How good are you REALLY at the piano?

[lostinidlewonder]

Please comment on this:

What is written here is in general form, of course the individual must know themselves to see where they perhaps fit inbetween the descriptions below.

How does one measure their ability at the piano? I wouldn't say it is measured by the amount of music memorized or even the difficulty of the music you can play, although these are good indicators. I find a better reflection of ones ability is the rate in which they master their music. Quality and Quantity is a reflection of an advanced piano ability.

What is advanced Quality and Quantity?
Quality is defined as concert standard pieces, that includes pieces could fit in a concert hall of a paying audience. Someones Quality could be defined by looking at the programs of music that could be created out of their repertoire.
    Quantity is a more difficult term to give an exact number to. I would say if it took you on average 9 hours to initially memorize (not master or play at tempo, and with at least a very high % accuracy without dependence on the sheets) a single Chopin Etude this is an advanced Quantity rate.

Quality and Quantity but produced without mastery.
What if there is Quality and Quantity but is produced with inferior technique and/or with poor musical expression? One can argue that you can always improve on how you play a piece, but there is a certain level that one can reach where their ability starts to entertain most people. But what if you do not play at this level and that people who hear you play cannot stand listening to you? Certainly if one has the ability to learn music at a fast rate the can now start to sacrifice rate of learning and start developing expressive/interpretive musical ability.

Quality and Quantity but produced with mastery.
Pianists who learn their music fast and produce it with very high musical quality are certainly in the advanced region. Someone who has an encyclopedic memory of all piano styles and can sight read almost everything with great expression would be considered a grandmaster of piano. Advanced pianists have to make improvements and important decisions with their Quality and Quanitity output to further develop themselves towards the ideal grandmaster state.

Quality or Quantity alone restricts your musical development.
Many people who consider themselves advanced pianists consider themselves so because of how well they can express their quality. They do not worry about how long it takes for them to learn a piece so long it is done right and played the way they want it to. This is a big insecurity that needs to be overcome to produce greatest musical improvement. One will have to sacrifice fine tuning musical expression and start simply memorizing their music faster.

Simply learning a lot of music but playing them without mastery will hinder your technical and musical interpretation development. As you get older you simply will not be able to deal with technical inefficiencies, one has to develop an efficient effortless technique that can last a lifetime. As musicians we should be interested in presenting our music in a musical way, people are not just interested in the notes, but the way in which the notes are expressed. It is like a public speech, imagine if Martin Luther King spoke monotonous and without any rhythm or pause! As a musician you look very limited if your “musical talk” is simply dictated without expression. You also seem limited if you look very tired or your body moves inefficiently as you play the piano.

One may also learn a lot of easy music in a fast rate (this fast rate depends on the exact difficulty of the pieces learned). In this case they should aim to increase the difficulty level of their music to improve the quality of their pieces. This will not require them to slow down on their Quantity output, rather the tools used to produce their Quantity will be tested upon more difficult quality work grounds.

Striving for balance in Quality or Quantity.
There is a balance of Quality and Quantity that needs to be struck up if one wants to achieve an advanced level. If one gives bias to one or the other they will limit their lifetime musical development. To achieve balance we need to sacrifice our effort we are comfortable with and focus on the other side which we have been neglecting. We simply must act against what we are giving bias to. Once a balance is somewhat struck up then we can increase both together, however as the difficulty level of Quality increases it naturally slows down the output of Quanitity, that does not mean that the Quantity rate has slowed down, the tools are simply used in more difficult grounds which take take more work to complete.

Lacking in both Quality and Quantity.
If you cannot play any concert standard pieces and you learn your easier music at a slow rate then you are lacking in both Quality and Quantity. A beginner would be someone who learn easy music but it takes a long time. Of course the intensity of beginners vary, if someone struggles with one handed pieces then they are a very early beginner, if someone struggles with a easy/moderate Mozart sonata they might be a beginner/early intermediate, it depends on the pieces you play and the length of time needed to learn them.

[go12_3]

I think I'm good enough when people smile and enjoy the music I perform, which is mostly at home , because I am not a professional nor do recitals, but  one of my recording  is here in the forum, by the way. During the Summer time when the winddows are open, my neighbors would comment they enjoy my beautiful piano playing....*sigh*  after all that practicing, it pays off to be *good* and after awhile to feel the satisfaction of playing such wonderful pieces, plus feeling confident to have a style of my own.   

best wishes,

go12_3

[perfect_pitch]

During the Summer time when the winddows are open, my neighbors would comment they enjoy my beautiful piano playing....*sigh* 

Damn... During the summer when I was practicing '3 Movements from Petrouchka' by Stravinsky - a neighbour across the road filed a complaint against me to the council....

What am I supposed to do when the music asks for Fortississimo???

I personally used to be a Quality and Quantity without Mastery... before my current Piano Teacher spent years teaching me to play and perform properly...

I'd say I'm a mid-level Quality and Quantity with mastery now... Hoping to do my first Major Public recital next year when I do my Fellowship of Music Exam.

[thierry13]

Damn... During the summer when I was practicing '3 Movements from Petrouchka' by Stravinsky - a neighbour across the road filed a complaint against me to the council....

What am I supposed to do when the music asks for Fortississimo???

I personally used to be a Quality and Quantity without Mastery... before my current Piano Teacher spent years teaching me to play and perform properly...

I'd say I'm a mid-level Quality and Quantity with mastery now... Hoping to do my first Major Public recital next year when I do my Fellowship of Music Exam.

You're doing pretty big pieces for someone who is only mid-level in quality with mastery... Maybe this could be corrected by making sure where the real problem lies...

[perfect_pitch]

OK... i should have worded that better... I can perform well... but I mean it will be taking me 18 months to learn and play my pieces properly.

I look at my teacher who could learn this stuff in probably 3 months and think - that's a high-level pianist.

I am learning really hard pieces, I only called myself mid-level because it takes well over a year to learn them.

[go12_3]

I think that being *good* at the piano doesn't depend upon how quickly we learn a piece,although that merits the pianist with skilled technique and musical abilities, along with dedication.  I know I am working on a few challenging pieces, like the Chopin's Fantaisie Impromtu and his Etude 10/1.  I don't think I would have even attempted these pieces a few years ago.  But, I had to work myself up to an acquired level through practicing Hanon, sightreading and technical exercises(Czerny) in order to learn these Chopin pieces at this moment.  I won't have them *learned* in three months, it may take a year before I can play the fast tempo.  A good pianist will know how to pace himself and recognize that he can learn the more challenging pieces in his own due time.  Also,  a good pianist can feel the reward in the learning process, even though it will be a slow one, which is in my case now with the pieces I am learning.  I cannot force myself to play a Tempo yet, but each day is a progress in the understanding my abilities to learn the passages and what I will gain from playing them each day.
No matter what level we are in, a good pianist will always continue to learn and grow and feel the fulfillment in acquiring the skills that are needful in order to play musically and polished to his satisfaction. 

best wishes,

go12_3

[timothy42b]

Your goal seems to be to assess progress in various areas, so as to plan your work? 

Sounds reasonable, but did you consider age?

I'm at an age where my once excellent memory has faded.  I have to accept that I won't be able to memorize and retain repertoire as a younger person might.  Therefore, my strategy should be to improve sightreading skills and adjust difficulty level downward to where the balance point is, no? 

[lostinidlewonder]

.... did you consider age?

I'm at an age where my once excellent memory has faded.  I have to accept that I won't be able to memorize and retain repertoire as a younger person might.  Therefore, my strategy should be to improve sightreading skills and adjust difficulty level downward to where the balance point is, no? 

Quality of your work is related to what would be considered acceptable in a public concert. A 4 year old for example would get away with performing "easier" pieces in concert than a 20 year old. So this means that the quality of a young child is different to that of an adult.

Also quality level changes depending on your your physical makeup. I doubt a 4 year old could play a piece that requires large intervals correctly because their hands couldn't reach what is asked for. Adults who can barely reach an octave perhaps could also get away a lessened "Quality" standard but some that are advanced learn to deal with their size and can still produce the illusion of controlling positions which are impossible for their hands.

Improvement to sight reading skills is essential to develop an efficient learning rate. However how we use this sight reading is important. We cannot be slaves to the sheet, every time you read you are encouraging your muscular memory to associate with what we read. How does it feel when you play this phrase of music you are sight reading?
      The more and more you sight read that passage the less you have to read to consciously tell your hands what to do. We can simply skim read the passage and our hands and ears control the rest. You can immediately sense this process, the brain making new connections which can happen with all ages. I find as you get older you make connections to what you did before more than make new connections, but our brain is constantly learning something new.
      Our sound memory is immense, some of us simply know what the right notes should sound like, there is no logic statement for it, we simply can hear it in our minds eye. The same applies for muscular memory, I do not believe that with age you can lose or be unable/restricted to learn new movements of the hand. Our conscious memory (Sight reading skills and logically observing a phrase that we read and transferring it to an action in our hands) can only be strengthened with age as we can draw from years of experience.
       If this experience has not been acquired then I would say the older student has a more difficult challenge ahead of themselves. They have to get through more work with less time which produces a difficult learning curve. However older students often have a good understanding life skills such as discipline and hard work. This can prove a major advantage over a young student who has no discipline but soaks up knowledge like a sponge. It is like the turtle and the hare fable Slow and steady will always win.
       As the adult improves they also know how to use past knowledge to help them, the child usually does not associate it with past experience in such logical terms, they just "feel it". But the adult observes everything they do, this allows them to control their musical quality and quantity more directly with good instruction. The adult may also pick up sight reading skills easier than the younger student and be able to approach it with more focus and discipline.

A complete approach to memorizing your music is required if you want to maintain it your whole life. Of course I cannot say that a good approach will cure against brain diseases that might rob you of mental capability. It certainly defends against it I believe, making new connections constantly is important to keep our brains healthy. It is complicated activities that keeps the brain working, in piano we have the Conscious (sight reading, logical statements, pattern observations etc), Muscular (hands memorizing a group of notes with a particular movement of the hand) and Sound (using the sound in our minds eye to aid our decision making with our muscular memory)  memory always working together as a whole.

I believe that being an advanced musician is also defined by the music you have already memorized and play at concert standard. So an older student who has a large repertoire might be excused to learn any new material and merely sharpen the huge amount of works they have already learned. But to keep the brain active and working you must learn new material and make new connections in the brain. Neurologists who study brain exercises note that repetitive work in grounds that are familiar to us (like crosswords)is not as beneficial to the brain as working in situations which require us to strategically approach a constantly changing situation.
       Someone who trains their brain to work at an advanced musical rate will be able to encourage the brain to maintain this rate even in older age. It may slow down, but we never work at maximum effort every day of our lives anyway. As you get older you may even have more time for yourself and thus your discipline towards your music may increase. As you get older you may also learn new tricks and understand how your own brain works so that you can learn things faster. If we find ourselves  memorizing our work through brute force then we will find that as we age and our brain slows down, we cannot deal with this inefficient approach.

I think that being *good* at the piano doesn't depend upon how quickly we learn a piece,although that merits the pianist with skilled technique and musical abilities, along with dedication. 

Someone who plays the piano very well but does it without any discipline would admit that the music they produce is second rate. They will not admit that the work they produce is the best they can possibly do because they know they have not worked the best they possibly could. I don't think that we can ever admit that the work we produce is the best we can do, we will always be insecure with how we play when comparing it to what is the "ideal" sound in our minds eye.

I believe someone is limiting themselves if they approach music without discipline and without regard to the rate in which they learn. Although they may produce wonderful works their output is very slow and thus they are limiting themselves and others of the wonderful music they could be producing!

A lot of people are undisciplined in their approach to music, I know this very well as a music teacher! It is the keystone to someones progress, as a teacher I find that I am unclogging this problem in students much more than anything else. They can learn all these efficient ways to learn their music and it will increase the flow of their learning rate, but if they have no persistence to their approach it their progress merely leaks out. Likewise if a student works hard at their music but refuses to improve their approach to learning their music they will founder and take the long way around. Many teachers work on simply Quality in a student and forget about the Quantity so it is not always the students fault.

Sometimes we like to study pieces that takes us a long time and to which there is a slow learning curve. I believe this is a slow way to approach your musical study. You should be learning more easier pieces than one large difficult piece. The process of learning is no different in an easy piece than in a difficult piece, the technique and what the fingers have to do is more difficult but the way in which our brain learns music is the same in all instances. We must practice this learning multiple times and as many times as possible instead of simply focusing on "difficult" pieces.

As you improve the pieces that might have been difficult for you 3 years ago now are a normal level for you. Then you can go ahead and learn these efficiency and with control. This is why Quality and Quantity is a reflection of an advanced ability at piano learning. As you heighten the bar which you consider "difficult" music you are improving yourself as a musician. If when you play you consider much of what you play difficult, then you are somewhat lacking in your abilities.

I am learning really hard pieces, I only called myself mid-level because it takes well over a year to learn them.

I believe was we get better at the piano we realize how far we actually have to go. We know we don't know. As opposed to the others who simply Don't know that they Don't know. We are forever reaching for that ultimate rate of learning, so that all those challenges become a routine mastered as fast as possible.