Also i get very, very frustrated, with experts and teachers recommending exercises and techniques, assuming that they will produce gains, because it did for them or for other students. Invariably following these exercises and strategies does not yield good results.The outcome is ALWAYS months of relentless practicing for minuscule gains that are not at all encouraging.It just boils down to innate ability.Either you have it, or you don't.Effort or strategy or persistence will never even begin to make up for it.
How do people find coming to terms with the idea that they are not capable of reaching a high standard at piano. How do you deal with the frustration of endless effort without result?
I have read pretty much all literature ever published on the topic of skill aquisition, and concluded that talent to a substantial extent is inherited.
I am extremely persistent, to the point that my level of persistence might be described as a form of insanity, yet it is to no avail. I cannot play advanced music, certainly not at the tempo required of advanced music.
No amount of practice, and no type of practice seems to make any difference at all. No matter who I take advice from, no matter which practice tecniques I adopt, there is simply no result.
It may take me 6 months or a year to bring a single line of music up to 75% of the prescribed tempo, practising extremely hard each day using only the correct, professionally recommeded practice regimen. I see others who can play the same line at 100% tempo and it takes only 2 weeks. Why is the difference so absolutely enormous?
Also i get very, very frustrated, with experts and teachers recommending exercises and techniques, assuming that they will produce gains, because it did for them or for other students. Invariably following these exercises and strategies does not yield good results.The outcome is ALWAYS months of relentless practicing for minuscule gains that are not at all encouraging.It just boils down to innate ability.Either you have it, or you don't. Effort or strategy or persistence will never even begin to make up for it.
Yes, talent does exist, but talent can only help you reach a certain level faster. Those who are not born with such talent can also reach a higher level. The top pianists today are people who differ from the crowd, and only that is natural. You can achieve their level by practicing the right way and challenging the impossible.
This is not true.
The question becomes, why after 10 years of daily practice, would any reasonable piece be beyond my level? Also i feel that the only way to make any progress is to challenge yourself to the most difficult music you are able.You cannot learn fast difficult passages, by learning songs with slow, less demanding passages.You cannot go back 3 or 4 years in difficty level, then get back to where you are currently, and find that 3 or 4 years practising easier material will better prepare you for the difficulties ahead.Practising slower wont teach you to become fast.I already have 10 000 hours of practising easier pieces.
Interesting, I have never actually faced this. Whenever I have put in a lot of effort, I have usually seen at least some improvement. I think what matters is aggressively zoning in on the problem, boiling it down to its constituent elements, making sure that each such element is as simple as possible so that I can focus on them individually. For example, if I'm certain that there is an issue with rhythm, I will try to tap it or hum it, then record myself and listen back, until I get it right. Since there is a clear feedback loop, it is almost certain that you will notice improvement as long as you can perceive the shortcoming in the sound or physical feeling.In other words, if you want to learn trigonometry, there's no point in trying to browbeat it into your head without knowing basic geometry such as the Pythagorean theorem. It may not be obvious that your shortcoming is, in fact, not understanding the Pythagorean theorem correctly, but if you look carefully enough, you will hopefully see it at that point, and then you can immediately correct it.This is my philosophy while approaching new subjects in general. For the piano as well, I just keep asking questions until I'm satisfied. It might drive a teacher crazy, but *shrug*.The problem is that while it's arguably clear that talent is inherited, it's not well-studied what this implies for the bounds of ability for a particular individual. There's no straight line from "average linguistic ability" to "cannot read above 400 wpm". Even if someone thinks the latter is impossible for them, it's quite possible that it isn't.People keep thinking of persistence as a great trait in itself, but I would argue it isn't. It's only useful if you know how to apply it. A lot of people try to study really hard, spending hours a day for years, but do not get anywhere, and this is not necessarily due to lack of ability, but is very often because they hold misapprehensions about the nature of learning the topic. One very common one in school, for example, is the idea that repeating something x times will commit it to memory. A relentlessly persistent person, who holds that idea, will be wasting almost all of their time, since the key to memory is association (I might not be completely correct about it, but I think it's a good analogy). Learning anything is full of pitfalls like this, it's not like hitting the gym x hours a day.If you're not already, I would suggest hiring a teacher, and spending several hours practicing with them during lessons. The way you talk about "type of practice" makes it seem like you are thinking about this in terms of practice regimen and exercises. Once one set of exercises does not work, you move on to another set of exercises. The problem is that advice only works if you really understand how to apply it, and can do that consistently. It's very hard to figure out if you are applying a piece of advice correctly, and the closest you can get in a situation where you cannot understand a piece of advice is to have the person giving the advice right beside you, observing what you are doing and correcting you until you have really understood it. Be really clear in communicating when it's not working. If the teacher is any good, this will go back and forth until you understand the concept much better. You will almost always see at least a little improvement during the session. If the teacher is bad, they will often tell you to just practice it at home while you protest that it doesn't seem to be working, and from my experience this is a very frustrating and unproductive situation to be in.First of all, you said you started at 32, and have been practicing for 10 years with an ineffective learning method (no offense, but there are a number of red flags for this in your write-up). This cannot compare to someone who has been learning for a decade, since they were a child, with really good teachers. When I'm playing the piano, there are so many minute changes which I have to keep making and trying out, and some which I would have never thought of which my teacher suggests. It is often those minute, almost imperceptible movements which hold the key to various aspects of technique, and beginner students often make the mistake of underestimating the complexity of this. They don't realize that certain comments by teachers, such as "hold you hand in an arch" are shorthand for executing something which is very tricky, and very difficult to do at a high level. It's a naive point of view, such as someone thinking that all of mathematics is how to solve more complicated addition problems. There are layers and layers of complexity hidden beneath, which you need to figure out. This may be easier as a child, but even as an adult, what matters is that you try to achieve those sensations and movements. In fact, this whole idea of spending 6 months to a year to bring a single line of music up to tempo seems ridiculous to me. If you have the technique for it, you should be able to play a line of music immediately, or at least within a week or two by which time it would be memorized (which removes the cognitive overload aspect). If you can't do that, you figure out what is the exact reason why you can not learn the passage, and try to come up with solutions for that particular problem. Otherwise, again, it's like trying to beat trigonometry into your head without knowing basic facts about triangles. You can try to speed up how fast you learn all of the prerequisites for a topic, but you cannot start something from the middle of nowhere.Well, here is where you're wrong. It's possible that certain things boil down to innate ability, but there are various aspects in your write-up where it would be clear to most pianists that your way of approach is terribly wrong. You can't really say for sure until you fix those things. There is this myth which a lot of people hold, that regardless of how they approach a subject, it will get better eventually, but this is completely false imo. You can make absolutely zero progress despite spending hundreds of hours, and this gets truer the more advanced you get in something. Don't be too hasty to ascribe things to lack of talent. (Don't take this to mean that I think talent does not exist, I do.)
I think you have made assumptions regarding my approach which may not be accurate.That is to say, i do not simply practice a line of music constantly for 6 months, but rather practice it, for a limited amount of time each day, as part of a more varied practice regimen that might include scales, several fingering exercises and several pieces of repertoire.Maybe even meditation or subliminal suggestion included. Having extensively researched the variety of methods one might use, I would not commit too excessively to any one exercise or section of music, as I understand the importance of interleaved practice etc..
I have now been practising circa 3 hours each day for the past 10 years. although I can play some pretty good pieces, my overall ability would be not remotely close to expert level
There certainly is a limitation to each person ability I've witnessed it myself teaching hundreds of individuals the piano over the decades.
I'm curious how you can figure out whether someone has hit the limit of their ability. Also, at what level do those limitations lie, typically? Do you think it can be impossible for someone to play a scale above 120 bpm (which the OP alluded to)?
I dont believe one on one instruction is always neccessary, some appear to do well without it.
It is not a limitation as such but more a rate of growth and which level of piano playing you want to exists in to expand your ability. I find many people are quite content playing works not at the highest level and work to steadily improve how they deal with the level they are happy with. They improve a great deal in terms of the rate of their learning or sight reading but they don't really study more and more difficult technical works, that isn't their interest. There is a huge world of music out there and it playing difficult piano works is not the best and only path to take for all serious musicians and is not the sole or even best indicator of progress. A number of my students who I have taught over 10 years are in this boat, they do not wish to learn more and more difficult works, that isn't the sign of progress for them, they have built their skills from the bare basic level and improved to a point where they really enjoy the music that is being created. They want the process of learning the level they are content with to improve, get that final polished product to arrive quicker. Playing more and more difficult works is not an interest of all pianists, there are many musical journeys you can take and experience fully what it means to be a musician without playing the harder repertoire. I have some students who play pieces predominantly around grade 4/5 level but learn them super fast. They would certainly knock the socks off a number of people who can play many levels higher than themselves in terms of rate of learning. So what does it really mean to advance to a higher level? Is it simply measured by the difficulty of pieces you learn and the quality at which you play them? Rate of learning and improving your efficiency with works at a lower level should not be ignored.
[...] being a master of the fast and complex works isnt the be all and end all.However you are left curious as to how such speed can be pulled off, assuming your not able to yourself...
Just for reference, this is the piece i am struggling with.Probably the hardest i have attempted.Paticularly the last 30 seconds, very difficult even at 75% tempo.Although this is Synthesia in the video, i also have the sheets for it. It takes patrick around 2 to 4 weeks to compose and perform a piece to this level.At least 10 times longer than that for me.
Thanks for posting the video for reference! I feel an odd sense of kinship whenever someone learns a piece from a synthesia tutorial like this one, as it is how I used to learn in the past, and what I still use for pop songs. Partly by ear and partly using synthesia, I can approximate arrangements like these very fast, and it's fun.I have some respect for what you're doing here. It is not easy, and you have high standards for yourself which is making you frustrated. I can play this at tempo. I can also make similar arrangements and play them in about a week or two. That's because the piece uses standard arranging techniques.This gives me an opportunity to pontificate on the importance of breaking down difficult material. What is the one thing you need to solve this piece? Arpeggios. Once you figure out how to do pretty fast and fluent right hand arpeggios, the rest is a piece of cake. So, if you're spending six months on this piece, what do you do? You should play arpeggios, over and over again, every day for at least 3-4 months until you get that feeling in your hand. Everything else is superfluous -- I'm sure you'll be able to add the left hand octaves and other standard accompaniment stuff within a month. On your friends being able to do this -- most kids are thoroughly trained to play fluent scales and arpeggios. Anyone who has once learned them never forgets them, although they can grow slightly rusty, it's just like picking up an old bicycle -- you'll get back to riding it within an hour, if not immediately.For someone who can play their arpeggios at that tempo off the bat, the arrangement is very easy to play. Do you see that? The whole piece reduces to one technical problem. Solve that, and voila! The piece will fall into your hands.Now, how do you develop right hand dexterity with arpeggios? I would highly recommend Josh Wright, Graham Fitch etc on YouTube, which is how I learned. It may or may not work for you. If you get a teacher, tell them that you want to work on arpeggios, not on this piece. Any good teacher should be able to demonstrate a number of different ways to improve your arpeggios. Obsess over them until you figure it out.Also, I'm pretty sure you can do it, and it's not a lack of talent holding you back. A lot of people get stuck with arpeggios like these because you need to learn to play a bit differently. You need to let your arm glide over they keyboard in a line, and your fingers need to get accustomed to the distance of an octave. It should be one fell swoop, not a series of disjointed movements. Try to watch some pianists play arpeggios and imitate what they are doing. I've sometimes found it useful to watch pianists' hand movements on YouTube at 0.25 or 0.5x speed. Don't take this too literally, but it's something which everyone does sometimes to check whether they're on the right track.I have also found that this is the kind of thing which many teachers are unable to teach, because they have acquired the necessary coordination so young that they have completely forgot what went into it.
As far as the speed goes, even with extremely smooth, fluent motion, you soon hit a wall at which the capacity to land fingers in the correct spot falls apart, and this is not a technical problem, it is a neurological one. At high speed, the eyes can no longer analyse the trajectory of the fingers, and the mind does not have time to apply adjustments or compensations to garauntee the trajectory of the fingers.You need to be able to play very fast arpeggios, without looking at the keyboard at all, and be almost certain not to miss any notes.To do this requires that the brain receives accurate feedback, not from the eyes, but from the musculoskeletal system. The problem with this, is that we are now dealing with a concept which is not understood by humans, and therefore cannot be mastered, as nobody really knows how this works.
Yes it is called proprioception, and motor learning theory is just that.Theory. It is a hell of a long way from a well understood concept.Proprioception provides limited feedback to the brain and mostly comes into play at the extremes of muscle extension.It does not produce accurate, quantifiable feedback in regards to muscle or appendage position, as does a machine in which component positions are tracked by precise signals which are accurate, consistent and quantifiable, unlike proprioception.
I think that you are way overthinking this. It's not hard to try out a bunch of different approaches. When something works, you'll feel the difference quickly, and it won't be incremental. It may take a few weeks to solidify the habit of doing it the new way, but you should feel a difference right away. You need patience, but not so much patience that you keep doing something unhelpful in the hope that if you work away at it for month things will get better. Lots of things can slow down arpeggios. I think one of the most common is developing a nice, legato arpeggio at a moderately slow tempo and thinking that you can work at speeding it up. When you try to do that, your fingers hang on the the keys too long, and you slow yourself down. You have to practice finding ways to get your fingers off the keys immediately after you strike them. But that's just one thing among many that could be slowing you down.You could have a look at this; even better would be to get a teacher to watch you and diagnose what's slowing you down.
As far as the tempo, I refer to playing 16th notes.For example, I could play scales at 100 or so beats playing 16th notes, which is about 30% or more slower than a lot of professionals could play.
As you say, practising slow does not exercise the correct motions required for fast playing, but it is still required in the practice regime.
With an arpeggio for example, i could repeat 7 times, increase the metronome by 2 or 4 beats, and then correctly play at the new tempo.But eventually, no matter how much experience you have at any given tempo, increasing the tempo, even slightly, always produces mistakes.
And as you would know, one must avoid playing repeatedly at a level that produces mistakes.Therefore you slow back down and the cycle repeats.Then you focus only on small groups of notes, so you can play segments of notes at the higher tempo.But then, stringing them together STILL produces mistakes.
At some point i can upload some attempts and you can have a look.I will probably take up one on one tutoring anyway, but i guess i am just venting the frustration, as i have been using several exercises and mental techniques to boost my speed, but i am still against a brick wall so to speak.
The problem with this, is that correct fingering cannot, and will not enable accurate placement of fingers at elevated tempo.
You need to understand the problem from a physics point of view.
There are probably 30 muscles involved in transfering a finger from one position to the next in a scale or passage.Every one of those muscles must follow an exact profile on tension versus time, with the phasing of each muscle in respect to all the others also needing to fall within an extremely narrow range. So in fact, the subconscious mind must make incredibly complex calculations in order to simply move a finger from point A to B.
The problem is, that there is less and less time to perform any calculation, or to make any correction during the process as the tempo is increased.
Absolutely perfect fingering does NOT help with the fact that the brain cannot control the process, because there is no time to even contemplate the task the brain is about to undertake.
You cannot ensure your fingers end up at the right position, when the brain has no time to even begin to grasp what you are about to ask of it.You MUST apply an exponentially greater processing speed in response to a linear increse in speed.This reality is observed in mechtronics, just as it is with human movement.You cannot guide a body part from any position, to any other position, without a complex system of observation/feedback which is continuously evolving throughout the entire movement, from start to finish. You need to explain, how to ENSURE that a component is very rapidly moved from 1 position, to another very specific position, without spending any time AT ALL calculating adjustments or contemplating the trajectory.There is no time to incorporate any consideration of trajectory, yet you must STILL ABSOLUTELY ENSURE, that only a very narrowly defined and specific trajectory is followed.From a physics, mathematical and biological point of view, this is impossible.Mental processing ability MUST increase exponentially in reponse to increases of tempo.That fact cannot be alleviated by fingering.
Maybe you CAN play slowly with a fast technique.
The fact is, playing slow, fast, medium, or any other speed in between, does not assist with accuracy at high tempo.
Correct fingering does not assist with accuracy at high tempo.
It doesn't matter how smooth, flowing or relaxed your technique is, when you cannot CONTROL the motion, because there is no time available to realise what the hand is or is not doing, or where the finger is or is not about to end up.You cant control or correct an event, when the event is over before a nerve impulse can travel from one side of the brain to the other...
Here is a clip of me practising the hardest line or so of music from the end of that piece.At least maybe it shows the fingering of RH.Obviously thats not all the things i would do during practising but you can see i can JUST pull it off at that tempo, but even after multiple days of being at that tempo, still a small risk of errors ocurring, and unable to advance tempo much at all without committing errors.Clearly i am highly familiar with that specific scale/sequence of notes, yet total security of playing does not occur untill far too much repetition has occurred, over multiple practice sessions.I use the same fingering as the creator of that arrangement.Obviously my actual motions would not be identical, but my finger numbering is identical to the original artist, which is something i always seek to establish early on in the process.
If you're practicing 3 hours per day for 10 years, what are your injuries? It would be unusual not to have some, especially if you have tension or some fault in technique.
Not necessarily. What kind of injuries do you have in mind?
The standard cumulative trauma disorders that all musicians experience from time to time, especially as we age.
Correct technique greatly reduces but cannot eliminate this. Humans are simply not constructed to sit in one position and perform repetitive motions for hours on end.