In need of advice (not another "what to play next" topic, btw)

[roniman]

Hi,

I've been having a sort of a problem, and I would like to know if someone has already been through this or something similar...

Well, I started playing the piano when I was in the beggining of college, I was 18-19yo by then and now I'm 24, so I've been playing for about 5 years. I've always regreted a lot the fact that I didn't start playing when I was much younger and so since I started playing I worked really hard, sort of compensating for the lost time... Anyway, about 5 or 6 months ago, by the time I finished the 3rd mov of the moonlight sonata I've been feeling really unmotivated to play. I used to spend most of my free time playing and practicing, but I suddenly stopped doing that. It's like I've completely lost my focus, and sometimes I don't even touch the piano during the weekends, which is when I have a lot of free time.
After the moonlight sonata I've only learned Chopin's nocturne 19, which was very very easy, and after that I couldn't find any other piece that would motivate me to keep practicing and working hard.
Has anyone been through this?
I find this very annoying because now that I finished college I ended up having much more free time, which I could spend practicing a little more, but I just can't due to a ridiculous lack of motivation.
I was just curious if anyone's had that issue and eventually overcame it.

Thanks

[rc]

I'm sure that everyone has felt periods of motivation-less-ness.  For me it's very important to actually use the music in performance.  We're social beings, and I felt like a crucial element was missing when I wasn't performing.  Yin with no yang.  Input with no output, a dead sea.

So, are you performing what you're learning?

[m19834]

Yes, definitely !!  There are similar things about my own experiences to what you describe as your experiences.  I think that, for me, actually finishing anything was quite a task for me.  I would lose interest most of the time or just get lazy because I would cease to seeing the point ... or something.  So, when I really decided to finish my degree and to have it be in music/piano and that, for the first time in my life, I was seriously going to give something absolutely everything I had to give (I felt that's what it was going to take in order to truly finish a thing) ... it was as though I walked into a tunnel and put those horsey blinder thingies on (so they can't see side to side).  And, strangely, while I was in that tunnel vision, it was *hoards* of work in many ways, but it's like I would dig a bit in some kind of mine, I would find some kind of treasure, and somehow there would be inspiration about what I was doing and some kind of sense of purpose.  It's like I could just keep going deeper and deeper ... until I smacked against something !!

For me, I had, I think, an unrealistic concept of what it would take to not just make it through my University program, but then to go on and build some sort of career in music.  I really had zero idea at all, actually.  In some ways that may have been good, but in some ways maybe not so much, too, I don't know.  There was one point during my senior year where something really hit me.  For a couple of years, I hadn't had many qualms about foregoing skiing trips and social events and such in order to stay home and practice ... not while I was in tunnel vision anyway.  It actually made me feel really good to be sacrificing what I could in order to grow in ways that I felt I had wanted to for so much of my life.  But, there came a point in my senior year where I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel ... and suddenly I had no idea what to do with myself !  So, one day while we were visiting my family and everybody had gone out skiing for the day except for me, I suddenly didn't see anymore what the point was in what I was doing and in the sacrifices I was making.  My purpose in what I was doing somehow needed deepening, and the thought of suddenly being shot out of the other side of my schooling with no real plan ... well, that was entirely spooky !!!!!!

It's been actually a really long road for me since then, and extremely difficult in many ways.  I feel really *REALLY* blessed to have found my wonderful teacher that I have now, and that has made a very big impact and difference in my life, for sure.  There are definitely still times where my sense of purpose must continue to grow deeper, and that's not always easy and is almost always accompanied by some sort of feeling of being unmotivated in my practicing.  The problem for me was that, before I met my teacher, I couldn't seem to dig myself completely out of the trench (well, I had to do some *serious* digging just to get to the point of meeting my teacher).  I hardly had the confidence to do anything at all, so it was tricky to find the right kind of outside source of motivation (like giving a concert, for example).  And, in many, many cases, I would perhaps be going along but my mind would really get severely into my own way and whatever progress I might have been making would come to a halt ... AGAIN.

Anyway, yes, it's very possible to get to the other side of what you are feeling, but you may need to work at finding that path.  Strangely, for me, I have even had times of extreme passion regarding it, but when it came to putting it into practice, I just couldn't manage to do it ... or at least not consistently enough to really, truly get me anywhere that resembled being truly past the wall.

Well, I am just guessing that there is perhaps something in what I wrote that you may feel you relate to, and it's my guess that you are needing some kind of further sense of purpose in what you are doing.  Sometimes actually just practicing can get things moving and will help to actually develop a sense of purpose in what you are doing.  I think we seem to need some magical mixture of outside motivation with inside motivation ... ultimately they are working hand-in-hand ... but, it's like a person can just stumble or something into the right thing, and then just as easily stumble out, too.

hmmm ... I think I'll make myself stop now !!  

[roniman]

Thank you both for the replies! They were very very helpful. I just realised that what is really missing is a sense of purpose, indeed. Since I am not a musician (far from it, i'm an engineer!), the only sense of purpuse I can force myself to have is performing. I haven't performed in public for almost 2 years. I have been avoiding it a lot, because I get absurdly nervous, which is weird, because I have no problems speaking in public, but when it comes to playing the piano in public I feel like I can't make any mistakes... or something!

Maybe I'll start by performing some easy pieces, just to get the hang of it...

But again, thank you very much. What you both said makes a lot of sense

[rc]

I'm glad we were helpful!  A few other ideas that might also be useful...

It doesn't even need to be a big, formal, public performance for me (though I DO enjoy them).  Sometimes it's just something fun to play for a friend or whoever's in the room.  Lately my parents have been inviting me over to dinner, afterwards I'll wind up playing a bit while my stepmom's cleaning up the kitchen.

Nerves - you're not alone!  We all want to give the best performance possible, and any little mistake feels like a painfully obvious smudge across the whole thing.  Playing easy pieces is definitely on the right track, as people usually won't know/care how difficult something is, just how it sounds, so it's nice to play something well within our abilities as a sort of 'buffer' against the effects of nerves.

Also realize that many excellent pianists screw up in front of audiences.  I'm surrounded by musicians far better than me at university, who nevertheless will make unexpected mistakes when the nerves hit.  What I've noticed is that the more experienced players are better at hiding these mistakes - or rather, making the best of the situation.  The piano prof, a top notch performer, asked us the day after he played a Prokofiev sonata how many mistakes we noticed.  He had 3 memory lapses up there, but was able to slow it down a bit and improvise his way back to a familiar starting point and make it work, hardly anyone noticed!

Rubinstein used to famously pretend to sweep up around the piano to collect all the notes he dropped