Simplicity 1

Keep it simple.

“Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler” said Einstein, and I tend to agree – at least when it comes to playing the piano.

This morning I was teaching a very gifted student who was working on some harmonization. She was (quite impressively) playing some complex chords with her left hand, but rather slowly and with some apparent trouble. The piece she was playing was a jazz standard, so it was tough not to see her having more fun.

So we simplified. What is the melody in the right hand? Can you play it by ear? Instead of the chords, can you play just the simple baseline? Listen to how it lines up with the right hand, how it slowly slides down chromatically, rises up again and then cadences down a fifth. All of this was explained more in sound than in words. We repeated four bars over and over, simple and slow, just listening to the beauty of this outline. There were no 7th chords, certainly no 9ths, just a tender melody and an easy bass.

This is how you build a foundation in music and how you practice with ease and control. The ear is involved because things are easy and natural. The complexities come later, not first. They flow naturally from the basic underpinnings.

We are taught in many ways to worship complexity today, but try finding the simple solutions in your work. Keep an eye out for common roadblocks: attempting to do everything at once, practicing to quickly, not involving the ear, practicing mindlessly, missing the larger picture.

Instead, take your practice slow, and keep your ear focused on easily clean and identifiable attributes. Things that help organize and structure your learning.

Can you hear the overall tonal area? Can you reduce a page to 2 or 3 salient harmonies or a simple bass pattern? Can you play the melody alone by ear, and then add simplified accompaniment? You might be surprised at how often incredibly complex pieces can be reduced to a few simple mental hooks.

Give it a try. It’s simple.