Piano Blog

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.

Transposition for Theory and Ear Training

Want a rewarding, practical,  theory lesson? Try transposition. 

The great thing about transposition is that you can apply it to whatever level you happen to be at. Are you learning a Chopin Mazurka? Take a phrase and try to play it in every key. Still on simpler pieces? Do the same. Not only will you learn more about the piece you're working on, you'll get a deeper understanding of how its elements apply in every key; an understanding that will come in helpful in the future. 

Remember to have a good idea of how the piece sounds, and a harmonic understanding of what is going on. (If you don't understand what's going on harmonically, get some help with that.) By having this knowledge before transposing, you'll get an incredible lesson in applied theory, as well as some great ear training. You can often learn more by transposing a small section through all the keys than you can from hours of book study. 

The Truth about Classical Music

Last night was spent with some musician friends of mine and might have involved too much alcohol. 

But rather than just complain about my sad, sad, state, here's an interesting question: Why is there an aura of snobbishness surrounding classical music? We all know this exists, but my experience has been that it is completely at odds with reality.

In truth, many classical musicians have extremely "colorful", borderline hedonistic, personalities. And quite a bit of classical music itself expresses extreme and profound emotions: love, grief, heartbreak, triumph, etc. 

I realize that a lot of classical music should be taken seriously, and has to be listened to closely. I just don't get why it's so often considered snobbish and highbrow, or so often discussed with a sort of saccharine tone.

Thoughts?

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. 

Piano Muscles

Right now I'm in the middle of my teaching week, as well as full of Mexican food and ice cream. So the chances of a long followup to yesterday's post are a bit slim at the moment.

But here's a quick thought from one of my lessons today. In weight lifting, a lot of attention is paid to exercising your muscles enough so that they grow, but not so much that they over-fatigue and can't recover. If you do it just right, its the last repetition of a movement that accounts for the majority of muscle and strength gains.

This is like piano practice. Some students (very few) over-fatigue themselves, but most don't do quite enough. Just like that last 10 percent of work can account for 50 percent of muscle growth, that extra 10 or 20 minutes of practice, or those extra 2 or 3 repetitions of a section, can make an enormous difference in practice output.

Not progressing like you'd like at the piano? Up your daily practice time by 10 or 20 minutes. Try 6 repetitions of a section instead of 4. Go over a section slowly for 10 minutes before bed, etc. etc. Try this out for a few weeks, and see if it makes a difference. You might be surprised.

Piano Teacher Bogeyman

I was at a housewarming party this evening. Somewhat introverted by nature, this was the first social gathering I'd been at in a few weeks where all of the other people were complete strangers. So it was a healthy reminder of someone's reaction when they find out I'm a piano teacher. This reaction has three stages: 

First: "Wow that's cool, how interesting."

Next "I took lessons as a kid, but didn't have much talent."

Finally: "My teacher was mean, made me feel worthless and cry. I was forced into lessons and it was traumatic, and now I'm scarred for life because of piano teachers like you."

OK maybe people don't go that far with the last part, but you'd be surprised how close this is to the truth. 

So first of all I'm going to be extra positive and nice in my teaching tomorrow. (I think I'm a pretty nice teacher in the first place...right students?) 

But this story also points to a common predicament: Children often don't come to enjoy the piano until they're in their teens. The problem is, if they haven't been practicing consistently for years at this point, it's too late for them to reach their full potential. Parents and teachers run into this problem all the time. I have my own thoughts on it, which I'll detail in the next post, but I'm curious to hear your take as well.