Piano Blog

Practice - The Last 10 Percent Is The Most Important

If you've read much of pianoblog.com or are one of my students, you know how important repetition is to me.

What many people don't understand about practice, is that the last 10 or so percent is where the majority of improvement occurs. Repeating a section 10 times vs. 5 times doesn't mean it will only be twice as good. In fact repetitions 8, 9, and 10 might add an extra 200 percent. (If you can't tell, I'm making these number up, but you get the point).

Its very similar to building muscle at the gym. The last repetition determines the majority of the muscle growth. How much should you repeat? There's an art to this. After a certain number you reach a point of diminishing returns, and you'd do better to work on a different section for a while and then come back. After a lot of practice, you'll get a sense of what is enough…there's a sort of "locking" in that occurs, where you can tell you actually learned something. As against a sense of murkiness and uncertainty about the section at hand.

But in general, I'd say most people err on the side of not enough repetitions. So, go forth and repeat.

Planning vs. Doing

There's a time to plan and a time to do, and those times don't usually overlap.

At least for my dull mind, there's not enough mental bandwidth to do both at once. 

On top of that, the mind is a tricky animal. If I'm at the gym, in the middle of a workout, and my "planning" brain switches on, I can find all sorts of reasons why I "shouldn't" finish the workout. I'm too tired. I might be getting sick. I don't have much time. Is this workout even working? Maybe I should try a different one. It would feel so good to stop right now.

If you're having trouble practicing, I bet one on reason is that you are overlapping planning and doing.

Arthur Rubinstein - An Amazing Person

There is so much in this interview, not just about music but about life. It is worth watching many times over. 

 

 

Is Your Child a Genius? Does it Matter?

Before reading further, please know this: I try to be positive. I think its important that children learn to trust their judgement, think for themselves, and feel good about who they are.

Not many parents tell their children that they're dumber than everyone else. Obviously, this would be abusive and disturbing.

A lot of parents tell their children that they're smarter than everyone else.

What happens when they learn they are not?

Instead of teaching our children (implicitly) to focus on where they are in relationship to everyone else, why don't we teach them to challenge themselves and enjoy the process? 

Go ahead, tell your child they are special. . . they are. But why make their genius the center of their thinking? It might make the parents feel better, but do the children care? Believe it or not, a truly happy child doesn't go around all day thinking "I'm a genius". He might implicitly think "I'm capable of handling the world", but more immediately he's probably thinking/feeling "this is fun, this is challenging, I'm enjoying learning about this."

Ironically, if your child is smart enough to deserve praise, he's certainly smart enough to see through saccharine pseudo-praise. Praise clear thinking, self-discipline, and hard work - tell your child they are a good person because they think for themselves and work hard, regardless of the outcome. Then lay off and let them enjoy life.

The Best Practice Advice in the World

After many years of teaching, and hundreds and hundreds of students, I can say with complete certainty that this is the best practice advice available.

It is simple, reliable, and when executed will improve your playing many times over.

This method can be implemented regardless of age or skill level.

More than any other factor, this method correlates to success at the piano. And further, those who rarely implement this technique show markedly less improvement than those who do.

In fact, in all my years of teaching, I can say that students who implement this method are *gaurunteed* to surpass those who don't many times over.

This technique has been used by successful concert artists for hundreds of years with incredible results.

I am giving this advice, confirmed by years of hard work and an enormous amount of real-world data, to you the reader for no fee. Are you ready?

This practice technique is as follows:

Practice! 

:-)

 

The Thing About Piano Competitions Is . . .

Piano competitions can be a real pain in the ass. Not just for the competitors, which is obvious, but for teachers as well.

Placing well often this means playing a piece somewhat conservatively at, say, 80% of a student's technical capacity. But improving can often mean practicing something at 90%, or even 110% capacity. (Within reason of course.)

Don't get me wrong I'm not against competitions. My more competitive students still enter them. But this "competition is everything" mindset some people have can wear thin; especially when it comes at the expense of real musical growth.

Developing musicians around the age of 13-18 need space to grow. They need to experiment, try out things, find their voice, and push up against pieces that might be a bit above their head both musically and technically. The fact is, this doesn't always lend itself well to polish and precision.

I'm not one of those people who is against competition per se, or anti-sports or anything else. But sports is sport and music is art. Art is a deeply personal thing, and the budding artist is finding himself through his practice. What are we teaching children when they work like hell on music they love, and then made to feel like failures because this or that judge was in a bad mood? 

Long story short. Go and compete, but keep the big picture in mind. End of rant.