Focus (How to?)

[egg]

I'm a novice piano player and I love to play, but I have trouble with discipline and focus (two factors which, it would appear, are key). I can learn relatively sophisticated pieces, but it always takes me copious amounts of time, my mind is always working in the wrong direction it seems. I feel that if I could focus better then I could work much more efficiently. I was wondering what sort of advice any of you might have for developing a personal method of routine, if there are any specific techniques that you use to achieve a focused mindset.

[fra ungdomsdagene]

I'm a novice piano player and I love to play, but I have trouble with discipline and focus (two factors which, it would appear, are key). I can learn relatively sophisticated pieces, but it always takes me copious amounts of time, my mind is always working in the wrong direction it seems. I feel that if I could focus better then I could work much more efficiently. I was wondering what sort of advice any of you might have for developing a personal method of routine, if there are any specific techniques that you use to achieve a focused mindset.

Focused mindset is the opposite of the learning in a vacuum that school teaches
To focus on what you do you must be able to see the link between what you do and what you would like to be able to do. If you sit at the piano thinking that your goal is to practice for the sake of it, repeat something over and over as the time passes then you could easily and quickly forget why in the world you're in front of a piano depressing notes on a keyboard with your fingers.
You need to think of the piece that you're playing and how you want it to sound, how it sounds in your mind and how it actually sounds as you play it.
Then when what you play doesn't sound like what you imagine you can tell to yourself "we've a problem" and now you know that your practice is the problem solving aspect of your playing, it's not an isolated homework but part of that continuum that is your relationship with music and the piano. So "bar 5 should sound like this" or "I want it to sound like this" and your focused practicing is a time for making that bar sound like you want it to sound.
Small goals is the best way to focus on something.
You need stimulus that are small enough that you can focus on them for a short amount of steady time. If you are working on too goals at the same time, then you will have to switch from goal to goal before you had the chance to really focus on one of them.
So you focus on X for a small amount of time and then switch to Y and as you focus on Y you've already forgoten X, then you switch to Z and as you focus on Z you have already forgotten Y. But if X is all you focus your attention on for that amount of time then you will have the time to master it and not forget about it as you switch to your next goal.

I had a teacher once that wanted me to master full pieces in a week. I liked this method because, I thought, I would advanced quickly this way. Next week I played the pieces for her and they were not good enough to her so she asked me to practice those pieces again. The next week they were still not ready to her and again I was asked to practice them. Bottom line: I spent months on the same pieces focusing all the time on something too big to grasp and learn at once.
When I changed teacher he would just ask me to master four or five bars of a piece. I was disappointed as I thought this method would halt my progresses. He used to say "since it's so small, I want it to be perfect for the next week". Next week I played those bars for him and he said they were perfect so we could move on. Bottom line: All the pieces were ready in just three weeks.
The goals were small enough to learn and focus consciously. So at least I knew the time devoted to them was never wasted. On the other hand when I used the same amount of time to focus on lot of goals at the same time the focus would switch from problem to problem, bar to bar, goal to goal too quickly for that time to provide any serious solution of analysis to any of them.

Another aspect of a focused mindset is theory.
If you consider theory not as theorical words in a book but as a practical mean to solve your problems in your playing then it would really help you to never go in auto-pilot mode.

Think of the sheet music as a combination of elements and information about music that you can isolate to better understand where the solution of your problems are.
As you focus on the sheet you can imagine all this elements in different colors.

Pitch: as expressed by the the five lines and the vertical position of the notes in relation to the clef that names the line it rests on. (1 G-clef, 2 F-clefs, 4 C-clefs)
Duration: as expressed by the graphic-stylistic quality of the notes
Rhythm: as espressed by the group of pulses showed by the bar-lines in relation to the time signature where the numerator expresses the amount of pulses per group and the denominator the value of each pulse
Rythmic movement: as expressed by the alternation of strong and weak pulses
Time: as expressed by the lenght of time between two pulses indicated at the beginning on the piece or along the piece at time changes (Allegro, Andante, Largo, Presto ...)
Dynamics: as expressed by dyamic marks through the piece

I know this sounds so obvious and I'm writing about things everyone know. But what helps to focus on the music you're playing or problems you're solving in your practicing is to think of the sheet music as an overlap of these musical elements. You must be able to see them isolated but never out of the context they create as all the musical elements fit into place.

One example of learning in a vacuum is when I was taught to read the bass clef as extemporaneous transport one line or space above the G clef
Good way to destroy a musical context. The best way to really learn the bass clef is to understand why it is used, why it is called F clef and what it rapresents, why the range of the piano at some point needs to change its clef and how the two clefs are connected with to C3 (C-clef below the first line) continuing each other

It's the reason why mnemonics don't work. You can't memorize something and apply it magically to a musical context when you don't learn it as a practical contextual aspect of the situation you're supposed to apply it to.

As for the technique I use: I try to decipher everything the sheet is trying to tell me before I even play one note on the piano, I don't want to feel like I'm parrotting something I've quickly skimmed as I experimented with hand positions and movements.
I photocopy the piece and highlight each element with a color: clefs and clefs switches with orange, dynamics with blue, musical patterns with green, time signature switches with red, main beats with purple. As I analyze the score I tap the rhythm, sight-sing the melody and analyze the key with the circle of fifths and practice the relative scale on the piano. When I'm ready to do some work at the piano I sightread just once (this is not enough to ingrain the wrong movements) and mark the spot I know I will have problems with and this is what I will practice first, no need to practice the whole piece. So as I have a good list of problems to solve I fix a goal of solving one of these problems in a small enough amount of time. So practicing begins and it looks like this: my goal for the next 15 minutes is to solve the problem in bar 4-5, this is the only goal for the following 15 minutes and the only thing I will focus on. What if 15 minutes aren't enough? Then I wasn't honest with myself and tried to solve a problem that was too big or a too large stimulus at once and the solution is to make it smaller.
I think there's room for repeatition as something at the piano needs to be repeated thousands of time to be ingrained. But first I want to solve all problems and to find all correct and stressless movements. As each note of the piece is perfectly fitted into the piece (movements, dynamics, duration, rhythm, pulse pattern, eveness) then I finally just practice by playing the piece.
You can see subgroups of small goals here too.
Each group of goals (mastering the movements, mastering the coordination, mastering the dynamics, mastering the relaxation, mastering the interpretation) have a subgroup of small problem-solving goals. So as problem-solving goals of mastering the movements and the notes are conquered I can move on to the problem-solving goals of mastering the whole piece (transition from main beat to main beat or different keyboard positions) and so on. The goal I master the day before is repeated the next day to be sure I ingrain its solution.

As for the supposedly needed discipline to work like this, all the motivation you need is too accomplish a lot everyday as you master your small goals being able to say at the end of the day that something concrete has been done unlike the frustration of waiting for your piece to be proof-performance as you feel like you've accomplished nothing day after day.

Bottom line: everything you do related to the piano must be in its musical context even music theory as a practical mean to decipher the overlapping elements constituting music and even practicing which is the problems-solving aspect of that global musical context.

Fra

[egg]

This is more than I expected (not to say I wanted less) and it's a new perspective that should prove very valuable to me. I think that my problem lies in the fact that almost everything I've learned (except for the very basics) has been self taught. Most of what I've learned has been from either books or my own intuition. Unfortunately, both books and my intuition can be flawed, the books provided me with the "mathematical" perspective of music and my intuition provided me with the "feeling" for what music is. I've never been able to find any middle ground between the two perspectives, viewing them (subconciously atleast) as two entirely different things. Your advice has helped me begin to formulate connections between the problem solving aspect of music and the intuitive. It's not that I'm not willing to spend alot of time on practice, but I know that I could be doing it alot more efficiently. I appreciate that you took the time to provide such indepth advice, I feel it should help alot, and I'll keep you informed as to my progress. Thanks again.