Knowing when to ‘move on’ in our piano practice is something that we need to really think about as amateur pianists.
Without wanting to sound like an economist, I think we need to think at a Micro and a Macro level. By micro, I’m meaning those small things, individual bars or groups of notes. By macro, I’m thinking of an entire piece.
Moving on at the Macro level
Josh Wright released a video with the interesting title of ‘Avoid Repertoire Museums’. Here he discusses the danger of spending too long obsessing on one piece and trying to push it further and further. Let’s take the example of a Chopin Etude. I’ve been learning Op. 25 No. 2 (the Bees). The metronome marking for this is minim (half note) = 108. Now let’s say that I can manage this at minim = 95 after a good number of weeks practising it. Is it really an effective use of time pushing and pushing to get it to 108? Not necessarily!
Similarly, with any piece, many of us can envisage how we’d like something to sound, but not always totally pull it off. Again, to avoid the repertoire museum, we should probably put it to one side and move on to something else in our piano practice.
However, many of us will refuse to move on. We’ll continue to plug stubbornly away – no matter what the cost in time.
It may well be much better to put it to one side, and move to something else. With any piece, we can always come back to it later, when our general level of playing has improved. We can then try to take it that bit further. Josh, in one of his videos, talks about his earlier recordings (from memory in his early teens) of some Chopin Etudes. In these recordings he plays them at a somewhat slower tempo than that of which he is now capable. Q.E.D.
Moving on at the Micro level
However, I think at the micro level, we tend to frequently do the reverse. That is to say, to move on way before we really should.
On Christmas Day, we had some family round. One of the nephews has been learning piano and I ended up giving him a bit of a piano lesson. He had a simplified version of the slow movement of the Moonlight Sonata that he wanted to try. So, we sat together and worked through it for a while. One thing I noticed was that, as might be expected, he would repeatedly get it wrong. So, we’d stop, think about what was wrong and then we we’d try again. However, as soon as he got it right once, he wanted to immediately move on to the next bit. It really didn’t matter how often I told him to stop and just repeat it correctly a few times, he evidently didn’t see the point!
However, what also occurred to me was that wise uncle Tommy very frequently doesn’t listen to his own advice. Yes, I know that:
- Only perfect practice makes perfect
- Practice makes permanent.
- Playing something wrong 10 times and right once almost certainly means that next time I’m more likely to get it wrong than play it correctly!
Yet, how often do I heed my own advice?
I’m as guilty as anyone
Yet, in my own practising, I constantly have to pull myself up for doing exactly what I was asking me nephew to stop doing. That is to say, moving on from whatever little problem I’m trying to fix as soon as I manage to get it right once (generally, with a big sigh of relief!). This then means that ‘on a good day’ I might possibly get it right. However, on the whole I’ll probably get it wrong. Coupling this then with keeping playing through hoping that today is ‘a good day’ just makes things worse.
We need to definitely stop ourselves from ‘moving on’ and ensure that we consolidate our efforts so that we reliably play that tiny section correctly.
For example, I’m currently working on Jesu Joy (the Myra Hess arrangement). The real trick here for me is the voicing. This is especially true when the melody is in the alto/tenor line and falls on a finger other than the pinky. I had diligently practiced first just the melody and bass – using both left and right hand final fingerings for the melody notes. Then I moved on to add full block chords. So far, so good.
Then, however, when I added the remainder of the right hand, the voicing started to fall apart – and so did my good practice habits! Sure, the notes themselves aren’t too difficult to master. However, keeping the melody nicely voiced whilst the remainder stays smooth and much quieter is not so easy. Whenever the voicing of any given note wasn’t to my satisfaction, I’d try again – so far so good. However, whenever the note was close enough to what I wanted, I simply continued with the remainder of the phrase. Not so good. Of course, this simply meant that when starting again from the beginning of the section, more often than note I’d again get the voicing wrong.
This is an example of where moving on at the micro level really doesn’t help. In fact, it wasn’t until I actually noticed what I was doing (from a recording of my practice) that I was fully aware of my error.
I then started working on it small group by small group, slowly and carefully and this is what at last made me see some progress again.
Does this strike a chord with you? Try recording your practice session and see if you actually do follow your own good advice!
