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Topic: How to make less mistakes?  (Read 2194 times)

Offline foobar

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How to make less mistakes?
on: November 20, 2013, 09:35:13 AM
Hello,

Sorry about the ambiguous subject line; however I often find myself in the situation that I hardly ever get a piece completely right. If I would play it three times, every passage would be right at least once (in terms of notes played and expression of the music). Even after practising a lot, I still sometimes make new mistakes.

Are there any pointers you could give me on how to get a more consistent style and what and how to practise to achieve this?

Offline snoa

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Re: How to make less mistakes?
Reply #1 on: November 20, 2013, 09:47:32 AM
I have the same issues. Make sure you're not over-practicing. Sometimes, if I haven't practiced in a few days my fingers will be weak; so when I go from no practice to 1+ hour of practice every day for a few days straight, my fingers get a bit worn out, and causes me to mess up on things I've never had a problem with before. It's frustrating, and has nearly caused me to want to throw my baby-grand out the window a few times, but the only way to really fix that is to rest for a day or two and not go so hard on your fingers next time.

If it's not that, identify the mistakes you make, like when you mess up, immediately stop and look at your fingers, what just happened? Did a finger hit a wrong key? What finger hit what key, what key was it supposed to play? Really analyze the types of mistakes you're making and practice to work around them. For example, if a lot of my mistakes were a result of my ring finger not stretching far enough and barely missing the right key because of it, then I'd work on exercises and songs that required good finger flexibility (a few Rachmaninoff pieces come to mind...) to help get more stretch out of my fingers. I'd also massage my fingers frequently, stretch them out and keep them moisturized with lotion to keep them nice and limber.

Another technique you could do is learn to play a song that's significantly more difficult than the one you're playing. Then when you get back to the original song, it'll be a piece of cake. We did this all the time when I was in an orchestra. If we ever kept screwing up a song then we'd get a new piece that was way harder. We wouldn't spend too much time trying to play the whole thing, just parts of it, but by the time we got back to the first piece there was a noticeable improvement.

Any of those techniques may or may not work to some degree depending on who you are and what type of mistakes these are, so I can't guarantee their effectiveness, these are just what have worked personally for me.

Offline hfmadopter

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Re: How to make less mistakes?
Reply #2 on: November 20, 2013, 10:06:49 AM
Once I've learned a piece and I start to make mistakes in it, which does occur, it's usually that I have become less attentive to the music. I.E. my mind wanders. The answer then, is to stay focused. Or try to become more focused.

 Most music has trouble spots in it.  Try to firm those up extra well and in fact, two things may occur in those spots. You may very well end up spending 80% or so of the time learning the piece on those rough spots ( I do). And secondly, they may well become the strong points of the piece. Once that happens then secondary weak spots may show up. I know they do as I do early run throughs at attempting performance level with a new piece. Ah, so there really were more than than those few rough spots to contend with after all. Once conquering those secondary spots, the piece should be more ready to just play. But the work is not done, it needs to be kept fresh.

I know in my own practice, once I've learned a piece that well my mind may wander to another similar piece or start thinking about how this piece reminds me of, for instance, a day at the park or some such thing. Or my grand child's face. What ever, it may be a break in concentration. Now when I really know the piece is when I can form those visions and play through as well, they have melded into one. I thought I was ready with the piece and was not but now I am. This could be months into it by this point.

Another thing that can happen is once we think we really know a piece, it turns out we did not like it as well as we thought we would and it starts to slip away. This is the breaking point, keep it together or move on becomes the question to answer.
Depressing the pedal on an out of tune acoustic piano and playing does not result in tonal color control or add interest, it's called obnoxious.

Offline timothy42b

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Re: How to make less mistakes?
Reply #3 on: November 20, 2013, 03:55:49 PM
I think there are three kinds of mistakes.

One is DMN activation.  The brain has an area called the Default Maintenance Network, a kind of autopilot that turns on when you're doing a task that doesn't need full attention.

The problem is it is pretty dumb and guarantees some unexpected stupid mistakes.  Since you said your mistakes were new ones this seems likely.

You can avoid it by maintaining alert concentration - easier said than done, and can sometimes lead to mistake category 3. 
Tim

Offline foobar

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Re: How to make less mistakes?
Reply #4 on: November 20, 2013, 10:09:58 PM
Thank you for your suggestions!

I guess it makes a lot of sense to analyse the kinds of mistakes, tbh i'm not really sure which are the most common in my playing.

The theory with not paying full attention might really be a source of my mistakes, but on the other hand, during playing, you have to do more at the same time than what you can keep in mind at any time. But i gues s there's no real cure for that

Offline bronnestam

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Re: How to make less mistakes?
Reply #5 on: November 21, 2013, 09:44:05 AM
Havbe you tried to record yourself frequently? With a camera, if you have, or just the sound. It is no fun listening to your mistakes afterwards  :(  but you will hear them better. You can make a pause in the playback and take notes, in written or mentally, about what really happened there and there. Then you can make a better analysis of how to fix it.

Use a metronome and make sure that you try many different tempi so that you don't get stuck in a particular tempo all the time.
Practice in short sections and also make sure that you change the extent of these sections all the time, so that you don't start and end at the same spots every time.
If you have a digital, change voices. If you have an acoustic, try find another piano to play on, with a different feeling.
Make your practice sessions very short, just a few minutes at a time - take at least ten minutes pause inbetween them, and use that time to STAND UP, MOVE AROUND, DO SOMETHING ELSE. If your practice time is short, you are forced to be more effective because you don't have time to dabble, and your mind is not that likely to wander ...

Also try playing the left hand's line with your right hand and vice versa.

All these things will strengthen your concentration and prevent you from being absent-minded when you play.
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