~The Wave~

[chopintoday]

I know those of you who practice 10-12hrs like I do have these moments of...okay periods of unproductivity. You know, how sometimes everything just seems to go so well, and other times when you just can't seem to focus or concentrate at all?

Lately I've been really stuck on the low wave. Nothing seems to help. I've been told that I'm just tired and need a break. (And well, I did. I got all banged up skiing and now I can't even lift myself to sit at the bench )

I've concluded that I physically and mentally cannot practice, to say the least. But can't help loving music as cheesy as it sounds.

I'm dying to get out of this ditch, please help!!!!

[faulty_damper]

I'm convinced you could achieve everything you do in those 10 to 12 hours per day in just 2 to 3.  That's your problem: more time doesn't mean you achieve more.  Quite the opposite.

Unless you are learning 10 to 15 different pieces during these 10 to 12 hours, you are wasting your time.  If you are learning 5 or less, then you really should reevaluate your use of time.

[rc]

If you're brain and body is too fried to have productive practice but you still want to do something musical you could explore repertoire through recordings (piano or non-piano), or read a musical book (theory, piano topics, biographies).  Schumann recommended exploring poetry, which is like an exercise in emotional imagination, or a walk in the open air.

I agree with Faulty though, 10-12 hours is probably largely unproductive.  Chopin once reprimanded a student for overpracticing and recommended not going beyond 3 hours.  The danger in having prolonged, unproductive practice is that as your mind loses focus you can develop the habit of ingraining careless mistakes.  That's where it actually becomes counterproductive.

I believe one can stretch their attention span by pushing a little longer, but I also know there comes a point when I'm practicing where I get sloppy and am just practicing bad playing...

[faulty_damper]

By spending more than the necessary time to accomplish something and then lose attention/focus/concentration, you actually defeat the purpose of practice.  And more than that, your ability and effectiveness of practice will also diminish because of the negative association you created by doing too much unproductively.  You already display such symptoms.

Loss of attention/focus/concentration is the result of doing too much where your conscious mind can no longer do its task.  And this occurs after practicing excessively.  This last memory is the one that will carry over more clearly the next day and any negative associations in the form of doubt, ineffectiveness, etc. will show up.  And if the behaviour isn't changed, and you continue the same habits, such unproductivity/ineffectiveness only builds as the days, weeks, and months go by.  And then the symptoms you describe become more frequent until that is the only thing you can think of.

If efficient and effective practive means are taken, there will be no "waves".

[chopintoday]

Alright, I'll try that...thanks.
but cutting out the hours part, are you sure you've never been in the wave?

[faulty_damper]

Alright, I'll try that...thanks.
but cutting out the hours part, are you sure you've never been in the wave?

If I want to catch the wave, I just wake up in the morning, and start practicing from 10am until 9pm.  In this 11-hour period, I would have accomplished very little.  I will end up feeling like I've wasted so much of my time because I know that what I did accomplish could have been accomplished in less than 3 hours from past experience.

You see, I don't spend the entire day at the piano mindlessly practicing.  I hate to practice.  As a result, I have spent a lot of time investigating the best ways to practice (best means the least amount of time with the greatest results).  I can now accomplish in one hour what used to take me 5 to 6 hours.  I am never in the wave because I just don't allow myself to practice more than is necessary for a particular task.

You should do a search on 'over practice'.  Contrary to what many teachers and students believe, practicing as much as possible is actually the worst thing you can do if you want to learn how to play the piano.

[amelialw]

I can tell you that 5-6 hrs a day will do you more good than 10-12 hrs. In fact I generally practise min.4 hrs but still can accomplish alot everyday.

haha, when I sit on the piano for 6 hrs or more, i'll get knocked out the next day, It just happenned on weds. and when that happens i'm only able to practise max 3 hrs the next day

[danny elfboy]

Practicing at the piano is exactly like exercise, they obey to the same rules.
For example the rules of exercise are:

1) Exercise creates an oxidative damage. To prevent this damage you must train more in less time. It is known nowadays that a steady 120 BPM for 40 minutes is largely stressfull and ineffective compared to high intensity and lower volume.

2) After few minutes that you repeat the same exercise your body becomes "neurally efficient". What this means is that it stops exercising, learning, thinking and is just going in an autopilot mode which is reducing the exhortation you need. If you change the variabiles your body keeps being engaged in something new doing a lot of work in a short amout of time.

3) You never build fitness while doing the exercise. The changes that take place while you're exercising are just introductions to the real work that body will have to do: at night while you're sleeping.

4) A person who has trained in a unefficient way will tell you that he/she got the results she got because of his/her training. But the truth is that he/she doesn't know what better results she could have obtained with better exercising in less time.

All these rules apply to piano in the exact same way:

1) Practicing creates a stress damage. Your central nervous system can't bear too much work and once you're on the overworking stage not only you're not learning and metabolizing information anymore but you're also unlearning what you've previously studied while in the good stage. The goal of practicing is to get more by working less.

2) After few minutes that you repeat the same pattern or read the same notions your body gets neurally efficient and goes into an autopilot mode. The majority of students when preparing for a test read the same chapter or paragraph over and over many and many times. The truth is that one focused time plus a good night sleep is all they need. All the extra work they believe they need is just wasted time with no learning potential, they're just in an auto-pilot mode which wastes time, consume their energy and adds nothing to their knowledge. The goal is to change the variabilities by reading things just once and them move to something else or as far as piano is concerned by switching hands frequently, by practicing small passages of many pieces instead of large passages of just one piece, by adding different patterns like group practicing, repeated notes and so on.

3) You never build conditioned knowledge or long term memory the moment you're reading or studying something. Those students who keeps wasting time and lamenting that studying takes a lot of hours (while they could learn way more in a fraction of that time) keep reading the same chapter over and over or the same paragraph because they assume that if they're learning they should be able to remember and understand everything of what they're reading immediately. The truth is that the reading, practicing, learning is just preliminary work, a sort of "information collecting". The real job is done at night when your body analizes and processes the information you have gathered.
That's why it is proven that insomnia and sleep problems causes learning and memory problems.

So what is the solution for the student who has been reading the same chapter for 90 minutes repeating it 9 times and still not remembering or understanding it? Reading the chapter for 10 minutes, 1 time ... using the other 80 minutes to take a walk in the park and eat an hot-dog and wait a good night sleep.

4) You'll listen a plethora of pianist telling you that they obtained their skill by practicing 10 hours a day. The point is that they have no evidence that this is true. Since they have never tried another system (not long enough at least) they just don't know that what they have learned by practicing 10 hours everyday they could have learned by practicing 2 hours more efficiently. They just give it for granted that they are good players because of their extreme practicing rather than "in spite" of their extreme and unefficient practicing.

BTW
Practicing for three days and then skipping two days IS "changing the variables" and hence a good way to learn. Practicing everyday is far less efficient than adding an "interval training" to your practicing. Skipping days is the best thing you can do for maximizing results.

In other words chopintoday there's nothing you're doing which is wrong or sabotaging your results. Accept the off-days within your week and use them to relax and practice less and more efficiently on the on-days. This way you'll not stress yourself on the on-days and you'll be ready to go after an off-day.

[chopintoday]

Thanks dan, I'll adjust my system. Maybe all I need is a little more breakwork and a little less fingerwork....

Just out of curiosity, how do you all practice? I mean, I know you practice less and achieve better results, it seems to be a proven fact here.

So in daily standards, do you have a plan (e.g. etudes by morning, pieces by afternoon, and new pieces by night)? Or is it more like, practice and perfect the necessary pieces?

[danny elfboy]

Thanks dan, I'll adjust my system. Maybe all I need is a little more breakwork and a little less fingerwork....

Just out of curiosity, how do you all practice? I mean, I know you practice less and achieve better results, it seems to be a proven fact here.

So in daily standards, do you have a plan (e.g. etudes by morning, pieces by afternoon, and new pieces by night)? Or is it more like, practice and perfect the necessary pieces?

For example I never take "time apart to study"
I just collect 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there, 20 minutes here ...
all the usable time. For example when waiting for a person to arrive, or waiting the past to cook or waiting the floor to dry after being washed.

Many people just believe that they can study only if they have straight hours without interruction to devote to study. They miss of the "crumbs of time" here and there that put together form a whole loaf.

So what I do for example is remembering when I had a problem last time.
What passage I couldn't play as good as I wanted it to be or what fast arpeggiato pattern I could really do the last time.

So what I time is practicing a bit that passage. Switching hands, changing the groups of notes, changing the keys, variating the speed.

After 5 minutes I switch to theory and do 2-3 line of solfeggio.

After 5 minutes I switch to another passage of another piece and work in the same way I did for the first one.

After 5 minutes I switch to harmony and read half a chapter.

After 5 minutes I switch again to solfeggio and do another 2-3 line.

After 20 minutes I do a long pause and do something else which could meeting a friend, watching a movie, working out ... whatever.

When I go back to my pieces I try again to play the passages I practiced.
Is there an improvement. And if there is an improvement what "new issue" has come out from having overcome the previous problems?

I use my instinct to understand whether I should leave the passage alone and wait a good night sleep because the practice was good and it's just a matter of waiting the time for the planted seed to grow into a plant, or whether I should practice that passage again.

In any way I choose other passages from other pieces to practice and do the same kind of 20 minutes routine.

At the end of the day I just don't remember what I studied and what I didn't, I have done so many small tasks that I just lost the thread. So I feel as if I did a mess.

Usually I cover in a day the material that other people would cover in two weeks.

Nonetheless after 1-2 days I know exactly and in exact order all the things I have practiced. This is common even in exercising. Sometimes you just feel as if your workout didn't yeld result. That's it: until you wait few days and your results can be measured, and they are there.

The problem is that our society taught us that you must "feel" the results immediately.
So if you're doing good you must feel some kind of effort, discomfort, soreness (mental of physical) or at least you have spent hours and hours doing something as the "proof" that you indeed did it. It's actually the opposite ... if you feel less effort, less discomfort and have spent little time doing something ... you've done better. Just wait for your body to process all the data you collected and things will make sense and will appear solid as rock even if the previous day you were not even sure you have learned them enough.

Real learning should feel like a magic and you should be always surprised that it is indeed taking place.

[faulty_damper]

The problem is that our society taught us that you must "feel" the results immediately.
So if you're doing good you must feel some kind of effort, discomfort, soreness (mental of physical) or at least you have spent hours and hours doing something as the "proof" that you indeed did it. It's actually the opposite ... if you feel less effort, less discomfort and have spent little time doing something ... you've done better. Just wait for your body to process all the data you collected and things will make sense and will appear solid as rock even if the previous day you were not even sure you have learned them enough.

Couldn't agree more.  But often, in school, you are often penalized for taking this approach.  The class lesson is given today, and you have a test on it tomorrow.  Such an approach to learning to play the piano would yield a class who can't play the piano.  But at least they intellectually know that your fingers depress the keys!

[chopintoday]

Great, I feel such a relief. Now I can love music and love practicing at the same time!

Just one more question though, in this way of practice, how long does it take you to learn a piece? Say, e.g. the chopin ballade no.4?

[danny elfboy]

Great, I feel such a relief. Now I can love music and love practicing at the same time!

Just one more question though, in this way of practice, how long does it take you to learn a piece? Say, e.g. the chopin ballade no.4?

It's a matter of finding a balance between chosing something which is above your level (so you learn something) but not excessively. In this way each piece you learn is not 100% unknown never practice material but a 70% of known material and a 30% of new material. What this means is that most of it will be solid at the first sight-reading while only certain specific passages are to be practiced.

If you learn more pieces at the same time, once you have completed one you have also completely many others and hence the time you need to completely a single specific piece becomes less relevant. The goal is to learn in packs and have a load of new material learned at the end of the week or two week or the month instead of just one piece per month where only 30-20% of it was new material and 50% of the practicing time has been spent to practice old known material.

[chopinfan_22]

I agree totally with DE. In fact, that's what I do... I'll practice 2 hours at the most over pieces that I'm trying to learn. The next day, if I feel the need to play or dabble on the piano, I pick something completely unrelated to what I'm working on and try to improve my sight reading skills or just play around or do theory. It's all about balance.