Studying without a piano

[faa2010]

Hi,

I have had problems in studying without a piano.

Because of work, and other courses which make me be far away from piano, I have little time during the day to practice. However, there are times where I can rest and go to a meeting room or a quiet place. However, as you can imagine, there is no piano, a bench or a chair with a table appear at least.

I suppose pianists could have at least a flat surface for the fingers, but in my case, my fingers cannot move as I want unless I see the keys or listen to the sound, my imagination is very limited.

There is also the studying of the music sheets, but I am very confused about how to read them or how to analyze the work, what I have done at least is to divide the work in sections which can have a phrase or an idea and sometimes I have the vague idea about if the piece or a section is played in major or minor.

Is there a way where I can learn without depending always on the piano?, that I can learn something and later on play it in the piano?, is there a way to make it without losing my concentration and to play with my fingers without keys?



 

[awesom_o]

Absolutely!

Study solfege. Solfege is one of the best, tried-and-true methods of developing the musical imagination!

[cwjalex]

i'm not sure how to practice the physical aspect of piano without a piano but you can certainly practice reading sheet music.  Identifying notes used to be extremely difficult for me and one thing that really helped was every day pick a single note on either clef and just kind of keep it in the back of your mind.  for example, one day I might focus on the middle line on the g clef which is a B.  For that day I would just visualize that middle line and remind myself that it is a B intermittently during the day.  I would also visualize where the B is on the piano.  Every day I would choose a different location on the sheet music until a couple months later I felt comfortable immediately identifying notes.  I don't know if this will work for everyone but it helped me a lot.  I hated using mnemonic devices and go through "every good boy deserves fudge" every time to identify a note.  I found it to be extremely slow and inefficient and looked for other ways to make identifying notes easier.  You could also keep flash cards of notes to help. 

going back to the physical aspect of piano I suppose you could do things like stretch your fingers during the day to make it easier if it is uncomfortable for you to play octaves.  You could also try to learn completely different skills that are unrelated to the piano to improve your hand eye coordination and dexterity such as rolling a quarter across your knuckles or various pen tricks.  I honestly have no idea how much those activities would help you playing the piano but those are the kind of things I would do when I was bored in school.  I also practiced writing with my weak hand a lot.  Many people might find these activities to be completely useless to improving piano skills but I figure they will help develop coordination and dexterity.

[amytsuda]

I have to do this a lot, because I travel a lot for my job. Studying scores is definitely what I do a lot when I don't have an access to piano. What helps is actually listen to the piece while studying scores, instead of just reading scores. Also watching YouTube videos of the piece played by someone with super technical skills.

Also it sounds a bit freaky, but I use my mobile phone and record my lessons in videos. I re-watch them, it's pretty helpful because you see yourself playing horribly, and getting comments from your teacher and your teacher demonstrating completely superbly....