Piano Blog

Thinking Ahead

 A couple posts ago, I discussed the need for chunking, especially if your playing has a "stop-start" quality to it. Being able to chunk is also essential in the process of thinking ahead, since it frees up mental resources to consider what's next. This process is like driving a car; you can't just focus on what's directly in front of you, but rather you have to divide your mental energy between what you're doing (controlling the car) and what's coming up. On the other hand, if you focus too far in front of you, you won't have enough mental energy left to focus on what's coming up or on controlling the car itself. Its an issue of mental resources and timing.  

The same applies to playing music. You have to focus just a bit in front of what you're doing, but not so far in front that you spread yourself too thin. This requires that you're able to put at least some of what you're currently playing on "auto-pilot". Just like like you can't think about every single detail of how to steer while driving, you can't focus 100 percent of your mental energy on one passage at the expense of what lies ahead. 

There's a simple way to test this autopilot. Take a half-measure or measure of something you're working on, and practice it with complete concentration. Then divert your attention away and see if you can play that section while reading a book, checking the time of a clock, etc. If you're able to divide your attention like this, you'll certainly be able to think/listen ahead to what is coming up. 

It's also interesting to note that if you try doing this with a longer stretch of music (say while reading a book), you'll probably stumble every few seconds--either with the reading or with the playing. With each stumble, you'll have to apply a "jolt" of conscious energy to whatever was lagging to keep things going. So its an interesting example of how the mind is handling information in chunks. Could it be that getting into a flow is also an issue of correctly timing these "jolts" of mental energy?

The Mental Side of Playing the Piano

There's a lot to be said about this subject, but more and more I'm aware of the important mental aspects of piano technique.

For instance, do you find that you constantly stop and start in your playing? This could be because you don't "chunk" enough. Chunking means grouping information so that your mind retrieves it in groups. 

As a simplified example, if you've got a measure with 20 notes in it, you'd have to think and execute 20 separate things to get through the measure. But if you can group those notes into 5 groups of 4, you'd only have to execute 5 commands to get through the measure. Thats a quarter of the mental workload!

A lot of what allows a seasoned pianist to play incredibly complex works is that he's practiced so many different patterns that he's able to chunk almost anything efficiently. 

There are a lot of ways to work on your "chunking abilities" but one of the best is very simple; although it involves quite a bit of self-control and concentration. It is simply this: pause every few notes and think ahead. Can you think through the next few notes as "one" thing instead of several separate notes? If not, can you repeat them until you can? Obviously if the next few notes are part of some chord or repeating pattern this task is easier, but they don't have to be. Any notes can be "chunked" as long as you practice them enough.

This is such a broad subject. I'm sure I'll have more to say on it. Hopefully this makes some sense!

Piano Lesson Resources

I am currently beginning a piano lesson resource page. This should be the start of a fairly extensive bunch of stuff of use to many people studying the piano. Right now there is only one item!

Technique Checklist

A student and I were recently trying to list all the basic technique that one could do for each key. I used to have an exhaustive list provided to me by an old teacher, but over the years I lost it somehow. Anyway here are some ideas off the top of my head:

-Major and Minor Scales, hands alone and together

-Chord Inversions: Triads, triads with the octave added, Seventh Chords

-Inversions like above but with the chords arpeggiated in various ways

-Scales hands together at the third and sixth (and perhaps other intervals)

-Scales in double thirds, sixths, and octaves

-Arpeggios of triads and seventh chords

-If you like, you can invert the chords of the arpeggio and practice starting on the first   finger of the right hand (or fifth of the left) for each inversion, instead of using the standard fingering.

-Chord Progressions - There are limitless possibilities here, but the standard I-IV-V-V7-I progression in all inversions is a good place to start

-Chromatic Scale (in thirds, sixths, etc. as well if you like)

-Chromatic scale in double minor and major thirds

-Five Finger patters with a fixed hand position, or "moving" patterns such as found in the Hanon exercises

-Fixed hand position double note exercises in thirds, sixths, etc.

Last but not least:

-Trills in various finger combinations (Neuhuas argued that trills are the most important of all technical exercises!)

It seems like you could formulate a pretty extensive technical regimen from the above list -- of course focusing on what you think needs the most work. Of course finding music that works the above is always better than dry repetition. 

Any other ideas? 

Let the Ink Dry

Apart from the technical exercises of his that I've studied, I don't know whole lot about Carl Czerny. I know that he never went on tour, that he lived alone with his cats, that we was the student of Beethoven and teacher of Liszt. I also figure that, as one pianist pointed out, the volumes of dry piano exercises he composed can only be explained by a hatred of children. 

Speaking of Czerny's compositions, I  read once that he worked so quickly that he would compose several pieces at once, so as to work on one while the ink on the others would dry. I sometimes think about this story when students come to me after a week with only a few measures of a piece learned. I wish they would "let the ink dry" in their practice sessions, just like Czerny did with his composing. 

Often a student will become so determined to perfect a certain line of music that he will spend hours and hours repeating it, to the exclusion of the rest of the piece. Now, I'm completely in favor of focused repetition, but past a certain point it becomes inefficient; your memory isn't identical to a computer in the sense that you can simply program something in and the job is done. By some mechanism or other, your subconscious needs time to "digest" all the data you feed it. (Of course, if your work is systematic and focused, there's no doubt that this digestion won't take as long.) 

Part of good practicing is developing a sense of when you need to move onto a different section and let things simmer. At the same time, moving between sections means you'll be more tempted to slop through large parts of the piece. So, a lot of discipline is necessary when shuttling back and forth like this. One method I find helpful is to make a note of what I've practiced and how. Then I can let this section sit overnight and pick up where I left off a day or two later. Meanwhile I can focus on a different part of the piece and let things settle in. 

If you want to try this, be sure to plan your practice sessions ahead of time so that you aren't trying to plan what to practice while you are actually practicing it. Then as you move around, don't go so fast that nothing at all sinks in, but get a feel for when you've reached a point of diminishing returns for a certain section. Take some notes on what you worked on and move to the next section. I think you'll find this style of practicing to be far more productive over the course of several days.  

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.

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, assess, 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!