feel like they are helping a specific aspect of my playing. If at all possible, I prefer to get my technique from music I would actually perform. For instance, why practice a Czerny study in octaves when you can play the Chopin Octave Etude or the famous octave passage in the Liszt Sonata?

On the other hand, there are things like Pischna exercises, which I think are *great* for people who have problems with finger independence and muscle control...you wouldn't get this sort of thing from the standard literature unless you spend hours searching for specific examples.

So, long story short. I say, good for specific problems, but I wouldn't spend a lifetime on it.

[Matt]

Hi Squareberry-- I *totally* agree with you about too many warmups boring younger students. There's an art to making these things interesting...it would be an interesting blogpost I imagine :-)

[rizka]

wooow,, u're blog so amazing..
it very helpful..
thank you

[Matt]

Thanks Rizka! Please feel free to add the blog on your RSS feed or sign up to receive updates. You can also let me know if you have any questions or things you'd like me to post on :-)

[mypianonz]

its great and a huge experience.