How do you define your own best effort ?

[m1469]

And, I mean this primarily in terms of practice and as you see your ongoing piano study (which may include performance and elements of performance, as well).

Please be as detailed as you can and would like to be. 


Thanks,
m1469

[opus10no2]

I'm not sure what this means..

But I've learned to chill and resign to the fact I will not ever have a monster repertoire, and actually I wouldnt need to have, as I have interests in other pursuits like composition and improvisation.

My best effort is a continuing and long term goal to, in restricted appropriate repertoire, unleash never-heard-before levels of speed and fury. 

[pianowolfi]

I have spent many years of feeling permanently guilty for "not to make my best efforts" Some piano teachers were leaving me in this permanent belief and this NOT in a motivating or challenging way. I have had MANY teachers. But I felt permanently alone with my existential questions about my way in music. So this is a question which leads me specifically to my own way of dealing with goals, requirements and pressure. And more and more I find out that I need to get IN CONTACT with my own goals and ideals. That is the current process I am in. I need to get in contact with MY higher goals and then find a balance between my own requirements on myself and my "output". So far for now. If I have more ideas I will post them later.

[rc]

Every once in a while I get up from the piano with a feeling of "well, I've practiced enough for today".  Contentment.  Or maybe I'm just burned out for the day.  Same difference

Other times I look back at the end of the day and see that I'd wasted a lot of time on distractions - fun little things that don't really add up to anything and have nothing to do with who I want to become.  I try not to be too guilty about it, but there are just some activities that truely are wasted time, who ever looks back and wishes they'd watched more TV, argued more on the net, or played mroe video games?

Not just piano though, there are days where it felt like 3 days because I'd done so much with the day...  that's what it is, seizing the carp.

[tds]

i guess when i no longer sweat at it

tds

[zheer]

   I always stop when piano playing becomes work, it has to be creative,fun rewarding,challenging but never work because i dont see at as work. My best effort has to come from the love of the music only,once i feel i have reached my current potential in performing a piece of music, that i define as my own best effort.

[pianistimo]

when i can be anywhere and be confident (and not panic in the back of my brain) that i could sit down and play whatever piece i'm thinking of without worries.

my hubby gave me a quote the other day:  'an amateur practices until they get it right.  a professional practices until they don't ever get it wrong.'

[penguinlover]

I love that quote!  It is motivation to play it just once more!

[pianistimo]

me too.  but, strangely - for me - it seems a matter of what day it is.  some days it seems that i can never get it right.  but, then oddly - i might wake up another morning and play as though i'd practiced three hours. 

[lostinidlewonder]

Does your "best effort" at practicing the piano mean your maximum output possible? If so this is simple to define the amount of time you need to be in front of the piano, it is when you cannot physically sit anymore because your backside is numb and your fingers are burning with fatigue, but that is not a balanced way to live life!

Still practicing for hours on end does not necessarily mean you get through a lot of work, there is usually a peak that we reach which if passed we simply learn at a slower rate with more time, or not even retain anything at all! I find this occurs in my students at different rates, some even after 5 minutes of focusing only on piano they are exhausted!

"What gets written, gets done" is something I keep telling students of mine, when you observe something in the sheet music that helps you memorise or control a passage write it down on the sheet music. Do not leave it in your head because things in our heads vanish without us even knowing it. Write it down and you will constantly be reminded of it, even if you take the sheet music out in 10 years time to relearn it.

In my mind the "best effort" at practicing the piano is maintaining a good bar per unit time rate and constantly aiming to push that higher. That is very simplistic but difficult to monitor and control. Many people get distracted with movements or sounds they cannot controll 100% and thus waste a lot of time trying to get it right without a plan or practice tactic (this is where a good teacher comes in handy). Some get distracted with the telephone, family, friends thoughts about the day etc. These two factors usually usually without knowing, make us choose to practice longer and harder instead of smarter.

I dont even care to ask students how many minutes/hours they practice, I measure their achievements on what they can actually show me. There is no point practicing for x hours and get no where! Time means nothing unless there is work to show for it!

[soliloquy]

When all the keys are broken

[thalbergmad]

When there is blood on the keys.

[dnephi]

When there is blood on the keys.

I only get blood on the keys when I'm playing Islamey under 3''.

At the octave glissando which I do with just one finger.

Ok that was sarcastic, so you all know. 

[soliloquy]

When there is blood on the keys.

You mean the keys are not unrecognizable, shattered fragments of wood, that due to heat (speed) and pressure (fury) have been turned into diamonds? 



weak

[thalbergmad]

Something like that old chap.

Thal

[rc]

They really don't like when I do that in the piano shop.  I thought that's how we're supposed to test out n ew pianos

 

[soliloquy]

They really don't like when I do that in the piano shop.  I thought that's how we're supposed to test out n ew pianos

 

OMFG i know!  One time while i was waiting to pick up a clavinova that was being repaired (broken keys of course ) I sat down to this barely concert grand steinway and started playing Rzewski, then one of the sales associates came in and gave me this nasty look and said all snobbily, "what is that?"  Then I gave him the most evil look I could, and I'm italian so it was REALLLLY evil, and said "It's Rzewski's North American Ballad No. 4, Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues.  I thought you would be familiar, as it is a repertoire staple."  I said this as I continued to play, then he just walked away and shut the door behind him   But it's ok because it was some modern piece of junk London Steinway that sounded like a Kawai upright.  Then randomly I had to go downstairs to pick up the keyboard from the repair area and found a restored MASSIVE NY Steinway Model D and was like, "whose is this?!?" and the repairman said it was his and told me to play on it.


The moral of the story is, never buy a piano from a piano store because cool piano repairmen downstairs always have better ones :O

[pianowolfi]

I am still daily coming back to this topic and find me every time again thinking about it . Through all these kidding posts with blood on the keys and practicing until you fall from the bench and so on there is a serious problem in it. Best efforts is often associated with working up to complete exhaustion. If you practice until you are so beat-up that you even can't reach your bed anymore you are in all probability doing something seriously wrong. Though I must say that I would miss the days in my life when I practiced even until I got beyond that point and went into a state of trance where I got very interesting inspirations lol . Sometimes it is the best effort to do that but it should be rather an exception I think. Best effort in a regular practise schedule includes to realize when it's time to stop and let things settle down. And sleep over it. I think there is such a thing as a "RAM"(random access memory), a memory for the day which is fed with all the things you learned during your practice sessions. You come to the point where this memory is full and its content needs to be saved in your long term memory and in your motoric memory and in the deeper layers of your subconscious. And there is the need for sleeping over it. You just can't fill in more and more into your daily RAM memory. It won't keep things anymore after a certain point.

[imbetter]

I feel that I'm showing my best effort when I'm motivated or stress free. Usualy, when I try and make my best effort, I do.

Like Pianowolfi said before, I have had only one teacher before my current teacher. I didn't approve of her particular teacher method and I felt as if she was holding me back. That made me feel as if I wasn't up to level with myself if you know what I mean. But now I'm with a different teacher who's always supportive and lets me strive for things.

When I left my old teacher I was learning stuff like a Clementina Sonatina and a Chopin Nocturne. Then I left her for a new teacher and he believed that  my best effort exeeded that old repertoire and he believed I could play harder pieces. I then started learning a Bach P&F, a Chopin ballade, a Handel Suite, and a Beethoven sonata.

Ever since then I've always had the motivation to achieve my best effort.

[rc]

The moral of the story is, never buy a piano from a piano store because cool piano repairmen downstairs always have better ones :O

hahah, that's a good point.  Just this weekend I was talking to a teacher after a masterclass about how I plan on buying a new baby grand in a few months and she recommended I talk to the university piano tech - somebody who's spent years fixing every kind of piano under the sun, might know a bit more than your average student (me) or salesman.

All the salesmen really need to do is sell stuff, they don't necessarily need to know dick about it.  There're a whole lot of crappy salesmen whose tunnel-vision on their commission turns them into pricks.  I've stood in a store looking to drop a good chunk of change on a DVD recorder, but because I was wearing my grubby work clothes not a single salesperson bothered to ask me anything, they went to the well-dressed lady who needed a new universal remote instead.  Or you get things like "That's alright, but for an extra $5/50/500 you could get THIS.  Unless you're an idiot you'd better get the extended avalanche warrantee."

At another store their employees couldn't tell me a single thing about any of their instruments, or even get out from behind the desk to help me find some sheetmusic...  All they did was look miserable and make sure nobody touched any of the nice instruments (unless they looked rich).

On the other hand, there are some good salesmen.  There's one fellow who will always have my business because he's honest and actually helps me.  He pulls me away from the pianos I was looking at to show me the ones they keep in the back, though he knew they were WAY out of my price range, just for the hell of it, heh.  Then he instists that I buy it with credit rather than cutting a cheque, that I should build a credit history for later when I want to finance a house or car.  That's pretty cool.

[ichiru]

I think my goal now is to get to the point of comfort to produce any kind of voice I want, which leave me no choice but to practice physical technique to build the muscles and to get my fingers more comfortable on the keyboard. So I think my final best effort will be when I'm able to communicate whatever my ideas in mind through my playing, without any difficulties.

But for everyday life... I think the best effort I've ever done is when I know I have used all the time given to me wisely 

[pianowolfi]

At the moment I am measuring my best effort on my progress in composing the program I want to play in concert in April or May. the only concert i will play in the first half of the year. If I am able to play it in April or May in concert I will know that I have given indeed my best. And that is a thing I measure only with my own criterias.
 Btw I have a random question to the topic starter: I haven't seen you on pianostreet for a while. Is there a kind of hope that you will drop by one day soon?

[keyofc]

If I'm going to perform something or put it in my repertoire, when I'm ready, I play it ten times without a mistake.
If I make one mistake at 9, I start all over.
It's always been a sure-fire way for me to perfect a piece once I have it all worked out.

Then - even if I do make a mistake (which truly I rarely do after this) I am so comfortable with it people think nothing of it.  And it gives me a lot of confidence knowing that I've done this.