A Few Piano Practice Tips

Having been asked for some tips, I thought it would be worth publicising them a bit. I have more!

1. There is only one most difficult part in a piece. In that one part, not everything is difficult. Not every note, not every chord. So you find the bit that is the most difficult, then understand why it is hard, and fix it. You have to understand what is hard before you can solve the problem. Then don't stop until you have fixed it = until you can play it ten times in a row with no mistakes!

2. Do you believe you can do it? ~Oh I will try my best but I am not really talented~~ OR say *I can do it*. Tough advice is: If you can't do it, don't do it! AND If you don't believe you can, then you probably won't (except by accident). BUT if you believe you can then it is possible and if you believe it perfectly then it becomes reality.

3. I think Heinrich Neuhaus wrote in his book that Richter was playing in a lesson and one difficult bit sounded really good, and the reason was he'd practised that bit for three hours! So that's what I meant, that people only can't play things because they stop learning it before it is good enough. It's not that they can't do it, but they just stop before they have finished!

(Which one is more scary, that you aren't good enough to succeed, or that you really could succeed but it's your choice??!)

OK!!!!!

Also practice tips are: if it is fast, learn it a bit faster. If you can do something more difficult, then you can do the thing at its normal difficulty level. And ten times in a row without mistakes - that's a good test!

Also if you repeat the notes - not dah, dah, but dadah, dadah, or dadadadah, dadadadah (I hope you can understand that!) then it gets better and you get more relaxed and the tone is better. Do it for every note in a chord and every voice in the counterpoint then it will all be better!

WELL. Those were some tips anyway!

Steps Along the Way

One of the greatest barriers to progress is knowing you are already too good to need help.

I always try to help when I can, and some people actually improve, but of the rest, some of the sadder examples are those who sit proudly on a lump of dirt of their own construction and show you they have conquered Everest.

I'm far more impressed by those who make no claims to fame, who are not embarrassed to admit their deficiencies, and who would like to improve.

They will find someone listening who knows what it's like!

The Great Interpreters

People think they have to discover something about themselves that they then put into the music they play. They think they have to have something to say, or some special way of saying it.

Maybe they think that because they see "the great interpreters" playing and see that it's very distinctive. There is some unique character there that you would recognise immediately no matter what they were playing.

Now, a good player has learned how to play well - they were not always able to play as well as that, they had to learn - but the basic character you hear was always in them from the beginning.

So what does somebody do who thinks they are not one of the great interpreters? How can they improve?

As I said, one way people try to do it is by "putting themselves into the music". But is that really what Glenn Gould or Sviatoslav Richter were doing? It's obviously them playing, you know immediately with no doubt. And the uniqueness comes from them. But the reason for it is that that's the way the music flows through their system. It's not something they add, it's a live connection to the music direct. On a bad day, they would tell you they were not connected, but on a good day the difference is that there is less of "them" and more of the music.

So the answer is not to add more of yourself. That is adding more ego. What is important, you or what you are playing? What is more important, telling the audience something you already know or discovering something new? Showing your heart or just pretending?

If you don't feel you are great, don't worry because the great people weren't great either. They thought they were rubbish. I'm telling you.

If you think you are good, you are wrong. If you think you are bad, you are wrong too. The only answer is to keep looking. Even if it's going well, there is still more to find. And if it is going badly, that's an excellent sign because you know you have got somewhere to go.

How to get better? How to get great?

Don't try to add things. Take things away. The more you put in, the less of the composer we are hearing.

Can you control your beating heart and the allocation of hormones and adrenalin and blood and electric communications in your body? I don't think so. So don't interfere.

The little "I" is not much help. All it can do is be selfish, which gets it a few advantages but only in the short term. The big "I" is a genius and you find it by being interested in what is not you.

For example the music. You have the score - read it! Enjoy it! The composer had a special reason for writing it and that reason still exists but we have to discover it. He saw something special and important. Now you have to show people where to look to find it themselves. Point in the direction. Or even carry them there. It's all in the music. READ IT!

And you know if you get it right or wrong, and you know if you don't know enough, and you know what you have to practise. You are the one who learns to get better, nobody can tell you how to be good. But people will help you. Everybody knows something nobody else knows - that's why there's more than one person in the world. That's why we need you!

Don't try so hard, try LESS HARD! But try your best! Your improvement will depend on how hard you look for the answers. Plus, bear in mind that you already know all the answers....if you look....

Chain of Command

Godowsky was a genius. A self-taught genius - the only kind there is, of course.

He learned how to do anything at all on the piano, and invented some new things too. If you want to have a lesson with Godowsky, try playing any of his music. It has lots of fingerings and helpful comments written in, so it's very instructive as playing music by a great pianist always is. Of particular note are his Studies on the Etudes of Chopin, which, since they are more difficult than Chopin's originals, raise the standard of piano playing in a rather helpful way.

Heinrich Neuhaus was Godowsky's student. There was a great teacher for you. And he was a great player too, though he spent most of his time teaching. You can learn a lot from his book The Art of Piano Playing. What he says seems obvious though, so you have to keep coming back to the book over many years to appreciate its value.

Then Neuhaus had a student called Sviatoslav Richter. He was good too!

Each of these people had their own talent, but it was helped by meeting one of the others. Destiny somehow allows people to look after each other.

Godowsky set off one day to find out how to play the piano, and look what happened!

Richter wasn't really a teacher but look what he did for us. If you can't learn from any of that, there's a problem somewhere!

Thanks very much to those three men, then. Thank you!

How to Learn a Piece of Music

How to Learn a Piece of Music
(How to Learn a Piano Piece)

Right, I've been learning music for 22 years now and I have come to some conclusions.

This is my current method for learning a new piece.

1. Familiarise
2. Memorise
3. Practise

That's it! Here's how you do it:

1. Familiarise. This means something very simple. First of all, it means going through the piece very slowly and carefully to see what the difficulties are in that work. If it is a complicated piece, then you can go slowly! Don't worry, even if you sound like an idiot while you are learning it, that's fine because you will be able to play it one day. It's different for show-offs who want to sound good from the beginning, because they never really learn their pieces. Yes, they will always sound like an idiot. Fortune favours the brave, as the saying goes, and here it also favours those who can admit they have problems - the problems are the difficult bits in your piece, and they will improve as soon as you admit they are there, understand what the specific difficulties are, and solve them!
You will need a nice clear copy of the music. Play through the piece slowly and carefully, listening to everything. Then you can see what is difficult. There is no such thing as a difficult piece, only difficult places in a piece. (Some pieces have a lot of difficult places!) So there will be a few bars in the whole piece that you find hard (or impossible). Now you know what to practise. You know what you find difficult, so you also probably know what is easy for you. These parts you can learn AFTER you've solved the real problems. Also you need to solve the difficult parts from the start because it will take longer to get used to them, longer than playing things you already can do, for example.
If you find the piece very difficult you might take a long time over this stage. In that case, put it away and come back to it as many times as you like until you feel confident.
There isn't time to discuss technical problems today, but I will say that a very important part of solving the technical side of the piece is getting a good fingering. Again, this can take a long time sometimes. There is a scale in fourths on page two of Chopin's Third Sonata, and that's taken me a year to get the fingering for. I'm sure you will do better than that!

2. Memorise. This is best if you can do it away from the piano, because playing what you are memorising can be a bit distracting. Also if you are using my method, then you haven't actually learned how to play the piece yet, so that could cause some problems if you are trying to play it! Some people don't see the music in their head, they just follow their muscles and the sound as they play. If they say they can't imagine the printed page then I have to believe them, particularly if they don't make any mistakes. But I know that if I can see the page in my mind then I won't make a mistake because I know what to play. So that seems good to me.
How to memorise could also be discussed at length. I would say it is about patterns, and where patterns change. Also the direction of the "story" (that could mean harmony, change in texture, etc.) is a way of remembering where you are in the work as a whole. I put a ring around anything I remember wrongly, as well as things that don't fit patterns (a chord that is different the second time round, and so on). Then you will see the ring in your mind, too. You will remember!

3. Practise. This means practise. Get used to things. Learn where your hands go. Understand the music better. Practise bits so you can play them at a faster tempo. That way, not much can go wrong at the right speed! If you are stretched to your limits in performance there could be a stress there. Try to escape this by admitting what is difficult and taking time to work it out.

Well I'm sure there is a lot more I could say, but that's all for today! I will discuss specific pieces next time. Let me know if you have one you'd like me to talk about!