How to Practice Bach + Scales

[takeda002]

Hi there,

I'd like to practice playing bach, because I love his music and I've been told it's some of the best repertoire to really be able to learn at the piano with. I have self taught myself some piano pieces like brahms op 10 no 1, the A section of the chopin etude op 10 no 3 (yeah, it's slow, but hey, I like it), and I play another instrument at a high level so I'm fairly well rounded in the realm of music theory and the very basics.

I'm moving away from home to attend Yale this fall, and one of the great things about their music department is the possibility to take lessons consistently: I've never had a real teacher before, and I plan on transferring to a conservatory for my main instrument next fall, so I plan on utilizing that to get a strong foundation in keyboard skills.

Does anyone here have any insight on how I can make the most of my time in the practice room? I'm a pretty obsessive person when it comes to managing time, so any really exact methods you guys could suggest would be really helpful. EG: I like to run through the left hand a few times, before slowly adding the right hand, or vice versa. I don't know. I just have no concept on how to put in quality time in the practice room, aside from being focused and putting a lot of effort into making it sound like it does in the recording.

[brogers70]

I'd say, don't practice obsessively. If you are self-taught, and have been working on difficult pieces, it's quite possible your technique is faulty. A good teacher can help a lot, but when fixing a faulty technique, you may have to go a year or two without practicing that much (by which I mean 20-60 minutes a day). You have to limit practice because you want to avoid re-engraining old, bad habits.

I'm saying this because I was in a similar situation. I was a very good classical guitarist. I took up piano, self-taught, and after a few years was playing fairly serious repertoire, Mozart sonatas, Schubert Impromptus, some of the WTC. But I was stuck at a certain level, and couldn't really progress, and whenever I played for anybody, everything tended to fall apart. Three years ago I got an excellent teacher. We spent 6 months in which I just did very simple exercises, arm drops, two-note slurs, very slow scales, and a few simple pieces, easy Haydn slow movements, two-part inventions, always working on relaxation and production of a beautiful sound. Now I'm back to the sort of pieces I was playing before, but they all feel much, much easier, they sound better, and I don't fall to pieces when I play for other people. The key was to spend the first 6 months practicing just 30 minutes a day (rather than the 3-4 hours I'd been doing before) making sure I only played in the most relaxed and correct way.

Enjoy Yale; I was a biophysics and biochem major there, but I loved all the concerts that were available because of the music school. And I sang in a great early music group run by a musicology grad student who dug up ever more unknown things for us to sing, usually off non-standard clefs.

[takeda002]

Brogers70, thanks for your reply!

I'll take your advice in what you mean- I will wait a month or so before I get there this fall before really digging in. As it stands, I haven't practiced (see: spuriously work on a piece) in a while, so I'd like for things to be as even footed as possible for when I address my fundamentals with an actual teacher.

And those experiences sound great! From what I've been told, the importance of the arts is as strong as it's ever been, so here's hoping I can come away with alike involvements!

[ted]

I suggest you improvise imitation baroque using scale subsets. That would accomplish at least four things at once; deepening your understanding of what Bach was getting at, embedding scales in your mind, developing your finger technique, and possibly most importantly, getting your own ideas to flow.