Thinking while playing

[natik]

Hi,

recently, I`ve come across a statement, that your mind should guide you when playing. Since that`s completely new to me, I would like to know, to what extent this should be pursued. When practising, I`m always kind of numb, relaying on muscle memory. But this method sometimes fails me, especially when I`m nervous. So I`ve started learning the notes by heart with some help of basic harmony. However, even if I know piece well (I am able to write it or project it in head), my mind is not able to help me consciously, and it comes always "too late". Therefore, every time I play, my mind runs awat and I`m just observing half-surprised what the next tone is.

Is it something rare and harmful? If yes, are there any efficient methods to change this habit?

[pianistaw]

Hi,

recently, I`ve come across a statement, that your mind should guide you when playing. Since that`s completely new to me, I would like to know, to what extent this should be pursued. When practising, I`m always kind of numb, relaying on muscle memory. But this method sometimes fails me, especially when I`m nervous. So I`ve started learning the notes by heart with some help of basic harmony. However, even if I know piece well (I am able to write it or project it in head), my mind is not able to help me consciously, and it comes always "too late". Therefore, every time I play, my mind runs awat and I`m just observing half-surprised what the next tone is.

Is it something rare and harmful? If yes, are there any efficient methods to change this habit?

Put the metronome very slowly(I mean it!) and think the section you're practicing three times hands separate.

 At this stage everything is in the mind. You are imagining yourself playing everything. If it helps you, close your eyes. Stare at the ceiling. Anything to make you focus internally.

Listen to the metronome and start playing it hands separate mentally. Your focus will need to be 100 % if you want this to work. You can vocalize if it helps or move your fingers and body like you were playing it for real.

Imagine each hands playing three times.

Then, you move on to imagine both hands together. This is the tricky part. If you are learning a new piece this will be very hard. If you already familiar with how it feels HT then you have half the job done.

Do this three times also. Try to make it as real as possible.

After that you can do the whole process again, but this time you play it for real. The same slow(!) tempo as before. Now, there is one key to this. You cannot just mindlessly repeat. You have to IMAGINE AHEAD. While you at the same time focus as much as you can on what you're doing, visualize the next phrase, see yourself play it, hear it being played BEFORE you actually play it.

That way, your mind will always be a step ahead of your fingers.

Slow practice done right is essential to every pianist's success.

Mindlessly repeating rough spots, even slowly, will not help at all.
Being mindful in every moment you do, every sensation you feel, and most important, in what SOUND YOU CREATE will do the most that you need as a pianist. Not everything, but almost.

[cabbynum]

I've gotten very distracted in a performance before. I was playing a sonata I wrote infront of an audience and in the middle of it I suddenly realized that I got 4 measures wrong on the AP theory test. My brain was elsewhere but my hands kept playing the right notes, it took a bit to get back into gear, I watched the video of the performance later, luckily you can't tell I got so distracted. But I was freaking out afterwords that I had screwed up royally. I told my teacher this the nextesson and she just laughed at me and said "well did you get the points back?"

I said quietly "well no"

She replied "then why on earth would you jump to a test you took 2 months before a performance?!?!"
It was funny though.

This doesn't really help, I just thought it related to thinking while playing.

[iansinclair]

No harm to thinking -- and feeling -- while playing.  In fact, seems to me that it is almost essential, otherwise the performance will become very mechanical.

However... it is probably a good thing to be thinking about the piece at hand!  Distractions or thinking about something else can be somewhat problematic to put it mildly... (although if you really really know the piece, you can probably get away with it, like cabby did!)

[indianajo]

When I was a piano student, age 8 to 16, I didn't have much emotion.  I felt pleasure at melodies, annoyance at a couple of dissonant pieces my teacher made me play, that was about it.  I had a protected life with not too much trauma, and piano was something that I didn't approach with fear or anything.  
When learning, there is a period just after the hands separately slowly part, where I read the score very slowly and follow it.  Some time later, I would get better and go a little faster, without looking to see more than what segment came next.  Then as I start to memorize the piece, there comes a time when I made mistakes because I am not looking and miss some things on the score.  When this happens, I put markings in the music to remind me of where the mistakes are, or my teacher did.  Then as I played I could tell bad spots are coming up, and  look ahead at the markings of what my mistakes often were, leaving the the current music to run on memorization.  Cerebellum memory I call it, the muscles don't remember anything.  As far as panic or nervousness goes, I put that to playing faster than one is comfortable with.  My teacher didn't make me do that, and unlike a conservatory, I wasn't expected to learn a certain number of pieces a month.  I was on a 6 to 10 recital pieces every six months cycle, which gave me plenty of time to learn pieces without panic.  The E. M. Berman exercises I did every two weeks or less about as emotional as reps on a weight machine.  
When I bought the piano age 32 and started learning on my own, there was much more emotion to be expressed.  Love, tragedy of the wife's illness, divorce, being forced from the best job I ever had back into the Army, lots of excitement of military training, a new job in a new city that required people skills that didn't come easily for me.  Being invisible to women of appropriate intelligence or education,  health, and religion.  Adults have experience, or have never lived enough because they weren't trying anything new.  
I took up the 3rd movement of Moonlight sonata first; there is a lot of anger that can be expressed there. Think of Beethoven's love life, Fur Elise was written for one of his interests, and she was too good for him to have any sort of relationship. All that talent, and no heirs resulted.  
Later I took up PIctures at an Exhibition that inspires me to think of a running movie in my head (and not the picture Moussorgski tells us to think of).  I still go mindlessly through totally abstract music; a sense of wonder at the winter landscape is the emotion with my on my current effort, George Winston's Holly & the Ivy.  I've seen a Kansas ice storm and found the visuals quite wonderful. We are having a mini-ice storm today in Kentuckiana, quite beautiful and so appropiate for this tinkly piece.  
So perhaps when you the original poster have lived some more, you will have some experience to be emotional about with your music. Until then just follow the expression markings, pretend they reflect emotion.  It is good training.    Enjoy life, or withstand life, whatever, with music to back to up through the bad times.  

[pianoplunker]

Hi,

recently, I`ve come across a statement, that your mind should guide you when playing. Since that`s completely new to me, I would like to know, to what extent this should be pursued. When practising, I`m always kind of numb, relaying on muscle memory. But this method sometimes fails me, especially when I`m nervous. So I`ve started learning the notes by heart with some help of basic harmony. However, even if I know piece well (I am able to write it or project it in head), my mind is not able to help me consciously, and it comes always "too late". Therefore, every time I play, my mind runs awat and I`m just observing half-surprised what the next tone is.

Is it something rare and harmful? If yes, are there any efficient methods to change this habit?

You answered your own question. "When practicing, I'm always kind of numb"...."Therefore, everytime I play, my mind runs away"  You must be focused in practice in order to play focused.  How about just making up something right on the spot using whatever knowledge you have? That could help get your brain more in the music since you have to think about what you are doing. 

[bronnestam]

Put the metronome very slowly(I mean it!) and think the section you're practicing three times hands separate.

 At this stage everything is in the mind. You are imagining yourself playing everything. If it helps you, close your eyes. Stare at the ceiling. Anything to make you focus internally.

Listen to the metronome and start playing it hands separate mentally. Your focus will need to be 100 % if you want this to work. You can vocalize if it helps or move your fingers and body like you were playing it for real.

Imagine each hands playing three times.

Then, you move on to imagine both hands together. This is the tricky part. If you are learning a new piece this will be very hard. If you already familiar with how it feels HT then you have half the job done.

Do this three times also. Try to make it as real as possible.

After that you can do the whole process again, but this time you play it for real. The same slow(!) tempo as before. Now, there is one key to this. You cannot just mindlessly repeat. You have to IMAGINE AHEAD. While you at the same time focus as much as you can on what you're doing, visualize the next phrase, see yourself play it, hear it being played BEFORE you actually play it.

That way, your mind will always be a step ahead of your fingers.

Slow practice done right is essential to every pianist's success.

Mindlessly repeating rough spots, even slowly, will not help at all.
Being mindful in every moment you do, every sensation you feel, and most important, in what SOUND YOU CREATE will do the most that you need as a pianist. Not everything, but almost.

Very good piece of advice here! But difficult, it requires an awful lot of patience ...
Sometimes I think of something else while I play. (OK, rather often then.) Something of less importance, but still ... next time I play the time section I think of the same thing! And next time, and next time ... So stupid!

The worst thing is that my mind seems to try to escape when I'm performing, that is, when I'm extremely nervous. In the very right moment where I really MUST NOT lose concentration, I suddenly start to think of incredibly much rubbish. It really is like I'm running away mentally.

I know I have to work on this ...  

[bronnestam]

PS. That is what is called "panic", isn't it? 

[natik]

Very good piece of advice here! But difficult, it requires an awful lot of patience ...

Yeah, seems like a real challenge. But it`s exactly what I was hoping to find - a method for fighting the absent-mindedness.

Thank you for the comments, every single one was helpful.

[lisztmusicfan]

From what I've learned and what my teacher has told me, when we are learning a new piece, we access the left side if our brain, which is the analytical side. Once it gets down pat there, it transfers automatically to the right side, which is like the lazy roommate who doesn't care but take sings easy. When in a performance that you have practiced a long time for, your right brain just takes over for you and you can think about whatever you want to because the right brain knows it so well and does it automatically.

[lorcar]

I noticed my mind wanders the more I know a piece, so from time to time in order to force myself to stay focused I create external noise, switching on TV, other music, etc, so I have to be 100% on the score I am playing.
Just yesterday I was watching an old interview to Maria Callas, and the question was if while singing she was more lucid, clear headed or rather totally transported by music and beauty.  Her answer was that she was ALWAYS very present in what she was singing.

THat said, having started piano again at 38 after 25+ years interruption, I must say that nothing compares in terms of focus and attention needed: maybe for a surgeon is different, but in general normal jobs and normal studies in my opinion do not require the massive attention playing piano requires

[ted]

So perhaps when you the original poster have lived some more, you will have some experience to be emotional about with your music. Until then just follow the expression markings, pretend they reflect emotion.  It is good training.    Enjoy life, or withstand life, whatever, with music to back to up through the bad times.  

Indianjo's thoughts here are the most interesting to me, as a sixty-six year old obsessive improviser. What part does life experience really play when I improvise ? How important is it for the creative process ? I don't really know. Most people would probably tend to answer that it means everything, and in a certain pragmatic sense they are right, but imagination and a desire for abstract beauty can transcend experience. Abstract beauty, for me, can transcend practically anything. I cannot possibly express live emotion at the instrument, the sort of thing popular films about musicians depict. That mechanism does not occur with me, although it might with other people. I can express emotion recollected in tranquillity, and I can infer all sorts of previous emotion and experience when I listen to my recordings later on, but that is not quite what the original poster was asking.

The short answer is that I do not think at all, in any way that makes rational sense, during the actual act of improvising. As I have often said in similar discussions, the nearest description of what happens is that I try to establish a feedback loop between sound and mind. Once that happens, it carries on by itself, with me as an interested spectator, rather like one of those chaotic pendulums which were popular in the eighties - a fully determined, non-random, yet unpredictable series of events. If I do feel emotion, it is joy and surprise at the perceived beauty (to me) of what is going on.

Indeed, I would go as far as to say that conscious thought about the actual playing process - physical matters, keyboard geography, harmony, musical structure and so on - is poisonous to creative flow. And that is where many improvisers and I part company, particularly the jazz brigade. But I am light years away from a New Age meanderer. It is a peculiarly ecstatic mental state, very different from anything else in life, and I cannot describe it as thought in any common meaning of the word.

So perhaps my music is an antidote to life experience, a transcendence of it, rather than an expression of it. That sounds negative, but it might come close to the truth all the same.

[gregh]

Indeed, I would go as far as to say that conscious thought about the actual playing process - physical matters, keyboard geography, harmony, musical structure and so on - is poisonous to creative flow. And that is where many improvisers and I part company, particularly the jazz brigade. But I am light years away from a New Age meanderer. It is a peculiarly ecstatic mental state, very different from anything else in life, and I cannot describe it as thought in any common meaning of the word.

I'm not much of an improviser. But when I'm trying to sound out a song that I'd heard, I rely on scales and chords. Start on what seems like the right tone, try to figure out what scale it's in, then it gets easier. If the next note sounds funny, I'll try throwing in an accidental.

I have to think that all of the theory will teach you how sounds relate to each other, but when it comes time to play, your brain-ear-finger connection needs to be developed well enough that you don't have to think about it because you've already done it enough times. Plop your hand down on an F7 chord and that's theory, but you're not thinking about theory because you just know how to play an F7 chord, and probably know it by sound well enough that you don't even have to think "F7". But it's theory that brought the F7 to you in the first place.

[lorcar]

TED

i dream of being able to improvise and play by ear. WHile I am stuck to the score.
ANy suggestion on the path to start in order to be able to improvise?
last night I watched Behind the Candela movie, and was thinking of Liberace ability to play w/o any score. Do you have absolute pitch? do you need solid harmony background in order to improvise?

[pianoplunker]

You answered your own question. "When practicing, I'm always kind of numb"...."Therefore, everytime I play, my mind runs away"  You must be focused in practice in order to play focused.  How about just making up something right on the spot using whatever knowledge you have? That could help get your brain more in the music since you have to think about what you are doing. 

As I think more about this ,
 I will retract the part about improvising as being a way to think more. actually you can be totally thoughtless and improvise. But I do believe you must be focused in practices in order to play focused.

[j_menz]

But I do believe you must be focused in practices in order to play focused.

Agreed, but the focus is different, I think. In practice, you are focusing on two things - how to play it and what it is in it you want to communicate. In performance, you are focusing only on achieving that communication.

And you should be listening. After all, if you can't be bothered, why should your audience?

[pianoplunker]

Agreed, but the focus is different, I think. In practice, you are focusing on two things - how to play it and what it is in it you want to communicate. In performance, you are focusing only on achieving that communication.

And you should be listening. After all, if you can't be bothered, why should your audience?

Ah yes, listening. Very important.   During practice what to listen for may change as the piece comes together. In the beginning of the practice may listen for correct articulation and timing. After some time listen to phrasing and dynamics. But listen indeed.

[kevin69]

When playing, i am aware of mentally doing three or four things: hearing the piece mentally before i play it; listening to the sounds i'm making (sadly, rarely the same as how i'm imagining them); the technical bits of playing i leave to the subconscious; and my conscious mind is focussed on the longer scale structure of the piece.

The 'technical bits' for me is anything that requires decision making in under a second. Thats best left to subconscious muscle memory.

Muscle memory fails for me on longer timescales of over a couple of seconds. Typically this happens where phrases are repeated but then followed by something different. I find this needs conscious thought to make the right choices at these switches.

Your description of your mind being numb when playing would (for me, at least) mean that the balance between technical correctness and musicality has gone too far towards technique with a loss of musicality. I'd also tend to get the switches wrong. I wouldn't listen to other people playing with my mind 'numb', so i don't do it to myself either.

[ted]

TED

i dream of being able to improvise and play by ear. WHile I am stuck to the score.
ANy suggestion on the path to start in order to be able to improvise?
last night I watched Behind the Candela movie, and was thinking of Liberace ability to play w/o any score. Do you have absolute pitch? do you need solid harmony background in order to improvise?

I sent you a private message about this as I don't want to divert the original poster's thread. I do not have absolute pitch. The amount of traditional harmonic background necessary depends on what sort of music you want to improvise. I think it is safe to say, however, that even the most extensive harmonic background is insufficient in itself to enable improvisation. There are too many other things involved.

[hfmadopter]

TED

i dream of being able to improvise and play by ear. WHile I am stuck to the score.
ANy suggestion on the path to start in order to be able to improvise?
last night I watched Behind the Candela movie, and was thinking of Liberace ability to play w/o any score. Do you have absolute pitch? do you need solid harmony background in order to improvise?

Playing by ear and improvising is one thing, perhaps an acquired talent. However you can learn the score and memorize it so to be free of the score while playing. You can start that today  one measure at a time, then a phrase etc. until you can play the whole piece. As time goes by you learn key association and common patterns of music. Playing by memory is a good thing too !