Piano Blog

Pressure

Sort of a rant?

Stress is a scary thing. In the right amount, a bit of stress can really motivate, but just a bit too much of it can lead to disaster. An athlete under the right amount of stress excels, but under too much pressure he crumbles.

The same is true at the piano. I don't mean just in performing, but also in the process of learning. Sometimes serious students expect too much. I think many young students could be pushed more, but there are some cases where this is the reverse; the pressure from parents or teachers becomes obsessive and overbearing. The child is not "good enough" unless he or she wins a competition or plays perfectly.

Ironically, this pressure often leads to burnout, poor performance, and even complete rebellion or shutdown.

Why is this necessary? Why do we have to beat others to prove our worth? (What the hell does beating others have to do with music or art?) Why does self-worth rest on how accurately you can play a Mozart Sonata? What kind of message are we sending to students or children by telling them they aren't good enough because of a memory slip or a wrong note?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all about new levels of achievement, aiming for your best, improving. There's a reason its called fine art - high levels of playing don't fall into your lap. 

But when music becomes all about stress, pressure, not messing up, and comparing oneself to others we lose interest in the music, because it isn't there anymore.

 

 

Sensitivity Training and Feedback Loops II

In my last post I discussed feedback loops in piano playing and their importance in cultivating physical awareness.* Now I'll try to give you an idea of how you can employ these ideas in your practice.I know that the last post might seem like a lot of information to keep in mind, but in practice its not so bad. So, if this is all new to you, here's something to try:

Take a 5 finger pattern, or a *very* small passage of only a second or two in length. For now do this hands alone . . . so pick a hand. Play this passage (preferably from memory) a few times, each time concentrating on the feel of your hand and arm, as well as the tactile feel of the keys against your fingertips and their movements up and down. Get as much "feel data" as you can each time you play the passage.

Now, take your hand away from the keyboard. Close your eyes and try to visualize yourself playing *every note* of this passage. Visualize as slow as necessary to be exact in your mind. Do this several times, and with each repetition try to make the visualization include a very vivid kinesthetic component. Don't go for speed; be patient and aim for clarity. Try to visualize not only the look and sound, but the *feel* of playing this passage in the muscles of your hand and your fingertips (but without actually moving your hand.)

(There is a helpful German word in this context: spielart, which the famous piano technician Franz Mohr explains as "simply the way the action feels to you, or how the action functions under your hands, in combination with what comes *out* of the piano . . ."** This is what you want to visualize.)

Now return to the keyboard and play the passage very slowly. Your goal is to visualize the sight, sound, and *feel* of each keystroke an instant before playing. After you do this a few times, you can work the passage up to speed, while continuing to visualize ahead. After each repetition, STOP, and consider what the play-through sounded like. Was it under your control? Did you get the sound you wanted? Did it "feel" how you wanted or expected? Use this information to make adjustments to the next run-through.

If you're patient with this, you can make this sort of analysis a practice habit. Although I focused here on the tactile component of the process, reflecting on every aspect of playing is a crucial part of effective effective feedback loops. The most effective musicians do this sort of analysis constantly--probably without even being aware of it. If you take the time to build it into your thinking, it will pay off many times over.

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*(As a side note, I think more than anything else, its this awareness that allows a good pianist to make instantaneous adjustments necessary for a good performance. This responsiveness also allows, after a lot of practice, for a pianist to adapt quickly to a new instrument.) 

**Franz Mohr. My Life With the Great Pianists, pg. 28. 

 

Sensitivity Training and Feedback Loops

Here's an element of piano playing that I think many people are unaware of. To develop a really refined technique, you need to be very sensitive to the *feel* of your hands on the keys. This means, the the tactile sensation of your fingertips, the weight of the keys, the motion of the key going down and how that motion *feels* in your fingers and hands.

Maybe this seems obvious, but a surprising number of people become extremely mechanical the instant they put their hands to the piano.

Why is this important? Really good piano practice, and piano playing,  involves setting up a "feedback" loop. It goes like this:

1) Sound concept -> 2) Attempted Sound Production ->  3) Result -> 4) Analysis of Result -> 5) Adjustment of Desired Sound/Attempt

(Sorry for the clumsy presentation, but you get the idea.)

The result of these steps 1 and 2 is a sound 3 that either matches the "Sound Concept" or not. Steps 4 and 5 can lead to an adjustment of the first two steps, which starts the process over again. This is a feedback loop. 

Many people fail in their practice because they don't really understand Step 2. In fact, most people focus almost exclusively on Step 3 to the exclusion of everything else! Of course this is very ineffective practice. Getting a desired result is worth very little if you don't know how you got it. Piano teachers are fond of saying "slow down". What we really mean is: "Slow down so that you can think about the results you are getting in comparison to the sound you want to produce and your attempt at producing it, and make adjustments as necessary while carefully thinking ahead." That's just a mouthful so we don't say it.

One note about step 2: like any non-habitual action, it involves 2 parts: a "foresight" or "pre-visualization" of the action, and the action itself. For instance if you decide to raise your hand above your head, you first visualize that action on some level and then you do it. For habitual actions, this visualization seems to scope out to larger levels. For instance, because typing is so habitual to me, I don't need to think ahead about pressing the keys of the keyboard, but I do need to think about what words to type. 

Too much information? Bear with me. Just remember, when you DO something (step 2) you have to "visualize" it and then do it. So step 2 has two parts.

Now, in piano playing, there are many elements to Step 2, such as note-reading, finger dexterity, hand position, fingering, and on and on. I want to focus here on one element that is almost universally ignored: the *feel* of playing. 

 When I ask people to visualize playing a certain passage, they often have no trouble understanding that they can visualize the correct key and the correct sound before playing. When you say "think ahead while you play", its somewhat obvious that you would think ahead about what notes to play and what those notes should sound like. It's less obvious to think ahead about what playing will *feel* like.

As an example, when I'm about to play a five finger pattern, I don't just have an image of the keys, but also a feel in my fingers of what it will feel like to produce that sound. This "feel" is a mixture of kinesthetic awareness (the feeling of my hands and their motion) as well as an awareness of how the keys feel on my fingertips and their movement up and down. 

OK This is enough of the details, so the end of part I. 

I'll continue this article in a second part with an exercise or two to help develop kinesthetic awareness and strong feedback-loops in practicing.