How big are your hands??

[edouard]

Hello!
I just wanted to throw in a couple of questions which may be controversial:

(A) what do people think of exercises to 'stretch' the handspan to its 'full' span? Could you give examples of some that may have worked for you? or examples of things not to do?

(B) same question but re flexibility of the thumb joint.

(C) do you think that one should specialize in a particular repertoire according to the required handspan. ie do you think a person with a big hand should play more rachmaninov and prokofiev than scarlatti or mozart? And should one find a teacher that has similar hands to one's own so that he/she can see things 'from your perspective'?

(D) how many extra pieces could we all have learned if we hadnt spent so much time surfing the internet?

cheers,
edouard  

[janice]

I can definitely answer your last question (D).  And the answer is 'ALOT'!!  LOL  I'm soooo addicted to this puter!!  LOL  I'm a "social butterfly", so I am always chatting over instant messenger--LOL

[bernhard]

(A)      Flexibility and strength go hand in hand: the stronger a muscle the more potential for flexibility without injury. In general one does not need amazing hand flexibility to play the piano. Unless your hands are diminute (e.g. Alicia de la Rocha) normal hand flexibility should be OK. If you do decide to increase your hand flexibility, make sure to build its strength before starting a stretch program. Also these things (both flexibility and strength) are best done away from the piano. Great exercises to develop hand strength are cycling and juggling clubs (balls will do it to a certain extent, but juggling clubs will really give a workout to wrists, forearms, fingers, etc.), climbing walls (the ones alpinists use for training) and of course the martial arts. Stretching exercises for fingers, hands and wrists are part of yoga, aikido and some routines are sometimes described in piano technique books. Just make sure you proceed slowly and that you are stretching the muscles and not the tendons (once you damage your tendons from over stretching or stretching too far too fast that’s pretty much it). General principles of stretching will apply (a good reference is Thomas Kursz – Science of sports training). And of course never use apparatus for stretching (remember Schumann!)

(B)      Same as A.

(C)      This is an interesting question. I tend to think that too large hands are more of a problem than too small hands. Alicia de la Rocha played the whole repertory and she could barely reach an octave (after a lot of stretching exercises recommended by her teacher). Thick fingers are the worst. I have a student whose fingers are so thick they do not fit in between the black keys, and if they do they get stuck there! Fortunately the piano repertory is so vast that it should not be a problem to find pieces adequate for any hand span. And most experienced teachers are well able to give advice across a wide range of hand spans. Think of a sports coach: he will be able to advise and bring the best out of a wide range of athletes with diverse biotypes, even though he himself may have a beer belly , be unfit and unable to perform any of the physical feats he is instructing his athletes on. Indeed I would suggest that the best teachers would be the ones with the greatest challenging problems, since they would have had to work out alternative ways of doing things that do not come naturally to them.

(D)      Actually I doubt that one would learn many more pieces. Learning is done by the unconscious. After a concentrated effort at practising/learning a piece the unconscious needs time to digest and integrate what it was exposed to during practice time. So surfing (or watching TV, or going for a walk, or sleeping , etc.) may actually provide such an opportunity. It may well be the case that if you used the time you spent surfing (or any other similar activity) practising you would find that you learned far less pieces. But let us not speculate. Let us experiment. Spend a week surfing as usual and one week using the surfing time to practice. Compare your achievements at the end of both weeks. Tell us the results.

Best wishes,
Bernhard

[Shagdac]

a) I personally have never found it necessary to do additional exercises to stretch hands/ thumb, etc. However if you choose to do so I agree with Bernhard.

b) Same as a, by the way I do have an older friend with arthritis in the joints of her hands, which at times have limited her flexability. She has stated to me time and again how much just normal practicing and playing has helped keep her joints limber. Not necessarily any "special" exercises, but just her regular playing.

c) I have pretty small hands (I think) however only recall 1 piece where this has precented a problem (heroic pol), but if it's only 1 or 2 chords, I don't let that stand in the way. I love Rach, and don't find that a problem, so I don't think one has to limit their repertroire due to hand size, there just may be a select piece or two that you have to come up with an alternative in several places. I've never had anyone notice.

d) I never knew that learning was done by the "unconscious" mind. I'm curious Bernhard....what factor does the TIME spent practicing play into this. If learning is done afterwards....why would it matter if we practice something thru 1 time or 100? Is it simply because the longer we practice the more the importance is stressed in our minds? I hope I'm wording my question correctly, even I'm confused!

I don't think staying off the computer would change the time spent practicing that much. I hate to admit it, but most of my time on this forum is at work! I work the overnight 13 hour shifts, which gives me plenty of time to work on my music, practice at my desk, listen to recordings, read this forum, study my scores, etc. AFTER my work is done of course. So very rarely do I get on the computer from my home!

Interesting question Edouard!

S

[bernhard]

d) I never knew that learning was done by the "unconscious" mind. I'm curious Bernhard....what factor does the TIME spent practicing play into this. If learning is done afterwards....why would it matter if we practice something thru 1 time or 100? Is it simply because the longer we practice the more the importance is stressed in our minds? I hope I'm wording my question correctly, even I'm confused!

These days, if you are not confused it is a sure sign you are not thinking clearly!

Your question holds the key to everything.

In piano playing you must repeat something several hundred times. But you must also alternate repetition with time for the unconscious to work it out. This means ultimately a night’s sleep. It is when you start dreaming with your piece that you know you are starting to learn it. Dreaming is a consequence of this integrative work of the unconscious.

This has the following awesome practical consequence: In order to learn anything in the most efficient way, work on it with full concentration for a period of time (15 – 20 minutes is more then enough) and then forget about it until the next day. The next day repeat the same procedure for the same amount of time and again forget it until the next day. Repeat this as many days as necessary to be able to play the passage in question is such a way that you cannot get it wrong even if you try. I assure you that you will get to this point in a maximum of seven days, usually much less. This demands incredible discipline and consistency. But it works like magic.

Now consider this extreme example. You decide to practise 5 hours every day. These five hours can be divided in  12 practise sessions of 20 minutes each plus 5 minutes break in between each practice session.

The worst thing you can do is this: “Today I am going to practise bars 12- 24 of piece x.”. Then you do that in each of the 12 practice sessions. For 5 hours solid. It does not work. It is a waste of time.

The brilliant thing you can do is to use each of these 12 practice sessions to practise something completely different in each.

You see, it does not matter if you work on a passage for 20 minutes or for five hours. Whatever you accomplished in 20 minutes is all you are going to accomplish that day. You need a night’s sleep in between. It is far better to work twelve days for 20 minutes everyday in a passage than to work on that passage for 12 consecutive sessions in a day. (You do not need to believe me. Just try it out!). Instead use the other eleven daily sessions to learn eleven new things. At the end of a week you will be amazed at the fantastic amount that you have learned.

But you must have a plan. You must make sure that everything that you are practising in these sessions add up to something at the end of a week. This is the simple secret of all those pianists who were able to learn massive repertories in no time at all.

This also means that you do not need to practise 10 –12 hours a day. 20 minutes is plenty. But the amount you will be able to learn in 20 minutes will be 1/12 of what you could learn in 5 hours. Do you understand what I am getting at? Do not think in terms of hours of practise per day, but in terms of number of 20 minute sessions per day and stick to whatever you are doing for seven days (or until you master it - usually less than seven days).

I wish someone had told this to me in my teenager years (then again, would I have listened?). So I tell it now to all of you. Enjoy and profit from it!  

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[Shagdac]

This is so incredible Bernhard...you probably won't believe this, but I actually DO many times start to dream about a particular piece I was working on, and that IS usually about the time it all seems to come together. I've always said, when I dream it, I know I've got it! I didn't think anyone else had the same experience though. Also, I have always wondered about why I always play better..."the next day" after I practice. I have in the past spent hours on the same measures and seen little progress, but the next day as soon as I start with the same measures, I can see improvement on whatever I practiced the day before. The only part of your statement I have yet to try is the 15-20 minutes practicing each part. I have always spent more than  that amount of time on a piece, but am anxious to see if I can get away with that amount. I will definately try it for 7 days and let you know the results. Actually, I'm hoping this really works as I have more pieces than usual that I am working on at the same time, and would like to accomplish quite a bit on each of them.

As always, thank you so much for your helpful advice. I'll let you know how it works out!

S

[donjuan]

yeah, that really is great advice from a great man.  I think ill try that too!!
donjuan

[rlefebvr]

You mean we have to practise more than 15 minutes a day.

No wonder I am not getting anywhere.

[newsgroupeuan]

(A) same as Bernhard
(B) Same as A
(C)I agree with Berhard here
(D) See C

[Magnus]

Bernhard, thank you. You really teached me something there.  

Greetings

[jr11]

Good discussion! Regarding part A, I have a habit of stretching each finger, hyper-extending it by pushing back on the finger tip and holding at the point of resistance. I do this almost unconciously several times daily. It's a good method to loosen the fingers before a performance, if it is not practical to warm up on a keyboard.

I am interested in Bernhard's comments that climbing is good for piano players. I stopped my occasional visits to the rock gym because I thought it was bad for your hands! Perhaps I have an excuse to spend more time there now  

[bernhard]

The only part of your statement I have yet to try is the 15-20 minutes practicing each part. I have always spent more than  that amount of time on a piece, but am anxious to see if I can get away with that amount. I will definately try it for 7 days and let you know the results. Actually, I'm hoping this really works as I have more pieces than usual that I am working on at the same time, and would like to accomplish quite a bit on each of them.

As always, thank you so much for your helpful advice. I'll let you know how it works out!

S

You are welcome!

Now let me say a few more words about 15 - 20 minutes, so that it is perfectly clear what I mean.

The important aspect  is that you should have a passage perfect at the end of 15 – 20 minutes.

If it is taking more than that, then the passage you chose to work on is too big.

Cut it in half.

Most people select bits that are bigger than they can chew. This leads to practising for hours on end without visible improvement, which leads to fatigue, discouragement and actually burn out in relation to the passage/piece in question.

Here is another approach to be combined with the 15-20 minutes one. I probably already said that in one of the threads, but I cannot remember where.

It takes 7 repetitions for the human brain to learn anything. So, choose a passage and repeat it seven times. If after seven times you have not learnt it, it is because it is too large a chunk of information.

So instead of doing what everyone who does not know this piece of information do, namely keep repeating endlessly the passage hundreds of times, do the clever thing and make the passage smaller.

Try again seven times. If you still have not got it, make it smaller again. Certain passages will require that you par it down to only two notes. But I assure you that anyone can learn two notes after repeating them seven times. Then you go to the next bit (make sure you overlap to avoid stuttering on the links later on).

So you must organise your 15 –20 minutes in seven time repetition blocks that add up to the passage you have to master in that session. Or make the passage smaller so that it will fit in the 15 – 20 minute session.

In the beginning this will be sort of overwhelming, but as you keep at it, very soon you will be able to look at a score and immediately know how long it will take you to learn it. You will know exactly how to break it down and the size of passage you can manage.

I cannot tell you much more than that because ultimately these are very personal things, you will have to discover how it works for you by experience.

Best of luck, and yes, do tell us what happened!

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

I am interested in Bernhard's comments that climbing is good for piano players. I stopped my occasional visits to the rock gym because I thought it was bad for your hands! Perhaps I have an excuse to spend more time there now  

Yes, it is excellent.

However most if not all exercises that strengthen the hands/fingers do so only one way, namely, "closing" the hand (cycling, climbing, juggling, towel drying, etc.). there are no common exercises for the antagonist set of muscles: the ones that make you open your fingers to the maximum.

One way to do this is to use a wide elastic band around the fingers and open them against the resistance of the elsatic band.  You can also try carrying light clay pots by inserting your hands on the jar mouth and opening your fingers to carry them. I believe this to be quite important if one is doing stretches that bring the fingers backwards, since the stronger the muscle, the more you can stretch without injury.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[faulty_damper]

I know that they train horses for 15 minutes at a time.  Any more than that will not get much results.  But what's strange is that, if I recall correctly from my psychology professor, that 15 minutes is done once a week!

Psychology works.  The 15-20 minutes of actual doing=learning is from science.  So why are school classes 50 or more minutes long?  I can't remember anything in college, especially classes that meet once a week for 3 units of credit (50x3=2 hours 30 minutes).  I hate those!

But I'm going to apply the 20 minute rule to school and hopefully be a better student.  It works for the piano.

[bernhard]

Psychology works.  The 15-20 minutes of actual doing=learning is from science.  So why are school classes 50 or more minutes long?  I can't remember anything in college, especially classes that meet once a week for 3 units of credit (50x3=2 hours 30 minutes).  I hate those!

Didn’t you know?

The purpose of schools (and any institutionalised system of teaching) is not to teach. For the little children the purpose of school is to have a place where parents can leave their children in relative safety so that they can go of to work and be slave to keep the economic machine running. You see, the state cannot tolerate anymore that someone (used to be the woman) stays at home taking care of the children and giving them personal education. No, everyone must work! So all those things that parents used to do with their children is now done by strangers (finger painting, baking cookies, and all those things that they do at school so that learning is fun). The child goes to school at 8 am, stays there until 3:30 pm, then goes to after school club, art class, piano lesson, oboe lesson, violin lesson, karate kids club, and get home at 6:00 pm, has dinner and bed. So children do not really make bonds with their parents anymore.

You see, a strong state must have a weak family. A strong family is a threat to the state. Why do you think the Mafia is organised on “family” principles?

Then as you grow up, the purpose of school is to teach you to not rock the boat. Oh, yes, you will learn to write essays and to argue your way about anything, specially things you know nothing about. They will give you diplomas and certificates and credentials. But do they give you skills? The truth is, to keep the machine working you do not need skills. You are going to get a job that any moron can do. They are going to give you a credit card with a huge limit so that you get into debt and cannot leave the job any moron can do – but for which you need the highest credentials: it shows you spend time at school and have been well trained to be a slave.

I am surprised you are surprised that they do not use what we know from learning psychology at school. But actually they do. They know exactly what they are doing. Look at the results: it is what they aimed for from the beginning.

Here is a story.

An airplane carrying several congressmen fell down in some farm. The authorities eventually tracked it down and asked the farmer what had happened. The farmer replied: “Oh, yes, an airplane full of politicians fell in the fields. I buried them all”

The investigators asked: “Were they all dead? Are you sure?”
The farmer laughed: “Oh, some of them kept shouting they were alive as I threw earth on the grave, but you know, these politicians are all a bunch of liars, so I was not about to believe anything they said.”

Best wishes,
Bernhard

[faulty_damper]

Oh course I knew.  But to make the system work, I must believe that what I'm doing is wrong because if I fail, it's not the state's fault but my own.    The system works.   The status quo is maintained.  Ah, the status quo.  

The status quo.  I can't help but to giggle like a little school girl.  I mean, I used to be one.

[amanfang]

If I have smaller hands - can reach only an octave - is it ok to leave out a few notes here or there in passages with large chords, or is it better to break up the chord?  There are pieces with large chords, perhaps 10ths, that I cannot reach and play solidly, but I would still love to play them, even for recitals at school.  Would this also disqualify from competitions?

[Shagdac]

Sevan626....I don't know if this will help, my hands are not large, and although I really don't find too many problems with this (in fact sometimes I think it is better!), what I have used to "get by" at times..and again I can only remember probably 1-3 times this was ever an issue, was to play the bottom note of the chord for the right hand, with my thumb of the left hand (if possible). I know this won't always work, but if your hands are close enough together to do this, it works.

I don't think this should limit your playing in recitals or programs at school, but I would think that in competitions, the jury members WILL know if a note isn't played. In fact, my teacher can sit behind me, and tell me after I finish a piece...."you missed the G# in the second measure". And he's always right. I know it when I do it, and think he didn't hear, but he always does! Nothing gets past that man! And I would think nothing gets past the jury as well, and there's more of them!

But depending on the competition, I would definately check with your teacher, and see what they say, and also what suggestions they have.

Good luck
S

[willcowskitz]

On unconscious learning:
There was this bit in a piece I was practicing that I couldn't get together for some reason, I played it clumsily. One night I was dreaming and I became aware of it and remembered a "technique" I had come up with previous night: if you're dreaming and you want to bring a person or an object into the dream, you must'nt try forcefully picture it in front of you, but be aware of the fact that the environment is actually a library of your thoughts and things that keep your mind busy - so if you come to think of something, it certainly exists in this library. So the trick was not to "create" anything in the manner you do in what we call reality (or waking state here), but to go look for whatever you're thinking about. After one of those corners in the dream environment, you're gonna find just what you were looking for. Of course its there, in your mind, somewhere. So I was dreaming and wanted to play piano. I started walking and looking behind corners and there it was, a piano. I sat down and started playing, and I played through this part I had had problems with, and I played through it again and my hands became one with the note progression. Next day when I went to play the piano, I just played through the part with success. Its amazing and ironic how unconscious we are of the biggest events actually taking place in our minds.

And its oh so enlightening to find that there actually are people out there who ARE conscious of what the modern society wants an individual's role to be. Lits a little candle in the dystopic landscapes of my future visions.

[newsgroupeuan]

I get my ideas when I awake from a dream

aren't we going off on a tangent?

[pies]

­

[Locky]

Just a reply to comment "D",

 I couldn't be learning any more pieces because I don't have a piano at the moment. I'm sure that there are other more productive activities we could be doing. Though this forum does provide lots of helpful, productive advice.

[arigatuso]

Hi everyone.

I do not have very large hands, but my 4th finger, is very "fleshy". Is there any special nail cut? Does it help very short nails?

Is there any strategies for thick fingers? Or some exercises/activities that makes your finger more thin?

...Exercises like climbing, weightlifting, aren´t they dangerous because the risk of making your hands even thicker?

Thanks,
Ale

[Shagdac]

Kind of ironic, after replying almost a week ago that I hardly ever found too small of hands to be a problem, that I am now faced with that exact dilemma. I have 2 different chords (both with the left hand) one is A-C-F-C, all sharp, and the other is B-F-G-D all sharp, except G, which is a double sharp (A). Usually I can reach the top note of the bottom chord with the thumb of my right hand, and haven't had a problem, but I cannot with this piece on the first one, the 2nd one I am able.

I've tried playing it leaving out the top note of the chord as well as only the bottom, but both are very detectable if left out......not sure what I am going to do, any suggestions?

thanks,
S

[nerd]

I can think of two solutions (which you probably knew already):
- Play the top note of the chord with the right hand (not always possible of course)
- Break the chord in some way (eg. 1+3, arpeggio...)

Or take a friend with you and tell him/her to play the notes you don't reach

Anyway, if someone has more stretching techniques, please tell them . I would especially need stretching between 1-4 (I think). Problems with the following pieces (at least):
1. Liszt: Ballade nr.2
In right hand (bars 55-56) there are:
- A-F-C (no problem)
- Bb-F-C (goes ok)
- Bb-Eb-C (difficulties reaching Eb)
About the same chords occur in 20-21, too, but a half step higher. Those are somewhat easier.

2. Rachmaninoff: Piano concerto no.2
Well, the left hand chords right in the beginning. They become gradually harder and I'm usually not able to play the F-C-Eb-Ab without playing some extra notes (it becomes F-G-C-Eb-Ab and maybe something more). The next one then (F-C-Eb-A) is no problem (because I don't have to play "inside" the keys).

Edit: I seem to love parentheses

[bernhard]

Hi everyone.

I do not have very large hands, but my 4th finger, is very "fleshy". Is there any special nail cut? Does it help very short nails?

Is there any strategies for thick fingers? Or some exercises/activities that makes your finger more thin?

...Exercises like climbing, weightlifting, aren´t they dangerous because the risk of making your hands even thicker?

Thanks,
Ale

Have you tried a pencil sharpener?

Yes thick fingers are the worst. Do you get them stuck in between the black keys?  

This will seem crazy, but it is true. How overweight are you? If loose a lot of weight, your fingers will also get thinner (unfortunately it is not possible to loose weight locally, so you have to loose weight in general, which means aerobic and anaerobic exercise and food intake control). Have you ever seen people who have been married for a long a time and they cannot get the wedding ring of their fingers anymore? It is the reverse process. As they grew old, they grew fat, and the fingers thickened. If they loose weight to the point of reaching the weight they had when they first got married, they usually can get the rings off again. Because there are no muscles in the fingers (just tendons), if your fingers are really thick, chances are that it is mostly fat.

...Exercises like climbing, weightlifting, aren´t they dangerous because the risk of making your hands even thicker?

They may make your hands caloused, and if you do actual climbing (I was referring to indoors climbing where the stones you hang to are reasonably smooth) with sharp rocks, your fingers may loose sensibility. However they are not dangerous (unless you fall or drop the wieghts on your foot )

I do not have much experience on weight lifting though so I am talking about the things I mentioned – rather than weight lifting. The problem is that all these activities only exercise “closing” your fingers, not opening them. So you must make sure that you complement any strengthening program with stretching and strengthening in the opposite direction.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

Kind of ironic, after replying almost a week ago that I hardly ever found too small of hands to be a problem, that I am now faced with that exact dilemma. I have 2 different chords (both with the left hand) one is A-C-F-C, all sharp, and the other is B-F-G-D all sharp, except G, which is a double sharp (A). Usually I can reach the top note of the bottom chord with the thumb of my right hand, and haven't had a problem, but I cannot with this piece on the first one, the 2nd one I am able.

I've tried playing it leaving out the top note of the chord as well as only the bottom, but both are very detectable if left out......not sure what I am going to do, any suggestions?

thanks,
S

Try what Nerd says as well.

You can always roll the chords. If you don’t want to do that, what about the right hand? Is it far away? Could you share the chords between hands?

If this does not help and you have to play the chords with your left hand, you may try this (but do not repeat it too much – there is a lot of stress and discomfort lurking there – refresh your hand often when doing this):

1.      The A#-C#-F#-C# chord is not too bad, since it is all on black notes. Can you stretch  your thumb and little finger so that they fall onto a straight line from tip of thumb to tip of little finger? If you can do that, you will probably be able to reach for the whole chord (unless your hands are exceptionally small, in which case there is no solution). If you cannot, then start a slow and regular program of hand stretching (go slow! a bit everyday), and think of widening your hand rather than pulling your fingers back (does that make sense? Easy to show, difficult to describe).

2.      The B#- F# - Gx – D# is far worse because of the alternation of white/black keys. Simple stretch will not do here. The solution (it may not work for you though) exists, but I do not know how to write about it. See if this helps. Put your hand (palm down) on a table top, with fingers separated (not stretched and not tight), tips of the fingers touching the table, palm off the table. Now observe the distance between fingers 2 and 3. It is not very big, is it? Actually pull them apart and how far you can get them to go. Again not very far, right? Ok. Now comes the trick movement to describe. Lift your wrist slowly and as you do so, rotate the hand towards the little finger. Keep fingers 4 and 5 glued to the table, but let fingers 1 – 2 – 3 be slightly moved by this movement so that they turn sideways. You will now be able to create quite a large distance between fingers 2 and 3 because finger 2 is moving within the first knuckle widest range of motion. Your hand will look all contorted an twisted, but you will have created quite a lot of space and your reach will be that much increased. Now go to the piano and experiment with this movement on that specific chord. See how much you need to turn to allow 2 – 3 distance to accommodate 1 – 5 stretch. You see, finger 2 will be able to bend in this position, and this will allow the little finger extra reach. You also have to angle your hand so that the little finger is more towards the black key area, and the thumb is less into the black key area. Again this will feel uncomfortable, so do not practise it for hours on end.

I hope this helps,
Best wishes,

[Shagdac]

Thanks Nerd, I definately think the solution is to take a friend along to hit the note for me! Hahaha
I wish I could hit it with my thumb of right hand but it is 2 octaves above the left hand! Your suggestion of 1+3 is not bad, and I assume that would be better than leaving a note out, maybe if done fast enough no one would notice??? ::)yeah right! Thanks.

Bernhard..It took several tries but I know exactly what you are referring to as far as the second chord by slightly rotating my hand and then I would actually be playing F# with the right "side" of my 3rd finger on left hand...is that right?

This seems to be what will work best however it takes a bit of time to get my hand into that position and it is really really a stretch, when I do actually do it, it is barely....will this become more natural and will I be able to do this chord quickly with practice? Also, I have noticed when my hand is in the somewhat "rotated"
position so that I can easily reach with my 1st, 2nd and 3rd fingers...it shortens the actual span between my 1st and 5th fingers. (Don't know if I am explaining it right).

If I have my palm flat (left hand) and fingers spread, the distance between my 1st and 5th fingers is (just) enough to reach this(but only the 1st and 4th notes of chord)...as I slowly rotate to place fingers so they reach the top 3 notes of the chord just enough to place my fingers 2 and 3 on the Gx and F#, my 5th finger comes up of the keyboard and goes somewhat back towards my palm. To play the bottom and top note of the chord my hand has to be almost out at the edge of the keys, if I move it back further, to fit the 2nd and 3rd fingers in, my 5th finger has trouble making it over the black key (C#) to hit the B#.

I really appreciate all your help, and am hoping that by continuing to practice this it will come more quickly. I can't believe I actually made it thru that Cadenza (which I thought would kill me), and then get to the end of that only to reach a chord I can't even reach!!! :-/

Oh well, I'll get it one way or another. Thanks so much again guys.

S

[jennbo]

A) if your hands aren't so stiff then you shouldn't so much complications.  granted you can't reach all the notes etc, if your hands are flexible then it can stretch a lot
B)My thumbs are flexible and I don't see how you could have any problems with thumbs.  Unless they're really fat or you have arthritis (sp)
C)No, I can only reach a 7th, and 8th at the most, but I've played many Rachs, Brahms, Chopins, Beethovens, Prokofiev, etc.
And if your teacher is brilliant enough than (s)he shouldn't have a hard time seeing things from the student's perspective.  *Just get a Russian teacher*  Also avoid those damned self-taught teachers who have horrible techniques.  They suck.

[bernhard]

Bernhard..It took several tries but I know exactly what you are referring to as far as the second chord by slightly rotating my hand and then I would actually be playing F# with the right "side" of my 3rd finger on left hand...is that right?

Yes, it sounds like you have it pretty much sorted out.

As you practise it you will get more and more used to it, but I doubt if it will ever completely comfortable (as compared to a more natural position). However, as I imagine this is just one chord, it should not be too much of a strain to use such “contorted” position, as long as you go back to a natural position as soon as possible, this way “refreshing” the hand.

Good luck,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

 *Just get a Russian teacher*  Also avoid those damned self-taught teachers who have horrible techniques.  They suck.

Er...

So now it is matter of nationality, is it? And let us have a quick look at some self-taught teachers with horrible techniques you would have refused to learn from:

Chopin: Self-taught teacher with a terrible technique (According to Kalkbrenner, the most famous pianist/teacher of the day who offered to "correct" Chopin's technique if he would agree to a four year intensive course). He was Polish, not Russian.

Beethoven: Self-taught teacher with a technique that was frowned upon by traditionalists. Always breaking piano strings, this one. He was German.

J. S. Bach: Self-taught teacher much criticised for his inappropriate improvisations. He also shocked  traditional keyboardists of his time by using the thumb when playing (oh, horrors, of horrors! Any one knows you should only play with fingers 2345. Using the thumb sucks!). He was German.

Leschetizky: Probably the most famous piano teacher of all times. Guess what: yes, self - taught. And do you know something else? He was German...

Pulease...

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[Shagdac]

JSBACH was the first to play with his thumb? I didn't know they didn't use all 5 fingers before that! How interesting. Maybe I should stick to only playing pieces before the thumbs were used.....no more impossible chords to reach!!! Hahahaha

[amanfang]

Bach...  The great "emancipator of the thumb."  

[JK]

I don't know whether I'm right or not but wasn't the great Sviatoslav Richter basically self taught and his teacher claimed he could teach him nothing?

[nerd]

wasn't the great Sviatoslav Richter basically self taught and his teacher claimed he could teach him nothing?

That's how the story goes. The teacher was Heinrich Neuhaus. And to stay on topic somewhat, Richter had really huge hands (just like Rachmaninoff). Here's a quote from https://www.newcriterion.com/archive/16/oct97/coleman.htm:

He had monstrous hands. He could fit an octave between his index and little finger, while his full hand could easily encompass a twelfth, that is, an octave plus four notes.

[JK]

Wow! I can only just fit an octave between my thumb and little finger! lol!

[willcowskitz]

I can play an octave with 2 & 5 and 1 & 2 and an eleventh with 1 & 5 but a lot of Liszt is still a struggle for me on stretching.

[EthanT]

speaking of big hands... have you seen rachmaninoff's... HOLY!!! That thing is like the size of Shaq's head!

***Did you know Scriabins hand was actually small, and he could not reach some of the cords he wrote himself...REALLY!

[bernhard]

I don't know whether I'm right or not but wasn't the great Sviatoslav Richter basically self taught and his teacher claimed he could teach him nothing?

Yes, we would love this sort of story to be true, wouldn’t we?

However consider this:

1.      His father was a piano teacher and concert pianist.  

2.      His mother played the piano (she was originally one of her father’s students).

3.      His parents’ house was a meeting point for musicians.

Self taught? I doubt it.

This is like someone who decides to learn Japanese as a second language and is following a systematic course that involves, grammar, writing and reading and conversation as an adult, asking with amazement: “How can these Japanese children speak Japanese so well without academic training. Look at them: they are all self taught!”.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[mosis]

Bernhard, your idea of 15-20 min practice seems interesting, but I don't understand something.

You say that you'll be able to learn much more music than if you were to just repeat passages on end for hours. What about passages that cannot be learned after 7 tries in 20 minutes because you're still learning technique and it's not possibleo to learn it immediately?

With this predicament, you would be learning one particular passage (as short as it may be, let us say two notes for the sake of discussion) for a long, long time, and the progress would be almost worthless.

I can understand this method working for pieces that you have acquired the appropriate technique for and you just need to learn the notes and expression. For example, I am working on Bach's F# Min Prelude from the WTCI, and I have the correct technique to play this piece, but the fingering, notes, and hand placements require some work. I practiced this piece much more than 7 times and 20 minutes and I believe that I got a lot more accomplished than if I were to only play it the 7 time 20 min method.

The same is with Bach's Toccata in D minor. I know this piece, but I haven't practiced the Toccata lately (just the Fugue) and I needed to bring the notes back into my fingers, as I was losing finger independance. After 7 tries, I did learn the notes again, but they weren't as secure as I wanted them to be. I practiced perhaps 10 more times and the entire passage was secure and perfect once again. I do not believe I would have this same result if I only practiced it 7 times for 20 minutes.

With Chopin's Military Polonaise op 40 no 1, I'm having trouble with the fast triplet chords and ascending semiquaver chords, and once again, I tried the 7 time 20 minute method, and it did not work for me. Is it 7 times OR 20 minutes, or both? After 7 times, I definately could not play it (however, I could play two notes, that is, the first chord to the second, quite fine.) I could not link these two chords to the music BEFORE them (which I knew) and the music after (which I was struggling.) I believe that much more practice would allow me to do this. Alas, I had no time, and I believe that there is some flaw in my technique (or lack thereof) that is hampering me from playing the chords as they should be.

So you see, I'm not bashing the method in any way, but I would just like you to teach me more about, so that I may understand. In my experience, seven times and 20 minutes was not nearly enough to learn something, and practicing more than that allowed me to learn it.

However, perhaps this explains why I always have trouble mastering and memorizing songs. :/

[jennbo]

I think it's all a matter of how you practice.  
Also, no offense by the 7x 20 minutes really doesn't work.  I think it's all a matter of your motivation, your will [to drill down whatever], and slowing it down.

Also, I find that I can play a piece a lot better after a really good workout.  

For example- i didn't practice my op. 53 polonaise for a week and I have a concert next week.  After going to the gym for an hour and going to my lessons, my teacher said my playing was like "day and night" from the previous lesson.

So I guess it's really mental.  Getting that drive to work hard, [heheh considering i haven't practiced in a week i should be quiet] and personally i play like crap if I feel like crap.  Drilling down passages isn't hard as long as I practice it really slowly for about 20 times [SLOWLY not just for 7 minutes]
so yeah good luck.

my teacher makes her students do yoga/taichi stuff if they start sounding like crap.  So I guess lots of stretching helps as well.  (I dunno she's brilliant sometimes odd, makes you do retarded yoga movements. )

[bernhard]

I think it's all a matter of how you practice.  
Also, no offense by the 7x 20 minutes really doesn't work.  I think it's all a matter of your motivation, your will [to drill down whatever], and slowing it down.

None taken. But you should have said the following: “the  7x 20 minutes really doesn’t work for me”

And why not? Did you test it by picking up two pieces of similar difficulty and learning /practising one according to my suggestion and the other according to your own idea of practice? And at the end of the test period after comparing the results did you find that my suggestion did not work – or at least did not work as well as yours?

And if that is the case, are you sure you understood the instructions and follow them correctly?

If that is the case, then please share with us this alternative method so we can try it and put it to the test too.

Or are you saying it does not work out of intellectual argument? (you know, intellectuals are those guys who think oral sex means talking about sex the whole night… )

In any case, I am not in the business of evangelisation. If it works for you I am happy I was of help. If does not work for you discard it and do something else instead.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

Bernhard, your idea of 15-20 min practice seems interesting, but I don't understand something.

You say that you'll be able to learn much more music than if you were to just repeat passages on end for hours. What about passages that cannot be learned after 7 tries in 20 minutes because you're still learning technique and it's not possibleo to learn it immediately?

With this predicament, you would be learning one particular passage (as short as it may be, let us say two notes for the sake of discussion) for a long, long time, and the progress would be almost worthless.

I can understand this method working for pieces that you have acquired the appropriate technique for and you just need to learn the notes and expression. For example, I am working on Bach's F# Min Prelude from the WTCI, and I have the correct technique to play this piece, but the fingering, notes, and hand placements require some work. I practiced this piece much more than 7 times and 20 minutes and I believe that I got a lot more accomplished than if I were to only play it the 7 time 20 min method.

You are confusing several issues here, so I am not sure where to begin. (And I thought I was giving clear instructions!)

I.      There are three basic stages in learning/practising a new piece.

i.      The first stage is exploratory. You sight read through the piece to identify the difficult bits, the motifs, the voices, you do analysis, you listen to CDs of the piece, you break it all down in manageable chunks to practise. You also figure out for each chunk the best fingering for the sound you aim to produce, the most economical and efficient movements. You spend time trying different movements, and fingerings. You also plan how you are going to tackle the piece; how many passages, how long the passages are going to be, how you are going to join the passages. A good part of this stage is done away from the piano. The end result of this stage is to have a thorough knowledge of the piece (theoretically) and to have a working plan to master it in as little time as possible.

ii.      In the second stage, which is mostly technical, you have most of the parameters defined, and you go to the piano to teach your body (fingers, arms, etc.) to actually play the several passages in which you organised the learning/practising of your piece. The main aim here is to ingrain the correct movements fingerings in your subconscious, and to smooth the movements so that they become not only automatic but also efficient and economical (and as a consequence elegant) This is the stage where you work with separate hands in small bits, ten join hands, and use all sorts of practice tricks (practising with different rhythms, practise in chords, use repeated notes and repeated note groups, etc.). You will also develop hand memory at this stage. The end result of this stage is to have the piece learned as far as playing the correct notes at the correct time is concerned. You want to get to that magical moment where your fingers just know where to go, without you having to think about it.

iii.      Finally on the third stage, you will be dealing mostly with interpretation and performance issues. The piece is learned and memorised at this stage, but you still need to work things like phrasing and dynamics, rubato and liberties you may take with tempo and rhythm, bringing out (or not) melodic strands in different voices. If you know where you will be performing the piece, you may need to adjust your playing to the piano and to the acoustics of the hall. If you are playing with an orchestra you may need to comply with the conductor’s suggestions.

These three stages are not separate as the descriptions above may imply. One stage informs the other. It may well happen that in the second stage, when you actually start practising the piece on the piano, you find out that the fingerings and movements you decided on the first stage actually do not work. So you may have to go back and change them. Also, although the second stage is mostly technical, you should not leave interpretation completely out of it until you get to the third stage. So there is a great degree of interpenetrations and overlap on these three stages. They are not at all self contained.

II.      Having said that, the 15 – 20 minutes practice idea refer to the second stage. What is this idea? In fact it is not an idea. It is a principle . in fact two principles.

i.      The human brain learns by “chunks”, and then by clustering these chunks into larger chunks. Anything that can be learned by repetition will be learned after seven repetitions. If after seven repetitions you have not learned the “chunk”, it means that the chunk was to large for the brain to handle. You must break it down into smaller chunks. Let us say that you want to learn a poem with 200 verses. If you read the full 200 verses seven times, chances are that after seven times you will not have learned it. Most people who are not aware of what I am about to say, will just keep repeating the whole poem in the hope that by increasing the number of repeats they will eventually master it. Let us say that it takes 30 minutes to repeat aloud 200 verses. Repeating the poem seven times will take 3.5 hours, at the end of it you will not have learned it. So you repeat another seven times. You still will not have learned it. So you do another seven times with the same dismal result. Now you have been reading this poem for 10.5 hours. Do that for a whole month. I bet that at the end of the month, practising 10.5 hours a day (21 repetitions) you still will not have learnt the poem. This is partly because you cannot fit enough repetitions in a day (the poem is simply too large), but also because if you have not learned after seven repetitions increasing the number of repetitions will not make any difference.

ii.      So what should you do? You must decrease the size of the chunk of information that you are trying to learn. How much should you decrease it? Well, start by cutting the poem in half: 100 verses. Now this takes only 15 minutes to read through. After seven repeats, did you learn it? If you did, this is the chunk size you can cope with. If not, the chunk size is still too large. So cut it in half again: 50 verses, which you can now read in 7.5 minutes. Now let us say that by cutting it in half and trying to learn the chunk in seven repetitions you finally got to 1 verse. That can be read in 9 seconds. This is the exploratory stage of your practice: when you find out what is the larges chunk you can learn by repeating it seven times. With experience you will get this size fairly immediately. But in the beginning expect to spend sometime learning about yourself and your learning capacity.

iii.      So you figured out that one verse is (for you) learnable after seven repeats. After seven repetitions you just know it. So it  is going to take you (9x7) = 63 seconds to master one line of the poem. To master the 200 verses will take you exactly 3. 5 hours, the same amount of time it took you to read through the whole poem 7 times without making any progress whatsoever. The conclusion is obvious: Breaking your learning tasks into chunks that can be learned after seven repeats will save an amazing amount of time, as compared to the alternative of reading the whole thing seven times.

III.      The second principle is this: You learn nothing until it is processed by the unconscious. Dreaming is one of the symptoms of this, so you need at least one night sleep in between learning sessions before you actually learn what you have been practising. Usually you will need several nights sleep depending on the complexity of your task. This is the 20 minute principle.

Going back to the 200 line poem. It took you 63 seconds to repeat and learn the first line. That’s it! You do not need to do any more work on this line today. You can do, if you want, but it will not make any difference whatsoever.

If you do your seven repeats (63 seconds), stop and go to bed, next day when you wake up you will find that you pretty much forgot the line. So you must start again, and repeat the line seven times (63 seconds again). But you will discover that although you felt as ignorant as in the first day, this time it took you only 5 repeats to get to the stage you were in yesterday after 7 repeats. So you relearnt the line in 45 seconds, instead of the 63 seconds. Never mind that, do your seven repeats again (even though you have mastered it by the fifth). On the third day, you wake up and to your dismay you realise you cannot remember a thing. However, this time by the second repeat it is all back in your mind. This time it took you only 18 seconds to get to the stage that in the first day took you 63 seconds. And in the second day 45 seconds. Again, even though you mastered the line by the second repeat , you do the full seven repetitions. On the fourth day. Chances are that you will not need to do any repeat. you simply know the line. I have never met anyone who needed more than seven days to get to this stage. Usually by the third/fourth day they have learned their chunk of information (provided that the size of the chunk could be learned after seven repeats).

The important fact here is this. If you repeat your verse 700 times (instead of 7), It will make no difference whatsoever to the speed with which you will learn it. It will still take four days. You do not need to believe me. Just try it. Get two passages of a piece. Size them so that they can be learnt  after seven repeats. Do only seven repeats on the first one, and 700 repeats on the second. See which one is thoroughly learnt first. My prediction is that they will both take exactly the same amount of time to be learnt

In the case of a passage of music, you will probably do more things then just repeat it. Possibly (I would do that) after repeating seven times, I would work on hands separate and hands together. Depending on the passage I might use rhythmic variations, or play it in chords, or other practice variations. So it may take 15 – 20 minutes to go through all these routines, maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less. Then that is it for the day! Only go through that passage again next day. If you want to devote 5 hours a day to piano practice, use the remaining time to practise other passages, or even passage from other pieces.

So use the 7 repeat principle to define the passage you are going to practise. Then practise it only for the time necessary to master it (usually less then 15 – 20 minutes, but rarely a bit more). Then leave it until the next day. Repeat the same process again until you finally know it (should take 3 – 4 days).

I can understand this method working for pieces that you have acquired the appropriate technique for and you just need to learn the notes and expression. For example, I am working on Bach's F# Min Prelude from the WTCI, and I have the correct technique to play this piece, but the fingering, notes, and hand placements require some work. I practiced this piece much more than 7 times and 20 minutes and I believe that I got a lot more accomplished than if I were to only play it the 7 time 20 min method.

It should not be a matter of “belief”. This is not religion. Why don’t you try it? Most of these ideas are outlandish. People cannot believe they will work until they try it. Then they kick themselves for not having tried them before.

The same is with Bach's Toccata in D minor. I know this piece, but I haven't practiced the Toccata lately (just the Fugue) and I needed to bring the notes back into my fingers, as I was losing finger independance. After 7 tries, I did learn the notes again, but they weren't as secure as I wanted them to be. I practiced perhaps 10 more times and the entire passage was secure and perfect once again. I do not believe I would have this same result if I only practiced it 7 times for 20 minutes.

Well, first of all, if after seven tries the passage you worked on was not as secure as you wanted, you should have cut the passage in half. Quite clearly you were trying  a too large chunk. Increasing the number of times is not going to get it any better (in this case this was a piece you already knew) but if it was an unknown piece you would be courting disaster. Since you could not manage such a large chunk, chances are you would be making mistakes. Every time you repeated the passage you would be making the same mistakes (the passage being too large you would not remember it), so very soon you would have a lot of mistakes firmly ingrained in your playing.

[continues next post]

[bernhard]

[continued from previous post]

With Chopin's Military Polonaise op 40 no 1, I'm having trouble with the fast triplet chords and ascending semiquaver chords, and once again, I tried the 7 time 20 minute method, and it did not work for me. Is it 7 times OR 20 minutes, or both? After 7 times, I definately could not play it (however, I could play two notes, that is, the first chord to the second, quite fine.) I could not link these two chords to the music BEFORE them (which I knew) and the music after (which I was struggling.) I believe that much more practice would allow me to do this. Alas, I had no time, and I believe that there is some flaw in my technique (or lack thereof) that is hampering me from playing the chords as they should be.

Ok, that is how you go about it.

(I assume you are referring to bar 29 & 30 which are repeated later on two more occasions.)

1.      I would start by working only on bar 29 to start with, and I would add the first chord of bar 30 to it in order to have an overlap later when joining bars 29 – 30.

2.      I would break this bar 29 further in two sections: the triplets and the ascending quaver chords.

3.      Now I would practise just the triplets, hands separate, repeating 7 times. I doubt it there is any normal human being in the planet who would not be able to master two G octaves in the LH after seven repeats. And who would not be able to master DGB – B – DGB on the RH after seven repeats. Moreover, this would take some 10 – 15 seconds. If you managed that – to master each hand separately after seven trials, then you know that this is the correct section size. If not you may have to work on just one chord/note for a while. But I trust that you were able to play each hand separately perfectly after seven trials.

4.      Now you are going to use the metronome  so that you get each hand to play (2 chords on the LH – 3 on the RH) in exactly the same time. Not only this will give the correct speed for the movement in each hand, as it will get your ear used to the relative speed of each hand. Now keep doing that for the next 15 –20 minutes or so. Or you may get so good at it after 5 minutes, that there is really no need to proceed to 15 – 20 minutes.

5.      Now comes the important point. Do not practise this anymore today. Forget about it. You are only going back to it now next day. But you just practised 5 minutes! That is all right. Move on to do something else. For instance the five ascending quaver chords that follow the triplets.

6.      Again, start with separate hands. Can you play them perfectly after 7 repeats (again this is 10 – 15 seconds)? If you cannot , try this approach: play chords 1 – 2 (remember, this is HS, so keep alternating RH and LH), then 2 – 3,the 3 – 4, then 4 – 5. Anyone can ado that. Now do chords 123, then 234, then 345. This should be easy too, because you sorted out most of the difficulties on the previous level when you were dealing with just two chords. Now do 1234, and 2345. Finally do 12345 (HS). And there you are, the whole of the ascending quaver section mastered in less than 20 minutes. Now drop it! Do not touch this passage again until next day. You will not gain anything from repeating it over and over again beyond the point where you mastered it.

7.      Now next day you must repeat exactly the same procedure from 3 to 6. When you start the day’s practice session, it will feel as if you had never seen this passage before. But as soon as you start working on it (still HS), it comes back to you at a fraction of the time that it took you to master it the first day. Again, do not repeat for more then the time to get it right a few number of times. This time you may not need even 20 minutes to get there. After 5 minutes you are done with.

8.      3rd day, repeat everything again. This time you may begin to notice that you do not experience so much difficulty in the beginning. You just “know” the sections (you are still doing HS).

9.      4th day, You probably can play each hand straightaway without any problems. If so move on. If not, keep following this procedure everyday. I have never known anyone who took more than seven days to master a passage using this method Usually it takes 2 or 3 days.

10.      Now you must join hands. Again you are still working on two different sections independently: the triplet bit and the ascending chord bit. If you truly mastered it separate hands, putting hands together will be more difficult but not as difficult as if you tried hands together straightaway. Work on each section for no more that 15 – 20 minutes, but make sure you achieved something. If you mastered it after 5 minutes, excellent. If after 20 minutes you are still struggling, you may need to simplify it, or you have not practised separate hands enough. After 3 or 4 days, these two section should have been mastered, so move on to join them.

11.      So, all in all it should have taken you a week or so to master this difficult (for you) bit, working at it for 5 – 20 minutes a day. Would it not be better to just spend one day working at it for some five hours straight? Wouldn’t the results be the same? Probably not. You work at anything for five hours, and you start making mistakes who will become ingrained. Besides your unconscious does not have the time (you need a night’s sleep) to process the new learnings. This means that next day you will feel like you had never seen the section before and you will have to start all over again anyway (exactly like you did when you were doing only 5 – 20 minutes). But the greatest advantage is this. If you were going to practise for 5 hours, to get the same results of 20 minutes, why not practise 15 different sections in those five hours? This means that at the end of 3 – 4 days, instead of having one section mastered (but probably full of bad habits) you would have 15 sections under your belt.

12.      Moreover not all sections in this polonaise are going to be as difficult (for you) as this particular section. So chances are that you will be able to tackle certain sections hands together straight away, or other sections you will be able to tackle longer sections. Remember the size of a section to be practised is determined by the 7 times rule: If you can learn it with seven repeats, it is the right size. If you cannot, make it smaller (I like cutting it in half).

Finally. Remember: it is not about belief. Just pick up two different but of a similar level of difficulty pieces /passages. Practise one as above, and the other any other way you please. Compare results and tell us what you found out.

I hope this is clearer now.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[mosis]

I hope this is clearer now.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

Yes, this is much clearer now. You sounded a bit pissed there, sorry if my ignorance was too much to take.  

I wish to try this method, but the reason I'm not so keen on jumping into it is because it goes against what I've been taught for 8 years (I don't have the greatest teacher anyway, he doesn't know a lot of practice methods.) I don't want to be practicing one part of a song this way and after one week I only know like, 3 bars. That goes against what you say about all the virtuosos using this method to master huge amounts of repertoire immediately.

I shall try it out some more on the Polonaise and another song.

Oh, another question: What sort of practice methods would you employ for mastering songs that you only know slightly?

I ask this because I can play, from beginning to end, the Sonata Pathetique, by Beethoven (first movement that is). I'm having troubles with the tremolos, but that's not the main problem. The main problem is that middle motif (with the right hand crossing over the left and doing the shakes) and keeping the large right hand run on the 6th page even and clean. I've already "learned" the song, but I don't have much technique to polish these parts up and make them perfect. Should I try the 7 time 20 minute method as well, or is there another way I should go about doing this? Once again, my own teacher isn't much help.

Oh, just a question. C. Chang's book says that it's better to break passages down into small sections and repeat those sections hundreds of times in a matter of minutes. Many people say this also works, yet you say it does not. Are they ignorant and misguided, or do more repetitions really help at all? Your opinion on this, please.

Thanks for the long response to all my babble.

[bernhard]

Yes, this is much clearer now. You sounded a bit pissed there, sorry if my ignorance was too much to take.    

He he, don’t worry when I am pissed I don’t sound just a “bit” pissed!

I wish to try this method, but the reason I'm not so keen on jumping into it is because it goes against what I've been taught for 8 years (I don't have the greatest teacher anyway, he doesn't know a lot of practice methods.) I don't want to be practicing one part of a song this way and after one week I only know like, 3 bars. That goes against what you say about all the virtuosos using this method to master huge amounts of repertoire immediately.

This is funny.  

You say you do not have a great teacher, and that he doesn’t know a lot about practice methods, and yet you do not want to try something that may go against something you have been doing for eight years (and probably without much effect, since if it was working you wouldn’t  be asking for help in a forum).

Here is my philosophy:

1.      Know what you want to achieve.

2.      If you are not achieving it, do something else. Keep changing what you are doing until you achieve your aim.

3.      Be sensitive enough to know if you are or are not achieving your aim.

4.      Move to the next aim.

The repertory you are playing my students are eating for breakfast after 2 – 3 years study. And I am not happy at all! Why is taking them so long? I need to investigate this! Come up with some even more efficient ways to do it!

Now, you are approaching this from an intellectual standpoint. Bad idea.

Listen to yourself:

I don't want to be practicing one part of a song this way and after one week I only know like, 3 bars.

Have you tried it? Don’t jump to conclusions based on what you imagine will happen. Do it! See what actually happens! And then go from there.  And what if after one week all you got are three bars? They are the most difficult bars in the piece, and you‘ve got them!

Finally, what would you think of the following argument:

“I do not want to start learning to speak French because I have been speaking English for the previous 16 years and I do not want to do something that might go against that”

You do not stop knowing English because you start learning French. You add another language to the one you already know Likewise, every new practice method you learn is an addition to the ones you already have. Of course some practice methods are crap and should be discarded. But learning a new one that may be as effective or effective in different ways does not imply that you have to discard the old ones.

Oh, another question: What sort of practice methods would you employ for mastering songs that you only know slightly?  

I ask this because I can play, from beginning to end, the Sonata Pathetique, by Beethoven (first movement that is). I'm having troubles with the tremolos, but that's not the main problem. The main problem is that middle motif (with the right hand crossing over the left and doing the shakes) and keeping the large right hand run on the 6th page even and clean. I've already "learned" the song, but I don't have much technique to polish these parts up and make them perfect. Should I try the 7 time 20 minute method as well, or is there another way I should go about doing this? Once again, my own teacher isn't much help.

1.      Start separate hands. Only join hands when you can do HS in your sleep.

2.      work on very small sections, both HS and HT

3.      Use repeated group notes both HS and HT. For instance, if you chose a passage with 5 notes/chords, first work on 1-2, then 2-3, then 3-4, then 4-5. Once you can do those with ease, do 123, 234 and 345. Then 1234 and 2345. Finally play the whole passage 12345. You can use this method for units larger than notes, e.g. triplets, or bars and even lines. Do not try this with passages larger than 7-8 units (it will take all day).

4.      When you join hands use the “dropping notes” approach, that is you play the passage with the RH in full but just one note/chord in the LH. When you can do this smoothly add another note in the LH, and so on and so forth until you can play the full passage HT. Then invert: play the whole of the KH and add just one note in the RH. Keep “dropping notes” on the RH until you can play the full passage. Your aim is to not let the other hand (the one you are dropping the notes) interfere with the one playing the full passage.

5.      Read my posts. I have described these and other approaches in great detail several times.

6.      Read the whole forum. Several people have suggested very useful ways to approach learning and practising pieces, and there are several threads dedicated specifically to the pathetique.  

7.      I cannot give you much more specific advice than that: I would have to see you playing in order to instruct you further. So use your teacher: that is why you pay him. Ask him what you are doing wrong, ask him to play it for you and observe what is it that he does. Compare with what you are doing. Your physicalities are different so you are not looking for exactly imitating his movements, but rather trying to understand general principles that you can then apply to your own physicality.

Oh, just a question. C. Chang's book says that it's better to break passages down into small sections and repeat those sections hundreds of times in a matter of minutes. Many people say this also works, yet you say it does not. Are they ignorant and misguided, or do more repetitions really help at all? Your opinion on this, please.  

How did you conclude that? From everything I said so far you should have concluded that I completely agree with Chang. (I said that learning a 200 line poem is impossible, you should learn it line by line, remember?) The whole point of repeating something seven times is so that you find out the size of small section you can then tackle for 20 minutes and repeat it for thousands of times. Me and Chang are in complete agreement in this point (and most others, I must say)

I hope this helps.

Best wishes,

[ted]

I have only just noticed this excellent thread.

Bernhard:

I agree about the education system. It is one of my regrets that I could not educate my son entirely at home. My wife's income was too unreliable to permit it, otherwise I would have done so without hesitation. As it was, I taught him every day, starting before he was two. Basically I used the Doman system, which is too detailed to describe here, but the point is that it really does work.

There is an art to it, of course. The notion of force-fed competitive prodigies is just as revolting as the passive, child minding of state schools. Learning and creating is what our brains are made for, and the art of being a parent, among many other things, is to foster the child's desire to learn.

There is another, completely false idea, that nurturing a child's intellect in this way somehow turns him into an unhappy social misfit. Complete nonsense ! My son is far better adjusted socially than I ever was at his age. He finished his first degree last year and is living and working independently abroad to finance his next degree.

You are so right, Bernhard. Our governments do not want healthy, independent thinkers, people who constantly question and improve. They want units to fit a competitive monetary structure. I successfully defied this ethos as best I was able, but misanthropy always lurks in the background as a consequence.

As to the original topic, just use whatever you have in the way of physical attributes to your musical end. Beyond certain broad principles everybody has agreed upon, and which Bernhard has already explained, allow yourself freedom of individuality. What at first appears to hamper may well be a springboard to musical insight.

Breaking large stretches may, for instance, lead to new rhythmic perceptions in improvisation. Having small hands didn't seem to stop Billy Mayerl and Keith Jarrett forging strong and very original piano languages.

[Spatula]

Both hands can span an octave easily and with some strecthing do nine keys.  

[mosis]

The whole point of repeating something seven times is so that you find out the size of small section you can then tackle for 20 minutes and repeat it for thousands of times. Me and Chang are in complete agreement in this point (and most others, I must say)

But you said after 7 repetitions, you won't learn the passage any better. Now I'm confused completely. o_O

[bernhard]

But you said after 7 repetitions, you won't learn the passage any better. Now I'm confused completely. o_O

Ok. I will try again.

Let us say that you decide to practise the piano 5 hours everyday. You have several options on how to go about allocating this time. You could for instance, sit at the piano and stay there practising for five hours solid. This is not a good idea. A much better way is to divide this five hour period into practice sessions lasting 20 minutes plus 5 minutes rest. If you do that, you will have 12 practice sessions (25 mins x 12 = 5 hours). Are you with me so far?

[if you decide to practise the piano for one hour everyday, you can still follow the same scheme, but this time you will have only 3 practise sessions, instead of twelve. Or you can practise ten hours a day, in which case you will have 24 practice sessions.]

Now what should you practise in each of these 20 minutes practice sessions? I will use as an example the Prelude in F#m (WTC1), since this is one of your pieces. Let us say that your aim is to master this prelude (I will not deal with the fugue, just the prelude). How should you go about it? Let us also see how you should not go about it.

1.      I will assume that before getting even near to the piano, you will have:

i.      Listened to a CD of this piece with the score in front of you. In fact I would suggest that you listen to several different pianists (and some harpsichordists as well) interpretations of it.

ii.      Made a motif analysis of the prelude.

iii.      Made a harmonic reduction.

iv.      Made a copy of the score where the three voices (bars 1- 2, 12 – 16, 18 – 19 and 22 – 24) have been isolated, the fingering written out and the distribution between hands been sorted out (in this prelude this is straightforward: the RH plays the treble clef, the LH plays the bass clef).

v.      Sight read through it to identify the most difficult (for you) bars/passages.

[why not ignore all this and simply jump straight away into playing it? Very simple: It is almost impossible to memorise something that is meaningless. Meaning is what allows associations and memory is based on associations. The analysis above will show you the meaning of this prelude. After you finished this preparatory work, give a lecture to willing friends/family on this prelude. This will guarantee that you never forget what you found out about it in your analysis].

2.      Having done the above work (mostly) away from the piano, you are ready to spend 5 hours a day working on mastering this prelude.

[One way, is of course to plunge into it for five hours solid. Start on bar 1 and read through to bar 24. Then start again and repeat as many times as you can fit in 5 hours. Do not get away from the piano during these five hours. Needless to say this is the worse thing you can do. First you will not learn the prelude this way in one hundred years. Second you will get so many bad habits that you will probably be unable to master it even if you change your way of practising later on. Thirdly you get burn out. Fourthly you most likely get injured].

So, as I said divide your five hour into 12 sessions of 20 minutes with a five minute break in between (if you are going to do all 12 sessions consecutively – but you can also do 4 sessions in the morning, 4 in the afternoon and 4 at night, or any other distribution that fits your schedule).

Now what you are going to do in your first 20 minute practice session? You are going to work on a section of the prelude. Which section? And how large should this section be? Only one bar? Two or three bars? 12 bars?

This will depend ultimately on you. How much technique you have under your belt, how much facility you have with playing counterpoint, how much of the technique needed to play this piece you must acquire.

The important principle is this: whatever section you choose, it must be completely mastered and memorised at the end of the 20 minute practice session.. This means that if you decide to work on bars 1 – 4, at the end of 20 minutes, these 4 bars must be perfect.

It takes about 1 min. 30 sec. to play this prelude. So if you are to play the whole prelude, which means that you will probably be able to fit about 10 repeats of it in 20 minutes. Obviously 10 repetitions will barely be enough to master this prelude. So the full 24 bars is obviously too large.  On the other hand it may be a waste of time to spend 20 minutes on the first bar.

That’s where the seven repetition principle comes in. Choose a chunk of the prelude with separate hands, say the first four bars. Can you master each hand separately after seven repeats? Can you play each hand perfectly with the correct fingering, the correct rhythm, and memorise it after seven repetitions? Let us suppose you cannot. After seven repeats the whole section is still falling apart. Your fingers keep going to the wrong notes, or you keep using the wrong fingering with the consequence that your fingers are tying themselves in knots and you have to compensate by using all the wrong movements. Moreover you keep forgetting how the passage goes, so that you are still having to read it. If this is happening, do not keep repeating after the seventh time. It will be not only a waste of time, as you will be learning all the mistakes you are making.

You have chosen a far too large passage to master, and insisting on repeating it will not make any difference. So cut it in half. You must be ruthless here. So now you are going to try two bars only. Another seven times, and the same thing happens again. So cut it in half again.

Now you repeat just the first bar (hands separate still) and this time after the fifth repeat you experience that magical moment when your fingers start to do everything right and you have actually memorised the whole bar. Excellent. You have found the passage you are going to be working on. Chances are that by now your first twenty minute session is over. So stop, get out of the piano, go out, stretch, drink a glass of water, watch the latest news, in short anything to take your mind of what you have just done. Take a five minute break!

3.      Now go back for another 20 minutes. This time you know exactly what you have to do: master completely that first bar. As you sit at the piano, you may experience a very common occurrence, so get used to it, it is no big deal. It will feel as you have never seen the passage you just practised before. Most students who are not told to expect this to happen get really discouraged at this point. But as I said it is no big deal. Just go back to hands separate and work on it again. It will come back very, very quickly.

It is now when everything is perfect that you can actually start to practise. So you see, the 7 times repetition you did do not really count as practice. It is just a practical way to figure out the size of the passage you will be working on. This is also the reason why you must always do it with separate hands. If you go for it hands together, all the mistakes you are making while investigating the best way to play the passage will get ingrained in your hand memory form where it will be almost impossible to dislodge them. If you do it with hands separate nothing gets into your hand memory, so hands separate is a very safe way to try different things that you may discard later as inappropriate.

So spend the next five minutes or so playing that first bar with hands separate. Since this is pretty unchallenging you will be able to fit in hundreds of repetitions. You can play in rhythm variations, in chords (particularly useful on the RH), you can play utlrafast, ultra slowly.

Now spend the remaining of the practice session working on hands together. Since hands together are 37 times more difficult then hands separate, even though you completely mastered HS, it will take much more time to master and memorise HT than it took HS. Also you want to be extra careful with not making any mistake whatsoever at this stage, since it when you play HT that hand memory is formed. In any case, by the end of the practise session this first bar should be completely mastered, memorised and pretty much ready for performance.

4.      At this point comes the 20 minute principle. Do not play this first bar anymore today! Nothing bad will happen if in your next 20 minute practice session you work on this first bar again. But nothing good will happen either: It will be a total waste of time. Instead take your break, and on the next session work on a different passage of the prelude.

5.      It is very important that you understand that although you apparently mastered the first bar on your 20 minute practice session, this is far from the truth. Learning is done by the unconscious mind. So you need a night’s sleep to integrate whatever you learned today. This means that your mastery of the first bar is temporary and it will remain so until it is incorporated by your unconscious mind. One consequence of this, is that the next day, when you play through the first bar you had completely mastered the day before it will be as if you have never seen it before. Learn to expect this. Accept it. Although it will feel at the moment that you will have to start form scratch again and go through all the drudgery of the previous day, this is far form the truth. Typically, it may have taken you 20 minutes to master the first bar on the first day. On the second day – even if it feels just like when you first set eyes on the passage – you will master it again at a fraction of the time it took you the first day. Maybe five minutes. So master it again.And again do not touch it until the next day.

6.      Come the next day, the whole story repeats itself. But again you will remaster the first bar in a fraction of the time, maybe one minute this time. And then by the forth day, you will go to the piano and play it perfectly first time. When this happens the passage is yours forever. You will never forget again (pretty much like you will never forget your mother tongue, or how to ride a bicycle). However for this to happen you must go through exactly the same steps every day you did o n the very first day. Most people cut corners  and that is why they are forever struggling with the same  piece.

7.      Now, do not forget that you are not working only on the first bar. You have another 11 sessions during the day. If in each you were working on a different bar, this means that over the first day you worked on 12 bars of this prelude. On the second day, because it is taking much less than 20 minutes to relearn the 12 bars you have learnt on the first day, you will probably be able to start another six bars. On the third day, you will be able to easily fit the remaining six bars and start using the practice sessions to join bars, so now on your practise session you may be working on passages that are 2 or 3 bars long. I estimate that it should take 4 – 5 days to completely master and memorise this prelude for someone with no technique (the technique being acquired as one works on each section – for the Hanon lovers amongst you, check out bar 20: repeat it 30 times and you have a Hanon exercise right there, staring you in the face). This of course is subjective some people will take more time, some people less time. But the point is, which approach will deliver the goods in less time? There is only one way to know. Select another prelude of similar difficulty. Learn one using the approach I am suggesting. Learn the other using whatever is your favourite way. See which method is best. Then tell us the results. If your method is better, describe it in detail, so we can use it as well.

8.      To sum it all up: There is no point is spending more then 20 minutes (make it 30 if want – but I have got away with as little as 10 minutes practice sessions) in any passage. As soon as you master it, drop it until next day. If you cannot master a passage in 20 minutes, it means that the passage you chose to work on is too large. Cut it in half. Now it would be silly to spend 20 minutes practising something only to discover at the end of 20 minutes that it was too large. So investigate the size of the passage by repeating it 7 times. If you can learn it (which is very different from mastering it) with 7 repeats, I guarantee that you will be able to master it in 20 minutes. Always do your investigation with hands separate in order not to ingrain mistakes and inappropriate movements/fingerings in your hand memory.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.