Mistakes, mistakes everywhere

[kalospiano]

Hi everybody,

I've been reading quite a lot on the online piano forums lately and it seems to be a very popular opinion that "you play as you practice", so if you practice with a lot of errors, of course you're going to do the same mistakes during actual performances.

Now, what is rather interesting (and despairing) to me is the fact that, basically, I seem to be unable to play a piece, even simple ones, without making some kind of mistake: be it an A instead of G, be it just a slight delay or acceleration in the tempo, be it just an short uneven passage in a piece, 95% of the time I simply cannot produce a perfect performance. Sometimes I'm at the last bar of a piece and I haven't done any errors, I'm fairly sure that everything will go smoothly and BAM! target missed on the very last note. Heck, I'm sure I wouldn't even be able to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star 10 times in a row if I tried.

And I'm not talking about always the same errors repeated again and again at every piano session. Those can be of course overcome by concentrating on them, repeating the problematic bit many times in a slow and controlled fashion.

I'm talking here about parts that I had always played perfectly, that suddenly, one day, fall apart by surprise, and possibly the day after come back ok once again.
But that single day, my fingers just slip on that "mastered" bar of some piece, and so I start from that bar again, sure that everything will go alright as it always has, and instead I just can't seem to make it and I'm like "what the f is happening?? I've always played this without any problem at all!"
It might take me hours of repetition to finally be able to play that part at speed.

Also, when practicing a complete piece, slow practice is often advocated, but it happens quite often that more instead of less errors happen when going much slower than usual, possibly due to the higher difficulty of keeping concentration on very slow tempos and on the lesser reliance on muscle memory.

Does this kind of stuff happen to you? How do you handle it? Do you just ignore the occasional slip and go on playing the rest of the piece like nothing happened or do you stubbornly start repeating the measure that is giving you trouble (or even the whole piece) until it's correct? How is it possible to avoid such unexpected slips if, by definition, they are unexpected? Is it simply a matter of needing to wait and practice for several more years before achieving a truly perfect performance? Or do you think that some people simply need to accept the fact that their playing will always have the occasional flaw and only on rare occasions will be able to perform without any mistakes?

Thanks for sharing your experience.

[adodd81802]

Hello Kalo, i think we have spoken a couple times.

It seems like you have potentially answered your problem in your point, but you want it confirmed. Concentration!

If you're thinking about how you haven't made a mistake, then you're not concentrating on not making a mistake!

Playing a slower tempo sounds like it could really benefit you here. it does require more concentration, and it also requires more control. You cannot cannot rely on your fingers "memory" to hit the notes! sure it might do it 8/10 times but you will always hit 8/10 times. If you honestly dont believe you can do a simple piece like twinkle twinkle without mistakes, you are missing some fundamental techniques in your practice. I happily learn pieces way below my skill level and purposely practice sections in pieces i can play at full speed, at half speed to refocus and remind my brain how it should feel, sound, how I can control my fingers to hit the correct notes, as in the event I still come across things I have not played before, or techniques i have not learnt, they can be much better practiced with easier pieces and slower tempos.

Chopin gave studies and exercies to his students. I recall reading about a student that claimed to have been reading a book while doing the exercises which Chopin highly disapproved of!

The point there that even 5 note exercises need absolute concentration because the point of them is not for your fingers to mindlessly hit away until they "get stronger" but for your brain to focus on the movements, the distances, to think about the sound and how it feels, and as your brain takes it in, it learns to replicate it.

When you play fast your brain simply cannot concentrate and so relies on your muscles guessing based on the pracctice they have done before. we fool ourselves by looking down at the notes, but we cannot concentrate on every note, we simply use our eyes as checkpoints and for the big leaps.

Theres two ways of playing fast, the first and the trick to many amateur pianists, is that hit and hope. where you think you can play it faster because you can do it a few times, and so get confident of your skill level, despite nothing being truly polished and your fingers do the hit and hope, because your brain was never engaged in the first place and do not actually know how you can hit the right notes, they just do... sometimes.

The second way is you properly practiced engaging your brain in fundamental steps and slower tempo and you eventually bring it up to a faster speed in that your brain gets better at replicating what you want to do at the fast speed, because you gave it time to learn to process your actions at a faster tempo and it eventually gets to the stage that you're not replicating a recall of notes but of a group of notes. This is why we practice things such as scales and arpeggios.

Sorry im waffling and i'm much better at explaining my ping pong of thoughts in person but I hope you get the jist of what i'm trying to say!

Out of interest, i cannot remember if you have said elsewhere, but how long have you been playing the piano, what's the last piece you "completed" and what are you currently learning.

[chomaninoff1]

Hello Kalo, i think we have spoken a couple times.

It seems like you have potentially answered your problem in your point, but you want it confirmed. Concentration!

If you're thinking about how you haven't made a mistake, then you're not concentrating on not making a mistake!

Playing a slower tempo sounds like it could really benefit you here. it does require more concentration, and it also requires more control. You cannot cannot rely on your fingers "memory" to hit the notes! sure it might do it 8/10 times but you will always hit 8/10 times. If you honestly dont believe you can do a simple piece like twinkle twinkle without mistakes, you are missing some fundamental techniques in your practice. I happily learn pieces way below my skill level and purposely practice sections in pieces i can play at full speed, at half speed to refocus and remind my brain how it should feel, sound, how I can control my fingers to hit the correct notes, as in the event I still come across things I have not played before, or techniques i have not learnt, they can be much better practiced with easier pieces and slower tempos.

Chopin gave studies and exercies to his students. I recall reading about a student that claimed to have been reading a book while doing the exercises which Chopin highly disapproved of!

The point there that even 5 note exercises need absolute concentration because the point of them is not for your fingers to mindlessly hit away until they "get stronger" but for your brain to focus on the movements, the distances, to think about the sound and how it feels, and as your brain takes it in, it learns to replicate it.

When you play fast your brain simply cannot concentrate and so relies on your muscles guessing based on the pracctice they have done before. we fool ourselves by looking down at the notes, but we cannot concentrate on every note, we simply use our eyes as checkpoints and for the big leaps.

Theres two ways of playing fast, the first and the trick to many amateur pianists, is that hit and hope. where you think you can play it faster because you can do it a few times, and so get confident of your skill level, despite nothing being truly polished and your fingers do the hit and hope, because your brain was never engaged in the first place and do not actually know how you can hit the right notes, they just do... sometimes.

The second way is you properly practiced engaging your brain in fundamental steps and slower tempo and you eventually bring it up to a faster speed in that your brain gets better at replicating what you want to do at the fast speed, because you gave it time to learn to process your actions at a faster tempo and it eventually gets to the stage that you're not replicating a recall of notes but of a group of notes. This is why we practice things such as scales and arpeggios.

Sorry im waffling and i'm much better at explaining my ping pong of thoughts in person but I hope you get the jist of what i'm trying to say!

Out of interest, i cannot remember if you have said elsewhere, but how long have you been playing the piano, what's the last piece you "completed" and what are you currently learning.

+1 all of this.

I think slow and deliberate practice will always yield good results. If you are making a lot of mistakes, a good thing to do is slow it down. When you have mastered a certain tempo, speed it up very gradually.

Also, as adodd said, concentration is key. When playing a piece, don't just go through the motions, playing mindlessly. If you are making an effort to make to play the right notes, the right notes WILL come out (eventually..).

However, no one is perfect, so there will will probably be a slip up here and there. But, you can minimize these mistakes with the above methods.

[thirtytwo2020]

If you're thinking about how you haven't made a mistake, then you're not concentrating on not making a mistake!

I agree very much with everything adodd had to say on this subject. Just one more point with regard to the above quote: I think it's a serious mistake to 'concentrate on not making a mistake'.

If this is your focus, you are not concentrating on the important things which make an interesting performance - sound, interpretation, dynamics, color etc. Don't get me wrong, I also try to strive for perfection on all levels, but your initial post, kalo, makes me think that perhaps you should try to think less about all your mistakes and just focus on what you want to say with your music (while following all of adodds advice, of course)

[adodd81802]

I agree very much with everything adodd had to say on this subject. Just one more point with regard to the above quote: I think it's a serious mistake to 'concentrate on not making a mistake'.

If this is your focus, you are not concentrating on the important things which make an interesting performance - sound, interpretation, dynamics, color etc. Don't get me wrong, I also try to strive for perfection on all levels, but your initial post, kalo, makes me think that perhaps you should try to think less about all your mistakes and just focus on what you want to say with your music (while following all of adodds advice, of course)

Good point, amidst my waffle, I should have pointed out that you shouldn't actively be thinking about "not making mistakes" but the things mentioned in 2020's post. My contrast in point was how your thought needs to be with what you're currently playing, as you're playing it, not concentrating on the fact you just got through that part without making a mistake or something!

[visitor]

Im nit entirely convinced note perfectness should be the end all be all goal.  Yes accuracy is part of it, but i habe found when i revisit old performance recordings that videos/audio of some pieces i was  beating myself up about shortly after playing, when compare multuple versuons or recall what i dis, the little error here and there doesnt bug me as much as se of my nicest playing wherw expression and phrasing and tone , and interprettion are all there, those are my most effective denditions and i dont mind an errant note here or there.
we are not robots and dont fall for the youtube trap wherw many timea only one take of many multiple tries gets uploaded and we hear it and think and expect we should be just as note perfect all the time.  I listen to bad perfoances of highly accurate note perfect pieces all the time, many are snorsville, seriously.

liste to above posts, accuracy does matter , but all the time what matters most is not accuracy

[kalospiano]

Thank you all for your replies. I guess my problem is indeed concentration. My mind does start wandering while playing at times, even on thoughts still related to the piano.  When I'm at the last measure of a piece and suddenly I find myself thinking "wow, I haven't done any error, finally" just to get the mistake on that last note, it means that I'm indeed losing concentration, as adodd said.

I have heard people talking about pianists who play "in autopilot", I guess that's just bs? Maybe it looks like they're in autopilot because they're so good, but actually are extremely concentrated.

I do care about feeling and interpretation, but it's still very annoying when sections that I thought mastered fall apart out of the blue

I already used the slow practice with gradual speed increase to memorize and solve critical areas, but didn't think it would be useful to avoid random mistakes as well.
I probably should pick one single piece of my repertoire and play it superslow for several days for several times a day, what do you think? And I should also try to practice at speed in order to get used at not stopping whenever an error pops up?

PS: to answer the question, I've been playing for about one year. My last pieces are the solfeggietto and the three movements of clementi's sonatina n°1. The first movement of the sonatina is probably one of the pieces I have memorized best, I can say all the notes without looking at a score or at a piano, but errors in totally random areas still pop up. I can play fur elise fairly well, even the turkish rondo (with a much higher probability of mistakes) and yet I manage to make random errors at a simple menuet in g from the notebook of AM.

[louispodesta]

Thank you all for your replies. I guess my problem is indeed concentration. My mind does start wandering while playing at times, even on thoughts still related to the piano.  When I'm at the last measure of a piece and suddenly I find myself thinking "wow, I haven't done any error, finally" just to get the mistake on that last note, it means that I'm indeed losing concentration, as adodd said.

I have heard people talking about pianists who play "in autopilot", I guess that's just bs? Maybe it looks like they're in autopilot because they're so good, but actually are extremely concentrated.

I do care about feeling and interpretation, but it's still very annoying when sections that I thought mastered fall apart out of the blue

I already used the slow practice with gradual speed increase to memorize and solve critical areas, but didn't think it would be useful to avoid random mistakes as well.
I probably should pick one single piece of my repertoire and play it superslow for several days for several times a day, what do you think? And I should also try to practice at speed in order to get used at not stopping whenever an error pops up?

PS: to answer the question, I've been playing for about one year. My last pieces are the solfeggietto and the three movements of clementi's sonatina n°1. The first movement of the sonatina is probably one of the pieces I have memorized best, I can say all the notes without looking at a score or at a piano, but errors in totally random areas still pop up. I can play fur elise fairly well, even the turkish rondo (with a much higher probability of mistakes) and yet I manage to make random errors at a simple menuet in g from the notebook of AM.

Everything on the Internet is real, including this website, which supposedly is monitored.  Therefore, I take high offense (as you should) at the OP's last response, which is not his original question.  As reference:

"PS: to answer the question, I've been playing for about one year. My last pieces are the solfeggietto and the three movements of clementi's sonatina n°1. The first movement of the sonatina is probably one of the pieces I have memorized best, I can say all the notes without looking at a score or at a piano, but errors in totally random areas still pop up. I can play fur elise fairly well, even the turkish rondo (with a much higher probability of mistakes) and yet I manage to make random errors at a simple menuet in g from the notebook of AM."

This is, per my thesis, and extremely important point.  However, I will not respond now (as I have wasted my time before) because the OP's original post is a fraud.

No pianist who has been playing for one year would even remotely have this level

[bernadette60614]

What I think:

When I make a "sudden mistake" it demonstrates to me that that "sudden" mistake indicates something which I haven't learned as well as I had initially thought.  Consequently, my next practice session focuses on those "glitches" in my performance.

If I view it this way, "mistakes" aren't "mistakes" so much as moments when the piece is teaching me what I need to learn more fundamentally.

GL!

[outin]

PS: to answer the question, I've been playing for about one year. My last pieces are the solfeggietto and the three movements of clementi's sonatina n°1. The first movement of the sonatina is probably one of the pieces I have memorized best, I can say all the notes without looking at a score or at a piano, but errors in totally random areas still pop up. I can play fur elise fairly well, even the turkish rondo (with a much higher probability of mistakes) and yet I manage to make random errors at a simple menuet in g from the notebook of AM.

I think in your case mistakes would be expected. Only one year of playing experiece with such pieces as you list indicate there's simply not enough playing experience and time behind you to be able to get to a level of consistency you look for. Wait for a few years before making any conclusions about your ability to handle and avoid mistakes.

I personally cannot really cramp my learning of a piece, just adding hours and ecpect it to become fully secure that way. At some point the amount of work starts giving diminishing returns. And it seems to be common even for "real" pianists to feel the need to let the pieces rest after initial learning before they feel the piece is fully performance ready. This means you don't play it for a while and then come back to it and maybe need to relearn some forgotten parts. Every time you do this your consistency with the piece and memorization becomes more secure. And usually your interpretation matures in a good way also.

[kalospiano]

This is, per my thesis, and extremely important point.  However, I will not respond now (as I have wasted my time before) because the OP's original post is a fraud.

No pianist who has been playing for one year would even remotely have this level

Wow, people on this forum can be awfully suspicious for some reasons.

1) a fraud is something were I take some kind of profit from my action at the expenses of others without their knowledge. So exactly how does my message qualify as a fraud? What's my advantage in lying about my level?
2) what's this "high level" you're thinking about? Is it fur elise, or maybe the turkish rondo full of mistakes? I think many beginners can play intermediate pieces if they work a lot on them and are ready to accept a much less than perfect final quality.
3) I have posted already some messages here to ask for advice and to give my opinions on the audio submissions and I've tried never to contribute to any negativity on this forum. I'm also having the same conversations on piano world where everything has been quite civilized and no one thought yet of calling me a fraud.
4) maybe you should simply avoid such generalizations but still if my kind of level is not tolerated in this forum, maybe it should be written in the forum rules, so newbies would avoid writing their real experience and just share the part of their repertoire that doesn't "offend" the other users, thus avoiding being called "frauds"

[kalospiano]

Thanks bernadette and outin, I guess it's true that I'm too much of a beginner to worry about perfection in my playing.... but still those unexpected slips on very basic pieces learned months ago are still extremely annoying I salso should take more breaks as you suggested. I'm trying to learn too much as fast as possible and this is for sure not helping playing error free.

[adodd81802]

No pianist who has been playing for one year would even remotely have this level

Assuming we are on the same page here, I understand your point on this podesta and was really the reason by my question, because time and time again people learning the piano find it necessary to rush through the levels as much as possible without truly accomplishing everything within their current skill set, and then "well in a year from starting to learn the piano, I can play this grade 8 piece.." no, no you cannot.

[adodd81802]

Thanks bernadette and outin, I guess it's true that I'm too much of a beginner to worry about perfection in my playing.... but still those unexpected slips on very basic pieces learned months ago are still extremely annoying I salso should take more breaks as you suggested. I'm trying to learn too much as fast as possible and this is for sure not helping playing error free.

You need to fully get your head around this Kalo, because for some reason, many struggling beginners often do not, and can never understand it, maybe these are particularly self taught, or over-ambitious people.

When you learn scales, when you learn arpeggios, when you even learn a 5 finger passage or even an interval, assuming you would want to take a career or an advanced level in piano tuition you need to understand that you are learning these combinations for life.

Every time you press any combination of notes, you are settling them in your brain, your fingers do not learn, your brain does the learning. Difficulty in pieces are not down to simply speed, or how many notes in a piece, but how many different combinations of notes that we need to execute with precision.

if you spend lots of time getting a combination of notes wrong in say, fur elise, it does not then matter that you go to what you consider to be an "easier" piece, your brain still only knows the wrong way of executing that combination. When you go to slow practice, you say you still make mistakes, it is because you have not practiced slowly and so you have no "muscle memory" there and rely totally on your brain, which you soon come to realize, does not know how to execute these combinations like you originally thought you did.

This is why grades are usually taken once a year, not because you should not be able to play at a higher level, but it is logical and sensible to learn these combinations slowly and correctly, step by step and sink them into the brain until they become second nature.

[pjjslp]

Thanks bernadette and outin, I guess it's true that I'm too much of a beginner to worry about perfection in my playing.... but still those unexpected slips on very basic pieces learned months ago are still extremely annoying I salso should take more breaks as you suggested. I'm trying to learn too much as fast as possible and this is for sure not helping playing error free.

Actually, I don't think the pieces you listed are "very basic" for someone who had been playing for less than a year before taking them on. Can you play them very slowly and get all of the notes right? As someone else said above, we aren't robots and occasional slips are going to happen. If you're repeatedly making the same mistakes, you went too fast too soon. I also notice more slips when I'm fatigued or distracted, and then I just put it away for the moment.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Don't worry about it.

Most of the time your audience won't notice.

And if they do, they don't care.

The better you get the less the stray notes happen.

[spenstar]

I used to have the same problem. The way I used to learn pieces was just to play it a bunch until it went into my muscle memory. Eventually I realized this was a huge mistake. I agree with what the others have said, and want to just add this: memorize the hand positions as well. In order to perfectly play a piece, you must not only have muscle memory. You must have a perfect memory of how it sounds, and a perfect memory of the notes to press. This way, even if you have a memory slip on one of those, the other 2 will compensate so there is almost no chance of a mistake.

[xdjuicebox]

I didn't have time to read all of the responses, but if I know I already have the technique to play it at tempo, I'll learn it slower.

If I don't think I can, I learn it at tempo...one note at a time. It's all about figuring out the correct motions, feasible ones, that will hit the notes in time with the exact sound that you want. It is possible, after all, humans wrote the pieces and intended it to be played. They have muscles just like you do, so it's on you to find out how they moved their hands to achieve that skill. Rachmaninoff was a human too (though he had absurdly large hands), and so was Liszt. It IS possible, "difficult" can equate to "oddly specific and really easy to miss."

Then slow it down and get precise after you can play it at tempo. The reason is you don't want to risk learning motions that you can't speed up.

The hand positions advice is really good. Practice transitions between hand positions specifically until you don't even need to look and you just know the distance by feel (kinesthesia is a useful sense).

To prevent messing up, you should be able to experience, before you even play:

1. What notes are you playing? Theory knowledge helps
2. What it looks like on the piano
3. What it feels like in your hands
4. If you have photographic memory, what the sheet music looks like
5. What it sounds like

^If you can do that (which is really hard), you'll never mess up

[kalospiano]

You need to fully get your head around this Kalo, because for some reason, many struggling beginners often do not, and can never understand it, maybe these are particularly self taught, or over-ambitious people.

yep, I see what you mean.
Here's my new tentative plan that I wrote on pianoworld as well:

1- stop learning new pieces for the moment.
2- focus just on one or two pieces to polish and repeat them a lot both fast (focusing on not stopping at mistakes) and very slow (focusing on not doing any mistakes), both ht and hs, both eyes closed and open, both at the piano and away from the piano.
3- more work on technique

I might add, on point 2, also practice in all the mentioned ways, starting from various random points in the piece instead of always at the beginning.

Actually, I don't think the pieces you listed are "very basic" for someone who had been playing for less than a year before taking them on. Can you play them very slowly and get all of the notes right? As someone else said above, we aren't robots and occasional slips are going to happen. If you're repeatedly making the same mistakes, you went too fast too soon. I also notice more slips when I'm fatigued or distracted, and then I just put it away for the moment.

by vary basic pieces I don't mean the Turkish Rondo, but stuff like the Menuet in G, or even Fur Elise. My main problem is not the same mistakes repeated all the time (those I have too, but at least I know how to correct them), but totally fortuitous mistakes popping up at parts that I had previously often played correctly.

Don't worry about it.

Most of the time your audience won't notice.

And if they do, they don't care.

well, it is true my family totally loved my Fur Elise, and even my teacher defined it as "ready for performance" notwithstanding a couple of quite noticeable errors that I had made. But still, I find it quite frustrating

To prevent messing up, you should be able to experience, before you even play:

1. What notes are you playing? Theory knowledge helps
2. What it looks like on the piano
3. What it feels like in your hands
4. If you have photographic memory, what the sheet music looks like
5. What it sounds like

^If you can do that (which is really hard), you'll never mess up

Well, I can do all that for some pieces, like the first movement of Clementi's Sonatina in C (for point 4, I don't have a photographic memory, but since I know all the notes by heart I can easily picture a sheet music in my head), but still I run across mistakes I will apply the 3-points plan that I wrote above in response to Adodd and see if I manage to solve or at least limit the problem.


Thanks a lot all of you for all your answers!!