Practicing without piano

[pianoman53]

Hi,

I've never had the problem to not be able to practice as much as I want. From September, though, I'm in a music academy where there obviously aren't enough pianos. Since this is sort of a standard in music schools, I'd like to know how people around here practice when they don't have a piano...

And please, not any wise-ass comments about getting my own piano, or some "Hi, I just wrote a 5 billion word-post on my blog. You should read it. Regards 'I-know-the-secret-of-piano-playing.blogspot.com"

[j_menz]

You could try visualisation (ie, seeing yourself playing in your mind's eye). This can be effective. Also, you can listen to some of the great pianists playing (both what you are learning and to broaden you musical horizons generally).

You could get a cheap keyboard. Perfectly OK for some things (like Hanon, if you are into that sort of self-torture).

Also, never underestimate the benefits of life experience in developing your musical depth. So, get out a bit. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy (and a dull pianist).

[akpl16]

I find myself a lot of time in the same situation too; just try stretching out your fingers once in a while to ensure mobility and flexibility of your hands. If you're itching to simulate playing, try getting a long table and just pretending they're keys for you to play your piece on. I've seriously done this with a lot of old repertoire I used to know, and though it doesn't really help me technically, it at least keeps me somewhat fluent and reminded of the music when I do get a chance to play it later. That being said, I'm sure you would agree these "not-practicing" breaks shouldn't be too long!

[danhuyle]

If you started playing the piece, then you'd have an easier time practicing without a piano.

You can write the music out on a piece of paper. Obviously this doesn't work if you hadn't played the music or even played through it.

If I wanted to play a piece from Albeniz Iberia, I'd have to play it to know what technique to use so that when I'm away from the piano, I'd have an easier time practicing without a piano.

To practice without a piano I would
- listen to recordings or watch performances to know how the piece goes
- play the piece through my mind in addition to knowing which page of the music I'm up to.
- listen to recordings with music in front of you to take notes
- learn the structure of the music

You could try visualisation (ie, seeing yourself playing in your mind's eye). This can be effective. Also, you can listen to some of the great pianists playing (both what you are learning and to broaden you musical horizons generally).

So true. Then you can play the music in your head and being able to see the book while it's being played.

[thing2emma]

During your time without a piano I would focus on memory. Work on technique when you have a piano available.
The best memory, personally, is when I can 'see' the music in my mind. That only comes from seeing it enough on paper. Also listen to it played by various artists and choose which dynamics and styles you like, and mark it in your score. Become familiar with it by listening to it.
I had only a month and a half to learn Bolcom's Graceful Ghost for my Grade 10 exam. I practised my 5 songs a total of about 10 hours in that time, and easily mastered the piece. I only managed it because I listened to it so much before that that I didn't have to work at all to learn the rhythm.

[keystroke3]

Do visualization.  Take the score and literally practice it in your mind.  Do hands separate first, then try putting them together.  It's helped me a ton with memorizing, I visualize a lot even though I have access to a piano.

Good luck!

-Keystroke

[keyboardkat]

Have you thought of getting a silent practice keyboard?   It really helps secure memory and you can practice technique on it as well.   In the days before air travel, artists on tour by train and ship used to carry these with them for practice.
Tuner/technician supply houses can sell you one.

[pianist1976]

No piano = no practice. Visualization is a powerful tool for daily use with piano, and maybe for one day or two without an instrument. You can also tap a table but sooner or later you will need the real thing, your muscles must work with real weights, your brain must coordinate movements with real sounds and your soul also needs something real  (I'm discovering nothing new, Chopin was desperate when he arrived to Majorca  because he had no piano the first days).

Get a portable digital piano and stop that nonsense!

[pianoman53]

Ofc I don't go days and days without a piano, but sometimes the waiting time for a piano is a few hours. Sometimes it's nice to sit and do nothing, but somethings it's a bit frustrating to not know how to deal with the time.

Thanks for the suggestions, keep them coming!

[zoeemmaline]

SCORE STUDY!!!

At my school every now and then there are simply no practice rooms and I will be sitting in the hall doing nothing except waiting for someone to get out of a practice room. Then my teacher walks by and says: "Why aren't you practicing?" So I say: "There are no practice rooms." And she says: "Well study your score!"

It never fails.

Even if you have just started a piece or you have a piece that you fell needs no work, you can always work on it.

[le_poete_mourant]

Gieseking is said to have learned and studied a great deal of music simply by studying the score. It was very effective for him; so much so that he once went on a tour playing nine concerts, seven different concertos in eleven days.

What if you're not Gieseking? It's not as easy, but it can be done. I went to a workshop run by Frederic Chiu, who developed his own method of score study when he was unable to work at a piano. As part of this workshop we had to learn an unfamiliar Scarlatti sonata without ever hearing it or touching the piano, over a period of two days. I wasn't sure I'd be able to do it, but it worked.

Examine the structure of the piece you're studying. Break down the form. Say it's a simple sonata form, like Scarlatti or even a Mozart. Examine the differences between the recap and the exposition. Examine the contour of the lines.

Work in layers: map out the piece by the way it progresses throughout the piece in terms of dynamics, phrases, articulations, keys...

Score study is extremely effective! Even when you're not "studying" actively, go over the piece in your brain. It makes things a lot more secure for me. If I can't "play" a piece through in my hea, I don't feel like I know it well enough.

[rachel11221]

Gieseking is said to have learned and studied a great deal of music simply by studying the score. It was very effective for him; so much so that he once went on a tour playing nine concerts, seven different concertos in eleven days.

Yes, I have heard the same things about Gieseking. In fact, I was surprised to read in his book, Piano Technique, (available cheaply from Dover) that he actually managed to learn pieces entirely without a piano. Now, obviously something like this would never work for a beginner, but since you aren't one, I think its something to think about. I don't know about learn a piece from scratch without a piano, but I have definitely managed to memorize and improve my playing of a piece (that I had initially studied a bit on the piano) without access to a piano.

[keyboardkat]

I will post here what I posted yesterday elsewhere.   The late master pianist Jorge Bolet said that he never solved a musical or technical problem at the piano, only away from it.

This kind of mental practice really cements secure memory, because you are then not just relying on kinetic, or muscle memory, which is unreliable, but on intelligent, intellectual memory, and visual memory.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Get a Rubik's cube and learn how to solve it.  Go on YouTube and search a tutorial.  The quickest I've seem someone learn was six hours.

Then after you get comfortable with that, start using your fingers to turn the sides instead of your whole hand.  Try to solve it faster and faster.  Then after a certain point, learn the Jessica Friderich method.  Then just keep trying to get faster.  Make sure that once you get the cube, lubricate it with some Vaseline or something to make it spin faster so it's easier to turn.  

You don't exactly have to learn how to solve it, but if you don't, then it's gonna be boring and it won't really help out with technique because you don't know any algorithms.  

Don't ask me how or why it works, it just does.  I always do a couple solves as a warm up before I actually begin practicing.  Or when I'm having technical difficulty on a passage, I do a couple solves before I work on where I have difficulty.

But yeah, whenever I'm away from a piano, I do this.  Never leave the house without it.