How to stay concentrated?

[geschema]

Very often while practicing, I notice that my mind is wandering aroud. Playing the piano seems to trigger a flow of thoughts completely unrelated to the music I'm playing. Does anyone else experience this? How can I train my mind to stay focused on the music?

[samjohnson]

I have experienced this same problem myself and found that, at least for me, a good solution is to have a cup of coffee or caffeine in some form about a half hour before I sit down to play.  It makes me not only more focused, but also more productive.  This may not work for everyone though.  Another suggestion is to try practicing at different times of day; we all focus best at a particular time, and it pays off to determine precisely when that time is. 


Hope this helps,

SJ

[alysosha]

take a break

[3htohn]

Hi Geschema,

For me, I take a break on the hour too either drink a coffee, lie down or eat some chocolate and it keeps me focused.

Энтони.

[geschema]

Thanks for the replies so far. I think I should provide a little bit more context. I'm usually quite busy during the day, so I can only practice in the evening. Unfortunately, if I take a cup of coffee at this time of day, I won't be able to sleep at night  Also my practice sessions rarely exceed 20 minutes.

[3htohn]

Hi Geschema,

I have a day job (nothing to do with music) so I:

practice after breakfast 7am - 8am; and
practice after dinner 7pm - 11pm (with my breaks on the hour).

Eating a main meal before practicing stops my mind from wondering when practicing and fortunately I can drink coffee anytime and does not keep me awake (but it's probably not good anyway). I had a good teacher tell me once to rest as much as you practice. As your mind is wondering, maybe you need to divide your practice time into sections. For example, scales, sight reading, studies, playing your pieces in different orders or sections. Or may be try just emercing yourself in the music as you play / practice. Thinking about the composers intentions, your interpretation, breathing, expression, what are you trying to communicate musically.

But I think you may be supprised how much one could accomplish in just 20 minutes. I know with the piece/s that I practice or I want to play there are always a few notes or patterns that are hard to get right. I've noticed in my playing there is little point in just repeating what I already know then stumbling on the bars I know I cannot play. What I do is when I get a spare 20 minutes I practice the notes or patterns of a piece that I know I find difficult, it usually, not always but usually works out in just 20 minutes and then play the whole piece next day or practice time with just one refresher on that bar(s).

Hope this helps,

Энтони.

[guendola]

It sounds like you are not really focussed on practising, with many things from the day in your head. And there might even be tasks that you could have done during the day or could even do now instead of practising. So you need to take a "final decision" that the next 30 minutes, next hour or whatever are dedicated to practising only. This works pretty well and the real trouble is in taking the decision, it should be like locking a door. Once locked, you have to unlock it to use it again, something that can't happen by mistake. Unfortunately I cannot describe the process of learning to take such decisions. Perhaps someone else can. But it is probably important too, to have a clear idea of what you want to practise.

[slobone]

It may be that your mind is wandering because you're not giving it enough to think about while you're playing. I find that happens a lot with me if I do a long series of identical repetitions. So try to vary things a little. Try a different tempo, a different section of the piece, or do hands separately, etc.

One thing that I've added to my practicing is deliberately concentrating on how my hands & arms feel when I'm playing a particular passage. How does it feel in my fingers, where are the stretches, where do I turn the thumb under, how big is the jump. I often memorize a measure or two and play with my eyes closed so I can focus more on the physical feeling instead of the sheet music.

[alysosha]

I have a day job (nothing to do with music) so I:

practice after breakfast 7am - 8am; and
practice after dinner 7pm - 11pm (with my breaks on the hour).

That's just awe inspiring.

[m19834]

Geschema, I was practicing and thinking about this problem of not being able to concentrate  , and realized that it actually only matters if you aren't accomplishing what you need to accomplish in your work.  If your mind is wandering but you are playing exactly the way that you want to, who cares ?  

There was another thread about this in the performance section not too long ago and I had some thoughts on it then that are still true, but I have something new to add (to my other thoughts from before) in that, if you give yourself a price to pay for not achieving what you need to achieve, and honestly hold yourself to it, you are going to find a way to bring your attention and focus in when you need to.  For example, I have 10 highlighter pens sitting on one side of the keyboard and my goal for a given chunk is to play it *perfectly* ... not even a slight slip of the tip of my finger on a single note (even if it doesn't actually cause an error in sound), 10 times in a row (I move one highlighter across the keyboard to the other side for each one I do perfectly) -- if I mess up on the 10th one, they all move back *seriously* !!  Sometimes it has literally taken me more than an hour to do one measure (that was to begin with), because I had to really wrangle my mind into cooperating with me !

Throughout the week though, I realized that I really meant business and that it was taking me FAR too long to get through my work that way, so something had to change !!  I got a lot more careful and a lot more willing to pay extra close attention to what I was doing, and eventually the standard of playing goes up.

As an interesting side note, yes, for whatever reason, playing the piano brings up ALL sorts of things in my mind.  I may be having memories from distant childhood days, or from 10 years ago, or be dwelling over particular problems in my life or have an under-riding sense of hurt from past pianistic/musical failures/experiences ... and, I have noticed that really holding myself more responsible for my playing forces me to clean out my consciousness, too !!  There is just no room for some of that thinking when I am really trying to get my playing in gear.  So, interestingly, I may be on my 10th run-through with a section and suddenly I find myself having some super negative thought and inevitably I mess up in a pretty major way.  hmmm ... I have to start it all over again and though the physical task may be getting easier for me, it's really a matter of challenging myself mentally to stay on the right path.

[geschema]

Unfortunately, all these thoughts that are coming to mind during practice often cause flubs, which is why I would like to get rid of them. I found this interesting post by the user Bernhard on the subject of concentration:

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=2082.msg17230#msg17230

What he says is that it's the mind's nature to wander around, and that nothing can be done to avoid that. Still, it seems to be possible to train the mind to keep its wanderings within the task at hand, by focusing on different aspects of it. I'll try concentrating on the arms/hands, as suggested by slobone (thanks!). Did anyone try meditation to improve concentration?

Guy.

[chris08]

I've re-read what Bernhard said and indeed , a lot of very helpful thoughts. I might have another piece  of advice I learnt in a Violin Forum: Start concentrating for just five minutes, and keep this habit for a few days in a row. It could help you to get in this special state of "flow" where you "deeply dive" into what you do. Does it make any sense?
Kind regards
Chris

[chris08]

Sorry, I read the WHOLE thread where Bernhard wrote his answer. He talked about 10 minutes  - with the same idea as  those famous five minutes in the before-mentioned violin forum.... anyway, it works quite well.
Kind regards
Chris

[indianajo]

Uh, concentration is fine, but a lot of early piano training is building up muscles and coordination.  Once I had learned a piece enough I had it memorized with my lower brain, I would sometimes read a novel at the same time as playing, building up speed day by day.  It wasn't a way to get to Carnegie Hall, but pieces memorized by the hindbrain like athletes learn to skate or catch a ball will never be forgotten.  I've recently gotten back to the piano after a 10 year break, and the hindbrain hasn't forgotten anything. My fingers are still pretty coordinated, although I'm having to work on strength training again.    Emotion in piano playing is another thing - you have to pay attention with the forebrain to express emotion.  So pay attention when emotion (expression) is involved.  I used to have movies in my head when I played Picture at an Exhibition.  Not the pictures that anybody else has photographed, my own internal movies.  One picture reminds me of a slow Russian  train chugging endlessly across the featureless steppes on the way to Vladivostok.  The picture with the crashing left hand chords was like attacking a hill fort with a bazooka.  The fast LH runs are like running up the hill to take the fort after you've suppressed the enemy fire.  On Beethoven's Sonata 14 Moonlight, the first movement to me like a beautiful couple rowing in a boat at night on lake Como, you can hear the little wavelets shimmer on my piano.   The second movement is the same couple dancing in white wigs and pearls in an 18th century ballroom, very elegant.  On the third movement, Marlon Brando and the Hell's Angels bust through the glass wall of the ballroom with their Harley's and tear everything up and kiss the girls against their will.  Make up some movies in your head, it helps the emotion. 

[sheena]

You make a good point there, indianajo. I think playing should never be mechanical, in the sense of playing without thinking and without being present. Engaging the emotional mind by coming up with stories about the music does not only make it sound better, it also gets more fun to play and naturally, it then gets easier to concentrate.

[jbmorel78]

Uh, concentration is fine, but a lot of early piano training is building up muscles and coordination.  

Pardon me, but how do you believe that one fosters coordination, other than through concentration?  To practice without concentration is akin to playing a game of soccer blindfolded and hoping to score a goal - you may happen to score the goal in the practice, millions of guesses later, but why not take off the blindfold and aim?

Of course, if you are speaking of concentration as an abstract concept, without a goal, then of course it is useless -  I should think, however, that this goes without saying.

Once I had learned a piece enough I had it memorized with my lower brain, I would sometimes read a novel at the same time as playing, building up speed day by day.

Why would you do this?  Again, there are much more efficient ways to build up speed if you would be content to borrow your mind from Danielle Steele for a moment to think about your music while you play it...

My fingers are still pretty coordinated, although I'm having to work on strength training again.

In that case, they are not coordinated.  The strength comes from the upper arm, not from the fingers, and all real coordination in piano playing has to do with organizing all of the forces of the body - not mutilating the hands with finger exercises, hoping that with enough slaps at the key, they will magically do what they were not designed to do in isolation...

Please remember that, as you have probably heard before, that this is a mental game, not weight training olympics.

Best wishes,
Jean-Baptiste Morel


  

[indianajo]

Practicing without concentrating is like keeping a soccer ball off the ground without thinking about it- you have seen this scene in dozens of movies, the friends are bopping a soccer ball up in the air while they joke, talk, and ogle girls.  Playing a Game against opponents that are trying to mess you up, requires some concentration.  Coordination once learned by the lower parts of the brain doesn't disappear- I've just come back after a 12 year hiatus and am starting back with the fairly advanced pieces again that I had learned before.  Strength requires recent practice- I can play advanced pieces, but not for 20 minutes at a time yet. Whether the strength is in the arm or finger is not relevant to the exercise of building up- you need reps.  Fingering exercises I did when I was 8-12 were useful for building the techniques of crossovers, rolling, arpeggio's, as well as building fine control of the 4th and 5th fingers.  Fingering exercise books are very mechanical, but have the reps that a sports trainer would proscribe for building specific muscles in the body.  I was forced into piano study because my 3rd fingertip was cut off age three, and I never used it without "helping" it with the second finger.  A couple of years of practice eliminated this bad habit, as well as giving me fine motor control of the fourth and fifth finger that were very handy in the mechanic's work where I earned my living.   

[go12_3]

I think the best time to stay focused is in four 15 mintue practice sessions and take a quick
break  inbetween, if your mind has the tendency to wander.  And at times when you are more focused, then practice for 1/2 hour.  Each day is different due to how much sleep you get and how the mind will focus.  Would morning practices work better for you than in the afternoons?  I practice mostly in the mornings, some in the afternoon, it depends upon the activities during the day.
Practice sections of a few pieces instead of playing through the whole piece, and that may help your mind focus on parts instead of everything at once.