Practice. And Eat Your Vegetables.

Everybody knows that if you want to improve something, you have to practice.  As I mentioned in my last blog post, this shouldn’t be news to anyone.   Now, although it is true that (generally speaking) the amount of progress is directly correlated to amount of practice, but what you practice and how you practice it plays a very crucial role.  And so today’s blog post is dedicated to effective practice strategies.

So, the first thing on the menu is technique.  Everyone hates technique.  Ok, maybe not everyone but I’ve personally never met anyone who really especially loved it.  But practicing technique is like eating your vegetables – it’s not always pleasant but it’s good for you.  Now when I say technique, I’m referring to any purely technical skill or exercise that will eventually lead to your brain and fingers automatizing a particular movement or pattern. This includes playing scales, arpeggios, chord progressions, et cetera.   The thing to keep in mind is that practicing technique is supposed to help with skill transference.  In other words, practicing scales should help with pieces where the melody features a lot of scale-like passages.  But we also get a lot more out of playing scales, provided they are being played mindfully. For example, scales are usually practiced in a legato (or smooth, connected) articulation, so we are also learning how to properly “connect” one note to another.  For beginner to intermediate students learning how to play a major scale for the first time usually means they are now being introduced to pieces that move out of a simple “5-finger” hand position by “crossing under” the thumb and “crossing over” the third and fourth fingers.  

So what does it mean to play scales “properly”?  Well first we have to look at why we’re learning the scales in the first place – which is usually for two reasons: to help with the memorization of key signatures; and to increase the ease of motion (and thus eventually speed) that we can play scale-like passages in a legato articulation (or staccato if that’s the technical exercise).  So when you are practicing the scales do not simply look at the pattern or shape that it makes on the piano – that’s important too – but it’s important to think about each note as a natural, sharp or flat.  The key of F has B flat, not A sharp, for example.  That way, you are also properly learning your key signatures at the same time.  When it comes to the actual execution of the scales, it’s all about efficiency.  You want to be able to glide from one key to the next while minimizing unnecessary movements, such as sticking the non-playing fingers up in the air.  You also want to make the movements smooth and not jerky, which, especially for beginners, is often made more difficult by the over-straightening or over-curving of fingers.  The fingers should essentially sit completely relaxed.  If you hold your hand in the air and let it flop you should see what the “natural curve” of your fingers is.  That is the same way they should sit on the keys.  The other thing that often gets in the way of playing “properly” is sitting too close to the piano.  If you are sitting at the correct distance, your elbows should not be stuck at your sides, but quite a bit in front of you and slightly pulled out to the side.  If your elbows are at your sides, your own body will get in the way of your arms as they cross in front of you and your playing will sound awkward.  Also sitting too close tends to mean that the wrists are also sitting a bit too low – and for heaven’s sake don’t let them rest on the piano!!  If all of these things have been addressed, then you will gradually move up and down the keys with greater ease and speed.

Now this idea of playing “mindfully” (awareness of posture, hand and finger movements, and attention to the overall sound production,) is also very important when practicing repertoire, regardless of genre.  But of equal importance is how you practice your repertoire.  The most common mistake that I see in students of all levels is in constantly practicing of a piece from beginning to end.  It is like a compulsive behavioural disorder!  When you learn a piece, you are essentially training your aural and tactile memory.  From the very first repetition in performance of that piece, your muscle memory pairs up with your auditory memory to figure out what’s coming next.  Now unfortunately our short term memories are pretty unreliable, which is why for most people if you’re trying to remember something and someone or something interrupts your thought process, there’s a good chance you’ll forget it.  So now imagine how hard you’re making it for your auditory and tactile memory systems by trying to throw at them an entire piece of music all at once!!  This is why learning pieces in small sections is critically important.  Take four to eight bars at a time, and play them until you feel that you are starting to know what comes next.  Then, when you’ve got those four or eight bars, do the same with the next four or eight bars until you’ve learned the whole piece.  Now I’m not saying to never play the song from beginning to end.  Of course, that is the next important step in being able to link the sections together.  But this approach will have you learn a piece of music much, much faster than if you regularly just practice from beginning to end.     

Lastly, make sure that you are isolating problem areas.  Once again, constantly practicing from beginning to end means you are giving equal practice to the easier and harder passages.  The passages that are more difficult require extra attention, so you have to practice them in isolation.  Play just that tricky bar or couple of bars alone – and slowly – with one hand, and then the other.  Then put them together.  Finally, “take a run at it” and go back a couple of bars from the tricky part and see if you can now play through it with greater ease. Practicing slowly is one of the best things you can do for your playing. Too often students are in a hurry to be able to play a piece at full tempo and end up sacrificing tone, articulation, dynamics, hand synchronization, etc. and basically everything that was musical about the piece just went out the window.  When you practice slowly and mindfully you learn all the details of the piece properly, only once it sounds good at a slow tempo can you begin to increase the speed.  

Here’s an appropriate quote to end today’s blog:  

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is nothing we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds. 

 R.D. Laing

Happy Practicing!

Learning to Walk Before you Run

Every week I spend time with my piano students during their lessons listening to their concerns, questions, and problems.  Approximately half of my current students are adults while the majority of the other half is made up of children 9 and under, but practically all my students fall into the beginner to early intermediate category.  Something I’ve found not terribly surprising and a little amusing, is that when demonstrating the songs they’ve been practicing all week, ninety-eight percent of the children think that they’ve played it correctly, while ninety-eight percent of the adults think that they’ve played it incorrectly (or poorly).  Now, we all know about the psychological hang-ups and insecurities that we develop as adults, but I think that the problem runs deeper than this.  I think that part of the problem lies with adult students setting their expectations too high.   And so I’d like to take some time to talk a little bit about what, in my experience as a piano teacher, constitutes “realistic” expectations for adult beginner students.

Learning to play the piano (or any instrument) is all about building skill sets.  A skill set is essentially a musical concept, idea or pattern that, once learned properly, the student should be able to apply to other pieces of music.  For beginners, skill sets that need to be learned will be general and simple, and as the student progresses towards intermediate and advanced levels, the skill sets get more specific and complex.  For example, a few skill sets that beginners must learn include: tying one small musical idea to another (ie. not leaving “spaces” between bars); being able to differentiate between, by ear or on the page, basic rhythmic units such as quarter and half notes; and being able to play with both legato and detached articulation.  If a student lacks certain skill sets, or has the inability to recognize a previously learned skill set and how to apply it to a new piece of music being learned, then they will begin to feel frustrated and that they are constantly “stuck at the same level”.  Now, often students are making progress but still feel this way, and this can be for a number of reasons, one of which I’m personally guilty of – which is to introduce a new piece with a new skill set as soon as a previous one has been learned.  Why, as teachers, do we do this?  Well, I think it is in part because we are happy to see our students advance to more and more difficult pieces of music, but I think there are a few subconscious factors coming into play.  We know that adults are (mostly) impatient learners and that if they get too frustrated or bored, they might quit.  [Just for the record – this is of course true for children too, but since children are enrolled in lessons by their parents, not only do they rarely get to decide when to quit, but they frequently have more support at home whereas adults usually don’t.]  

“OK Claire, you’re getting off topic” (I hear you saying), and maybe I am a little bit, but it’ll all tie in together, I promise!   

So there are a couple valuable lessons to be learned here for both the student and teacher.  For teachers:  know what your students’ skill sets are, and try as often as possible to stay with one skill set at a time until they are mastering it.  If you flip flop back and forth between skill sets all the time it will take longer for the student to master and integrate them.  Furthermore, don’t let your students dominate the lessons, especially with regard to repertoire.  You are their teacher for a reason and they understand this.  Don’t allow them to be constantly playing music higher than their actual skill level.  Students will feel better about themselves if they can master a piece in a few lessons (as opposed to a few months.)  Of course, having an occasional “challenge piece” can be beneficial for many adults as it gives them something they feel they can work toward.  For students:  please try to be patient! Both with yourselves, and with your teachers.  If they are choosing music for you that you don’t particularly like, it is usually only to teach you a particular musical element.  That said, if they are constantly picking music for you that you don’t like, speak up!  Teachers are not mind readers and they don’t know what kind of music you like unless you tell them.  [Another side note here: if you know you are picky about music, try to be as specific as possible with your teachers from the very beginning.  Saying that you like “popular” or “classical” music is extremely vague, since most people have a clear preference when given the choice between playing Leonard Cohen or Miley Cyrus; Bach or Bartók.]

So, what are “normal” self-expectations for adult beginners?  First, expect that you will likely learn one or two skill sets in a single piece of music, and depending on the individual and the skill set being learned, you may require one or two more pieces to really solidify that skill set.  As you progress to more difficult tasks, skill building will move at an even slower pace.  I know that that might be a little annoying to some beginners, but it is extremely important to think in these terms rather than comparing progress with time passed.  Why?  Because everyone is different, and more importantly, everyone knows that a student’s rate of progress is directly correlated to the amount of practice they put in (this shouldn’t be news to anyone.)  Second, try to realize that some skills in music take years to master, and that you are not “slow” or “stupid” for not being able to master them in your first year or two of playing.  Take, for example, the concept of sight-reading.    The reason it takes years upon years to master sight-reading is because it is actually the accumulation of many, many, many skill sets and being able to execute them simultaneously.  You have to be able to read the different rhythms in each hand and how they interact, read the notes accurately, know your key signatures well enough that you remember to play the correct sharps and flats, quickly discern between many different possible intervals, be able to “look ahead” in the score to anticipate hand movement, understand various expression markings, dynamics, articulation, tempi… I could go on.  So part of having realistic expectations as a beginner student entails assessing what your current skill sets are, and recognizing the new ones being learned in your new pieces.  If something feels “hard”, chances are that you’re learning a new skill set – or multiple skill sets.  If the latter is the case, try to break it down.  If you can’t, that’s where your teacher should be able to help out.  And remember: learning is a lifelong journey, and it’s the journey, not the destination, that counts the most.