Practicing away from the piano

[thalberg]

Helene Grimaud says she does much of her practicing away from the piano.

I've tried this but cannot make it productive.  Anyone had luck practicing away from the piano?

[schubertiad]

A couple of weeks ago I went on a summer camp teaching english in the middle of nowhere with no access to a piano. I decided to try and use my time well by learning a piece without playing a note. I did chopin's 2nd nouvelle etude (the chordy one) and learnt the notes of each hand from memory. It took a good few hours of work. When I got back I expected to be able to play it pretty much straight away, but found that my fingers simply didn't know what to do. I still haven't learnt to play the thing, and in that time have learnt quite a bit of new music the usual, hands-on way. For me, at least, it was a bit of a waste of time.
Btw i have heard of a lot of professionals who learn music away from the piano. Rubinstein used to, so did Giesking, and Angela Hewitt does too. I guess when it all comes so easy to you it doesn't really matter how you learn.

[counterpoint]

Why should one practise without piano if one stands in the other room? For concert pianists that are often on tour, it's a complete different situation. I guess, it would not work for me.

[ramseytheii]

Practicing away form the piano means different things to different people.  Karl Leimer, the teacher of Giesking, believed that a piece should be memorized before you play it on piano, so for him, practicing was studying.

For me, it means for the most part planning.  Any piece we learn is going to be complex.  if you have a 5 person family, you don't go to the grocery store without a list.  You can save yourself a lot of time, by deciding away from the piano exactly what you are going to do on the piano.  Since practicing consists of discovery, decision, and repetition, you can make discoveries and decisions away from the piano, and enter them into your physical memory at the instrument.

Another idea of practicing away from the piano is visualization.  you visualize how the music will sound, feel, and look.  When you approach the piano, you approach it from the standpoint of knowing the end goal already, from practicing and visualization away from the keyboard, and then your task is to realize and retain it.

I think it is not important that practicing mentally has to be linear.  What I mean is, you don't have to sit there and try and think of the whole piece from the first note to the last.  You have to address what needs to be practiced at the keyboard, and the whole form will come together for you later.

Walter Ramsey

[pianistimo]

my method must be linear then.  if i don't practice all parts pretty much equally - one or the other part is weak in my memory or fingers.  but, i admit to not having that great of memory now - and am working on it.  so, the working away from the keyboard would establish for me - the divisions that i choose to make the piece into (three or four?).  usually i am a 2 page person if it is a difficult work.  i try to memorize, now - as much of those two pages as possible and then when i walk by the piano - just sit down and try to play that much (after having thought about it).

i think i know what you mean about non-linear though, ramseytheii, because when i cycle - suddenly a portion of what i play (perhaps my favorite part) will repeat 3x instead of going on to the rest of the piece.

[term]

There is benefit in practising away from the piano and i do that daily, but that there's no substitute for pressing down the keys of a piano.