Recital Prep: The Three M's

My student recitals are fast approaching. Here is a set of ideas on preparing well for a relatively short performance of one or two solo piano pieces:

Have it Mastered, Memorized, and Moving!

(Don’t you love alliteration, too?)

Have it Mastered: Your pieces should really feel like they are completely “in your fingers” and you should feel confident even in the most difficult parts. Remember that there is a big difference between mastery and perfection. Perfection is impossible but mastery is necessary for achieving a rewarding experience as a performer. Most students who have played for at least a few years have fond memories of a good performance that went well. Think about why it went well, and you’ll probably realize that it was because you were in control, felt confident, and knew your music thoroughly.

Have it Memorized: To most piano students, this means knowing your notes, fingerings, and rhythms. But don’t forget about dynamics, phrasing, articulation, pedaling, tempo adjustments (like ritardandos, accelerandos, etc.), as well as any other stylistic considerations. All of these elements must be incorporated so that your performance really speaks with authority and expression. I also take this one step further: You have not truly memorized thoroughly unless you are able to skip ahead in the music in case of a memory slip. Can you skip to the next section or phrase if you forget where you are? If you can skip ahead successfully, your confidence will only be increased! That, of course, will make it less likely for you to have a memory slip in the first place.

Try practicing this before your recital by forcing yourself to stop sometimes while running your piece. Then see if you can skip ahead quickly. If you have several “markers” you can skip to in any given piece, you will be more likely to save a nervous first performance where memory slips can be common. This is one practical reason why it’s important for students to understand the basic musical forms (ternary, sonatina, sonata, five-part forms, etc.) and cadences (the V-I motion being the most common).

Remember, everyone has memory slips from time to time. Be prepared to skip ahead, and your audience might not even notice if you do have a slip!

Have it Moving: This is about tempo. All too often I see students who are otherwise well prepared for a recital simply play a piece at the wrong tempo. You should be ready to perform at the right tempo without forcing it. It is important for music to flow naturally without feeling hesitant, and this is what I mean by “moving”. Be sure to check regularly on any metronome markings (composers mark them for a reason) and try to get yourself as close to the tempo marking as you can.

Fortunately, tempo markings are often suggestive of a range of tempos. For instance, there is no definitive metronome marking for “Andante moderato.” What’s important is to understand that the tempo marking doesn’t just imply the speed but also the character of the music. Play the wrong tempo, and the piece might not really get off of the ground. If a composer marks an absolute tempo (like quarter note = 120), it is usually your duty to get the tempo as close as possible to that marking. But even then there is some freedom. Your version of the piece might sound better at 126, while others will be more comfortable at 116. Most composers are actually looser in what they want for tempos than what is evident in the score.

The flip side is that a performance can also be played too fast. Notice that my choice of wording was “moving,” not “frantic!” If you’re simply trying to impress everyone at your recital with super-fast tempos (this notion afflicts the young quite often) you might crash and burn. That’s usually not impressive, even to untrained ears. So keep your performance moving along, but not so fast that you are out of control and your fingers get ahead of your mind. That’s a sure recipe for disaster!

Ideally, these three M’s of performance preparation should be achieved by no later than TWO weeks before your performance. Even better would be three weeks or a month, but then you do run into the danger of having your pieces peak musically before your performance instead of at your performance. You want to sound as fresh and spontaneous as possible. Reaching this balance can be a real challenge, so you must know yourself as a performer and take the right path to avoid “overcooking” your performance. But, to be sure, better safe than sorry – preparing ahead of time is always preferable to stressful crunching at the last minute.

Happy preparation…perhaps more on this topic will appear in future posts soon.

Read More......

A Complete Series on Improving Practice

Chris Foley (The Collaborative Piano Blog) has completed a wonderful month-long series of posts on how to improve practice skills and achieve better results. He wrote a succinct but substanceful post each day of October on this topic - what an amazing accomplishment!

Just in case anybody missed my previous link to this series at the beginning of October, I'm linking now to Chris's convenient post that lists all of these articles by day and topic. His presentation of the material is well-organized and has a definite trajectory, but you can skip around at will by using the links in the sum-up post.

This is highly recommended material for anyone looking for new ideas or a fresh approach to practice techniques. Chris covers everything from goal-setting and practice scheduling to the subjects of memorization and artistic sensibility. 

Thanks to Chris for such a solid and expansive resource!

Read More......

Attention All Piano Students and Parents...

...please read a new post over at Chris Foley's Collaborative Piano blog that explains how to make practice time schedules work for busy kids and teens.

My students have heard most of this advice from me already: at lessons after a rough week of missed practice, or at the beginning of the year, or when a student bumps up from a 30-minute lesson to a 45-minute lesson, etc. But it is always good for students and parents to hear it from people in the music teaching field besides me. Chris has also organized his thoughts on the matter according to age, and I think it's obvious that we've shared many of the same experiences with a wide range of ages. Since it is still just the beginning of a new season of lessons and practice, remind yourself (whether your role is that of a student or parent) of the various ways to effectively plan practice time.

I can't overstate how getting the most out of piano lessons (including the enjoyment factor) means regular, daily, consistent practice. Use Chris's guide to jumpstart a better routine!

By the way, Chris is writing a post every day of this month on getting better practice results. To go to all of these posts as they come out this month (which I highly recommend), click on this label url: 31 days to Better Practicing.

Read More......

Post-Vacation Practice Sessions

It's good to be back from a refreshing vacation, where I touched a piano nought but once during a whole week! Believe me, this can be healthy once in a while. Since a new performance and teaching season is upon me, I will share how I like to get back in shape at the keyboard after some time away. I hope this will be helpful for all pianists, but especially for those students who may have had quite an "extended" vacation away from the piano.

After a long time away from the piano (this means a week or more), I suggest the following:

1) Keep playing sessions SHORTER than usual. Use 10- or 15-minute practice blocks separated by periods of rest. Example: If your typical practice time is one hour per day, just do a total of 30 minutes each day in three 10-minute blocks.

2) Warm-up periods should be LONGER and tempos SLOWER than usual. Revisit scales, chord progressions, Hanon exercises, Philippe exercises, etc. Keep them well under your faster speeds for at least a few days, if not a week.

3) Do some sight-reading. Your musical mind will also need to get back into shape in addition to your hands and fingers. Try to read through some potential repertoire for the upcoming year, or look at some unfamiliar pieces at a level down or two.

4) Memorize something immediately. In the interests of continuing to get your mind back on track for the upcoming year of learning and memorizing, make it a goal to memorize something immediately from the first practice session. It could be as little as two measures of the opening of some new piece. The amount memorized doesn't matter; what matters is exercising your memory right away and committing to the process. Memorization should be an ongoing activity, not just something you do only when a piece is close to performance readiness.

5) Re-examine your technique. The first few practice sessions after a long time away can be wonderfully interesting and full of unfamiliar sensations. Take advantage of this transitional time to experiment with how you approach the keyboard physically. Your "good" technique will be a little rusty, but you may have also let bad habits fade away into the background due to the time away from the piano. If tension has been an issue, try to focus on being completely relaxed in your wrists, forearms, and shoulders throughout your first few sessions. You may discover new ways to reduce fatigue, or how to voice lines without force, or how to keep your fingers in better contact with the keys. The possibilities are endless.

6) Enjoy yourself and LISTEN. Don't be judgmental or overly critical when you are first coming back to the piano. You must have faith that your relationship with the instrument will come right back in due time. But don't expect it to be 100% the first day, or even the third day. I prefer to avoid a purely technical focus during the initial sessions and instead work more on phrasing, dynamic range and expression, and other interpretive possibilities. This way I have a good time making music first, so that my ear is engaged from the start. I realize that this may seem to contradict #5 above, but it really doesn't. Just to clarify things: What I am trying to avoid is the repetitive technical practice that one needs when polishing a piece to performance level. You don't need that right now; wait until you your transitional return to form is over. It might take only a few days or more than a week - everyone is a little different. Patience and acceptance are good virtues to abide by during your "recovery" period!

Read More......

Thinking about Practicing - 8 Ways (Plus One)

How do you think about practicing, as a student or a teacher? There are a number of ways to view the "practice" of practice, and Ed Pearlman supplies eight over at Music Teacher's Helper Blog. He lists some pros and cons to some of these approaches, which just goes to show that our purposes behind practice need to be fluid, dynamic, and in a state of constant rediscovery.

I would add another point of view to this list: Practice as a developer of self-reliance. This relates to Ed's #5 (practice as a mirror of lesson work), but I think it is important to clarify self-reliance as an important motivator and signifier of true independence in students. It is especially desirable to develop self-reliance in students when it comes to the realm of problem-solving.

There's not much more satisfaction to be gained from teaching than when a student comes to a lesson with a problem (technical, rhythmic, interpretive, etc.) fixed. For example, if a student can play that crescendo in her Beethoven Bagatelle without speeding up the tempo unnecessarily, I'll say something like, "Great job on that crescendo there! How did you keep the tempo from rushing in your practice this week?" Invariably, the student will supply me (and in her own words) with a descriptive practice technique that gets good results. Usually it will be one I've been trying to inculcate over weeks or months (such as using the metronome at a slow practice tempo, or counting aloud steadily as you play, etc.)

In other words, you will rarely hear a response to "How'd you do it?" that reflects a bad practice technique. The student will be actively realizing that she is internalizing better practice habits that get real-world results. The satisfaction I can see on a student's face when this happens is a big part of what makes teaching applied music rewarding.

I think the trick is to take advantage of a great psychological set-up: I put the student in a position to express her own competence without any preachy interference from her teacher. If a student is getting tangible results on her own, that student will veer away from bad habits and continue to explore self-reliant problem-solving with more confidence. Simple, right?

Read More......

"Chunking" Bach's Invention in C major

I have taught Bach’s C major Invention (in 2 parts) to quite a few students over the last few years. This short piece is one of the big milestones that all accomplished intermediate pianists need to conquer in order to prepare themselves for the technical demands of the advanced repertoire. I think that it serves as a great example for teaching about “chunking”; that is, breaking a piece into small parts in order to make the most of practice. This post will be devoted to explaining the utility of chunking when it comes time for a student to learn this piece. (Download a free copy of this public-domain work here.)

Now it must be said that some of my talented early-intermediate to intermediate piano students did not need to divide music into smaller parts very often. They may have been good enough to avoid it for the first three or four years of study. When a student like this did need to divide the music, it would suffice to either practice in two parts (for the simple binary compositions) or to practice in three parts (you guessed it, for the ternary compositions). But without exception in my experience, when a student gets to the Bach inventions it becomes absolutely necessary to go beyond chunking and divide the piece into much tinier segments. To practice this invention even in three parts can be completely overwhelming for the less experienced intermediate student. In fact, when I teach this piece I usually divide it into about ten to twelve segments!

Why does it become necessary to do this? The complexity and independence of the two lines is what makes the work difficult to learn for pianists who only know the easier minuets and marches by Bach. Imitative counterpoint like this takes effort to coordinate. The renowned pianist Walter Gieseking wrote the following in his practice advice for the C major invention:

“It is not advisable to play the whole invention straight through, when studying. In fact, this should be forbidden. Only small parts should be practiced at a time; and these should be repeated over and over again, so that irregularities and unevennesses may be immediately corrected. It is much more difficult, if not impossible, to do this when longer parts are played.” (1)

Gieseking knew what he was talking about and if it was good enough for him, it’s good enough for me. Simply put, students will not succeed at mastering this piece unless they do two very specific and important things:

a) Figure out some way of dividing the music into small parts, and
b) Resolve to learn each part through repetitive practice of just that part.

Here’s a game plan for breaking up this piece. Refer to your score. (Again, you can download the score here.)

Let’s divide the piece into three large CHUNKS first.

A) Measure 1 to the downbeat of measure 7 (notice the cadence in G at m. 7)
B) Measure 7 to the downbeat of measure 15 (ends with cadence in a minor)
C) Measure 15 to measure 22. (end of the piece features a final cadence in C)

To practice the entire piece effectively during the first few weeks, the student should map out a plan to practice each chunk on separate days in a clear cycle. This will help avoid the common problem of crafting a performance with a great-sounding beginning, an ok-sounding middle, and a terrible-sounding ending. For example, the student could try the following:

Monday: Chunk A
Tuesday: Chunk B
Wednesday: Chunk C
Thursday: A
Friday: B
Saturday: C
Sunday: A (or day off)

…And so on. Once that has been figured, it then becomes necessary to organize the practice of the specific chunk on each day. Let’s say I am just starting out on this piece on Monday so I need to practice Chunk A according to my weekly plan. I’m going to devote twenty minutes each day to this piece. We're going to break the chunk into even smaller segments. Here’s what we can do:

1) Practice each hand separately and SLOWLY from m. 1 – 7. Write in good fingering and leave out the ornaments (like the mordents and trills) for now. ( 5-7 minutes)

2) Divide Chunk A into three segments (m. 1-3, 3-5, 5-7). Always overlap your practice segments to the downbeat of the next measure so that you don’t have any practice “gaps”.

3) Practice the first segment hands together slowly. If you make mistakes and hesitate a lot, you are either going too fast or you need to divide the segment into one-measure “segmentites”. (I just made that word up…) You can also review the segment hands apart if you need it. (2-3 minutes)

4) Once you can do the segment cleanly without note, rhythm, or fingering mistakes, try to repeat the segment perfectly five times. Remember, keep it SLOW for now! (3-4 minutes)

5) With the time left over, try to do segment 2 in the same manner as in (3) and (4) above. (5-6 minutes)

And there’s practice day one. Now of course you have noticed that we didn’t make it to segment 3. That’s ok; just be sure to hit segment 3 the next time you practice Chunk A, which would be in three days. You then try the same process with Chunk B the next day, Chunk C the following day, etc. Eventually, you will be able to tackle all the segments in a chunk easily in one twenty-minute session.

The next practice step is to string segments together until you can play the whole chunk well. Let’s say it’s week two and you’re back to Chunk A. Here’s how you use your time:

1) You can play segments 1 and 2 perfectly, but segment 3 is a little messy. Practice segments 1 and 2 separately (with a break in between). (3 minutes)

2) String together segments 1 and 2 and play through without stopping. Try to do this perfectly five times. You might need to slow down. (5 minutes)

3) Practice segment 3 alone until it’s better. Let’s say it improves to perfection. (5 minutes)

4) Now what should you do? You should string together segments 2 and 3 first. Don’t try 1-2-3 yet! Baby-step into playing the whole chunk by doing some overlapped 2-segment practice. (3 minutes)

5) The last thing you should try is to play the entire chunk through a few times. If all goes well, you are on your way to getting the piece together. (2-3 minutes)

Soon it will be time to start stringing the big chunks together. You’ll discover that as you progress it will take less and less time to play through each chunk because it will be mastered perfectly if you follow this plan. Here’s what week 4 might look like at the start:

Monday: Chunk A, Chunk B separately. A-B nonstop.
Tuesday: B, C. B-C nonstop.
Wednesday: A, B, C. A-B-C nonstop.

By Wednesday, you’re playing through the whole piece. Since you practiced each chunk equally throughout the process, the piece should sound consistently good all the way through. If you follow a method like this with discipline and care, you just cannot go wrong. It will seem that the piece will learn itself. You would be doing yourself a huge favor if you also memorized each chunk as you mastered it.

If at anytime in the process you get stuck and don’t improve, you can always go back a step and re-do your segments. As soon as you get to a “purple patch”, you go back to segmenting until it gets better. Then you move ahead in the process.

Right now, you’ve read this far and are most likely exasperated at how detailed this practice ethic can get. You might also suspect that there will be hurdles along the way, that some chunks and segments will come easier than others, and that this situation might be too “idealized” to work practically. Well, let me say that of course it won’t be easy, but this method is the only way to learn a difficult piece to the point of mastery in the shortest time possible. This is how the pros do it. For me, this is exactly how I have to learn a piece of music if I am to play something on a professional level in a short amount of time. Chunking works wonders, and the best part (no pun intended) is that you will learn the whole piece much quicker than if you always start at the beginning of a piece when you practice.

Yes, it takes patience, focus, and careful planning. But the students of mine who followed this kind of practice plan always got to a high performance level in the end. They felt great about their solid accomplishment in this Invention and learned to apply the process to other difficult pieces. A Bach invention today, maybe a Rachmaninoff concerto tomorrow?

___________________

(1) Walter Gieseking and Karl Leimer, The Shortest Way to Pianistic Perfection, in Piano Technique(same authors) (New York: Dover 1972), 26.

Read More......

Chris Foley's "10-minute Practice Blocks"

Chris Foley (over at "The Collaborative Piano Blog") posted a wonderful list of ways to use 10-minute blocks of practice time in an effective and efficient way. Since I've always been a big fan of short, multiple practice sessions (rather than one long one) on any given day, this is a must-read for anyone who struggles with making the most of practice time.

For those not familiar with the idea of "breaking up" practice time, here's an example:

Your teacher wants you to do 45 minutes of practice each day.
When you do one straight session of 45 minutes, you know that you risk some loss of concentration/commitment during the last fifteen minutes. The solution: Practice 30 minutes, then take a break. Later, do the rest of your practice (15 minutes) after you feel more refreshed (for example, after a meal or some kind of outside activity).

But another solution might be to do TWO 10-minute sessions, and use Chris's list as a way to organize your practice goals. That way, you get in two distinct practice "spurts". You might just accomplish a little more than usual.

Another positive aspect of this kind of practice: When you limit yourself to a 10-minute session, you could also be limiting bad practice. If you tend to practice too fast, or repeat the same mistakes over and over, the time limit will help keep you from going overboard with your worst habits. If you follow Chris's list carefully, you might also be able to REVERSE some of those bad habits. 

I hope that everyone who studies piano (at any level) takes a good look at this important idea and experiments with it. You might not know what you're missing, and more productive practice for the time investment could be yours.

Read More......