Advice for Pianists: Piano Lesson Myths
Piano lesson myths are so ingrained into our culture and our consciousness that it almost seems silly to counter them. But on close examination, even the most “obvious” beliefs about piano study and piano practice are not only wrong, they are damaging to the individual who is bound by their chains. This material is an attempt to help pianists of all levels be liberated from such mental constraints, attitudes and assumptions regarding piano lessons, so that they might truly reach their goals.
“Children learn faster than adults.”
Realty: There is no difference. This idea that a child’s brain is more receptive is incorrect. What may be true is that the child is less encumbered by the busy-ness of life and tends to have less mental clutter. This state results in a naturally-better focusing ability which creates the illusion that the child may be able to absorb new material faster than the adult. However, what the child often doesn’t have is desire. The adult really wants to study piano. And this great desire creates the same type of focus that is needed for quick learning. In fact, adults who have this intention, often from wanting to make up “for lost time,” often learn faster than children! The adult who is just a dabbler who doesn’t have the great desire is a typical hectic, frazzled adult. This type of adult is the adult who will tend to learn slower — not because they don’t practice enough, but because their energy is so distracted. Another cause of distraction is self-judgement and stress and impatience that is associated with learning. Adults have had their lifetimes to become familiar with music so they know how it is “supposed” to sound, whereas children usually have never heard the piece they are learning. As a result, adults do tend to become easily frustrated by comparing their current ability to play a piece with the way they know it should sound — and THIS comparison can cause enough stress and anxiety that the adult student will often lose interest or stop playing altogether. So adult students need to take caution about this unnecessary temptation to think they “should” sound like a professional pianist after only playing for three weeks. The adult student must learn to embrace his or her current ability with grace and appreciation. From this point improvement will occur.
“I must practice every day.”
Reality: Taking two or three guilt-free days off from practicing each week will help you progress faster than if you practiced everyday! Think body building. People who work out or who lift weights are always told to rest the day after a workout. Why? Because the workout tears down the muscle tissue and the day off is when it is rejuvenated and built up stronger than before. Our brains are similar to this. The rest periods are when your brain assimilates your effort. Also, the reason it must be guilt-free is so that you get the complete benefit of the day of rest. If you intend to practice seven days a week and you miss a day, you will be inclined to be stressed about it during the inadvertent day off. So instead of relaxing from the piano on that day, you are more stressed. In fact, with this more typical approach, you may be inclined to practice more the next day with the hopes of “making up” for the missed day. This approach never works. You can’t cram the piano. All you will get is more and more errors and more and more frustrated because your poor brain is never given a rest it desperately needs. For best results, just practice only 4 days a week. This allows you to plan-in 3 days a week of guilt-free rest. (These days do not have to be in a row.) This is realistic and supportive because things often come up for us in our busy lives anyway. By making 4 days a week 100% of the requirement, if you do more, you feel great.
“Once I can play hands together, I don’t need to continue practicing hands separately.”
Reality: The very steps that bring you to a certain level of mastery are the ones that will help to maintain that level of mastery. Most people assume that practicing hands separately is a temporary step towards the goal of playing hands together. But let’s examine what professionals do. They will continue to practice hands separately on a piece they’ve played for 25 years! This is because only when you practice hands separately can you really focus on certain nuances that would be obscured if you were spreading your focus between two hands. The better hands are mastered separately, the more reliable and proficient it will be when you then bring hands back together. So, please think of practicing hands separately not only as an initial phase of learning a passage, but also as a way to MAINTAIN and also to further improve and polish a section of a piece you’re working on.
“I should learn a new piece in order, from the beginning to the end.”
Reality: The most efficient way to study a composition is to learn the most difficult sections FIRST! Here’s why: The typical way that people learn is to learn the first part first. Then, each day they push forward and learn a few new measures. The problem is that it’s very tempting to stop pushing forward and to prematurely reward yourself by playing through the part you’ve already learned. This, of course, is the beginning section. As you approach the part that you don’t yet know, you hear the music getting slower and sloppier until it just stops. Then, this is so frustrating, you are tempted to repeat the part that you know again rather than work on the new section. So in essence, when you do this, you end up “practicing” the part you already know and avoiding the parts that you don’t yet know. This is so common, yet so ineffective! The worst part of it is that the part you already know is often the easiest portion of the music, as composers rarely start out with the most difficult passages. So think about it: You end up practicing and practicing and practicing the first section of the piece every time you “run through the part you already know.” Yet this is the EASIEST section and requires collectively the LEAST time. Whereas the hardest parts that require the MOST time collective are the parts you tend to avoid each day. It would be so much more efficient if you could get out of the assumption that you should learn the first part first. Instead, scan through the new composition and determine which sections appear to be the most difficult. Start on THESE sections, even if they are not connected. Eventually, each section will grow and they will overlap into each other. NOW, when you want to play through the sections you “already know,” it will be the HARDEST sections that you play through rather than the easiest. This means even if you avoid learning the new sections and you fall back on playing the parts you already have learned, you will still be doing some good, because these sections are the ones that will benefit by the continued review since they are so difficult. In the end, you will have over-practiced the hard sections and under-practiced the easy sections. The result will be that all the sections will be equally-mastered and this is what will help you reach your goal sooner than later!
“When practicing, I should never rush.”
Reality: It is PREFERABLE to play any sections of a piece you are learning FASTER than you need! Eventually, when you attach each section to one another, you will be inclined to slow down because it is harder. But you will slow down to the correct speed of the piece. Most people have a very hard time getting the piece up to the right tempo because they practice each section at the right tempo and then when they attach the sections to one another, it becomes TOO SLOW! This commonly-heard advice about not rushing is only applicable AFTER you have learned the piece when one may be tempted to sacrifice accuracy for speed. In that case ONLY would it be true that one should not rush.
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