Concentration Exercises?

[florentin]

Do you know of any exercises, at the piano or away from it, to help with concentration and focusing on the music better?

I find that after I know a piece well, I play it pretty good, but my concentration is not fully focused on it.

[xvimbi]

I don't think it has to do with your ability to focus, but rather with your willingness to do so. It could be that, once you have mastered a piece, you have also lost some amount of interest in it. Is that still the case when you perform a piece?

[zheer]

Play chess.

[stringoverstrung]

Do you know of any exercises, at the piano or away from it, to help with concentration and focusing on the music better?

I find that after I know a piece well, I play it pretty good, but my concentration is not fully focused on it.

Some parameters of good concentration are:

- relax mentally= not having anything else on your mind, no stress. This leads to a derived requirement: the preparation (among others: free your mind in the preparation),
- will power (make no mistake about it: it can be trained!)
- inner peace
- physical fitness/not being tired (Gary Kasparov worked out intensively 2 hrs a day)
- the devotion of your attention and the will to give your sole attention to one problem.
- what i call "the whole approach": it is your attitude towards the "concentration problem" / your life in general. Not easy to explain but it is like the difference between a young western boy playing Nintendo and watching TV in contrast to the lifestyle of a Tibetan Monk.

Speaking of which:
The nec plus ultra of concentration is without a doubt:
Meditation!

So what you can do to ameliorate your concentration:
- Run to a bookstore and buy a book about Buddhist meditation for beginners continuously saying to  yourself "i want to concentrate!"
just kidding  I'm only hinting that your lifestyle in general might need some change.

EXERCISES.

What you can begin with is:
- improve your physical fitness level (run 2 times a week). You will even see that running goes a lot better when concentrating on the movement of your legs.
- inform yourself about relaxation/breathing/being mentally at rest,
- learn your mind not to rush from one topic to another,
- train your will power: do something stupid (like flipping a coin) 100 times with concentration just  because you WANT TO.

EXERCISES AT THE PIANO:

- probably when you know the piece your concentration diminishes because this piece "is no challenge anymore" (as Xvimbi says in other words). That's were you have to change your attitude: it's not about the challenge to learn a piece but about making this music sound as good as it deserves to sound. Exercise to overcome this:
Play simple pieces you truly love. (play = NOT the same as hitting all the notes)

- Convince yourself that you will NEVER AGAIN play one single note without this note having all your devotion/attention/concentration.  After all:

"You must have a good reason to break silence." (Chinese proverb) 

[quantum]

Pick any object near you that is easily visible.  For example the end tip of a leaf on a plant.  Now stare at that specific point as long as you can, not letting anything distract you. 

The common response would be to stare at the point for a few seconds, but your eyes will get curious and tend to wonder.  You will start following along the edge of the leaf.  Maybe you will examine the the variations of colour on the leaf, follow it's veigns down to the stem, wonder up the branch, examine adjacent branches, notice the bookshelf behind it and start reading the titles on the spines of the books, wonder over to the clock on the wall and watch the second hand tick.  When the news announcer on the radio mentions the rising price of gas in your city you finally remember you were supposed to be staring at the point on the leaf you try to find the exact leaf you were looking at but get confused to actually where on the plant it was. 

The idea of the exercise is not to do the above, but to prevent your eyes at all costs from wondering off that point on the leaf - your chosen point of concentration.  Try doing it for 5 - 10 mins or so.   If you are concentrating at your fullest, you shouldn't even notice how long you were actually staring at that leaf because your concentration is toward the leaf and not time. 

[florentin]

I am not going for Buddhism, but I will try some of the ideas in here

 

[prometheus]

You don't need to be a buddhist to meditate. A lot of professional atheletes use some kind of meditation before their match. Any form of mental exersize can be considered meditation of some kind.

I would recommend chess, running and meditation to anyone. But I doubt it would have a direct effect on your playing.

[rc]

Meditation is just a great skill to have in all areas of life. Learn it anyways.

Another idea that comes to mind is realistic drawing... You really have to focus and clear your mind in order to draw all the lines, spaces and little details in drawing what you see. It's maddening. Also, you can learn to draw, which is fulfilling in itself. 

(my recent side-hobby)