Different practicing methods

[danny elfboy]

The methods I know are:

Fink

Sandor

Lister-Sink

Chang

- I didn't include Taubman because the method is only available through very expensive VHSs -
 

Can you please tell me the pros and cons of all methods listed above?
Also can you tell me what all these methods have in common and what instead they disagree about one with the other?

[ramseytheii]

After having suffered from a bad form of tendonitis and having focused on tensionless playing and good use of the natural anatomy of playing I want now to apply all of this to my practice making it easier an quicker to learn pieces

I'm looking for a method which is rational/intuitive (and after listening to students practing long pieces hands together from the beginning and making the same mistake in the very same place over and over for 100 times without realizing they need to practice just that bar I can't consider the common way to practice rational/intuitive) but which is not dogmatic. I mean a method that realizes there are several ways of applying the same sound principle but that doesn't try to claim the one it promotes is the only way

What I have applied so far to make my practicing more rational is bar-by-bar practicing, hands separate with the bass pattern memorized and practiced first
But I want to perfecting my practicing method and follow something more comprehensive

The methods I know are:

Fink

Sandor

Lister-Sink

Chang

- I didn't include Taubman because the method is only available through very expensive VHSs -
 

Can you please tell me the pros and cons of all methods listed above and what (according to what I'm looking for) you suggest to adopt?
Also can you tell me what all these methods have in common and what instead they disagree about one with the other?


Thanks

I doubt that anyone here is as familiar with all four of these as you hope, except Bernhard, who isn't here anymore.  I think your best bet for the second part of your post, is to read read read!  And then tell us what you think of them.  Your desire to achieve rationality in piano playing will conquer all the constraints that seem to be involved, like the number of pages and the time required to do this study.

At the risk of sounding esoteric and jumping the gun, I don't think your current method which you described above is as rational as you want it to be, and this is why: music rarely goes bar-by-bar, and when it does, ieach bar is  a phrase.  It makes more sense to practice not bar-by-bar, but phrase-by-phrase, and also to practice connecting the phrases.

Hands separate is always good, even for passages that seem simple, as long as you make the effort to make each hand play artistically and with the utmost coordination, which you probably already know.  Bernhard used to suggest when practicing hands separate, to practice also faster than you will be playing the piece, as you lose a certain portion of your speed when you combine hands.

If you always make it your priority to memorize "bass patterns" before other things, it may hold you back.  Sometimes the bass doesn't follow a pattern, but an independent line.  Or a line that works in conjunction with another.  And since you mentioned practicing and memorizing it "first," I would suggest that first you decide what is the most important part of any passage, the so-called red thread, and practice and memorize that.  Or first decide what are the hardest passages of the piece.

This is rather like trying to find the exact conditions which constitue a masterpiece.  It usually comes down to, "I know it when I hear it."  For me, I think any time we want to judge something as a masterpiece, the criteria come from within, not without.  The way the piece functions tells us how great or lacking it is.  I feel it is similar with piano technique.  The way a piece functions pianistically, will guide us on how to practice.  In this sense a method exists only in terms of scientific method, to investigate, decide the criteria, and execute them.  A method in the sense of do this first, then this second, may not be possible beyond a certain point.

I hope this is not too vague.

Walter Ramsey

[danny elfboy]

I doubt that anyone here is as familiar with all four of these as you hope, except Bernhard, who isn't here anymore.  I think your best bet for the second part of your post, is to read read read!  And then tell us what you think of them.  Your desire to achieve rationality in piano playing will conquer all the constraints that seem to be involved, like the number of pages and the time required to do this study.

At the risk of sounding esoteric and jumping the gun, I don't think your current method which you described above is as rational as you want it to be, and this is why: music rarely goes bar-by-bar, and when it does, ieach bar is  a phrase.  It makes more sense to practice not bar-by-bar, but phrase-by-phrase, and also to practice connecting the phrases.

Hands separate is always good, even for passages that seem simple, as long as you make the effort to make each hand play artistically and with the utmost coordination, which you probably already know.  Bernhard used to suggest when practicing hands separate, to practice also faster than you will be playing the piece, as you lose a certain portion of your speed when you combine hands.

If you always make it your priority to memorize "bass patterns" before other things, it may hold you back.  Sometimes the bass doesn't follow a pattern, but an independent line.  Or a line that works in conjunction with another.  And since you mentioned practicing and memorizing it "first," I would suggest that first you decide what is the most important part of any passage, the so-called red thread, and practice and memorize that.  Or first decide what are the hardest passages of the piece.

This is rather like trying to find the exact conditions which constitue a masterpiece.  It usually comes down to, "I know it when I hear it."  For me, I think any time we want to judge something as a masterpiece, the criteria come from within, not without.  The way the piece functions tells us how great or lacking it is.  I feel it is similar with piano technique.  The way a piece functions pianistically, will guide us on how to practice.  In this sense a method exists only in terms of scientific method, to investigate, decide the criteria, and execute them.  A method in the sense of do this first, then this second, may not be possible beyond a certain point.

I hope this is not too vague.

Walter Ramsey

Thanks for your detailed reply
I agree that hands separate is always more rational than hands together
The reason is simple

First I have to say that the highest level of intuition and rationality with regards to the piano and piano playing have come (for me) from understanding the piano in relation to the choir

As I wrote in a post some days ago working with a choir has helped me immensely with my piano playing and I now do blame all the teachers who give for granted the detailed explanation of what the piano is and what playing the piano represents
So we grow up and get stuck with silly naive ideas like "right hand part" + "left hand part" and things like this

The piano represents the grand staff
As such each it enbodies all the voice registers
So what we have when we have our hands upon the keyboard is the ability to play for the soprano, for the alto, for the tenor and for the bass

From this simply rooted awareness several concepts become stroardinarly clear
Two for example are:

1) In a choir each register studies its part well and independently from the other part
The ability of singing in the choir is maintaning the independency of melody, volume, dynamics even when the other registers are harmozining what we're singing changing it profoundly. What we have at the end when all the registers sing at tempo and together is not a whole-music practiced as a whole but the fusion of four TOTALLY independ melodies and harmoniously combine together.
Clearly even from just a musically perspective the piano playing needs not to be a "whole-melody" but the harmoniously combination of INDEPENDENT melodies

2) And with this I reply to your consideration about learning the bass pattern first.
When we deal with INDEPENDENT parts harmoniously fused together the most important aspect of this fusion is the bass. The bass is like the foundation of a building. Musically it leads everything, it defines the higher-part motion and the mood of the piece. The same melody can change drastically just by changing the bass
In more advanced choirs all the registers learn the four-part sheet not just their part in order to better understand the musical context. In this analysis they always start from the bass NEVER from the soprano melody.
The melody tells nothing a pianist about the nature of the piece, the structure of the piece, the whys it is written like that. A pianist that considers the bass first is a pianist that can improve, that deeply understand the musical context of the piece, that knows why it has been written like that and the way it is progressing. A pianist that considerts the melody first and add the bass later is often a robot-pianist; doesn't really understand the music just follow the instructions from the sheet, can't improve and when making a mistake is lost. Doesn't really understand why the piece is written like that, doesnt' consider the bass within the context but just a series a notes to reproduce at the piano. This "out-of-context" learning makes the process slower and harder

The result are pianists that can't put the piano in a musical-harmonical context and just think of it as an instrument you play with two hands, that have pieces with a staff for the right hand and a staff for the left hand and all they know is they have to learn the part and play them.

The results are also pianists that find exagerately hard to sight-read
It's a fact that the eyes can't really see both the cleves at the same time and there's a small up-down motion which often the reader itself is not aware of
This motion is always down-up with a north-east direction and NOT up-down with a south direction. This is a mechanical fact. The sheet should be read from right-to-left in order for the eye-motiong when sightreading to be up-down.

In my experience all people who have problems with sightreading subconsciously attempt to read up-down by focusing (as learned as second nature) on the melody because they have been taught superficially as if with the piano you play a melody and add the bass and not as if the piano was an ambodied choir where structurally the music is constructed by the fusion of the sequential parts and their motions starting from the bass and ending with the soprano

Since I've started working with the choir and subconsciously thinking of the bass as the foundation of the music ( and by this I mean that in the melting of each independent part the bass leads and determine the motions and progressions of the other parts) I learn my pieces at the piano much quicker, they make more sense to me, I can allow a dipendency of each line/parts that didn't know possible before and sightread much faster

Opinions?

I want also to take advantage of your reply to ask your opinion about speed
I know that the standard method is to start slow and increase the speed
I know this is not always rational because certain movements work with slow speed but don't work with fast speed
Hence what is rational is finding the right motions for high speed and process to start with slow speed and gradually increase it BUT respecting the correct motions for speed

This is often counfounded by other concepts like parallel sets (which have never worked for me, because althought I can play something fast as a chord and then add a small delay between notes to have a very fast speed ... the tone resulting from reaching speed in this way is not good but weak and sloppy) or alternate speed

I have to say that to me what is most ration is combining the concept of slow speed vs. slow motion and the concept of gradual speed increasing
Because in my experience when we think of playing at high speed when we're not ready we subconsciously think of "rushing" and we play furiously try to find the way to increase the speed. But speed is usually "ease of playing" ... speed comes to me not when I feel the need to "rush" movements that are not still ingrained but when I know the piece so well that the playing is absolutely tensionless. Speed rather than rush seems to me like "flow" and this flow can only come from accuracy and fast thinking of where to play next in the keyboard. That's why I think there's a logic between the gradual increasing of speed because it is naturally consistent with the practicing needed to "think ahead of where you're playing" and "accuracy and easy movements"

As a consequence I believe that both the parallel sets and the move the metronome up a notch are wrong concepts because they put the speed out of the musical context.
With these methods speed seems just something "external" to acquire using various mechanical trick. But I think speed is actually inherent to the piece and depends on knowing it perfectly and the accuracy and lack of tension in playing.

Speeds comes not from practicing a passage using tricks and neither from following the increasing speed of the metronome but from practicing and becoming deeply aquainted with the piece having an absolute control of the accuracy

This is also what I've learned from the choir
Speed in a tough passage of one of the register is not gained by focusing on the speed itself as something tangential to the piece but gained from learning and knowing the piece so well that you feel at ease moving without stops within its structure thinking always ahead of what you're singing.

So I think it's right that speed comes with repetition BUT not for the reason that is always given as to why

[ramseytheii]

Thanks for your detailed reply
I agree that hands separate is always more rational than hands together
The reason is simple

First I have to say that the highest level of intuition and rationality with regards to the piano and piano playing have come (for me) from understanding the piano in relation to the choir

As I wrote in a post some days ago working with a choir has helped me immensely with my piano playing and I now do blame all the teachers who give for granted the detailed explanation of what the piano is and what playing the piano represents
So we grow up and get stuck with silly naive ideas like "right hand part" + "left hand part" and things like this

The piano represents the grand staff
As such each it enbodies all the voice registers
So what we have when we have our hands upon the keyboard is the ability to play for the soprano, for the alto, for the tenor and for the bass

From this simply rooted awareness several concepts become stroardinarly clear
Two for example are:

1) In a choir each register studies its part well and independently from the other part
The ability of singing in the choir is maintaning the independency of melody, volume, dynamics even when the other registers are harmozining what we're singing changing it profoundly. What we have at the end when all the registers sing at tempo and together is not a whole-music practiced as a whole but the fusion of four TOTALLY independ melodies and harmoniously combine together.
Clearly even from just a musically perspective the piano playing needs not to be a "whole-melody" but the harmoniously combination of INDEPENDENT melodies

2) And with this I reply to your consideration about learning the bass pattern first.
When we deal with INDEPENDENT parts harmoniously fused together the most important aspect of this fusion is the bass. The bass is like the foundation of a building. Musically it leads everything, it defines the higher-part motion and the mood of the piece. The same melody can change drastically just by changing the bass
In more advanced choirs all the registers learn the four-part sheet not just their part in order to better understand the musical context. In this analysis they always start from the bass NEVER from the soprano melody.
The melody tells nothing a pianist about the nature of the piece, the structure of the piece, the whys it is written like that. A pianist that considers the bass first is a pianist that can improve, that deeply understand the musical context of the piece, that knows why it has been written like that and the way it is progressing. A pianist that considerts the melody first and add the bass later is often a robot-pianist; doesn't really understand the music just follow the instructions from the sheet, can't improve and when making a mistake is lost. Doesn't really understand why the piece is written like that, doesnt' consider the bass within the context but just a series a notes to reproduce at the piano. This "out-of-context" learning makes the process slower and harder

The result are pianists that can't put the piano in a musical-harmonical context and just think of it as an instrument you play with two hands, that have pieces with a staff for the right hand and a staff for the left hand and all they know is they have to learn the part and play them.

The results are also pianists that find exagerately hard to sight-read
It's a fact that the eyes can't really see both the cleves at the same time and there's a small up-down motion which often the reader itself is not aware of
This motion is always down-up with a north-east direction and NOT up-down with a south direction. This is a mechanical fact. The sheet should be read from right-to-left in order for the eye-motiong when sightreading to be up-down.

In my experience all people who have problems with sightreading subconsciously attempt to read up-down by focusing (as learned as second nature) on the melody because they have been taught superficially as if with the piano you play a melody and add the bass and not as if the piano was an ambodied choir where structurally the music is constructed by the fusion of the sequential parts and their motions starting from the bass and ending with the soprano

Since I've started working with the choir and subconsciously thinking of the bass as the foundation of the music ( and by this I mean that in the melting of each independent part the bass leads and determine the motions and progressions of the other parts) I learn my pieces at the piano much quicker, they make more sense to me, I can allow a dipendency of each line/parts that didn't know possible before and sightread much faster

Opinions?

A lot of that is so well put.  Sometimes I have struggled with pieces for a long time before thinking of them in choral terms, and then they click.  Rachmaninoff etude op.39 no.4 for instance, I struggled to achieve a variety in the sound quality.  Finally I heard all the movement of the inner vocies as altos and tenors, and I actually thought of the voices of people that I know, and it worked.

I still find your theory of learning the "bass line" somehwat inadequate.  Sometimes one has to ask what constitutes a bass line.  For instance, look at Chopin nocturne op. 55 no.2 in E-flat.  This piece would fit your method, if only it had a consistent bass line, that went always from the lowest note to the highest - but it doesn't.  It goes up and down at its own pace - so what is the bass line here?  There are underlying harmonies, which are ornamented by the left hand's arabesque like figuration, but a harmony is not just a bass line.

Or take an even more basic example, the first prelude from the well-tempered clavier.  If you just play the lowest notes on every odd-numbered beat, and call this the bass line, you will find it doesn't tell you much about the exquisite harmony on top.

What would be more effective, in my opinoin, would be learning the underlying harmonic progressions, and putting them into rhythmical shapes.  That way, the notes that you learn will all fit into the poetic structure of the piece, and won't be aimless.  In many cases, it seems one can't properly phrase a "bass line" without knowing the harmonies and phrases - so those must necessarily come first.

I want also to take advantage of your reply to ask your opinion about speed
I know that the standard method is to start slow and increase the speed
I know this is not always rational because certain movements work with slow speed but don't work with fast speed
Hence what is rational is finding the right motions for high speed and process to start with slow speed and gradually increase it BUT respecting the correct motions for speed

First of all, I disagree with the pricniple that you find in many places here on pianoForum that movements "work with slow speed but don't work with fast speed."  If you are playing something slow, or in Bernhardian, slow-motion, you still have to make your movement as economical and efficient as possible, and this frankly does translate into fast speeds.  If you play something slow, and sway and stir and flop around, of course it won't work.

It may though still be rational to play everything at a brisker tempo first - if it helps you to identify which passages are more difficult at a faster rate.

This is often counfounded by other concepts like parallel sets (which have never worked for me, because althought I can play something fast as a chord and then add a small delay between notes to have a very fast speed ... the tone resulting from reaching speed in this way is not good but weak and sloppy) or alternate speed

I have to say that to me what is most ration is combining the concept of slow speed vs. slow motion and the concept of gradual speed increasing
Because in my experience when we think of playing at high speed when we're not ready we subconsciously think of "rushing" and we play furiously try to find the way to increase the speed. But speed is usually "ease of playing" ... speed comes to me not when I feel the need to "rush" movements that are not still ingrained but when I know the piece so well that the playing is absolutely tensionless. Speed rather than rush seems to me like "flow" and this flow can only come from accuracy and fast thinking of where to play next in the keyboard. That's why I think there's a logic between the gradual increasing of speed because it is naturally consistent with the practicing needed to "think ahead of where you're playing" and "accuracy and easy movements"

As a consequence I believe that both the parallel sets and the move the metronome up a notch are wrong concepts because they put the speed out of the musical context.
With these methods speed seems just something "external" to acquire using various mechanical trick. But I think speed is actually inherent to the piece and depends on knowing it perfectly and the accuracy and lack of tension in playing.

Speeds comes not from practicing a passage using tricks and neither from following the increasing speed of the metronome but from practicing and becoming deeply aquainted with the piece having an absolute control of the accuracy

This is also what I've learned from the choir
Speed in a tough passage of one of the register is not gained by focusing on the speed itself as something tangential to the piece but gained from learning and knowing the piece so well that you feel at ease moving without stops within its structure thinking always ahead of what you're singing.

So I think it's right that speed comes with repetition BUT not for the reason that is always given as to why

That seems allr ight to me!

Walter Ramsey

[richard l.]

I've read Chang, Gyorgy, and Otto Ortmann myself, I find as Chang mentions that they hit and go for different kinds of goals. From my Classical Guitar playing experience it's really about finding some basic motions(technique) understanding your body in those (a huge task) and then modifying and moving from there. With differences in hand anatomy, previous experience and specific problems that need to be addressed qua situational context of the player,  the teacher's previous experience plays such an integral role in guiding or helping guide with some kind of insight. I think reading on different texts and insights is necessary but having the basic tools to focus on your technique yourself and realizing the motions your body can do and working with those is extremely helpful.

I think the other side of this is just extreme focus on one's motions and through the confines of a method and it's insights liberating yourself to finding your own motions by following all of the principles learned beforehand about "correct" or accurate motion.
For myself, it's about finding lots of knowledge and moving forward with that after organizing it. I know that doesn't help specifically with finding another text to draw from but it gives you an idea about how a certain player goes about it.

I'm sure you're well aware of theory as a tool for more musical play (compositional-wise), and I try to work on composing myself and that helps me see how a piece "should" or can be played(my first theory text focused on a choral approach to piano harmony!).

Best of Luck,
R.