PPI????

[amanfang]

I have started reading Chang's book Fundamentals of piano practice.  He talks about PPI - Post Practice Improvement.  I have not heard of this before - perhaps it is merely my ignorance.  He says basically if you practice "properly" and efficiently then your technique will "like magic" automaticall improve.  How does this happen??  He says you will notice the next day that you can play the same passage better than you did the day before.  Well, wouldn't that happen simply because you practiced well and improved??  Perhaps he gets to this later.  I have not finished the book yet.

[faulty_damper]

PPI is when you do something and get better overnight.  You never get better while doing something, only afterwards.  This statement should not be taken out of context in the manner I mean.

"Well, wouldn't that happen simply because you practiced well and improved??  "
Um, that's what he means.  If you didn't practice, then you won't improve.  Post-practice improvement, notice that post means after, after practice improvement.

Don't take PPI too seriously, he's just calling it something like the way we call something something.

[amanfang]

I would think that if I don't get better while doing something, I would notice that whatever I'm doing isn't right.  I'm still not getting this.  Perhaps I can only improve a certain amount in any one sitting, or any one day, but I should still see improvement, or else I'm not practicing right.  Is PPI the brain "resetting" so to speak so that not only have I improved, but now there is more room to improve the next day??  He seems to build a lot of what he saying on maximizing PPI.

[faulty_damper]

Just think of PPI as your brain adapting to something new.  It's difficult at first but then after you do it, you get better at it.  It also won't seem so difficult as it was before.

[Shagdac]

Amanfang...I'm sorry I cannot remember where it is located in the forum, but Bernhard discusses this at some length. He goes more into detail, that when you practice (if done properly), the learning process actually takes place later (at least 7 hours)...normally when you would sleep. That's why it seems  like the next day you automatically play better. It has taken this time for your brain to comprehend and "learn" what you practiced (correctly) earlier.

I will continue to look for the thread. It is quite interesting, and really makes alot of sense. I know the explanation as far as "How to practice" and then when it is learned, sure saved me a great deal of time in practicing.

S

[Saturn]

I would think that if I don't get better while doing something, I would notice that whatever I'm doing isn't right.  I'm still not getting this.  Perhaps I can only improve a certain amount in any one sitting, or any one day, but I should still see improvement, or else I'm not practicing right.

In a certain sense you're right.

But (if I understand the concept correctly), you're not really seeing improvement in that one sitting, but the ability to improve.  You could draw a rough analogy between practicing and watering the grass:

When you water the grass, you do not see the grass immediately become greeener.  Not even slightly.  No matter how much water you put there, the grass will not become greener as you water it.  But what you see is the water, which is the potential for growth.  When you come back the next day, you may notice a difference in the grass itself.

Improvement of your piano playing abilities takes serious brain work.  In order for the brain to work towards that improvement, though, it has to know how.  That's what you do when you practice: your teach your brain how to improve.

- Saturn

[amanfang]

So then how will you know if you are using proper and efficient practice techniques if you can't see any improvement when you practice?

[faulty_damper]

You wait for the grass to grow.  If it doesn't grow them either you are not watering enough or you aren't watering it with clean water.

[amanfang]

Sorry to keep asking, but I am just trying to get this straight.  So if I am experimenting in my practice, and I try something 3 or 4 different ways, are you saying that I will have no idea which one will work since I don't actually improve until I go to sleep (or something to that effect)??  What good then is experimenting??  

[xvimbi]

I would think that if I don't get better while doing something, I would notice that whatever I'm doing isn't right.  I'm still not getting this.  Perhaps I can only improve a certain amount in any one sitting, or any one day, but I should still see improvement, or else I'm not practicing right.  Is PPI the brain "resetting" so to speak so that not only have I improved, but now there is more room to improve the next day??  He seems to build a lot of what he saying on maximizing PPI.

PPI refers to the subconscious. The hypothesis is that when one practices, one mainly trains the mechanical, motional aspects. The brain won't be able to fully rationalize what one did during practice, because one is mostly occupied with getting the motions right. After the practice, the brain is processing all that new information, which will in fact result in even greater improvement. When one starts a new practice session, say one day later, one can usually play a certain passage much better than one could at the end of the preceeding practice session. That's PPI.

[cellodude]

Amanfang...I'm sorry I cannot remember where it is located in the forum, but Bernhard discusses this at some length. He goes more into detail, that when you practice (if done properly), the learning process actually takes place later (at least 7 hours)...normally when you would sleep. That's why it seems  like the next day you automatically play better. It has taken this time for your brain to comprehend and "learn" what you practiced (correctly) earlier.
...
S

That's the way Chang explains it. I think it's later in the book where he explains how the brain works. Based on the explanation that the brain works at problems when we sleep he suggests that we practice just before we go to sleep to get maximum benefit from the practice. There's no way to verify if this is true but he gives the example of how he did better than his more intelligent (he claims) classmates (or is it colleagues? I'm doing this from memory at work and don't have the book at hand) by considering a problem just before he goes to bed. The next day he wakes up with the solution while they are still stuck.

Regards,

dennis lee

[faulty_damper]

Yes, what Dennis says.  If you have a problem you are stuck on, make sure to contemplate it right before going to bed.  So if its a problem with a passage, then practice that passage for a short time, then end practice and go to sleep.  When you wake up you should be able to play that passage much easier.

This learning technique works for many other things not limited to piano practice.  In highschool, my psychology teacher told us how thinking of the problem right before going to sleep will help solve it the next morning.  This is how she solved many of her problems.

Chang's books are clearly inspired by what he read in psychology books.

[bernhard]

Ok.  

Here is how it goes.

1.      There are several levels to PPI. Piano playing at its most basic is movement and co-ordination. It is not intellectual work. So people above (and Chang) concentrate a lot on the “brain” – and by that we immediately assume it is the intellectual brain. But remember that we have several “brains”.

For instance, when you eat,  one of your brains (who definitely has a degree in biochemistry) regulates to the minutest amount how much acid must go in your stomach; how how much of which hormones must go into your blood at any given moment. It determines how your heart will beat. How much your pupils will dilate in accordance to the amount of environmental light. And so on and so forth.

Don’t you think this is an amazing “brain”? Even though our “intellectual brain” may have no knowledge of biochemistry, physics or maths, somehow our “instinctive brain” (that is what I have decided to call it) knows about all those subjects. In fact it knows far more that what all our scientists have discovered so far, since all the time we surprise scientists by doing things that according to science at a given moment should be impossible (acupuncture comes to mind – until the 60s was considered superstition at best and charlatanism at worst. Now it is more or less accepted and still not understood). However, for piano playing the “instinctive brain” is of little concern (unless it is not working properly, in which case you die ).

2.      Level 1: purely physical. Now I am talking about the sensations and movements. Yes, there is  a “brain” that deals with this. And it is not the “brain” in your head. I call it the “motion brain”. It makes sure we move correctly. That we perceive sensorial data through the sense organs and that we act on these sensations. Many animals have only instinctive and motion brains. And they function perfectly well within these limitations. This is the brain that controls typing, driving a car, physical exercise and of course piano playing.

Many people get confused with the instinctive and the motion brain. There is no need. They may seem similar on the surface , but there is a huge difference: The instinctive brain learns nothing. It is born knowing everything it needs to know (think about it: If you had to learn how to make your heart beat you would be dead before the lesson even started). The motion brain on the other hand must learn everything from scratch. It knows nothing. This may surprise some of you, but we have to learn how to see, how to hear, how to taste, how to smell and so on. But because we learned this stuff at a very very young age we get deluded into thinking that this stuff is instinctive, that we were born knowing it. [Here is a side thought: This means that prodigies are not born. They have to learn the stuff]. The motion brain also has a specific way of learning, it will not learn in any other way. It learns only by imitation. Did you hear this piano teachers? It is pretty useless as far as learning to play the piano goes, to have deep intellectual discussions about the meaning of music, or to endlessly analyse the harmony of a piece. This is certainly fun and will add to your understanding of the piece and it certainly must be done, but it will not further your progress in playing one single micron. For a student to learn to play the piano, s/he must have a model to imitate.

But I am digressing.

Back to PPI.

Physically PPI works in a very straight forward manner. Consider bodybuilding. You will not build muscles while exercising. You will build muscle when you are resting. The reason for this is simple. When you are lifting weights, you are not simply exercising the muscles. You are ripping them apart (just look at the faces of the guys). It is painful. However, the muscle gets rebuild in time (it takes 36 hours), and when it gets rebuilt, it gets bigger and hence stronger. So a basic principle to grow muscle is “no pain, no gain”. No pain means that you are not ripping the muscle. And if you are not ripping the muscle, you will not rebuild it.

If you look at pictures of Mr Universe in the 50s they are skinny fellows compared to today’ guys. Part of the reason for this increase in size is the use of anabolic steroids. But part of the reason is that in the 50s sports physiology was not at all well understood. So people were going to the gym every day and they would exercise the same muscles everyday. They were ripping the muscles all right, but they were not giving time for the healing and rebuilding process to happen. They would get injured.

Then it was discovered that this process took 36 hours. So now, a body builder still trains everyday, but he has a rigid rota of muscles to be exercised, so that there is always a 36 hour period between sessions devoted to specific groups of muscles. So he might do legs on Monday morning, but then he will rest the leg muscles until Tuesday afternoon. Meanwhile he will do arms on Monday afternoon, and only go back to arms again on Wednesday morning. Once body builders started to do that in the early 60s, the results were astounding.

So, from a muscle point of view, PPI simply means that you do not get strong while you are exercising, but while you are resting, since it is when you rest that the muscles get rebuilt (=stronger and bigger).

There is always a smart alec who concludes from the above that in order to get big muscles you should therefore rest and never exercise. No, the exercise is very important, because if your muscles do not get ripped, there is no reason for them to get rebuilt, duh!

But this also shows how important it is to have the correct procedure. Without this information (muscle must be ripped to grow – it takes 36 hours to repair ripped muscle), you will never stand a chance of progress.

So it is with piano practice. The guys who are progressing (both in body building or in piano) either know this stuff, or are following the correct procedure by pure chance (which might be a much better explanation why there are so few good pianists – instead of the usual one that you must be a prodigy).

Now, piano is done with muscles. But most of the movements in piano playing are not movements that we normally do in daily life. Muscle that is not used atrophies. Most adults who start playing the piano from scratch have atrophied muscles (for the necessary movements). Hence the beginner’s clumsiness. As with any physical exercise, muscle will grow with repeated use. So in the beginning repetition of the basic, important movements is essential.

It takes 3 – 6 months for muscle to grow. So this is the worst period. A teacher can be really helpful at this period if s/he knows which movements should be repeated, and if s/he can ensure that daily repetition of the correct movements is enforced. On the other hand a teacher who does not know about this stuff can add years to a student learning and ensure that the student will never be able to progress. So this is the muscle story: PPI is simply the rest period in between training sessions when muscle ripped by the exercise is allowed to repair itself and grow (36 hours).

Now do not get the wrong idea here. Although I have used bodybuilding as an example (because it is extreme), muscle building in piano playing is not this extreme ever. Think of a baby. Why does it take a baby one year to start walking? A good percentage of this time is simply growing the leg muscles (and other) that will allow the baby to stand up. Even if the baby “knew” how to walk, it would still take 6 months for the necessary muscles to grow. You can see that in people who have been in bed for a prolonged period of time (e.g. coma patients that wake up after 4 – 5 years). They know how to walk, but they cannot, because their muscles have wasted away from lack of use. However they will recover quickly, since they know how to walk and their attempts to do so will rebuild the muscles much faster than a baby who does not know how to walk and therefore wastes many movements “experimenting”.

Likewise in piano playing, we need first to build up the necessary muscles – not to the point of a body builder, but to the point that will allow a baby to walk. And just like walking is all the exercise a baby needs to develop the necessary muscles for walking, playing the piano is all the exercise one needs to play the piano.

But to start with you will not have the muscles, so it will take 3 – 6 months. During this stage the main PPI at work is the 36 hour period  for ripped muscle to repair itself.

The practical consequence: beginners must have a 36 hour period in between practising the same movement. Please understand this clearly: It does not mean that you should space your practise 36 hours. You must still practise everyday (just like a body builder) but you must have a rota: B major scale on Monday morning. Repeat only on Tuesday afternoon. Chord practice on Monday afternoon. Repeat only on Wednesday morning. Practise piece on Tuesday morning, repeat again only on Wednesday afternoon. You get the idea. The student does not have a clue about all this, and I strongly suggest that the teacher should not spend too much time explaining it. What the teacher must do is to spend as much time as needed to create a schedule for the student and make sure they stick to it. This is the greatest advantage of having a parent who is a piano teacher (assuming they know this stuff): they will ensure that their child sticks to this sort of program, and if they do, in five years time you have a “prodigy”.

Once muscle is built, it will only increase and get stronger if you keep ripping it. Otherwise it will stay at its level for as long as you keep it to the same physical demands. This means that after 3 – 6 months, you do not need to worry about the 36 hour period anymore. The muscle is now adequate for the work required of it.

[continues on the next post]

[bernhard]

[continued from the previous post]

Now comes the second stage (these things do not happen one after the other – they are all happening at the same time, but I have to write about them this way). Now we will be dealing with nerves and nerve control.

This is the really crucial step in piano playing, not the muscle stage. Everything will hinge on this, and yet few people have any awareness of this level. It is all unconscious and taken for granted. This is really important, so listen carefully.

A lot of piano problems (including injury) results from trying to deal with technical problems with muscle, rather than with nerves. There is something called nerve inhibition that is often confused with muscle tension .

You often see that in beginners. They are clumsy, and one aspect of such clumsiness is sympathetic movement. You ask them to put their five fingers (RH) on the keyboard over CDEFG and keep the LH on their lap. Then you ask them to keep all fingers on the keys and lift only finger 2 several times. Typically all the fingers will move in sympathy. In fact, if look at their LH on their laps, they are moving too. One of my students would even wiggle her toes when trying to move finger 2 in isolation. When you point this to them, they try to stop sympathetic movement by tensing the muscles involved, and it will work. The problem is, if they are allowed to go on, soon they start tensing as a matter of habit, and this can now get in their way for years to come.

So they must learn to stop sympathetic movement by nerve inhibition. Since for a muscle to move a message must be sent via the nerves, one must learn to inhibit the nerve carrying this message. If the message is not delivered, the muscle will not move. And there will be no tension involved.

How do you teach that? I cannot tell you. All I can say is that we all already know exactly how to do it. If  I tell you: lift your arm, how do you do it? It is a huge mystery! No one knows how volition actually works. But we all do it. We all can do it. Remember, the motion brain learns by imitation. So imitate what the student is doing, and then do it yourself by nerve inhibition and let the student imitate you.

This is a completely new level. To start with, we had to build muscle. But now that the muscles have been built, the whole task of piano playing becomes the task of ingraining specific sequences of nerve inhibition. This is a completely different sort of PPI. Like with muscle building, it requires repetition, and I must qualify this term: correct repetition. And I must qualify it again: correct conscious repetition.

The student must repeat, and he must be fully aware that what s/he is repeating is a sequence of nerve inhibitions that result in a sequence of movements. This is the stage at which very slow practise over two or three finger movements will pay dividends. This means slowly lifting and lowering the five fingers over CDEFG in order to observe nerve inhibition versus muscle tension as a way to control sympathetic movement. And once you figure it out you never need to do slow practice ever again.

I hear of people talking about doing extreme slow practice on advanced repertory and I have to laugh. This people do not have a clue. The learning of nerve inhibition should not take long. In fact it starts passing to subconscious control almost instantly. So the teacher must be watching like a hawk for any signs that the student is using muscle tensing rather than nerve inhibiton to control sympathetic movement so that only the correct thing gets ingrained in the subconscious. From this point on, PPI is a night’s sleep.

Once muscle building and nerve inhibition have been achieved the next step is co-ordination. This involves two steps. First co-ordination of the whole playing apparatus (shoulder girdle – arm – forearm – hand – fingers), so that the motion starts at the shoulder girdle and transmits to the fingers (and not the other way around), and finally co-ordination of the two sides of the body.

Externally this is achieved by working on the pieces/exercises, first with HS and then with HT and there are several ways to go about it (which I have discussed at length in other threads). Internally the whole process is guided by sound (remember, when I said that the motion brain controls not only movements but sense perceptions as well?). This means that the student must have an aural image of what he is trying to accomplish with his/her movements. If the hearing is detailed enough, the fingers will comply and produce the desired sound. Most people forget this and get increasingly obsessed with the minutiae of movement. It is not necessary. Hearing should always take precedence over movement obsession.

So now we are having increasingly complex sets of co-ordinated muscle actions and nerve inhibitions, for which many times there is only one or two sequences that will work optimally for a given passage in music. A great part of practice has to be devoted simply in figuring out what these sequences might be, and then ingraining them in the subconscious.

Fortunately patterns in music are fairly limited, and with an appropriately designed program, the student should have mastered pretty much all the patterns in a couple of years (by the way this never happens because no one seems to be able to follow a program to the letter).

Such complex co-ordinations of muscle actions and nerve inhibitions cannot possibly be done by the conscious mind, so the task must be performed by the subconscious mind. Like muscle needs 36 hours in between exercise in order to repair itself and grow, the subconscious mind needs a night sleep between conscious practice of complex sequences of muscle actions and nerve inhibitions in order to incorporate those. So again PPI at this level is one night sleep.

If you want to know more about the practical ways to use PPI to one’s advantage, have a look at this thread:

https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=perf;action=display;num=1084457512


If you want to know more about the several brains (I only talked here about the instinctive and the motion brains) have a look here:

https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=stud;action=display;num=1085767324


I hope this helps.

Best wishes,
Bernhard

[bernhard]

So then how will you know if you are using proper and efficient practice techniques if you can't see any improvement when you practice?

There is no absolutely proper and efficient practice technique. It is all relative. The correct question is: “How do I know if practice technique 1 is better and more efficient than practice technique 2”

I am afraid there is only one way to answer this question. Get two pieces/passages of similar difficulty. Practice one with technique 1 and the other with technique 2. After one week practising this way, compare results. It should be obvious which is the best. Notice however:

1.      What worked wonders for one student may not work with another, in fact, results may be reversed with two different students.

2.      Different passages also may respond differently to different practise techniques.

However, given how repetitive music is, and that soon you get to know your students, with experience you will be able to sort out problems in a way that will look to the uninformed observer as miraculous. This happened to Leschetizky. He was able to suggest ideas to his students that had dramatic impact. Yet, when the students talked about “his method” they could never agree. Clearly he was working on the basis of the principle above.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

Sorry to keep asking, but I am just trying to get this straight.  So if I am experimenting in my practice, and I try something 3 or 4 different ways, are you saying that I will have no idea which one will work since I don't actually improve until I go to sleep (or something to that effect)??  What good then is experimenting??  

Yes, you should immediately have results as you are practising. However, just because you practised does not mean that you have learned. For that you need a night’s sleep.

Next, do not try 3 or 4 different things on the same passage/piece. Try each practice technique on a different passage /piece (but of similar difficulty). Otherwise how can you compare results? See the post above.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[cellodude]

Oww! My brain hurts. I wonder which one of my brains got hurt by Bernhard's post.

[faulty_damper]

Obviously not the intellectual one.

[arigatuso]

Bernhard, you wrote:

"...Next, do not try 3 or 4 different things on the same passage/piece. Try each practice technique on a different passage /piece (but of similar difficulty). Otherwise how can you compare results? See the post above. "

What is the "right" procedure for EXPLORING the best technique for a passage? I've always have very different ways to play certain passage, and I practice many of them, but how do I now if one is interfering with other? Why I'm making progress or not making? Is this technique that helps, or that, or this togheter?..

BASICALLY HOW TO EXPLORE??


...Ale

[Antnee]

So they must learn to stop sympathetic movement by nerve inhibition. Since for a muscle to move a message must be sent via the nerves, one must learn to inhibit the nerve carrying this message. If the message is not delivered, the muscle will not move. And there will be no tension involved.

How do you teach that? I cannot tell you. All I can say is that we all already know exactly how to do it. If  I tell you: lift your arm, how do you do it? It is a huge mystery! No one knows how volition actually works. But we all do it. We all can do it. Remember, the motion brain learns by imitation. So imitate what the student is doing, and then do it yourself by nerve inhibition and let the student imitate you.

Kind of like in Kill Bill... "wiggle your big toe..."

-Tony-

[bernhard]

Bernhard, you wrote:

"...Next, do not try 3 or 4 different things on the same passage/piece. Try each practice technique on a different passage /piece (but of similar difficulty). Otherwise how can you compare results? See the post above. "

What is the "right" procedure for EXPLORING the best technique for a passage? I've always have very different ways to play certain passage, and I practice many of them, but how do I now if one is interfering with other? Why I'm making progress or not making? Is this technique that helps, or that, or this togheter?..

BASICALLY HOW TO EXPLORE??


...Ale

If you come up with a new idea (or read it somewhere, or someone suggested it to you), and you want to investigate this new idea rather than simply accepting it on blind faith (always a good idea), then you must test it. For testing, controlled conditions are necessary. Therefore you choose two pieces/passages of similar difficulty and try the new technique on one of them, but not on the other, and compare results after a couple of weeks.

However, if you already have a repertory of techniques that you know work, then the procedure above is unnecessary.

And yes, it is very important to practise certain passages in a variety of ways. Of course this assumes that the several ways have been tried (not simply accepted on blind faith) and that you have investigated then enough to know when, where and how they work (and if possible why as well), and when, where and how they don’t work. Every practice trick has strengths and limitations. If you don’t know what they are, then yes, you may end up with them working against each other (a good example is the widespread practice of slowly increasing speed with a metronome in order to get fast. This practice – very useful in other contexts by the way – will actually create speed walls and actually prevent you from achieving fast tempos).

The “right” procedure is the one that results in improvement almost immediately.

Consider frying an egg. If I tell you that in order to fry an egg all you need to do is to put some oil in a pan, put the egg in, wait for a while and take it out once it is cooked, you may agree with me that the procedure is simple enough.

But now consider a person who is totally inexperienced with cooking – perhaps someone form a different culture who doe not even know what an egg is. Several things can go wrong if the person tries to follow the instructions above.

They may throw the egg whole (with the shell) in the frying pan. They may put too much oil, or too little. They may come back to you and say: I did everything you said, in the morning, and when I went to bed at night the egg wasn’t yet cooked. And on closer observation, you realise they did not put the fire on because there was nothing in your instructions to that end.

If the egg is not cooked after a few minutes, you will know something is not right. Likewise, if a student cannot play a scale over two octaves after one year of lessons, something is very wrong. In fact 5 – 10 minutes at the piano should get that scale going. If not the student is doing something wrong.

Part of the role of a teacher is to give you a timetable for progress. Here in the UK people are expected to take ten years to play a Mendelssohn Song Without words. This is crazy. Anyone could be playing this stuff in 1 – 2 years.

Even though it may take sometime for you to master a full piece, improvement on a small section (say a bar or two) should be apparent over a couple of minutes. If not, you are doing something wrong.

The basic approach is simple: Try something. If it is not working, try something else.

Does that help?

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[arigatuso]

Yes it helps.

But...

I'm on fifth book of the Suzuki Method (i can play a Haydn Sonata, a Bach Partita, some easy Chopin nocturne...)

so.. if I take.. lets say some passage of the Liszt Hungarian Rapsody 2... 10 minutes and I have it? I do no think so... perhaps if I have a teacher that show me the right technique may be... most of my time i keep searching new techniques and most efective techniques doesn't appears between 10 minutes of practice...

so I think you approach works, you can manage a passage in 10 minutes, only if you have choosen the right technique to play it and you master this technique.

If not, you must keep searching a technique that works fine, and this may take much more time.

Am I wrong?

sorry my english,
Ale

[bernhard]

so.. if I take.. lets say some passage of the Liszt Hungarian Rapsody 2... 10 minutes and I have it? I do no think so...

If you take just two notes of any piece you will certainly master them in 10 minutes (much less actually). It depends of the size of the passage. It depends how difficult/impossible the passage is for you. It may take quite a long time to master the whole Rhapsody, but if you break it down in sections and master each section separately, you will eventually get there.

However it might be a much better approach to organise a program where you go through a number of pieces that progressively deal with the difficulties that you will find in the Rhapsody, so that by the time you come to learn the Rhapsody most of it will be easy and you will have acquired a sizeable repertory on the way.

This is the way I teach. I do not care how difficult or impossible the piece the student wants to learn is. All that matters is that s/he wants to learn it. This provides interest and motivation, without which, no learning. Now my job is to figure out a plan to get the student there. And by plan I mean a sequence of progressive repertory that will allow the student to eventually tackle the difficult piece s/he wants to play.

The catch here is: I do not use technical exercises, or pieces that the student has no interest in. So I must select a repertory that will provide the technical ladder, and on top of that the student must be interested in learning this repertory. Fortunately the piano repertory is vast enough to easily fulfill both conditions.

Finally, any piece does not consist only of impossible sections. Most pieces are mostly easy, except for a few sections. These are the ones that will define everything.

perhaps if I have a teacher that show me the right technique may be... most of my time i keep searching new techniques and most efective techniques doesn't appears between 10 minutes of practice...

Yes, that is one of the biggest advantages of a teacher: it saves you a lot of time (assuming the teacher knows about this stuff – some don’t). And yes, you should be able to do all the investigation you need to do to master a passage in 10 – 15 minutes. Just make sure that the passage’s size is appropriate. Usually people try to tackle far too large passages.

If not, you must keep searching a technique that works fine, and this may take much more time.

Time spent researching the best technique is time very well spent. It does not really matter how much time this will take (with experience it will take less and less time). Just look at the alternative: in order to save time researching a technique that works will you rather go ahead and use a technique that does not?

Have a look here, where I explained all this in great detail. If you still have doubts, come back.

https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=perf;action=display;num=1084457512

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[nick]

Hey Bernhard, when you said

Yes, that is one of the biggest advantages of a teacher: it saves you a lot of time (assuming the teacher knows about this stuff – some don’t). And yes, you should be able to do all the investigation you need to do to master a passage in 10 – 15 minutes. Just make sure that the passage’s size is appropriate. Usually people try to tackle far too large passages

I would like to hear a bit more on the length of time to play faster than needed for tough parts, as you appear to have achieved this. Little background, I am on the 3rd movement to the Appassionata sonata, and as my previous post stated my goal was 126 on the met. I have been for 10 days now, doing section work at 160. Some parts I can play 40 notes in a row at that speed now, which is really cool since when I try 126 it feels like I am crawling! but other parts are stubborn, and I can do maybe 8 or 16 notes in a row, then run out of steam. Fingers tire. My assumption is that if I continue, I will eventually gain more notes until the whole passage is complete. Since I have made good progress so far, I think this is logical. Is it better to continue adding a note to the passage, or to do repeats on the whole passage in small sections. Say you have a 40 note passage. Better to break the whole thing up and work on the sections, then try and string them together, or start from beginning with a few notes, and continue adding notes? May not matter, but I thought you may have gone through this and have an answer. No sense in inventing the wheel again.
Nick

[arigatuso]

Several questions.. help bernhard

1) Suppose I take some passage, I practice this and then I let take PPI take over. Some days later I can practice this passage very well. But, I case of trills when I start practicing trills and concentrate on it I loose some control. WHY!!!? why I can play trills very good without thinking and it cames worse when I start thinking about it.


2) Some techniques doesnt seem to fit at first for a particular passage, later, months later, I find that technique was the very good, but this if after I tried with many other techniques between. Is there a method to choose the right technique for a particular passage?

3) My teacher never worries about technique (except of course telling me that I have to play relaxed, ...). I play a lot alone and I invest a lot of time searching the right movements. However.. another student of my teacher is VERY good, but he started at 7... what I have to do? simply follow her instructions , or invest time on searching on my own? what is the best way (long term)?

[bernhard]

Hey Bernhard, when you said

Yes, that is one of the biggest advantages of a teacher: it saves you a lot of time (assuming the teacher knows about this stuff – some don’t). And yes, you should be able to do all the investigation you need to do to master a passage in 10 – 15 minutes. Just make sure that the passage’s size is appropriate. Usually people try to tackle far too large passages

I would like to hear a bit more on the length of time to play faster than needed for tough parts, as you appear to have achieved this. Little background, I am on the 3rd movement to the Appassionata sonata, and as my previous post stated my goal was 126 on the met. I have been for 10 days now, doing section work at 160. Some parts I can play 40 notes in a row at that speed now, which is really cool since when I try 126 it feels like I am crawling! but other parts are stubborn, and I can do maybe 8 or 16 notes in a row, then run out of steam. Fingers tire. My assumption is that if I continue, I will eventually gain more notes until the whole passage is complete. Since I have made good progress so far, I think this is logical. Is it better to continue adding a note to the passage, or to do repeats on the whole passage in small sections. Say you have a 40 note passage. Better to break the whole thing up and work on the sections, then try and string them together, or start from beginning with a few notes, and continue adding notes? May not matter, but I thought you may have gone through this and have an answer. No sense in inventing the wheel again.
Nick

Usually the main problem in long fast passages is memory. By that I mean hand memory. If you have to think what the next note is, you will get hesitations and stuttering. Is that your problem? If it is, you must break the long sections in small sections, make sure there is a lot of overlap in between sections and simply do repetition after repetition until it all gets ingrained. You should be able to play the whole passage in automatic pilot. If this is your aim, then the best practice strategy is repeated note-groups. I have described it several times, here is a thread that talks about it:

https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=teac;action=display;num=1084900625

The other problem you mention is finger tiredness. It is most likely that as you increase speed you are tensing up and keeping that tension on permanently. A lot of people urge piano students to relax, but if you truly relax, you end up lying on the floor. The way to deal with tiredness consists of two parts. First you must make sure that the work is distributed throughout your whole playing apparatus (shoulders /arms/forearms/wrists/hand/fingers) and not just fingers. And second you must have tension, but you must refresh your muscles constantly. Robert Henry and xvimbi have talked at length about this, and I suggest you read their excellent posts on the subject. Here is a recent thread that dealt with this:

https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=perf;action=display;num=1091040382

Also your tiredness maybe because you are repeating the passage several times. If so, one way to deal with it is to alternate right and left hand practice. This way you can practice for a reasonably long period of time and the hands are always fresh.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes,
Bernhard

[bernhard]

Several questions.. help bernhard

1) Suppose I take some passage, I practice this and then I let take PPI take over. Some days later I can practice this passage very well. But, I case of trills when I start practicing trills and concentrate on it I loose some control. WHY!!!? why I can play trills very good without thinking and it cames worse when I start thinking about it.

There is a very big difference between “thinking” and mental work. Mental work is essential for piano playing. Thinking is not only completely unnecessary as it is nocive.

I have discussed the matter of “thinking” here. You may find it interesting. It explains the hows and whys.

https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=stud;action=display;num=1085767324

https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=stud;action=display;num=1087468817

2) Some techniques doesnt seem to fit at first for a particular passage, later, months later, I find that technique was the very good, but this if after I tried with many other techniques between. Is there a method to choose the right technique for a particular passage?

Yes, it is called the scientific method. Get two passages of similar difficulty. Practise one with the technique you are unsure about, and the other you practise your usual way. Compare results after a couple of weeks.

But what you are probably asking is more on the following lines: Faced with a passage, is there a way to know straightaway what would be the best way to tackle it? I am afraid that the answer here will disappoint you. Yes there is, it is called experience. So in the beginning it will take a long time to figure things out, but with experience, you will realise how repetitive music is and you will realise that you can deal with any passage.

This is a bit like self-defence. If someone attacks you is there a best defence? Yes, there is. Always. But your capacity to use it will depend on your experience in fights, and on the amount of time you have been training, and if your training has been thorough enough. The really unfair thing about all this is that just when you start to get the hang of things you die.

3) My teacher never worries about technique (except of course telling me that I have to play relaxed, ...). I play a lot alone and I invest a lot of time searching the right movements. However.. another student of my teacher is VERY good, but he started at 7... what I have to do? simply follow her instructions , or invest time on searching on my own? what is the best way (long term)?

Well, I don’t really believe in playing relaxed. If you truly relax, you will end up lying on the floor. What one needs to master is the art of constantly refreshing the muscles involved. Robert Henry has written some superlative posts on this matter. I agree with everything he says (I mean his piano posts, not his political ones he he ). I suggest you click on his profile and read his posts. He says it much better than me. Try this one for starters:

https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=perf;action=display;num=1091040382

Your teacher may belong to the school of thought that technique is ultimately a very personal matter and that you have to find out by yourself what works best for you, given that we all have different bodies.

I agree with this line of thought, and I tend not to insist in specific positions, or traditional movements. However, although there is a range of correct movements, and some slack definitely exists, there are also movements that are generally inappropriate, and no one should use them (e.g. “breaking” the nail joint as you press the keys).

The other student may just have hit on the right co-ordinates by chance. It is known to happen. I doubt very much it has to do with the age s/he started.

And yes, you should always investigate by yourself as well as follow your teachers instructions. But if I understood correctly your teacher is not giving you much instruction, therefore…

Also have a look at this interesting thread that is somewhat related:

https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=stud;action=display;num=1092084292;start=1

I hope this helps.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[nick]

Berhard said:

Usually the main problem in long fast passages is memory

This is not a factor for me as I know the notes very well.

also, when said

Also your tiredness maybe because you are repeating the passage several times. If so, one way to deal with it is to alternate right and left hand practice. This way you can practice for a reasonably long period of time and the hands are always fresh

I do switch hands once I start feeling fatigued. I can't play the whole passage once without feeling the fatigue in the middle of it or less. So it would appear more smaller section repeats would work. The first fast left hand part in the 3rd movement of the Appassionata has probably about 80 notes! What is worse, the last part is the most difficult. I will continue as I am with smaller sections. Thanks again for the comments and if anything else to add, fire away.
Nick

[nick]

I said:

The first fast left hand part in the 3rd movement of the Appassionata has probably about 80 notes!

Wrong. Counted them today and 195 16th notes without interuption. Little tough at speed. Can't do it yet.
Nick

[Sketchee]

I saw a documentary on this where they had a group learn a dance routine in a day. The next day some had sleep and others didn't.  The ones who didn't sleep were able to do the dance exactly as they had the same as the day before.  No loss in performance but no improvement.  The ones who had slept not only did the same as they had before but had dramatically improved.

The theory presented is that the mind "practices" in sleep.  Not literally practices but it strengthens the memory connections in the brain made during sleep.