loop method to learn a new piece

[danny elfboy]

I wonder what do you think about this.
I was casual watching the lesson of a young electric guitar teacher.
He was with a 13 year old girl who had problem with a piece.
So she would always start with the first 2/3 bar of the piece, make a mess out of it, lose the tempo the rhythm and after that she would start over again to make the same mistake.

The teacher at this point said "no, no .. we're going to loop those bars ... follow me"
So what they did is creating a new piece out of repeating the same three bars.
1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3

I noticed that after the first 30 seconds not only the girls was not making any mistake anymore and had grooved the rhythm perfectly but she also released completely the tension at the instrument and was playing more relaxed and with precision.

Seemed to me that in 2 minutes she learned something that with her conventional way would have took 2 weeks.

I thought what would like to transfer this method to the piano.
Seems like it could work (in the first phase of learning the notes and motions rather than in the phase of polishing interpretation and dynamics)

What do you think?

[jolly01]

Isn't this the "repeated note groups" that CC Chang and Bernhard always spoke about?  It works for me...I might have misinterpreted though...
Brian

[gyzzzmo]

'Loop method'.....'repeated note groups'...... Nice terms for playing something again if you didnt do it right :p  Are there actually people who DONT use this 'method'?

[keypeg]

Was this teacher's effectiveness through a particular method, i.e. looping three bars to create a piece out of them?  Or was it because he connected to something in the student, the occasion, and the music and applied it creatively, loosely, and knoweldgeably?  Was this creative thinking and creativity with music?  All music is patterned structure, and if we're in synch with it rather than having learned by rigid rote, we can be playful with it and apply it in various ways.  May this be the other lesson about lessons?  Does applying what this teacher did consist of the loop method, or the thinking behind it?

I have no answers - and am just wondering.

[danny elfboy]

Isn't this the "repeated note groups" that CC Chang and Bernhard always spoke about?  It works for me...I might have misinterpreted though...
Brian

Repeated note groups is not a loop.
It is what is used with running sixteen notes and you do the whole set starting each time from a different note. For example you have 7 notes. Repeated note groups is:

1+2 - 2+3 - 3+4  4+5  5+6  6+7

1+2+3  2+3+4  3+4+5  4+5+6  5+6+7

1+2+3+4  2+3+4+5  3+4+5+6  4+5+6+7

and so on and on and on

[danny elfboy]

'Loop method'.....'repeated note groups'...... Nice terms for playing something again if you didnt do it right :p  Are there actually people who DONT use this 'method'?

People never use this method.
What people do for example is starting a piece with the first bar.
Making a mess in the first bar. Pausing a bit and starting again to
play in the same messy way. With time they play 12 bars at a time.
All of them messy but they keep playing over and over.

A loop is by definition without rests.
You're forced to groove the rhythm if you want to play in time
because the loop keeps going and you can't stop it. In a matter of few
minutes you repeat the same pattern 50-60 times untils for some reason your
body start to gets it and looping easily. At that point if you go back and instead
of the loop you play the pattern just once it will be tremendously easy.
Besides the playing mechanism is forced to find a more efficient and economical
way to play those notes so after having mastered a loop you are also supposed
to have mastered the correct motion to play those notes at speed and with the less
effort/strain.

[danny elfboy]

Was this teacher's effectiveness through a particular method, i.e. looping three bars to create a piece out of them?  Or was it because he connected to something in the student, the occasion, and the music and applied it creatively, loosely, and knoweldgeably?  Was this creative thinking and creativity with music?  All music is patterned structure, and if we're in synch with it rather than having learned by rigid rote, we can be playful with it and apply it in various ways.  May this be the other lesson about lessons?  Does applying what this teacher did consist of the loop method, or the thinking behind it?

Yes but I think there are two distinct phases in learning a piece.
First we must get accostumed to the notes and the patterns.
Eventually when we know the notes the big work is to work on musicality,
understanding the piece, its structure, tweaking dynamic and interpretation,
making it smooth and musical. But at the beginning it is just a bunch of notes
and learning this bunch of notes is where lot of students waste their time and
the reason why they eventually don't work enough on interpretation and musicality.

As far as I could imply from the situation the teacher was using a method he
uses when a student is stuck in the note-learning phase of the piece.
After I thought about it and how the girl responded immediately to it I realized
that it makes sense indeed.

[keypeg]

A couple of thoughts:

My first response was to your response to the teacher, and also knowing that you questioned how you yourself were taught.  This teacher did two things.  He applied a particular method and approach, which is what you latched on to.  But it is possible also that he worked creatively with music.  I also sense that underneath this he might have a different vision of music itself. Is that possible?

But at the beginning it is just a bunch of notes ....

I was actually surprised to read this.  Is my thinking that different?

It's never a bunch of notes for me.  Before I learned that there were formal patterns to compositions (the sum total of all my theoretical knowledge is less than 12 months old) I have always perceived patterns.  Music is pattern upon pattern upon pattern.  When I encounter music my radar is set on those patterns.  Those patterns piece themselves together from the very first encounter.  I see them without even wanting to.

I tried "formal sight reading" recently to see what that's about, and for the first time I can play "a bunch of notes"  - i.e. one note, the next note, the next one, in sequence as eyes and fingers work together.  It is almost like being led blindfolded one foot in front of the other with no destination.  Since smallest child I have not approached written music this way.  It is useful to be able to do this patternless blind playing, but I would not want that to be my world.

So what this teacher did seems logical.

I did that with a Vivaldi one year.  I had difficulty with the fingering of a particular passage: my fingers got glued down and wouldn't lift (violin).  It was the first music of this kind I had been given and to be honest I prefer it.  Well known easy to recognize melodies tend to be boring.

Vivaldi is repetitive and full of patterns.  I analyzed the piece (4th violin of a quartet) for areas of dificulty and noticed that they all had patterns.   Some were common to each other.  So Problem 1, Problem 5 and Problem 7 might be of the same musical pattern.  I created those loops that you described.  I looped 1, 5 and 7 together and I would play them endlessly.  This "familiar song" flowed easily in the real work.

[slobone]

'Loop method'.....'repeated note groups'...... Nice terms for playing something again if you didnt do it right :p  Are there actually people who DONT use this 'method'?

Not quite the same thing as playing it again -- more like playing it again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again...

And I don't wait till I've made a mistake, I do it with every chunk (about 4 bars) of the piece, starting slow until it's up to tempo. Scoff if you will, but once I've learned a piece by this method, I know it for life.

But I don't "loop", that is, I don't literally play the first note of the chunk immediately following the last note. But close enough.

[danny elfboy]

A couple of thoughts:

My first response was to your response to the teacher, and also knowing that you questioned how you yourself were taught.  This teacher did two things.  He applied a particular method and approach, which is what you latched on to.  But it is possible also that he worked creatively with music.  I also sense that underneath this he might have a different vision of music itself. Is that possible?

I was actually surprised to read this.  Is my thinking that different?

The problem is that playing music for piano is divided into two almost opposite components. The heavily intellectual ones of reading the sheet and making sense of it and the kinestethic analytical emotional ones of making music.

When I first find myself looking at a page full of blackness for the first time I'm indeed not immediately in a musical mode because I have first to make sense of all the mess.

Learning the note is actually something we should "rush" for the real work in music is being musical and tweaking dynamic and musicality. So we need just a "mild aquaintance" with the notes and patterns of the piece to be able to move to a more musical phase and keep learning in a more musical way.

Many people get stuck in that phase, the note learning, the note memorizing, the patterns analyzing. A phase which is as musical as as reading syllabes in a fridge instructions book. Of course if they just sight-read the piece trying to get acquainted with the notes, slowly, making mistakes, staring at the sheet ... it's not mistery they get stuck in that phase.

Getting stuck in that phase is sad because that phase is time consuming but actually something that everyone can do. It's music, making music, playing with sounds in unique ways that should be the real work and focus of a music student.  So that phase should pass as soon as possible and give room for the real musical work.

That's why I think the most conscious teachers uses approach to skim the intellectual note reading/memorizing patterns/remembering sheet phase and move as soon as possible to a more musical phase of dyamic, interpretation, musicality, musica sensitivy, rhythm grooving, understanding ... a phase which allows the note-intellectual-sheet-blankness work to go on and improve but at a different less strictly intellectual level.

In my experience the worst obstacle and wall a student face is opening the book and learning a new piece for the first time. Usually they spend a lot of useless time trying to learn the "notes". Eventually they know the notes and you can see they're really working on the music, or better yet, that once they don't have that obstacle anymore they are progressing in learning the piece at a faster piece and are exploiting more and more of their potential and musical sensitivity.

[slobone]

I agree that you should move from the note-learning phase to the music-making phase as soon as possible. But the key word is "possible". For me the transition doesn't take place until I feel confident that I can play through the piece at a reasonable approximation of the target tempo, without having to constantly worry about which finger is going on which key next. That can take me quite a long time! I'm talking about "muscle memory", not just an intellectual understanding of what the notes are on the page.

However, I've been finding that there is an overlap between the two phases. As I begin to learn the notes better, I instinctively begin to play them more musically -- with phrasing, dynamics, little rhythmic adjustments. (Of course it's essential to stop and make sure that it's the right phrasing and so forth.)

In fact I sometimes notice that a passage can be easier to play if I play it musically than if I play it mechanically -- put in all the accents and so forth instead of trying to play it evenly. Eventually I might incorporate this insight into my practice routine and try to combine the two phases in some way.

[danny elfboy]

I agree that you should move from the note-learning phase to the music-making phase as soon as possible. But the key word is "possible". For me the transition doesn't take place until I feel confident that I can play through the piece at a reasonable approximation of the target tempo, without having to constantly worry about which finger is going on which key next.

And so you agree that whatever method (like the loop method) who retains the same efficiency in learning in this phase (or provide more efficiency) while cutting massively the time spent mastering this phase is welcome?

In fact I sometimes notice that a passage can be easier to play if I play it musically than if I play it mechanically -- put in all the accents and so forth instead of trying to play it evenly.

This is very true and I have written about it in other threads (https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,28405.msg327778.html#msg327778)

and I have also noticed many times. But this I think is another argument in favour of a method to reduce the time stuck in note learning. Because it's hard to play musically something in the note-learning intellectual phase for the simple fact that we don't have a general acquaintance with the structure and musicality of the piece (until we have learned the note and passed the purely intellectual phase) to be able to provide musicality to those notes.

[keypeg]

There is something that I am fuzzy about in this discussion.   When I look at a new piece of music it sings to me and I can hear generally what it is like as music.  It is musical from the beginning.  A rough musical idea forms.  Then I study the piece before playing it and get lots of musical ideas.

Then it's time to master it as music, as you say.  That's the drugery part.  But even there, there are patterns throughout, and these are musical and can be practiced musically somewhat in the way you describe that teacher doing.

But in what you are writing, it seems that the notes in the beginning are meaningless and unmusical.  I am almost getting the idea of a succession of sounds, one after the other.  Is that how it is for you guys?  Or am I getting this wrong.

[danny elfboy]

But in what you are writing, it seems that the notes in the beginning are meaningless and unmusical.  I am almost getting the idea of a succession of sounds, one after the other.  Is that how it is for you guys?  Or am I getting this wrong.

I'm a good sightreading and yet written music doesn't trasmit to me the idea of sound, it remains a series of black signs to me, I can't translate mentally and emotionally immediately the notes to music.

[keypeg]

So at this point you must go through the action of your eyes telling your fingers what to do, and when your fingers do it, you get to hear what it sounds like for the first time, is that correct?

Therefore in the beginning you are dependent on a mechanical process that cannot give music.  The music can only come once you hear the notes flowing from your fingers.  This is what you seem to be describing.  I find this interesting because I have recently learned to also sight read from eye to finger, because it is something I should be able to do.  It comes across just like that: I barely have a sense that I am even playing music when I go through the exercise.  But of course I can go back the other way. 

This exercise that you described sounds very good, by the way.  It almost adds an element of playfulness to what would be an unpleasant task.

Did you see my PM on Guhl?

[danny elfboy]

So at this point you must go through the action of your eyes telling your fingers what to do, and when your fingers do it, you get to hear what it sounds like for the first time, is that correct?

Therefore in the beginning you are dependent on a mechanical process that cannot give music.  The music can only come once you hear the notes flowing from your fingers.  This is what you seem to be describing.

Yes, this is correct, exactly what I meant to say.

Did you see my PM on Guhl?

Read all you PMs, but didn't remember the reference to Guhl.
Can you remind it to me?

This exercise that you described sounds very good, by the way.  It almost adds an element of playfulness to what would be an unpleasant task.

I noticed it too. It's not just a matter of mechanics but also the sounds, for some reason you get hyponotized by the sounds, like a young child would and get totally immersed in what you're doing.

I have an explanation for this. During meditation people chant mantras.
Mantras words like mind anchors and brooms. They remove any other thoughts and
anchor you to the present moment in a way that generate the awareness typical of meditation. The exercise seems to have the same effect.

[keypeg]

I guess I never left childhood.  This mantra-like thing is part of my playing and practicing.  It didn't get spoiled.  Now I need the nitty gritty stuff but won't lose the first.  The PM is no this site, not the other, and I sent it today.

[danny elfboy]

I guess I never left childhood. 

There's no reason to leave childhood.
Childhood is a misnomer for a phase of our life when we're (more or less)
complete, unspoiled, instinctive, receptive, self-confident, open-minded.
There's no reason to let culture, orthodoxism, comformism, status-quo,
social roles ruin all of this, brainwash us into thinking in certain ways,
acting in certain ways, restraining our true-self, shut down our reception
and instinct; in other words to let a higher social power turns us into
zombied gears usefull for the mechanism of production, consumption but
deprived of our real humanity and our ability to interact freely and differently
according to circumstances we face in the free path of life. We're supposed
to be free spirits always and should never let anyone turn us into something
else. I'm a big tall young child and it's the thing I'm most proud of.

[keypeg]

Well, you know how I feel about that.  And at my age I can get away with being childish.  What I meant is that because I was untaught all my life, apparently I also did not lose some of these aspects of music.  I thought I was deprived, and in fact I was, but now I see many positive results.

[danny elfboy]

I thought I was deprived, and in fact I was, but now I see many positive results.

I'm not sure about being deprived. Maybe you have been deprived of things that would have spoiled you, ruined your intelligence and make you unable to learn new things.

[keypeg]

I'm not sure about being deprived. Maybe you have been deprived of things that would have spoiled you, ruined your intelligence and make you unable to learn new things.

It is possible.  However, at this point in my life it is the formal knowledge that I need, but I think taught by someone who has not lost the deeper child-thing.  When I get the formal things, the connection with music that came instinctively is not lost.  I will sometimes put it underground in order to get a backbone to what I am doing, and then the two merge to become something strong.  With this new backbone I can do things I could not before, I mesh a conscious understanding with gut feeling, and there is something "clean" about the playing which makes it more beautiful.  It is clean, but not sterile.

[kard]

CC Chang does mention a looping method. He calls it cycling. (I haven't had to use it yet)
His book really is a great eye opener. There is a lot of material that can be incorporated into what techinque you have already developed.
lol I practically swear by parallel sets these days...

From reading it seems as if there are a lot of approaches towards getting past the notes. I think it's all about developing your own strengths into an efficient, personal method.

[slobone]

And so you agree that whatever method (like the loop method) who retains the same efficiency in learning in this phase (or provide more efficiency) while cutting massively the time spent mastering this phase is welcome?

Are you sure you're not a lawyer? In fact I believe I said I play the same chunk over and over, just not in a loop. I fail to see how the minor difference between your method and mine could save me "massive" amounts of time...

[danny elfboy]

I fail to see how the minor difference between your method and mine could save me "massive" amounts of time...

Just out of curiosity try to loop the chunk without any second of rest.
Of course if there's a difference is not in the total time saved but in the characteristing of a loop. If you play in a loop there's no time to "reset" the motion and the effort, no time to think and no time to adapt to less efficient motions, the body and the mind are forced to integrate the "right way" immediately. It's a bit like playing a duet. I believe playing a duet helps a lot because when another person is going on with this part you have no time to think, to adjust, to adapt ... you must go on and on and on and between mistake there's a moment in which this "necessity" to enter in the groove give results faster.
The same is true for sight-reading. If you're forced to sight-read in accompainment or duet there's no time to overthinking and process or to adapt to less efficient reading or lower speed. At the beginning you're like lost but realizing the "groove" isn't going to stop or slow down for you, eventually you find a way to become a part of it and reading becomes fluent and automatic. The power of necessity in a way.

[slobone]

Actually I think I'm pretty much already doing it. I specifically observed myself today, and yes indeed, when I do repetitions I go directly from the end back to the beginning with maybe a metronome beat or two in between.

However, I want to caution people about chunks. If you do, say, measures 1-4 over and over until it's up to tempo, then do the same for 5-8, and you do that every day, you may notice that there's a disconnect between 4 and 5 when you play the whole thing. So I do something different every day. Tomorrow I may do 1-5, then 6-9, or whatever. As I learn the piece better the size of the chunks increases, and I do fewer in-between stops on the metronome. So I may start at 72, then jump to 96, then 120.

I'm sure all of you guys who always practice up to tempo with full dynamics and everything are rolling your eyes right about now...

[keypeg]

When I work on a piece methodically, or if I am working on some specific aspect, the last thing I do is to play it through once with a modicum of spontaneity, allowing whatever I worked on to settle in as much as it can that day and note care exactly how perfect it is.  It won't gel until after sleep, but at least I didn't leave the piece in "disconnect mode".

[danny elfboy]

However, I want to caution people about chunks. If you do, say, measures 1-4 over and over until it's up to tempo, then do the same for 5-8, and you do that every day, you may notice that there's a disconnect between 4 and 5 when you play the whole thing. So I do something different every day. Tomorrow I may do 1-5, then 6-9, or whatever. As I learn the piece better the size of the chunks increases, and I do fewer in-between stops on the metronome. So I may start at 72, then jump to 96, then 120.

Even better, I have learned, is to practice phrases instead of chunks.
Phrasing is one of the biggest serious problems of advanced playing (piano and other instruments) and singing too. Correct phrasing makes a huge difference.

It's like the difference between:

"A cat, that I have seen yesterday, has been missing for days"
 
and

"A cat that I have seen, yesterday has; been missing for ... days"

If the loop is applied to phrases instead of chunk we get the advantage of actually having a disconnect between two phrases, a disconnect which is necessary for the musical flow.

[slobone]

I'll go along with that. But just don't always start and stop in the same place.

[jolly01]

I still think all of this is basically what Chang and Bernhard have been saying.  The way I put it together in my mind is:

hands separate:
all or as many of the notes of bar 1 as I can + the first note of bar 2 (overlap).
bar 2 plus the first note of bar 3.
so on.
combine these bars into the phrase.
combine the phrases into larger pieces up to completion.
loop or cycle any of these components as necessary depending on the difficulty of the material.
hands together:
dropping notes (or what my mind calls "adding notes one at a time") and work you way up similar to hands separate.
All the while, from step 1, trying to make this sound like music (tone, rhythm, etc)
In general this approach works for me.  Is it the best?  I don't know, but I have fun and I progress...

Regards
Brian

[slobone]

When I'm learning a piece, I don't try to make it sound musical -- I do that in Phase 2. But I know there are people who learn that way, and I once had a teacher who wanted me to do it. She said, "Right from the beginning, play with all the dynamics, phrasing, rhythm, pedalling -- but playing as slow as necessary."

I never succeeded in doing it that way, and I got very frustrated. I couldn't make my brain simultaneously keep track of all those aspects of a brand new piece at the same time.

And I had questions about whether it even works. Things just sound different at different speeds. A note that seems important at a slow tempo might not even be noticed when you go at a fast clip. How can you even know how you want to phrase something until you've played it enough times to know it well? Why lock in all the decisions at such an early point?

That said, I have noticed that "musicality" does tend to sneak in when I'm doing multiple repetitions. Gradually phrases begin to emerge, and so forth. But it seems to be almost an unconscious process. Maybe if I made it more conscious I could expedite the process...

[nia_kurniati]

Isn't this the "repeated note groups" that CC Chang and Bernhard always spoke about?  It works for me...I might have misinterpreted though...
Brian

I want to know about this loop method on piano,  Can you explain it more please, thank u before.

[danny elfboy]

I want to know about this loop method on piano,  Can you explain it more please, thank u before.

I have asked a young piano student, who usually struggle so much to learn the notes and (phase 1) that after 3-4 weeks he is still stuck in the same mistakes, forgotten notes and such, to learn a piece he has never seen in his life using the loop method and to record the his session. I predict he will learn the notes in a moment. I will post the recording of his looping session when I got the recording and that will make thing clearer (and I hope he will indeed learn the piece faster, will see)

I have given him precise instruction:

1) First use the method hand separate
2) Recognize the parts that are technically harder or harder to memorize and read
3) Keep looping a part till you can feel it has been ingrained in your fingers and your sense of rhythm. Sometimes this means looping just twice, sometimes it means looping 500 times. Just follow your instinct, will fingers will tell you when you have got it.
4) Once you have looped enough parts to have a whole phrase start looping by phrases
5) Once you have both hands in control use the looping with both hands respencting the same rules

 

[nia_kurniati]

Thank u, danny. I will wait this looping lesson. Is it means that I loop difficult part until I got the rythem and others, and then when I got back this difficult part would be easier?
I agree and usually do hand separete per phrase and then do it both hands still per phrase and then go to the next phrase. thank u.

[danny elfboy]

Here is the recording as promised.
Again the student had never seen or heard the piece before and the first phase of learning a piece (notes and patterns) as always been a problem, while once he has the piece well outlined in his mind he has no problem with musicality, interpretation and dynamics.
The rule again is that each loop must go on till is feels ingrained in the fingers and the body rhythm.



Loop method session

[Bob]

You're doing just one hand measure by measure?  Then two measures together?

I don't know if I would do snippets that short.

Hmm....  I'm just wondering if the piece is too hard if the student is going measure by measure like that.  You lose the sense of phrase.  I was thinking this was talking about going around phrase by phrase.

You do know you're adding an extra beat, making the 3/4 4/4 sometimes?

I'm just thinking out loud.  Or in type.  I would think that type of practicing is engraining the notes into the hand pretty well though.

[danny elfboy]

You're doing just one hand measure by measure?  Then two measures together?

I don't know if I would do snippets that short.

I have said him that the rule is that you try snippets that seems to make sense or looks like they would create problems of accuracy and reading and if you can "feel them ingrained in the fingers and the rhythm" you leave them alone, if not you loop them until you feel them ingrained. This means sometimes doing very little snippets, sometimes bigger ones, sometimes combining more snippets to make phrases and sometimes skipping the loop. This is ideal in my opinion because you don't make an arbitrary rule to loop X or loop Z, but let your ear, fingers and internal rhythm guide you in what needs to be worked on. That also why you don't get bored with this method.
Everyone listening to this session would think it must be dreadfully boring, but the point is that as long as you're feeling the need to loop, you have not ingrained that snippets, and as long as you don't have ingrained it, working with it is challenging your skill and involving you in the whole work hence is not boring. Only practicing what you can do easily is boring.

It's the same with sport. If you lift a light weight for 20 times and each time feels too easy, you get bored to death. If you lift an heavy challenging weight for 10 times you actually feel yourself involved and challenged and have no time to feel bored.

Hmm....  I'm just wondering if the piece is too hard if the student is going measure by measure like that.  You lose the sense of phrase.  I was thinking this was talking about going around phrase by phrase.

There must always be a focus on phrases, but if a phrase is too much you can do snippets of the phrase, remembering to rebuild the phrase from the snippets and practice the phrase too.

The piece is deinitely too hard since this was an experiment to see if there was any advantage using this method. In the specific this piece has double voices in the melody which is something he had never encountered before. The student is usually very slow at getting the piece structure under his fingers (before any "real" work on the musicality itself can become the focus) and I was trying to say whether the method applied to an harder than usual piece, never seen before would have made no difference at all. So far I'm pleased.
Even if it seems like not much, to reach the level he reached in this sessions he would have taken weeks normally. And this is just in one session. I can only imagine how fast he would improve with even just 20 minutes a day spent in this way.

You do know you're adding an extra beat, making the 3/4 4/4 sometimes?

Shame on him I told him to count not to lose the rhythm (he has rhythm problems). But at the end of the recording I can see he solved most of his problems with tempo which would have taken weeks on its own.

I would think that type of practicing is engraining the notes into the hand pretty well though.

All in all that was a positive experiment. Maybe some more focus is needed, which I guess would come naturally from getting used to this method (this was the first time) I will probably ask for the recording of another session, to keep analyzing the method efficacy.

[slobone]

Shame on him I told him to count not to lose the rhythm (he has rhythm problems). But at the end of the recording I can see he solved most of his problems with tempo which would have taken weeks on its own.

I noticed that too. Maybe if he used a metronome? Once you've learned the notes well enough to keep a steady beat.

Also why is playing staccato so much? Did you tell him to do that? I think articulation is just as important as anything else when you're learning a new piece.

And PS danny elfboy, I now see that your method is very different from what I've been doing. I've been having trouble with a Chopin Mazurka -- not that it's especially difficult, but because I'm just kind of burnt out on doing so many repetitions. I think I'll try your method to see if it's more efficient.

[danny elfboy]

I noticed that too. Maybe if he used a metronome? Once you've learned the notes well enough to keep a steady beat.

Also why is playing staccato so much? Did you tell him to do that? I think articulation is just as important as anything else when you're learning a new piece.

I guess it is related to the tempo problem. He's not counting and going by the march sound so certain notes becomes longer and certain become shorter.

And PS danny elfboy, I now see that your method is very different from what I've been doing. I've been having trouble with a Chopin Mazurka -- not that it's especially difficult, but because I'm just kind of burnt out on doing so many repetitions. I think I'll try your method to see if it's more efficient.

Let us know and if you can post a recording of your session too.
I will keep experimenting with this "project" to see how it can be better tweaked and made for intuitive. I like the fact that this is based on letting the fingers "tell" you when you've ingrained the notes or not. This prevents getting bored and wasting times of already ingrained parts which is what many do. They keep repeating the beginning (already ingrained) they keep repeating more the part they can already play and keep avoiding the hard parts. The feedback I have got is that indeed there's no boredome and the whole thing is very instinctive so you feel more involved but also conscious.

[keypeg]

I could only listen to part because this computer has no sound and my son would only let me use his computer for a minute because he's busy.   

So I took the music to the piano and played with it.  It's not the kind of music that I'm used to playing so it was a new experience for me too.  Spontaneous run-down in the order that it occurred.  These are the explorations of an untrained amateur.

The fingering isn't something that comes automatically.  I found that I wanted a kind of choreography or dance.  I abandoned playing both notes very soon.

I notice mention of the sometimes 4/4 time the student used.  I found myself wanting to do that too.  It's not a matter of counting.  It's a matter of feeling the 3/4 beat.  The way the music is structured, you want to stress the second note instead of the first, and that leads you into wanting to stretching things into 4/4 timing. 

If you catch that, and play just the top onte as a melody you feel a tension of wanting to stress the second note but knowing you have to stress the first note. The thing that makes you want to stress the second note is the rhythm of the note values and  I think maybe where high and low notes are.  There is a push and pull.  If you heed what the meter wants, a kind of delicate tension sets in, like the supple muscles of a ballet dancer or a gymnast who holds back but doesn't.

At that point I felt the piece musically.  That musicality resided in the meter, the rhythm, and the held back tension that wants to climb into the crescendos.  Ther was an underlying rhythm and pulse coming into the stressed first note which was almost like a holding back in the final note, or flowing or drifting into the first note from the last.

I found that when I had that rhythm, flow, or musicality, the fingers flowed.  If that was not felt, it was very difficult to play.  I wouldn't have the same thing with a Bach chorale.

Going by what I experienced I would almost say that the 4/4 timing was a symptom of not feeling that meter, and that feeling the meter is crucial for being able to play the piece with ease.  It doesn't have to do with counting.  It has to do with feeling the flow of the rhythm.

At this point I felt like singing the melody and maybe I did briefly.  I found myself playing each voice separately in small chunks, but as phrases.

This is the point where I started looping.  There was another aspect that had a "musical" aspect, and that was the dance of the fingers (choreography) to get to their various positions.  When the feeling of that rhythm and song-like character was there, then the fingers moved with ease and "dance" is how it felt.  Some "moves" were repeated over and over, like a dance step.  The looping was transported by this feeling of graceful rhythm.

I found myself looping sometimes along two notes - a final eighth flowing into the next first note of the next measure, playing that over and over to get a certain flow: then with both sets of notes, then the rhythm coming into the left hand.

What really struck me was how the rhythm, meter, dynamic (tension?) .. musicality ... was a thing that transported the ability to play these notes smoothly.  When it sang itself it was easier than dry notes.

If I recall this student's playing, I don't feel any kind of rhythm or flow.  I also seem to remember that it's played relatively fast.  The music says Lento.  When you slow down, that graceful floating feeling reveals itself.  If you play it more quickly that goes into hiding.

I found that as I was learning the piece, it was the needs of the music as they revealed themselves as I played that made me want to loop here and there.  If I decided to loop or repeat this or that it would have not been as effective because a certain internal dialogue would not have been there, or not as much.

But the big thing that struck me was the idea of meter and rhythm.  It had some kind of role.

[danny elfboy]

I'm noticing that this format (i.e. experimental project + recorded session + comments) is generating a lot of great and useful ideas. It is helping to tweak this project of the looping and also to provide great insight about technique, musicality and piano.

So I'm making this a long term project.
I will keep submitting recorded sessions of different players with different musical problems
I hope all of you will keep commenting and providing insight
This will allow this method to be tweaked for the best results (i.e. when to take musicality into account, how to count, tapping the piece first?, singing it?) while also generate a lot of material of practicing piano, techniques, tricks and ideas.

[danny elfboy]

I notice mention of the sometimes 4/4 time the student used.  I found myself wanting to do that too.  It's not a matter of counting.  It's a matter of feeling the 3/4 beat.  The way the music is structured, you want to stress the second note instead of the first, and that leads you into wanting to stretching things into 4/4 timing. 

If you catch that, and play just the top onte as a melody you feel a tension of wanting to stress the second note but knowing you have to stress the first note. The thing that makes you want to stress the second note is the rhythm of the note values and  I think maybe where high and low notes are.  There is a push and pull.  If you heed what the meter wants, a kind of delicate tension sets in, like the supple muscles of a ballet dancer or a gymnast who holds back but doesn't.

This is a very good analysis.
Yes the piece is a peculiar 3/4 in that there's no natural emphasis in the first note and it feels like a 4/4. I think preliminary work of tapping the rhythm might help to overcome this problem with this and other pieces. So tapping the rhythm has to become the first phase of the loop method.

This is the point where I started looping.  There was another aspect that had a "musical" aspect, and that was the dance of the fingers (choreography) to get to their various positions.  When the feeling of that rhythm and song-like character was there, then the fingers moved with ease and "dance" is how it felt.  Some "moves" were repeated over and over, like a dance step.  The looping was transported by this feeling of graceful rhythm.

I found myself looping sometimes along two notes - a final eighth flowing into the next first note of the next measure, playing that over and over to get a certain flow: then with both sets of notes, then the rhythm coming into the left hand.

Indeed, in a way I forgot this as I explained the experimental method to the student.
The very idea of the loop is to get into a circular motion rhythm i.e. a dance ... the thesis and the arsis of the feet. It's like a merry-go-round where each cycle occurs at the same time but within a certain structural rhythmic discourse.

So clearly if you don't get the rhythm in the first place, you can't get the loop; or actually you can get the loop but its based on faulty perspective of the rhythm hence the musicality is lost.

Indeed the looping doesn't have to be mechanical not auto-pilot.
It has to be consciously trasported by the rhythm, hence the rhythm and understanding the rhythm must comes first; the rhythm will guide the loop; and the fingers will guide you through what needs to become a loop and for how many cycles.

I found that as I was learning the piece, it was the needs of the music as they revealed themselves as I played that made me want to loop here and there.  If I decided to loop or repeat this or that it would have not been as effective because a certain internal dialogue would not have been there, or not as much.

Yeah, this is very important.
The important aspect is that we're not only trying to eliminate the common practicing method of trying to play first time the piece badly and just repeating the same beginning over and over, session by session with the piece sounding worse and worse as it progresses toward the end, we're also trying to eliminate the need for a highly intellectual method based on fixed number and non-individualized arbitrary rules.

The loop method instead allows the fingers to get into the loop.
What this mean is that they will loop for as long as they feel necessary.
This will create a personal map of practicing where the fingers won't loop (at least without boredome and sloppiness) what doesn't need to be practiced and they will instead be lost pleasantly in the loop when something do need to be practiced.

[keypeg]

Can the loop method be more spontaneous and less "methody", I wonder?  Like this tapping out the rhythm.  This is a rhythm that wants to dance itself, and sing.  I'm coming at this relatively untrained so I'm your antithesis-guinea pig.  Even the tempo thing was less analysis than a feeling transmitted straight from the music. 

I found myself going off on tangents.  Sometimes when I let go and tried to get the fingers to dance to the right fingering, or catch the feeling of the music (or rather let it in) I was improvising parallel melodies, similar motions, just dancing and playing with it until it flowed, and then went back to the correct melody.  It was a joyful thing.