learning new music without losing technique?

[Bob]

Lost my post...


Being a really good sight-reader might solve this....

How do you keep technique up and keep developing technique if it takes awhile to learn a piece and get it under your fingers?  Also keeping in mind that a piece of music probably isn't going to hit technique evenly, as in working all the fingers, both hands, etc., the LH usually getting short-changed by pieces.

Say you take an atonal piece, something really difficult to sight-read.  Something with enough notes that you're not going to sit down and just play through it.  Make the tempo fast enough that you can't really 'read' the music and you have to really get it into your fingers first.  While you're doing that time goes by, time during which you could have been pushing your technique.

Time is another solution.  Just add more practice time.  But I'm wondering about not adding more time.

[quantum]

Work on several pieces which are at different stages of learning.  You may be sight reading through books for prospective repertoire, fingering a piece, working on difficult passage work, memorization, resurrecting old repertoire - reading, resurrecting old repertoire - re working fingering, resurrecting old repertoire - memorization, recital prep for pieces, compose or improvise music.

Just because you are not working on technique on one piece doesn't stop you from doing so in others. 

[becky8898]

Hi Quantum. My teacher has always taught me that smart musical thinking can make up for a world of not having enough time to practice.  20 minutes of really intense thinking either playing pieces, or working on your technique is worth 2 hours of dum dum playing where your brain is off in the ozone.  Now most of us are somewhere in the middle but can improve our musical ability to concentrate. Try that. Also  Bach, more Bach and more Bach. Play some every day at whatever level your at.  It will keep both hands fresh, can actually provide technique like in the C Minor  prelude of wtc book 1. Finally any piece your working on. Try and find parts of it that also allow you to work on your technique.  Like for instance. When I play a Mozart Sonata. I may take the scale work and make a game out of it.  Like ill try the scale passing the thumb under and other times ill just try it by just  shifting my arm position or play some of the scales in parallel thirds.  You can find all kinds of neat things to do with most pieces that will help with your technique. 

Cheers, Becky

[quantum]

My teacher has always taught me that smart musical thinking can make up for a world of not having enough time to practice.  20 minutes of really intense thinking either playing pieces, or working on your technique is worth 2 hours of dum dum playing where your brain is off in the ozone. 

Very true.  I find that mental practice can be far more efficient than relying on physical practice.  Technique is not exclusive to physical practice either.  One needs to think about how their body works. 


I mentioned it earlier, but I should elaborate.  A lot of my technical development came from improvising on a particular technical element.  Do not underestimate the power of improvisation.  Spontaneous creation of musics often requires technical skill to execute artistic creativity.  Improvising can greatly aid in one's technique development as one is engaged in actively applying technique towards an artistic goal.  One not only becomes more fluent in the execution and creative delivery of a physical movement, but is encouraged to think on how such element would be used in a musical context. 

Right now I'm doing a lot of improv using Messiaen's Modes of Limited Transposition.    His music becomes much easier to grasp once one understands his language. 

[ted]

I do not like playing solely for a physical purpose. I do five minutes night and morning of pure technical work on my silent practice clavier and I find that more than suffices. At the instrument I am interested only in making music.

I am even reluctant to improvise too long using physical goals as it can sometimes become a habit of thought which can block improvisational flow. In other words, the spontaneous reactions become technical and haptic rather than aural and musical. However, with this small caution I agree with quantum  that improvisation is a very natural, stressless and effective way of maintaining technique.

I guess I should add though that I am far from a normal player, have only a small repertoire of other people's pieces and I never perform. Therefore my way must be generalised with care.

Yes, symmetric partitions of twelve are interesting to fiddle with. I tend to like those with three positions rather than four, as the augmented chord wasn't used anywhere near as much as the hackneyed diminished in conventional music. Just me being contrary as usual I suppose.

You can only have periods of 2,3,4 and 6 (1 and 12 being trivial) but they form an interesting subset of the 352 possible partitions.

[birba]

Hi Quantum. My teacher has always taught me that smart musical thinking can make up for a world of not having enough time to practice.  20 minutes of really intense thinking either playing pieces, or working on your technique is worth 2 hours of dum dum playing where your brain is off in the ozone.  Now most of us are somewhere in the middle but can improve our musical ability to concentrate. Try that. Also  Bach, more Bach and more Bach. Play some every day at whatever level your at.  It will keep both hands fresh, can actually provide technique like in the C Minor  prelude of wtc book 1. Finally any piece your working on. Try and find parts of it that also allow you to work on your technique.  Like for instance. When I play a Mozart Sonata. I may take the scale work and make a game out of it.  Like ill try the scale passing the thumb under and other times ill just try it by just  shifting my arm position or play some of the scales in parallel thirds.  You can find all kinds of neat things to do with most pieces that will help with your technique. 

Cheers, Becky

You are 12 years old?! - The world would be better off if you were the norm and not the exception!  Your musical training and attitude is SO invigorating!!!  Your teacher is one lucky guy (or gal!) 

[Bob]

Oi... I found a simple piece.  It looks simple on paper.  Pain in the butt for fingering.  I don't think there is a good fingering for it.  And I've got an editted edition so it's got that... And I really wonder what the editor was thinking on some them.  He must have different hands than me. 

But I spent a large chunk of practice time figuring out fingerings.  And some drilling of the piece to get it under my fingers.  It's a little awkward too.  Surprise, surprise.  But when I worked on the fingerings I wasn't doing my normal routine.  Even working on the piece isn't going to push me for physical technique.  And it's contrapuntal so that hangs me up a little in terms of actually reading the music.

It's the same situation.  And what I predicted. 

I like the idea of working on several pieces at once, each piece in a different stage.

But the only other idea I'm coming up with is to just put in more time.  Do a routine, and make it as concentrated as possible -- Or shift it a little so it's changing and eventually hitting all the areas evenly.  And then add on more time for actual literature.

It's frustrating how slow it is just to work out good fingerings and then start to get this under my fingers.