JUL 30, 2012: The main problem about re-learning a piece of piano music is, for me anyway, that I have to own up to something: the piece needs re-learning. I don't know why that's such a difficult thing to admit to oneself, but apparently I'm not alone in this dilemma.
Oh sure, you could fake your way through it at a performance and even improvise something functional if need be, but that's getting around the main issue: you don't really know the piece anymore. There are gaps in your knowledge of this music.
The good news is that if you learned it once not too long ago, the piece comes back with surprising ease once you get past a certain point of renewed contact with it. I think it's important to know when that point is, because great things start happening once you get there.
More specifically, I take each section at half speed and slowly crawl up to tempo with a metronome---even if I think I know it like the back of my hand. Every time I catch myself thinking that I already know the section and therefore this is wasted time, I say to myself, "just do the work and worry about the wasted time later." More often than not, I find that it was time well spent.
After putting the sections together, there's always going to be a little ajustment. In particular, some details will still need work. And---this is the tough part---there will be new details you never had problems with before that suddenly give you an unbelievable run for your money. How do you explain it? I think it might be because you perceive the piece in a new way, and you might even touch (or "sculpt") the work differently now in your mind and fingers. You might have played it super-legato before, and now you believe that some portamento is called for. Now the mind has to over-adjust, not only to that passage but to the entire section.
I would not advise starting from scratch when re-learning. It might pay off in the long run, but time is pressing, and you have obligations. Usually taking the individual sections at half-speed and slowly increasing the speed is sufficient for a second learn.
In fact, there may be some instances when re-learning bar-by-bar the way you learned it the first time will be confusing to you. Have you ever been in a classroom where the material is so familiar and so "easy" that the instructor's words don't even make sense? The instructor is certainly not going to say, "if you already know the material, you can skip this class." Well, the piece of piano music may do exactly the same thing to you if you try and learn it from the ground up again.
The first learn-through definitely involves bar to bar detail-searching and phrase by phrase accumulation in order to complete the section. You don't get the hassle---and the same joy of discovery---when you learn it the second time. But if you can get past the I-know-this-already syndrome, you may find that your technique has gotten slightly or even significantly better since you last touched this piece. You may hear yourself play it with a smoothness and confidence you never had before. And then you realize that as good as it was to learn it the first time, it's even better on the re-learn.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Memorizing
JUL 24, 2012: If you can train yourself to do it,the most effective way to memorize piano music is away from the instrument---sitting in a comfortable chair or at a desk. The more you do it, the more you can hear the music inside your head without actually performing it.
According to Karl Leimer in his book The Shortest Way to Pianistic Perfection (1930), the performer begins memorizing by learning short phrases or bits of music--and gradually learns to memorize in larger chunks. The ability to hear music just by looking at the printed score is a cherished goal for any musician, I would imagine, and that is the secret of Beethoven's ability to compose after he became totally deaf. Leimer asserts that the performer begins to work out the details of the performance away from the piano "so that work which had at first been purely technical, becomes purely mental." Sometimes even the fingering can be worked out mentally.
When I memorize, I don't use the metronome very much. I even speed up the parts that are technically unchallenging and slow down the difficult passages when playing over a chunk of music I have just learned from memory. But once the notes are all there--in the brain as well as the fingers---I get out the metronome. Starting at a reasonably slow tempo so as to still get all the notes, I take the metronome up notch by notch until I reach tempo. I would do that anyway, but the main difference is that there is no music in front of me. I think it's important to keep checking it with the score so you don't stray too far from the printed page, but it's a fact that when a composer makes a "composer plays composer" recording for the general public, the score reader will usually notice a lot of small changes between what's on the printed page and what the composer actually does on the recording. There's no reason you can't do the same within reason, assuming you have a familiarity with the style of the music and the composition itself.
Learning away from the instrument helps you see the structure. Playing passages at different tempos insures the performer that they will be able to find things not obvious to them if they had chosen to stick with one tempo (usually the one marked by the composer). You might think of those various tempos as different flavors of the same beverage. But it goes beyond that. If you understand what's possible at one tempo, you might be able to transfer it to another---not right away, maybe, but after putting in enough time.
The thing is to put in the time.
According to Karl Leimer in his book The Shortest Way to Pianistic Perfection (1930), the performer begins memorizing by learning short phrases or bits of music--and gradually learns to memorize in larger chunks. The ability to hear music just by looking at the printed score is a cherished goal for any musician, I would imagine, and that is the secret of Beethoven's ability to compose after he became totally deaf. Leimer asserts that the performer begins to work out the details of the performance away from the piano "so that work which had at first been purely technical, becomes purely mental." Sometimes even the fingering can be worked out mentally.
When I memorize, I don't use the metronome very much. I even speed up the parts that are technically unchallenging and slow down the difficult passages when playing over a chunk of music I have just learned from memory. But once the notes are all there--in the brain as well as the fingers---I get out the metronome. Starting at a reasonably slow tempo so as to still get all the notes, I take the metronome up notch by notch until I reach tempo. I would do that anyway, but the main difference is that there is no music in front of me. I think it's important to keep checking it with the score so you don't stray too far from the printed page, but it's a fact that when a composer makes a "composer plays composer" recording for the general public, the score reader will usually notice a lot of small changes between what's on the printed page and what the composer actually does on the recording. There's no reason you can't do the same within reason, assuming you have a familiarity with the style of the music and the composition itself.
Learning away from the instrument helps you see the structure. Playing passages at different tempos insures the performer that they will be able to find things not obvious to them if they had chosen to stick with one tempo (usually the one marked by the composer). You might think of those various tempos as different flavors of the same beverage. But it goes beyond that. If you understand what's possible at one tempo, you might be able to transfer it to another---not right away, maybe, but after putting in enough time.
The thing is to put in the time.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
The Difficult Details
JUL 17, 2012: To me, one of the maddening things about performance is the details that get messed up during performance---as well as the details you didn't expect to get but came so effortlessly. How do you figure it? I wish I could come up with an explanation.
One thing I'm pretty sure of: the more quality practice time you do, the less those little mistakes will mar your performance. But what do you do about those tricky details that refuse to fit in with the rest of it? They often seem to have a life of their own. After a while, the selection I'm performing will feel smooth and safe for me to play, but these little trouble spots always give me cause for concern as I come up to them while I'm in front of an audience.
Hard as it is to relax, I think just letting go mentally could do a great deal to solve the problem passage. One thing that seems to happen over and over: these problematic details seem to come in bunches. And they are often bunched together. It's as if the composer was thinking "difficult", and difficult music came out---technically, musically, intellectually, or any other way.
The problem is that if you don't master these details by a certain time, you tend to think that you never will. This is true of everyone. I absolutely refuse to try a passage up to tempo over and over again if I know that it's difficult. The worst thing that could possibly happen in this situation--I'm beginning to believe---is that you get the passage perfectly after doing it wrong seven or eight times.
I really think the best thing is to go back and take it as slowly as you need. Sometimes the composer even makes it easy for you by dividing the note values squarely so that it's all divisible by two----sixteenth notes, eighth notes, quarter notes, half notes. Once triplets get in there, or anything that's not divisible by two, it becomes much harder to practice something slowly. At any rate, you certainly can't break it down as easily. Even so, I think it really needs to be played slowly enough so you as a performer can get all the notes.
After that, it might be a good idea to go back and put that passage into the context of the section where it came from. Play the whole section, including the difficult spot, at a slow enough tempo where you can get it all even and consistent. That's a tall order right there.
But what if disaster happens? For instance, you did all this and the passage was going correctly when it was up to tempo. You play it in front of an audience and it starts to fall apart again. Somehow you manage to hold it all together so that the performance keeps its continuity, but inside you're thinking, "I may never get this passage."
So you go back and relearn the section. That works for a while. But later----same old thing. Maybe that's just the passage talking to you, saying something like, "you need to get back to me and find out where the specific problem is." And THAT may take some time to figure out.
One thing I'm pretty sure of: the more quality practice time you do, the less those little mistakes will mar your performance. But what do you do about those tricky details that refuse to fit in with the rest of it? They often seem to have a life of their own. After a while, the selection I'm performing will feel smooth and safe for me to play, but these little trouble spots always give me cause for concern as I come up to them while I'm in front of an audience.
Hard as it is to relax, I think just letting go mentally could do a great deal to solve the problem passage. One thing that seems to happen over and over: these problematic details seem to come in bunches. And they are often bunched together. It's as if the composer was thinking "difficult", and difficult music came out---technically, musically, intellectually, or any other way.
The problem is that if you don't master these details by a certain time, you tend to think that you never will. This is true of everyone. I absolutely refuse to try a passage up to tempo over and over again if I know that it's difficult. The worst thing that could possibly happen in this situation--I'm beginning to believe---is that you get the passage perfectly after doing it wrong seven or eight times.
I really think the best thing is to go back and take it as slowly as you need. Sometimes the composer even makes it easy for you by dividing the note values squarely so that it's all divisible by two----sixteenth notes, eighth notes, quarter notes, half notes. Once triplets get in there, or anything that's not divisible by two, it becomes much harder to practice something slowly. At any rate, you certainly can't break it down as easily. Even so, I think it really needs to be played slowly enough so you as a performer can get all the notes.
After that, it might be a good idea to go back and put that passage into the context of the section where it came from. Play the whole section, including the difficult spot, at a slow enough tempo where you can get it all even and consistent. That's a tall order right there.
But what if disaster happens? For instance, you did all this and the passage was going correctly when it was up to tempo. You play it in front of an audience and it starts to fall apart again. Somehow you manage to hold it all together so that the performance keeps its continuity, but inside you're thinking, "I may never get this passage."
So you go back and relearn the section. That works for a while. But later----same old thing. Maybe that's just the passage talking to you, saying something like, "you need to get back to me and find out where the specific problem is." And THAT may take some time to figure out.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Beginning
JUL 14, 2012: I have been told that the best use for this blog is to examine and demonstrate techniques for learning the piano. Since piano is my instrument, and I've spent some time looking at various methods, I'd like to explore some ideas with you.
First of all, I want to share a simple technique that improved my playing by leaps and bounds. Without going into too much detail, the procedure is this:
Break the piece up into sections. Start at the beginning of each section with its opening bar and take that bar at half speed or slower. Then, using a metronome, increase the metronomic number notch by notch until you can play that opening bar at tempo. Then do the same with the first two bars (you already know the first bar), and then the first three bars (you already know the first two), and etc. until you reach the end of the section. Putting the individual sections together is usually not too difficult, but you may need to spend time learning how to go smoothly from the end of one section to the beginning of the next.
I have no idea of the piano skills that you, the reader, have acquired at this point. But I would say that if you have not reached a high level of mastery, and you do nothing else but use the method I described in the above paragraph, I believe your progress on the piano will dramatically increase---and you will continue to find improvements the more you experiment with it.
First of all, I want to share a simple technique that improved my playing by leaps and bounds. Without going into too much detail, the procedure is this:
Break the piece up into sections. Start at the beginning of each section with its opening bar and take that bar at half speed or slower. Then, using a metronome, increase the metronomic number notch by notch until you can play that opening bar at tempo. Then do the same with the first two bars (you already know the first bar), and then the first three bars (you already know the first two), and etc. until you reach the end of the section. Putting the individual sections together is usually not too difficult, but you may need to spend time learning how to go smoothly from the end of one section to the beginning of the next.
I have no idea of the piano skills that you, the reader, have acquired at this point. But I would say that if you have not reached a high level of mastery, and you do nothing else but use the method I described in the above paragraph, I believe your progress on the piano will dramatically increase---and you will continue to find improvements the more you experiment with it.
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