What I learned during practice today :

[airanimechiic]

The arguments for slow practice and use of the metronome are compelling...

That's the one thing my teacher will never let me forget. Slow practice. Sections. The holy metronome! 

[alysosha]

Today I learned I'm still really bad at sightreading.

[m19834]

Hands and arms do not only want to have sympathetic motion with each other, but even physically deeper than that, they aim to have sympathetic muscle contraction or relaxation (as well as sympathetic motion).  As playing involves some form of tension and release, when one hand/arm is requiring a moment of muscular tension while the other is requiring relaxation (or if one hand/arm is acquiring tension because of a certain shape or whatever), the one that requires more relaxation may sympathetically pick up the other hand/arm's tension or vice versa.

[m19834]

As pianists, our hands are only as big as our ears.  As our ears grow, so do our hands.

[furtwaengler]

As pianists, our hands are only as big as our ears.  As our ears grow, so do our hands.

  I love it. Thank you!

When I get home I'm going to read through this thread.

[m19834]

I love it. Thank you!

I'm glad, you're welcome .


Today I am learning somewhat concretely that, as one's entire concept of life is altered and changing, everything sounds different, too ... even silence.  Somehow the stretch between silence and sound grows still farther and bigger and more vast, and each "side" of the stretch becomes more grand.

[m19834]

Yesterday I realized this --though today I just remembered and called on it again in a different piece-- that sometimes coordination between hands isn't working quite right simply because my angle of visual perception isn't quite right.  Sometimes the problem comes from one of my hands being out of my peripheral vision, and that's it !

[m19834]

Ultimately, playing the piano is a concept.

[m19834]

This is something I have experienced in my life before, but am being reminded of today :

Sometimes what outwardly appears to be learning something new is inwardly experienced as remembering something old. 

*meow*

[m19834]

Brilliance is only as great as its practicality.

[m19834]

Play as though your fingers, hands, and arms are an extension of your mind and body  .

[csharp_minor]

Try to make the phrases make sense. If they don’t and the music sounds boring and drags then you are playing it wrong, don't blame it on the composer.  

Gosh I was put off a piece because I was playing it so badly without listening to the phrases and making sense of them. Then my teacher plays it for me and it all makes sense!

...I have much to learn  

[dss62467]

This is why I'm a huge fan of iTunes.   I can almost always find a recording of what I'm learning. 

This piece I'm learning now will be the exception.... my teacher wrote it and I'm the first of his students to play it.  I may be stopping over for a demo a few times over the summer break.  Somehow I think he'll be thrilled with that, he loves to show off.

[csharp_minor]

This is why I'm a huge fan of iTunes.   I can almost always find a recording of what I'm learning.  

This piece I'm learning now will be the exception.... my teacher wrote it and I'm the first of his students to play it.

Well my sight reading is rubbish so I usually try to find some recordings to get a sense of the piece and hear other people’s interpretation of it, so You Tube is really useful for me.

I’m in a similar position to you the pieces I’m learning now were composed by my piano teacher’s friend  so there are no recordings for me either. I have only heard them played twice so far, once in her concert and last lesson.

[dss62467]

I've noticed recently that as I become more and more familiar with a composer, I'm able to sight read his pieces.  It strikes me funny how I'll find phrases that are common in pieces from the same composer.  Kind of like how you can always tell when a song is Metallica when you hear just a few bars...  I'm starting to know Mozart like that.

What strikes me even funnier is that I like Mozart and Metallica just about the same amount.

[faa2010]

I learnt that I can almost perfectly the piece with separate hands, but when I put them together I can't unless I listened the piece before.

And I have a poor sight reading, when I read the piece, I only memorize the notes, fingering and the time of the notes. The tempo, the intensity and the speed I get them from listening the piece.

[littletune]

Hmm well... I can play some pieces really well already with both hands together and then my teacher tells me to play it with each hand separately and I just can't... I just get lost and I don't know anymore what notes I'm supposed to play and with which fingers  I think that's really funny    So now my teacher told me to learn the pieces really well with each hand separately (and without sheet music) -that's a lot more boring  But it's not as hard as I thought at first. 

[pianisten1989]

But it will be a lot more fun, once you know a piece really really well. And think about every note you're playing.

I, myself, haven't learned anything today, basically. Those Symphonic etudes made me really depressed, for real, and I'm just so sick of them!

[m19834]

World class playing doesn't come from practice, practice, practice.  World class playing comes from knowing what it takes to be playing in a world class way.

[m19834]

Ultimately, the answer to many --if not all-- questions takes form in an ability.

[brogers70]

Working on Chopin Etude 10/1 - just before the halfway mark there are A major arpeggios, A-E-A-C# (fingered 1-2-4-5), both ascending and descending. I was trying to figure out whether it was best to play the A-E-A between the black keys or farther forward. Playing them farther forward is easier in some ways, but it requires a lot of abduction-adduction at the wrist, but, especially on the descent; plunking the 4th finger down between G# and A# accurately is tough because my hands are big and tend to get caught up on the black keys. Following Bernhard's suggestion for sorting this sort of problem out, I tried both approaches for 5-10 minutes and found that if I used the 5th finger on C# (on the descent) as a springboard from which to push off laterally I could land the fourth finger between the black keys pretty accurately and that it got easier quickly, whereas the adduction-abduction bit required to let me use the proximal ends of the white keys for the A-E-A didn't get any easier with practice. So between the black keys it is.

[brogers70]

The farther back from the front edge of a key you touch (ie the farther from your body), the more force it takes to make a sound, because you are applying force closer to the axis of rotation. You produce less torque the closer you are to the axis. So, for playing fast arpeggios which require you to hit white keys between the black keys (as in the A major A-E-A-C# in Chopin 10/1, it works better to play deep, because any force you apply to the flanking black keys by mistake (friction or a glancing blow on the way to the A) won't actually sound the wrong note. Of course it's better to be absolutely precise, but with thick fingers in a small space it helps to play deep.

[fenz]

I am not going to always know everything there is to know about a musical work and composer.  I am not going to always have done *every* little thing I could to prepare for a performance (at least, in hindsight it seems I always think of something I can do better next time -- at this point in my life).  I am not always going to make the right decisions, and as a matter of fact, sometimes I will just make the wrong ones.  I will not always have courage.  I will not always be able to defend myself.  I will not always know what to say and what to do.  There are a lot of things that I will have to settle for developing over time and with maturity.  Sometimes I will be embarrassed and feel like a fool.  Sometimes people may laugh at me.  Some people will tell me that I have no business doing what I think I want to do, and they will try to tell me all the reasons why. 

Me too...

But, none of this means that I cannot trust myself and that I have no place in the world of music and piano.  I am okay with learning as I grow; I will find a way to cope with falling short. 

Whatever is in me that needs to come out, and at least I know it's there, I will just work to give it a path -- maybe that's good enough for now.

Like this 

[m19834]

  -- fenz, I hadn't read that for a long time.  That M. girl sometimes knew me quite well, it seems


Okay, today's starts with something I have known for awhile, in that "unnatural" hand positions don't *have* to equal tension and discomfort.  But, along those lines, I realized just a moment ago that occasionally a passage or a part of a passage will require a hand position that may not seem or feel entirely natural, and if there is a mental block against allowing this to happen, one will fumble there just because one can't accept the sensation that comes with that territory.  However, if the sensation is just accepted as OK and as part of the passage, the fumbling can stop.

[pianowolfi]

-- fenz, I hadn't read that for a long time.  That m1469 girl sometimes knew me quite well, it seems


Okay, today's starts with something I have known for awhile, in that "unnatural" hand positions don't *have* to equal tension and discomfort.  But, along those lines, I realized just a moment ago that occasionally a passage or a part of a passage will require a hand position that may not seem or feel entirely natural, and if there is a mental block against allowing this to happen, one will fumble there just because one can't accept the sensation that comes with that territory.  However, if the sensation is just accepted as OK and as part of the passage, the fumbling can stop.

To me one major example of this is Chopin's op. 10 No. 2. A piece which requires very careful and very relaxed practicing! Every pianist who has experience with it tells you: do little steps, practise slowly, stop before it hurts! Because first it's so unnatural!  But then the playing mechanism and your movements start to adapt to it, step by step.

[m19834]

The experience or appearence of "naturalness" at the instrument is simply the result of a well-developed system -- either consciously or sub-consciously -- which can be trusted completely.

[m19834]

The purpose for securing in memory --for truly learning, that is-- a piece of music utilizing various forms of memory-type is not simply (or even really directly) so that, in the case of an emergency, if one fails, there is another/are more to back it up.  This has been my belief, more or less, for several years now.

The real purpose behind securing a piece, learning a piece, utilizing various memory-types is because all of these memory-types are actually NECESSARY for the carrying out of a piece of music, especially advanced.  We are often actually utilizing these various memory-types simultaneously between hands/fingers etc.  And, when we can't use a specific type of memory for one hand (because we are looking at the other, for example), that doesn't mean we are utilizing only one memory-type for the hand we aren't looking at, either.  We are often using at least 3 (it seems) for one hand alone, even when we aren't looking at it.

Here, the distinction between knowing (or not knowing) the text, vs. having the right programming to carry it out becomes more clear, too.  And, the specific area which needs to be worked on should a problem arise becomes more clear, as well.

It is interesting to observe and note which memory-types are being utilized and at what points, and also to know why.  Is it simply because you are lacking in one and therefore MUST have another present in order to shimmy through a passage ?

I think, to have all as sharp as can be is the experience of music itself.

[m1469]

Yes, listen!  But, listen with expectation!  A huge and lifelong study.  The far ends of the piano ring differently because of the build.  I didn't know that until sometime in the last few months.  The study of orchestration and listening to how composers treat the combination of instruments in their symphonies, ages of listening education for voicing on the piano.  Listening for particular precision, a huge motion in technical ability.  Know what harmonies to expect and which notes make up those harmonies, before you play them; knowing a piece and theory and the instrument quite well.  Listening for style; music history.  And, somehow our spiritual garden meets up with all of these, too.   Listening with expectation.  Even in scales, in everything.  To stop playing to win approval from those individuals who you respect, but to speak directly to those individuals in their very own language (even if they are hundreds of miles (or other lifetimes) away, and even if they don't know you yet).

[i_learn]

Hello m1469,
I am 16 and think alot on the same lines as you do, and often have oscillating moods past minutes and have a great book that would help you find the way in your thoughts, read any book by Jiddu Krishnamurti, really, its mind mutational!!!

[m1469]

I learned this from nature today, on a piano-related venture:

Even rainbows depend upon your point of view.  

[mnmleung]

It's been a week since I played my first Chopin Mazurka (op 24 no 4) at our local piano club's monthly meeting.  I listened to the recording.  It wasn't the obvious mistakes (culminating in a short pause in which I audibly muttered, "sorry Chopin") that caught my attention, but the lack of dynamic contrast / variation which bothers me.  I thought I was observing dynamic markings but I cannot hear any evidence of it ...

So this morning after reading a post here about Ravel's Toccata from Tombeau, I dug it out and picked a short section, and tried to think about the dynamics before starting to play the section.

I have just realised that most of the time, I memorise the notes, probably some of the phrasing, and possibly the harmonic activities, but not dynamics.  I suppose it is better to realise it today rather than tomorrow ...

[m1469]

Funny, without realizing there had been a post here since my own last post, I came here to post about dynamics as I thought more clearly about it yesterday during practice.

Okay.  Awhile ago I had this kind of thought about registers in sound and on the piano (and with voice) and started extending a particular activity of mine at the instrument over the entire keyboard, from the very bottom A to the very top C.  As I did this, I started consciously recalling, while playing in one register, what the other registers sound like and how this register that I am playing in sounds by comparison.  So, I have started giving my playing in one register a mental context.

Yesterday, I was thinking about gradation in dynamics (which has to do with register, also), but realized that aside from, or perhaps along with, dynamics being dependent on context and personal ability and so on, it also has do with active sound memory.  Right now, I'm working with specific plans as it comes to dynamic gradation between four levels of dynamics, and I relaize that if I keep in my mind's ear the entire context of dynamic sound at all times, then I can better achieve whatever the specific dynamic is that I'm aiming for at the time.  So, I'm not going to just aim for a mp at a point, but rather a certain level within a mental tapestry.  hmmm.  As a side note, I have read about musical form being strange for the listener in that it depends on sound memory, but along the lines of dymanics, also, I realized that the audience's ability to percieve dynamic expression is also dependent upon this tapestry that I would be pulling my performance decisions from.

BYE BYE!

[m1469]

It seems:

Art, as craftsmanship, is essentially a mysterious mixture of delivering both the expected as well as the unexpected, all at once.

[m1469]

This is something I've been gradually realizing over the past few months, but words came a bit more clearly today.  It is that even my adult idols, perhaps some of them internationally legendary, have to live with other great successes and potentials.  Even Horowitz still "has" to withstand everybody else and yet, to many, he is still a legend.

Lately I've been a bit obsessed with Lang Lang and Valentina Lisitsa, but awhile ago it dawned on me that they still have to compare with new potentials and mature legends, as well, despite the fact that they are what they are.  And, they are still what they are despite the fact that these others eixst!  I also started to see that we are all in fact individuals with something unique to offer.

[mnmleung]

actually, this happened yesterday ...

I borrowed Schnabel's edition of the Beethoven sonatas from the library and played through the first movement of the op 26 A flat sonata (as opposed to using my Dover score from which I learnt some 25 years ago).  I expected to have my eyes opened by the editorial goodies: but the difference to my hands and my ears were even more surprising.  And most of the "changes" make much better sense!

[brogers70]

I started doing scales HT 4 octaves - then I got sick of that for a few years and just did scale bits out of pieces. Then I started working on scales HS and wow, not only had the RH been held back by the LH when I was doing HT, but even the LH hadn't been getting developed properly. It was a huge help. Then I noticed that I always did them as 4 octaves. Yesterday I started working just on the parallel sets and hand shifts within scales and just doing 1 or 2 octaves up or down. I can see that the speed will improve a lot.

All of this is probably obvious, and if I had had a teacher for most of the years I've been learning I'd have figured this out sooner. Better late than never.

[m1469]

A pianist's "blank canvas" is not actually silence; it is the principles of playing, of sound, and of music.

[m1469]

This isn't truly just from today, but the words are clear to me today:

In order to attain your goal, you must first reach a point of seeing beyond it. 

I think that's actually true, but I don't know if it's true all of the time.

[m1469]

hmmm ... I'm sorry, but this might be my favorite thread ... hee hee.  I do wonder though why I'm the only one posting in it?  Okay, not actually the ONLY one, but you get my drift.  Maybe I'm the only one here with so much to learn still .

I just got up from piano, my piano, my beautiful piano, and something came to me when I was playing.  It is this:  Play the piano with your body, not your head.

Now, I know what that sounds like and I do realize that a person needs to think through things and not just be a piano monkey without music.  But, I guess in terms of feeling the music in your whole body, and this is something that I love, at some point your body maybe just becomes more or less synonymous with the music.  That's at least what I really want.  So, when that sentence came to me, it really meant something specific to me, and had an actual bodily sensation/meaning, and it seems like an insight that I want to get to know more.  

On that note, an interesting other aspect of playing that has recently in the past couple of days become a companion to me, is the actual conscious attitude of playing not actually with my hands, arms, fingers (okay, those guys, too, of course -- wait, actually, I thought about it, they're not guys they're girls) but with my hips, of all things!  Yeah, from my hips.  And, do you want to know what?  When I used to be a "soft"ball pitcher, that's where the pitch would come from, too.  So, it's somehow related to me right now.

I'm trying to remember to myself that sometimes there are ideas and these ideas have to be explored and either thrown out, adjusted, or mastered.  And, maybe everyday won't be filled with new ideas, but will be a day that is rather about mastering something recent or throwing it out or adjusting it.  

BYE  

[roger_1948]

today at practice I learned that the body seems to have a mind of its own when it comes to hand position while your playing.  For 3 and 1/2 year i have tried so hard to follow what my teacher has taught me about rounded fingers and all the rest.  My body has been fighting me the whole way. Truth is when my hand takes a traditional position my playing is mediocre at best. When I relax and let my hands go, my playing actually improves to fair and even has moments of some very  nice sounding piano music. 

For me natural is fingers straight out and only curving when i have to. Also my pinky can curve exactly the way Horowitz curved his.  Makes me laugh to think that if we went back several thousand years we might both come from the same genetic pool.  Of course he has more talent in that pinky than I do in my whole body. 

Anyway I have decided to stop fighting my body . im playing the piano for its enjoyment and if this stops me from becoming a concert pianist by the time im 90 oh well , at least ill enjoy myself along the way. 

Semper Fi, Roger

[m1469]

hmmm ... well, one thing I doubt is that anybody became truly great at what they do by ignoring themselves and their instincts completely.  Along the lines of that topic is one of my current, foremost curiosities.  Instincts seem to me to be something that is perhaps already inside of each of us, and in many ways they are probably unique to us individually in the specificity of them.  And, I wonder if they are changeable?  I mean, can you really train an instinct to be something that it's not?  So, are instincts and learned intellect something different than one another?  Maybe those guys already actually know everything in the world and they are teaching us?  Like I said, it's a curiosity at the time.  I mean, no matter what, I think, we want to continue gaining experience.  AND, I think it's fair to say that not all instincts should be listened to without intellect stepping in.

My soul can not possibly wait until I am 90 to be a concert pianist.  Lately though, I think something like "I don't have career goals, I have artistic goals" ... but, I wonder if secretly that is just masked doubt or so.  I mean, maybe it's only a half truth ... but then again, maybe it's a whole truth.  What I really want though, secretly, is for my artistic achievements (whatever those may ever be!) to carve me out a career ... or, legacy  .  If I am to be very honest.  Okay, but then again, if I am to truly be honest, what I really want is to communicate something of importance to a person.  Does that really depend on a career?  Something's messed up in there for me.  What I can tell anybody right now though, is that I certainly don't have an intellectual answer to the world's riddles, at least not one that resonates through my being.  You know?

So, listen to my body, yes.  Ignore everything else?  I don't think so, either.  I want it all .  That is why my deep hope is to gain a very large pool of culture and so finally I am reading through a Mozart sonata everyday, and listening, and observing, and feeling, and thinking, and reading books and digging into things.  I wish, I truly wish, I could just swallow everything down at once!  You see, my eyes are bigger than my whole self, it seems.  Or, at least they are bigger than my ... well, perhaps bigger than my intellectual ability.  I don't have the intellectual ability to know every step to take in order to be what I see, or hear, or somewhere in me know.  So, I get to thinking, no, I get to feeling, it's probably not an intellectual riddle, girl.  It's probably something else.  Oh, I see, I say .  Well, I feel love though, okay?

So, I tell you a thing that comes to me in the past few days also:  "I just saw what I wanted to be, and so I be-ed it"

[becky8898]

Today for the very first time i think i really got it about breathing properly as I play and calming myself down as the music ends.  During my Lesson we looked at pieces of music that came crashing down right up to the end, and others that came down slowly. How they where different and how you need to adjust your body to the different styles of endings. 

An example might be the last movment of the moonlight Sonata as one that takes you in an emotional hurrican all to the finish. 

The other example would be say  Chopins etude op 10 #3. How it peaks and then at the end so beautifuly brings you to the end , so softly and gently.

Anyway thats what I learned today.

Cheers, Becky

[m1469]

It's not that I want to get my body to do everything for me, it's that I want to reach a point of utmost trust that it will do what my imagination desires.  In rock climbing (the very little that I ever did), one of the first things you have to do is trust your equipment, and that's exactly what I want in piano playing; I want to completely trust my equipment.

[pianowolfi]

It's not that I want to get my body to do everything for me, it's that I want to reach a point of utmost trust that it will do what my imagination desires.  In rock climbing (the very little that I ever did), one of the first things you have to do is trust your equipment, and that's exactly what I want in piano playing; I want to completely trust my equipment.

I think your body is much closer to your heart, and to your ideas, than any equipment.

[m1469]

I think your body is much closer to your heart, and to your ideas, than any equipment.

Well, yes, thank you .  I guess I want them to be synonymous with the music, but I know that you probably get what I mean.  And, I get what you mean .  Thanks for the guest appearance ... hee hee.

[m1469]

One day I was sitting there, staring at my piano score, looking at all the dots on the page and I started connecting all those dots together in my mind, with an imaginary line.  hmmm, I thought to myself, that's interesting, they form a line.  And then one day I looked again at those dots and thought, "hey, they look sorta like what my fingertips touching the piano key feels like" ... hmmmm.  And, then at the piano, I started mentally connecting those dot-sensations in my fingertips and thought, "hey, that is a kind of path, or line!" and so I looked at the piano score and I felt in my hand/fingers the same line between them both.  neato!  

And then, one day, I realized that my two hands had two separate lines, AND, that sometimes in order to achieve one line smoothly, I needed to also use more space above the keys and suddenly my motions took on a new dimension which included the space above the keys.  And, one hand needed more of that than the other and soon I had a mathematical problem to solve.  If one hand has a certain line and takes a certain space, and the other takes a certain path and a certain space, and they both start at the same time and they both reach a certain point at the same time, but one needs more space and has a longer path than the other, at what speed does each need to travel in order to coordinate them in the appropriate places at the appropriate times?

And, even though there is another dimension to music than this, the motion of the act of playing music on the piano started to become an equation, and one in which there are parenthesies around certain problems because I need to solve those first.  Sometimes I still have to prioritize how I solve the equation and many times, if something's not quite working, it's because I'm confused in my prioritization somewhere or I don't even know what the equation is, and I need to get the equation straight.  I have to consciously program my machine in a very clear and defined way, and then at some point, those mathematical problems are being solved in the background of my thinking, not in the foreground.

Thanks, bye.

[m1469]

And then, one day, I thought, hmmm ... how do I really know how fast I'm going or how far I'm traveling with my arms themselves, how do I really feel that in a way I can count on, unless I have a stable point of reference?  And, then, I thought ... hmmm ... my body is maybe a good point of reference.  That started helping me to be more accurate and to start gauging my motions better, and the lines and angles that my hands needed and did make starting having a new kind of dimension, too, and my arms weren't just out there, swimming in outer space.

[m1469]

And sometimes my body, my torso needed to move because I realized that if it always stayed in a single spot, the angles and lines occassionally became impossible, or at least full of tension and I couldn't count on it enough to want to walk onto stage.  And, if my torso moved, then it needed some kind of counter balance so I could remain stable, and so my legs and feet started to get in on the action, too, and started acting similarly to a cats tail.  And then I started to feel the right way about playing and I started to feel like a kind of athlete mathematician musician, and then my body started becoming capable of supporting my soul self.  And other stuff, too, of course, lots of other stuff.

[m1469]

And, scales, chords, arpeggios, aside from being a fundamental aspect of music, is a very good way to practice this relationship with the instrument/keyboard.

And, entire hand positions become like dots to connect, too.

[m1469]

In Bel Canto singing, there is this kind of diaganol inward stretching that you (can) do from, say, one hip to the shoulder on the opposite side of your body.  Maybe the hip kind of goes forwards on that side and shoulder back, as an example, and there is this stretch in your torso.  And, in Bel Canto singing, you want something always stretching, always moving.  And, so I did that in piano playing, too.  Always stretching something and, sometimes, it's impossible to stretch in one dimension so you have to use another.  So, if I were to play chords starting from the middle in both hands and going out on either side, I can't stretch equally to each side and so where do I go?  I go up, with my sternum which is actually used in singing and, well, there is also the pelvis which is actually used in singing, too, so I carried over these ideas, too.  

And anyway, maybe sometime, maybe sometime soon(?), my playing will just become these stretches here and there and a little thing here and a little thing there, and my body will just stretch a certain way and my body will play the piano.  Did you know that there is a kind of ancient serpent lady that people talk about in secret Bel Canto singing?  She does little spirals or so.  I think of the spine like that.  And, did you know that in Bel Canto singing, you actually think of singing with your whole body with the body as the instrument?  Somehow this in piano playing doesn't seem very different to me.  Maybe the piano is like the voice box or so.

So, *rubs genie lamp* ... please soon can my playing be just gestures and stretches and imagination?  Sometimes skiers talk about just thinking a thing and it's as though the skiis just go there.

*runs back to piano*