Strategy for Success? [Bob project]

[Bob]

How do you plan your practicing?
in the long and short term?


It seems like if I want to get better I really have to focus on one aspect for about a month.  During this time, other part of my playing suffer.  For example, I get my scales sounding good, but I'm not working on too much literature.  Or, I have a few pieces in shape, but then I'm thinking, "Great, I can only play these 3 pieces.  My technique has atropied, my scales are lumpy, etc... "

Part of what I'm wondering is how in the world do you cover all the various aspects of music -- developing technique, playing literature, sight-reading, studying piano literature, doing serious listening, etc.  I spend 6 months studying chords, find there's still tons left to go over, and still haven't studied much literature.  It's frustrating...  

Any suggestions?

[bernhard]

Yes, at some stage you will have to get really organised. The way you are practising is the way beginners go about it. This is how the pros go about it:

1.      Consider three completely different levels of practising/learning: short term (what you do day-to-day), middle term (monthly), long term (1- 5 years).

2.      Start with the long term: Which pieces would you like to be playing in one year’s time? In five year’s time? Do not worry about being over ambitious. At the end of the year you can review your goals. Sit down and make a list of them. For the purposes of illustration, say that your list of desirable pieces at the end of 5 years is 100 pieces.

3.      Plan your monthly work. Using the 1-5 year list, distribute these pieces over twelve months. Again do not worry too much about being able to do it, as you go along you can reevaluate your goals. However try to work on at least 5 pieces a month, but no more than 30 pieces. For the purposes of illustration, say that you are going to work on 10 pieces a month. Now make table with these ten pieces ocuppying the first column and 30 columns (or 31 depending on the month). Everyday you are going to work on these ten pieces, and tick in the corresponding column if you did it or not.

4.      Plan your daily work. You are going to work 10 – 15 mins daily on each of your 10 pieces. After you finish your 10 –15 minutes, forget about it until the next day. Move on and do another 10-15 minutes on the next piece. These 10 15 minutes do not need to be consecutive. They can be any 10-15 minutes anytime of the day. This is the beauty of this system, you do not need a block of 2hs 30mins (you can do it if you want though), but you can spread it in ten blocks of 15 minutes.

5.      The most important requirement for this method to work is consistency. You must do it every day.

6.      The second most important requirement is that you have a specific goal that can be achieved in 15 minutes. So if you are learning a new piece, this may mean that you will be working on the first two bars. If you cannot master two bars in 15 minutes, next day do just one bar. Next day do the next bar, and so on.

7.      Do not work on scales /arpeggios separately. Practise the scale of your piece, and do it as part of the 15 minutes. Imagine your piece is in A minor. That is the scale you will practise. First day, just play the notes, one octave only: your aim is to learn the notes, not to play the scale. This should take only a couple of minutes. Then move on to the piece an do a single bar, or two bars hands separate.

8.      Next day, do the scale again. Do you know the notes now? Then work on it hands separate two octaves, your aim is to master the fingering. Do your piece’s two bars. Have they been mastered? If not repeat the previous day work, if yes, move on to learn it hands together.

9.      Next day practise the scale in hands separate, but in clusters of notes. Then your piece.

10.      Keep a music journal where you write briefly where you are at, and what your next steps are, so the next day you know what to do.

11.      Since you are doing ten pieces, chances are that you will be covering a lot of scales everyday this way. You may choose your pieces so that they cover certain specific scales.

12.      At the end of the month you will have learned certain pieces, and others you will be still learning. The learned pieces are replaced by new pieces. The others go on to the next month. You must wait until the end of the month to replace pieces, even if you have learned them in the first week.

13.      If you choose your pieces so that they cover different techniques, you will not need to do technical exercises (drop Hanon – waste of time – if you want to do Czerny, just treat it as a piece. But why not do Scarlatti instead? It will give you exactly the same benefits of Czerny, but it will be a beautiful addition to your repertory). Scales and arpeggios however are very necessary (not as technical exercises, but as foundation to musical understanding).

14.      After 2 or 3 months you will be able to review your goals and adjust them. You will also be able to plan better your middle and short term work.

15.      This practise does not involve only work at the piano. You may spend your 15 minutes listening to CDs of the piece you intend to learn, analysing the score in order to decide how to break it down in 15 minute sections, memorising the piece from the score, etc. (in short, mental practice).

16.      The key word here is discipline. Never practise by sitting at the piano to play whatever you feel like. It is perfectly all right to do so, but it does not count as your 15 minutes practice. And if you do it, make sure you share it with someone else, this way you will be practising performance.

This is the tip of the iceberg, but it should get you started.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[Daevren]

Hmmm, this sounds like a fun way to plan. I wonder if I can fit in something like this into my agenda. Being a multi instrumentalist, wannabe composer and music theory junky...

Do you have any tips for people like me Bernard?

[bernhard]

Hmmm, this sounds like a fun way to plan. I wonder if I can fit in something like this into my agenda. Being a multi instrumentalist, wannabe composer and music theory junky...

Do you have any tips for people like me Bernard?

Same answer. Have long - middle - short term goals. Just make sure that that the day-to-day short term goals add up to your middle and long term goals (the most common reason why such system fail), and that you do it consistently, no matter what.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[mark1]

Bernhard, what are some good ways to practise the scales and particularly the arpeggios? The primary chord for the arpeggios or a variety? what ones? Thanks                                                                 Mark

[bernhard]

Bernhard, what are some good ways to practise the scales and particularly the arpeggios? The primary chord for the arpeggios or a variety? what ones? Thanks                                                                 Mark

I have just seen that you started a new thread on this subject. I will answer it there.

[Clare]

I've got a question that's been bothering me for a while - how often do you need to practice things? Like, say there's a tricky four bars in a piece. If I master it in one practice session, do I need to do it again the very next practice session, or can I leave it to do again the time after? And how often should I practice the rest of the piece? Could I not play it for a week and it won't get worse? Should I practice everything I need to get done by the end of semester at least twice a week?
I'm a bit confused now that I have to get a big repertoire down and I can no longer get through everything within two days.

[Bob]

 Berhard, thanks for the advice.  

What do you do when you hit those things that don't fit into your schedule?  Something that will take 6 months of focus?

[bernhard]

I've got a question that's been bothering me for a while - how often do you need to practice things? Like, say there's a tricky four bars in a piece. If I master it in one practice session, do I need to do it again the very next practice session, or can I leave it to do again the time after? And how often should I practice the rest of the piece? Could I not play it for a week and it won't get worse? Should I practice everything I need to get done by the end of semester at least twice a week?
I'm a bit confused now that I have to get a big repertoire down and I can no longer get through everything within two days.

You need to practise everyday. Not forever but only until you do not need to practise everyday. There is a sound reason for this. When you learn something, the next day you still remember 90%. By the second day the retention is 20% and by the third day is 0%. Practising twice a week means that you are always starting from scratch. Practising every other day is a bit better, but you are still progressing very slowly. So everyday practice is the best. On the other hand there is no benefit in practising something several times a day (you learn with your unconscious, so a night sleep between practice sessions is the most efficient way to learn anything – you know you learnt it once you start dreaming about it). How does this knowledge may help you?

1.      Practise your four bars for as long as it takes to have your fingers doing it without thinking. This usually should not take more then 10 – 15 minutes. If it does and you do not have the extra time, cut it down to two bars. In short, practise towards achieving goals, not towards time. Make your goals small enough (or big enough) to fit your available time. If practice 4 hours and at the end you achieve nothing this was a waste of time, not practice.

2.      If you practised and learnt your four bars, and come the next day you cannot remember them for your life, don’t fret, this is normal (and I am sure you experienced it many times). Just go back to it and you will discover that it all comes back into a fraction of the time it took first time around, even though at the start of the practice session it may feel and look like you are starting from scratch. While you are in this stage you must practise your four bars everyday, even if at the end of the session you can play it perfectly. You can stop practising it everyday not when you get it right at the end of the session, but when you get it right at the start of the next day session. Then you will be able to space it sometimes years and still be able to play it.

3.      If you practised your four bars first thing in the morning, leave it for the next day. Practising it again before lunch, then again after lunch, then again in the afternoon and once more before going to bed will have no discernible effect on your progress. Instead use these other practice opportunities to practise something else.

4.      This is short-term practice. You must organise it so that it adds up to your middle and long-term goals. Jumping from passage to passage, or from piece to piece without planning is usually why it takes so long for people to increase repertory.

5.      Day-to-day practice is for the stuff you do not know (meaning stuff you cannot play straightaway at the beginning of your practice session, even though you thought you had mastered it the day before). Stuff you know, you can and should space out. If it is a complete piece, the best way to keep it polished is to perform it at every opportunity (for friends, family, students, anywhere there is a piano). But you must be organised here too: make a rota of your known pieces so that at every performance opportunity you play (practise) a different piece (carry a list with you if need be and tick the ones you have already done). These of course are informal performances.

6.      Things will only get worse from lack of practice if they are at the stage where they get worse from lack of practice. The other day someone asked me to play a piece I hadn’t touched for centuries. I said “yes, many aeons ago I used to play this, but I doubt it if I can remember it”. They insisted, and being a sort of daring, reckless guy, I decided to give it a go. To my great amazement I played it perfectly (or at least I would like to think so). This just shows that piano playing is like riding a bicycle: you never forget it. But you must have got to the point where you never forget it. Until then you must practise it regularly. After you reach that point then it does not matter anymore how often you play/practise it. Unfortunately I cannot tell you how long it takes to reach this point since it will depend on the person and on the piece. People with great, natural facility for the piano and easy pieces may take just one practice sessions. People who have to work hard to display facility with a difficult piece may take many years (to give you an example it took me four years to feel comfortable with Bach’s Partita no.1 in Bb major – not a terribly difficult piece – I learned it in a couple of months, but had to keep practising it since it slipped away from my grasp with incredible ease).

7.      Now more than ever you must organise your short-term practice so that it adds up to your long-term goals.

I hope this helps.
Good luck,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

 Berhard, thanks for the advice.  

What do you do when you hit those things that don't fit into your schedule?  Something that will take 6 months of focus?

I am not sure I understand your question. If something takes 6 months of focus, then it takes six months of focus. I know that I wokred on certain pieces far longer than that (I am still workig on some).

However this would fall into the middle/long-term category. If what you are practising takes six months to perfect rather than 15 minutes, you are trying to chew too much. Make it smaller. Anyone can master two notes in 10 minutes of practice. Then add another two notes (it may take several months to get the whole piec this way, but you will get thre eventually). But this may also be a sign that you are not technically prepared for that piece yet, so drop it for the moment, keep working on easier (for you) stuff and come back to it in a few months time.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[Clare]

Bernhard, you just totally opened my mind. I have to go and revamp my practicing style now.
Thankyou so much, once again.

I was working on a rotational basis, like practicing pieces a and b on Monday, c and d on Tuesday, e and f on Wednesday, then back to a and b again, etc. I was wondering why nothing ever got any better, even though I was doing 4 hours every day.

[Bob]

[m1469]

Thanks for sharing with us Bernhard.  I am wondering about a couple of things in response to your practice ideas.

1.   Why 10-15 minute sessions?  

2.   Say you are working on only 5 pieces, could you plan 2 consecutive 10-15 minute sessions in one day with the same piece; 8 bars instead of just 4 for example?  If not, why?

3.   How about time crunches and dead lines?  I know that these probably fall somewhere under middle term, but what if you need to learn a new piece for something, quickly, that you did not plan on learning that month (or year)?  Would you do that practice separately and otherwise sitck to your schedule?

4.   Are you suggesting that one uses the beginning sessions of practicing a new piece just listening and breaking learning sessions down, or is that separate work done in preparation for practice at the piano?

5.   In getting to know this routine, how can one plan a solo concert without knowing exactly how long it may take one to learn an entire program (one may have calculated 6 mos total, but perhaps there is need of recalculation 3 months into it)?

Thanks,

m1469

[bernhard]

1.   Why 10-15 minute sessions?  

In order to be successful three conditions must be met:

a.      You must know what you want.

b.      You must keep changing your behaviour until you get what you want (if what you are doing is not working, try something else).

c.      You must have enough sensitivity to realise when you actually got what you wanted and stop trying.

(a) and (b) seem obvious enough. But what about (c)? Most people are slightly puzzled by it. “Sure I will know when I got what I wanted!”

So I will give you an example. Years ago, I was very much into magic tricks and juggling. I had a friend who was also into these things. We were asked to go to a children’s party and entertain the children, which we gladly did. On arrival, it turned up that the children were quite a boisterous and rowdy group. They were climbing on top of each other to get to the juggling clubs and balls and having a grand old time by mocking about and being overexcited. We had prepared a number of routines, but it was clear that under the circumstances, it was not going to happen. My friend was very distressed. I had to tell him: “Look, what is our goals here? To show off? No, we are here to entertain the children. They could not be more entertained!”. With this he relaxed and we just had a good time. You wee, sometimes you are already getting what you wanted in the first place but you do not notice.

Here is another story. Once upon a time an encyclopaedia salesman tried to sell me an encyclopaedia. I was not particularly interested to start with, but as he started to talk, he completely convinced me that buying an encyclopaedia from him was the key to my eternal happiness. He was good. He had a superb patter. But he did not know when to stop. As I was ready to sign a cheque, he just kept going on and on, even though his goal had already been accomplished. This gave me the opportunity to think things over, and I ended up not buying the encyclopaedia.

Many piano students are like that. They don’t know when to stop. They will go on practising the same passage day after day for hours on end. You also have the opposite kind of student, the ones that stop as soon as they barely got the passage together.

Anyone should be able to master any passage in 10 –15 minutes. There is nothing magical about the time. Make it 20 minutes if you prefer. There is no need for more, and no further benefit will accrue from more practice than that on a single day.

Of course, there are exceptions. If you are going to practice your performance of the Hammerklavier, this is going to take 40 – 50- minutes. If you are using some particularly lengthy practice tricks like repeated note groups, this is going to take 30 – 45 minutes. But practising a passage for 4 – 5 hours, when you already mastered it after 15 minutes is simply lack of sensitivity in perceiving that you have already achieved your goal.

2.   Say you are working on only 5 pieces, could you plan 2 consecutive 10-15 minute sessions in one day with the same piece; 8 bars instead of just 4 for example?  If not, why?

Yes, that is exactly what you should do. Instead of working 4 hours on a passage, you should divide these 4 hours into 12 sessions of 15 minutes (with 5 minutes rest in between) and work on twelve different sections (either of the same piece or of different pieces).

3.   How about time crunches and dead lines?  I know that these probably fall somewhere under middle term, but what if you need to learn a new piece for something, quickly, that you did not plan on learning that month (or year)?  Would you do that practice separately and otherwise sitck to your schedule?

Deadlines are emergencies. Then of course your usual schedule go through the window. Which is one of the reasons that you should avoid them. Always say no to proposals that will generate deadlines and the resulting stress.

4.   Are you suggesting that one uses the beginning sessions of practicing a new piece just listening and breaking learning sessions down, or is that separate work done in preparation for practice at the piano?

You can use your practising sessions for anything that you want, from learning a piece from scratch to polishing a piece. But is must be well planned (in the short term, middle term and long term) and consistency is the key.

5.   In getting to know this routine, how can one plan a solo concert without knowing exactly how long it may take one to learn an entire program (one may have calculated 6 mos total, but perhaps there is need of recalculation 3 months into it)?

As the years go by and experience increases, you will be able to tell what you will be able to accomplish and how long it will take you.  In any case you should always plan for the unexpected. Above all do not accept proposals if you think you may just make it. Some people work well under pressure, I am not one of them. I was once approached by a violinist who wanted to play the Franck Sonata. His normal accompanist had had a serious car accident and there was no way he would recover in time. Although I knew the violinist and was very sympathetic towards his problem, and although I wanted to help, I also knew that in order to have the piece ready in the time suggested, I would pretty much have to stop everything I was doing, and probably the piece would not be at its best. Plus the stress would work against me. So I declined, because had I accepted I would probably do this guy a disservice.

Finally, I have explained most of this subject in much greater detail here:

https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=perf;action=display;num=1084457512

Have a look and come back if you still have questions.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[m1469]

Thanks for your patience with me Bernhard, I apologize for not having already thouroughly read through the thread that you recommended to me.

Yesterday, I put into practice your advice, although I lost the discipline part way through.  Yet, today, I very clearly see that the material I remember the best is that which I worked on within the first 15(ish) minutes of my work for particular sections.  I have never put this together before.  

I find the most difficult thing for me is learning how to get myself that organized and calmed down enough to plan out my approach in the way you have suggested (although I am beginning to see the cleverness of it).  For me to really take it seriously, it will take hours  to plan out my study ideals for the next 5 years.  But, I know it would be worth it.

Also, I will assume off the top of my head (although you may have explained it before in one of your 1454 posts, and I may have missed it) that this method of practice/study is precisely the reason you teach beginners five days a week for 10-15 minutes.  And this also helps them learn how to practice I assume.  Very smart!

Thanks,

m1469

[Bonobo]

This looks much better than my practicing method;
To just try to get through the piece.
Maybe it will be hard to follow all these points, but it will surely help a lot.
I'm also gonna have a piano concert in school next year, and I've planned to play 10 songs ~ 40 mins - a little bit hard song for me, but not impossible. I will get 90h of school time for doing this, I will make sure that I have more scheduled practice then I've ever had before, and also there's no better pianist who can help me.    

[colette]

I would just like to say that you have given some excellent advice in this thread, I think that lack of organization and sensativity within practice are fundamental to poeple not progressing, even with lots of time spent. Most people don't know how to practice in order to reach their goals, they just fumble along and hope that it will all come together eventually. People should experiment with different strategies instead of getting stuck in the same old routine, however it is sometimes really difficult to see wheather a particular practice approach is effective or not. It is hard to judge how long you should give one approach before trying something different if something is not working, and ofcourse you need to make notes about your progress to make it easy to compare different approaches.

Thankyou for your advice, It has helped to clarify some thing for me.

[bernhard]

Thanks for your patience with me Bernhard, I apologize for not having already thouroughly read through the thread that you recommended to me.

You are most welcome.

Yesterday, I put into practice your advice, although I lost the discipline part way through.  Yet, today, I very clearly see that the material I remember the best is that which I worked on within the first 15(ish) minutes of my work for particular sections.  I have never put this together before.  

I find the most difficult thing for me is learning how to get myself that organized and calmed down enough to plan out my approach in the way you have suggested (although I am beginning to see the cleverness of it).  For me to really take it seriously, it will take hours  to plan out my study ideals for the next 5 years.  But, I know it would be worth it.

Yes, this is absolutely right. The really difficult part is to plan your work and then (even more difficult) to work your plan.

In modern first world societies we are not educated anymore to do so (if we ever were). School actually encourages an undisciplined approach (I have my own conspiracy theory why this should be), which is one of the reasons I dislike institutional education and much prefer the apprenticeship system.

And yet, the whole key to success is right here: spend some time breaking down your aims into short-term, middle term and long term goals. Then make sure that the short-term goals add up to the middle and long term goals, and be consistent. Being consistent is by far the largest stumbling block. We want to do what we feel like, not what is written on a piece of paper.

Also, I will assume off the top of my head (although you may have explained it before in one of your 1454 posts, and I may have missed it) that this method of practice/study is precisely the reason you teach beginners five days a week for 10-15 minutes.  And this also helps them learn how to practice I assume.  Very smart!

Exactly, you could not be more correct.

A lot of piano teachers are obsessed with movements, positions and postures. Another lot obsess over interpretation. Very few actually bother with teaching a student to practise efficiently.

And yet, both movements and interpretations are not at all that important to teach (and it may be argued that it is not possible to teach it), since at the end of the day that student will eventually come up with his own ideas of technique and interpretation.

In my opinion the aim of a teacher should be to get the student independent of the teacher in the fastest possible way (something very wrong with Evgeny Kissin here), an instead of teaching the piano (a piece, a technique, an interpretation) the teacher should be concentrating all of his/her efforts in teaching the student how to learn. Many teachers however cannot do that for one of many reasons:

1.      They don’t know how to do it (they do not have the information/knowledge/understanding).

2.      They never really paid any conscious attention to how they learn themselves, so their learning patterns – because unconscious – maybe very inefficient. Even when they are efficient, the teacher with mostly unconscious learning patterns may fall back into some absurd idea/method that actually goes totally contrary the way they do things, but it was “the way they were taught” so they do the same.

3.      It simply never occurred to them that this may be the ultimate purpose of teaching.

4.      It is a lot of hard work to teach how to learn.

you may have explained it before in one of your 1454 posts

The truth is out there…

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

This looks much better than my practicing method;
To just try to get through the piece.
Maybe it will be hard to follow all these points, but it will surely help a lot.
I'm also gonna have a piano concert in school next year, and I've planned to play 10 songs ~ 40 mins - a little bit hard song for me, but not impossible. I will get 90h of school time for doing this, I will make sure that I have more scheduled practice then I've ever had before, and also there's no better pianist who can help me.    

Don't just believe me. However intellectually tempting these concepts maybe, they may be completley wrong or inapproapriate. Much better is to try this:

Select two pieces of similar difficulty (both technical and musical).

Then learn/practise one of them the way you are used to.

Learn/practise the other according to the ideas herein.

After a couple of months (you may see results much before that), compare results and tell us your conclusions.

Systematically use this approach for every new practise idea you come accross. After a while you will have a repertory of ideas that works beautifully for you, and you will have discarded a lot of useless/timewasting/inefficient procedures (for you).

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[Spatula]

Then I still sometimes wonder why top players go 3 hours straight for maybe 2 pieces.  Perhaps they're performing it instead of the drill or practice.  There is a difference when you "practice" ie drill much like how bernhard described, and then perform a recital to yourself to see where you are.

[bernhard]

Then I still sometimes wonder why top players go 3 hours straight for maybe 2 pieces.  Perhaps they're performing it instead of the drill or practice.  There is a difference when you "practice" ie drill much like how bernhard described, and then perform a recital to yourself to see where you are.

Absolutely. There is very large difference between practising a piece in order to learn and master it and practising a piece you have already mastered and what you are actually practising is "performance".

At some point you will have to stop practising small sections, hands separate etc. and actually play the piece as it should be played. If that piece happnes to be a piece that take two hours to be performed, then that is the size of your practice session.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.