What are we really "perfecting" ?

[m1469]

I have been thinking about this quite  a bit in the last several months and after a discussion with a student of mine yesterday, I can't resist the urge to start a thread here about it.

Here are my thoughts :

Our main aim as far as the technical aspects in playing the piano is that of gaining control of our extremities.  This control is intimately tied to our ability to express musicality.  When we are playing a piece of music, we are not aiming to form and fashion thee perfect rendition forever and ever amen, til death do us part.  BUT, we are aiming to have the technical capacity to play exactly what we want in the moments of a given day, and in the moments of a given next day (or something like that).

Ideally, our person, and musician, is evolving and growing perceivably everyday or even in every moment.  So, our concept of each piece will be constantly evolving along with our own growth, even if only slightly.  Our standards are always changing/growing.

So, the aim technically would be to have a flexibility to fit our standards and concepts of every growing moment; which is basically complete control over our extremities to manage our highest concept of musicianship in every moment.

I think there is most likely some kind of Zen to this all, I am feeling lately.


Does this seem right ?  The implications of that cause me more questions, like, how do we get there ?  Or, maybe we never "get there".  I don't know.  Maybe this is similar to my "absolute freedom" thread from awhile back.

It seems to me, that even with set compositions, if one is in the state of musicianship I describe above, we are always improvising.


Should you wish to share your thoughts and ideas along these lines, they are greatly appreciated.




m1469 

[Torp]

What you're talking about here is the piano equivalent to Bruce Lee's philosophy of no technique.  In his view (much simplified through my own memory filter) if you dispensed with the idea of being beholden to any technique you would be free to create the right "technique" in the moment it became necessary.  Of course, his thought process also required you learn "all" technique in order to then dispense with it.

What I took away from much of that was not that one could get through life without technique, but that one shouldn't become pedagogical about technique and that the "right" technique will be right in the moment, not necessarily for all time.

Additionally, the key is not necessarily to learn a specific technique but rather to have the ability to let technique flow smoothly out of us as the moment requires it.

I don't know if any of that added any value to the discussion or not...

Jef

[m1469]

Yeah, that adds a lot of value to the discussion, in my opinion.  I think along those lines, what I thought after I posted the topic is that probably, at some point, we just play.  I often feel that way with singing, but I struggle more at the piano (well, I do get glimmers), in all honesty, and that's frustrating.  Maybe it is some syndrome of fighting the water llike someone who is learning to swim.  But, I think that what you mentioned has to do with that : No technique = just playing.  Maybe ?

Thanks for your response.


m1469 




I am going to get you Mr Piano, so watch your back <@>  <@>

[pianistimo]

great question and answer!  too bad, for me, this happens around midnight or one in the morning.  the only thing i can compare it to is that cartoon where the frog sings opera really well when noone is around and then when people come around he croaks.  i've gotten better over the years relaxing, but still my best playing is always for myself.  seriously, if i didn't worry about making mistakes - i would worry less about getting through the piece memory-wise and just focus on the sounds and the enjoyment of playing.  but the bigger the audience - the more time it seems that you need to get into the 'meditative' state.  maybe half of the first piece to just 'let go.'  also, if the piece is technically demanding - and allows few mistakes (ie chopin etudes) - i am feeling like that is not the kind of pressure i want to be under.  much prefer easier pieces.  it's strange because i want to be a virtuoso, but i don't want people to know it by what i play?.  mostly, i want people to say, that music is 'her' music - and that it has a good effect on people (relaxing to listen to, few or no mistakes, and is purposeful and musical).  and, maybe that they will glimpse the spiritual side of music (that shiver of the spine or tingly feeling) and feel whatever the composer was trying to get across.

[lostinidlewonder]

The actual improvement (physicaly and musically) of a piece we memorise never stops. So we could get philisophical and say we never actually completely finish a piece. However I think it is not the right way of thinking because we are actually improving an aspect of our playing as a whole as we maintain contact with our memorised repetoire.

So there are 2 things we constantly improve with our music. That is the PHYSICAL excecution and the MUSICAL expression/interpretation etc. These two things are constantly improving along side one another however they draw upon different main sources for improvement.

The PHYSICAL part improves best with repetition, experimentation, together with the aim of increasing the physical efficiency, improving a more comfortable natural feeling ("our fingers like honey" as Mozart said) or effortlessness of playing the given piece. Our physical action also improves as we absorb and become very familiar with general "procedure" at the keyboard (arpeggio, scales, chord progression, building blocks of music) and understand how to notice, apply or control changes of these standard procedure that we find in a new piece.

I noticed that when a student who for instance never played an arpeggio etude and then starts to learn one, is confronted with a huge amount of discomfort. The challenge to learn to balance playing arpeggios in the hand in this instance is a big brick wall and hinders their development. However after a while full of struggle and learning, once they somewhat master the basic idea of arpeggio, when faced with it later on down the track they have the facility to deal with it and thus it takes a lot less time in comparison to the first time they attempted it. This would be considered an improvement in the physical aspect of playing in my mind. The faster your rate of absorbtion of new music the better you are becoming. So spending 6 years to learn to play one Liszt Etude is not as "good" as someone learning 60 smaller pieces in the mean time. The exposure to "procedure" at the piano is just not covered in one piece, we have to see many examples from many different composers.

So this means that we must always search for these "procedures" at the piano and make it second nature to us. This is not to say if you cannot play rapid scale thirds in one hand that you should make that your aim, depending upon your musical taste, depending upon the your physical body, and depending on your commitment to your music, different things will be targeted. It is important to understand what procedure you face in pieces you currently learn, this is why a teacher is good to help draw attention to these details. Often we can target and know what procedure is difficult for us, but we have no idea how to deal with it. There is always a method to go about working on your difficulties. Unfortunately one cannot write a paragraph to explain how to practice away your difficulties because each person is different and different things will cause different changes to peoples undertsanding. Again, a good teacher wil help you because they form a relationship with you musically and then know how to guide and offere adviced based upon your needs.

I really feel like a doctor when teaching piano.  As I watch the same student play for a few months, eventually we learn to sense when they are playing relaxed and when they start to get uncomfrotable. Each person however tenses differently in different places in a score. Particular fingers are unbalanced, or sense of the center of their hand lost in different places. As a teacher you should notice when this happens and offer advice to try and make them play in their relaxed mode.

I always ask when I see phsyical transfer to the keyboard that looks uncomfrotable or strange, Are you really comfortable? Which finger(s) is the most difficult in this passage, where is the centre of gravity, which finger(s) balance the hand? These questions have deep answers which give reason as to why we do this or that to our hand in a given passage and also very various depending on the persons fingering and their physical hand.

Sometimes we have to SHOW what relaxed playing looks like and what tensed playing looks like. We have to be actors and OVERDO the students flawl. It is amusing because I always do it over the top and the students laugh. But it highlights where they are going wrong effectively.

This idea of being shown how it is done is an important observation but not as important as actually physically practicing it yourself. So watching videos of great masters will help you phsyically but not really that much. This is where our MUSICAL ability benefits most. From observation our MUSICAL undertstanding improves and becomes more refined.

I remember when I very first started to teach piano as a young teenager I tried to improve peoples musical understanding and decision making by telling them what to do. Louder here, softer here, faster here slow down there hoping that as I repeat it over and over again with many examples they will learn. But eventually I found it to be very ineffective to improve the students Musical understanding. They rely on the teacher to make the initial decision and if left alone are afraid to make the decision or make ineffective musical decisions (weak dynamics, flawled tempo control).

I found however students who have a particular interest to listen to music and who constantly ask me to give them new music to listen to have fabulous MUSICAL understanding. They have exposed themselves to listen to high quality playing and this only enhances their musical decision making. These students I ask to listen to piano music with the sheet music and follow it, section it up, even if it is a piece you dont wantt o learn yet, just break it apart and notice procedure at the piano and also musical intepretations that the recordings present. These students when faced with music know what sound has to be produced but are phsyically challenged to get there. However they have the clear understanding of where they want to get to which is a lot better than a students who only listens to what the teacher says and cannot make the decision themselves from what they have heard before.

[dmk]

The actual improvement (physicaly and musically) of a piece we memorise never stops. So we could get philisophical and say we never actually completely finish a piece. However I think it is not the right way of thinking because we are actually improving an aspect of our playing as a whole as we maintain contact with our memorised repetoire.

actually i kind of like this philosophy....it would stop idiots from saying they have "mastered something" you may "get" a piece of music, but saying you have mastered it is putting a pretty big ticket on yourself.....

"perfection" is unattainable perhaps because it does not exist at all in anything inherently subjective.

great topic m1469

dmk

[Torp]

....it would stop idiots from saying they have "mastered something" you may "get" a piece of music, but saying you have mastered it is putting a pretty big ticket on yourself.....

I think you're being overly pedantic about semantics here.  Nonetheless, the term mastered, as it is used ubiquitously in this forum, has nothing to do with the concept of perfection.  To me, it is a description that was invented in order to gauge progress to a certain level in any given piece.  If we choose to define "mastery" as a variable, then of course, it is unobtainable.  Rather than calling people "idiots" for using specific terminology, perhaps our time would be better spent developing a common language that we can all use to describe the various states of learning and accomplishment within music.  If the term "get" is somehow superior to the term "master" then let's use it.  I would submit, however, that both words will suffer from the same problem.  They are both attempting to describe a moving target.

"perfection" is unattainable perhaps because it does not exist at all in anything inherently subjective.

The concept of perfection is completely subjective.  If perfection exists at all, it will be in the subjective realm.

In the bigger picture, to me, art is not about perfection.  It is about expression.

Yes, as always, m1469 asks the deep questions.

jef

[pianistimo]

just re-read this thread and love the continuation.  especially lostinidle's points about notcing where the hand/fingers are unbalanced or uncoordinated and HOW to improve it.  also, the points about not telling the student loud/soft here and there, but to truly listen to other pianists cd's for the 'whole' picture.  sometimes students don't see the whole picture.  an integrated performance is when you are comfortable with the entire piece and there are no sections, imo, that you have to worry about getting through because of poor technique or poor understanding musically.  (or sometimes less than optimal fingering or not a good understanding mentally of what the composer was trying to say).

this is a good question - because you get a glimmer of what teaching is really about.  it's not necessarily perfecting in the way STUDENTS think of perfecting.  rather, it's more about a continual growth of understanding and adding what you learn each time you play. 

[Bob]

I think the two directions are...
performing a piece with a "set" unchanging interpretation, and
performing a piece with a flexible interpretation.

You would need lots of options for technique to be flexible with the interpretation.  Having enough control to vary any aspect of piano is an accomplishment.

I would think being able to change any aspect at will during the performance would be a good challenge -- being more in the moment that way.  But I think it depends on the piece.  Some pieces need a strict interpretation, some can be free.  Even if the interpretation is strict, having a lot of technical options would give you more to work with when deciding your final interpretation.

You also need to be flexible with any performance to adapt to the piano you play on.  You might have to change the way you normally play to get the same sound out of an unfamiliar piano.

[pianistimo]

yes!  there is one thing i don't understand yet, though.  why do very accomplished pianists choose those 'flim flam' pianos that you can breathe on and the notes go down?  how can you control pianos like that?  is there a new level i'm not on yet (am sure it's possible).  i personally still hate easy- to-play pianos.  but, maybe for some reason- they have better 'tone' because they're played easier and maybe the hammers go slightly faster (since they're broken in?).  but, why would a person want the hammers to go faster?  wouldn't you have more options if they were going slower?  i just don't understand.  can someone clue me in.

[pianowelsh]

A musicians work is NEVER done. There is always more to learn pianistically, musically artistically, as you say we keep growing in our perceptions and our development and the retention of technique is a constant battle (rather like keeping the garden in check). Hence you get 80 year old pianists being interviewed and saying 'i'm still learning, ive done 5 hrs practice already today'.  Prefection by its very nature is something always strived for - rarely completely achieved, ironically when it does come its often not at the moment when we are trying hardest. Perfection is also transitory (pianistically speaking) - you see this with child prodigy's who are flawless at 12 and flat at 18/20.