Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Achievement of the week - what got you excited?

Sam Rose, I enjoyed reading about your adventures in New York. That kind of confidence tends to be a rare thing.

Andy Platt, being officiant is a big deal. Good for you.

DottedNotes, there is nothing small about public performances of pieces written by Mozart & Haydn.

As for my week #14, I continue working on Ashokan Farewell, now six weeks in. I tried something new this morning, recording myself calling out the chord changes, and then listening to that and trying to play the left hand part with my eyes closed. This helped me find what is near obvious to many, especially those with teachers. Some of the chord changes, such as D to Bm7 are simple if a person anticipates them (adding one key).

I would like to say this exercise was a silver bullet, but when I tried hands together again, sightreading the ABC notation, it was not much better. Still, I think the new exercise, chord changes called out and trying to play them with eyes closed will help.

I mentioned morning practice. That is a new thing, doing a short 15 to 20 minutes in the morning, then filling out to an hour for the day, later. Breaking up the practice time seems to help with the hand discomfort. Using headphones, also seems to help because the hands don't pick up the vibration from the keyboard. I continue playing with the fingerless gloves, and soaking the hands briefly in warm water after practice.

I am into week three on my yet unnamed new composition in A major. It sounds nice, but I am still wanting more and continue to nudge it.

I continue watching some of the Yale music appreciation courses. My attention does wander at times, as does that of the students in the class, but I am learning some more terminology, structure, and music history.
http://oyc.yale.edu/music/musi-112

Thanks for all the reports and comments.

Thanks for your advices, Richard, I’ll follow them.

Ugh, the recital did not go well today. Too many memory issues in the Rameau - nerves, pure nerves. And they came out of nowhere - was fine, walked to the piano, blurgh.

I was first and the next two caught my memory issues I think. Doh!

By the end, I had recovered and did some credible performances for the preludes. Particularly the C minor which was very nice.

Oh well, it doesn't always get easier, sometimes it just gets worse ... but next time will be better I'm sure!

Andy, I am sure you played better than you think. The thing you should be proud of is that you were able to recover on your own which is an incredible feat by itself. You should pat your shoulder for the playing through the piece and playing the chopin piece well. It's so easy to be influenced by the mistake in the first piece and mess up the second piece. It shows your personal strength and maturity as a musician. Congratulations for completing the recital well.

I think the part of reason why it does not always get easier is because our expectation changes as well. First time, you are happy if you can somehow make yourself "do" this recital thing. After a couple of times, you start demanding much more out of it. Don't you think we tend to be a harsh critic when it comes to our own performance?

Andy Platt, yes, it seems like if one person gets the yips, it is contagious. Did you record your performance? Listening back may not be pleasant, but will give you more information.

Can you talk about your preparation, the day of the recital, the day before? I find that sleep, rest (physical and mental) diet, exercise are all important parts of my lead up to performances. I prefer light physical practice plus mental walk throughs.

I know there is a ton of information on memorization, entire threads, chapters of books. What might you do different? Did you have any written material at all? I know it is different for classical, but I find a set list with the first few bars written out to be useful to have. Sometimes my mind feels so completely blank that I forget what piece I am going to play.

Memory faults tend to be the most dreaded type of mistakes by solo performers, so you are not alone. You have already come to the secure thought that next time will be better, and you have already demonstrated your nerves at other times with good performances.

Andy
You have my empathy. I'm glad the preludes felt good to you. That makes it an achievement (and the fact that you didn't just quit). :-)

Andy, pulling things together and doing a good job on the Chopin preludes after having memory issues on the first recital piece is a huge accomplishment. It shows that you can keep a cool head even when things are not going well. That should give you confidence to make your next recital a breeze!

Thanks FarmGirl - I can assure you it was that bad. My teacher asked, "What happened? You've never done that before." My memory of that event is as clear as my lack of memory of the pieces was.

SandTiger - I've read "The Musician's Way" this year. One of the things he talks about with memorizing (everything in the book is to be done "deeply" so, of course he says you have to memorize "deeply") is that if you haven't got it memorized deeply, read it. The truth for most of us is we never have it memorized that deeply, it takes too much time we don't have available to us. And, to be honest, I thought that the Rameau was memorized pretty well.

WiseBuff and SwissMS - thanks, I agree.

What I have to figure out is how to tackle the nerves head on. Because they literally came out of the blue, I didn't have time to address them. Which means I have to head them off. I think the various techniques about doing your pre-run through completely as a performance might help. I suspect I was just pushing any thoughts of the performance to the back of the mind, letting them fester and come rushing out, instead of bringing them out in a controlled fashion.

For my achievement this week I have to thank our forum member Richard (zrtf90), who has posted at length in the past few months on the benefits of really slow practice. Thanks to Richard, I've finally figured out what this really means.

I have always tried to practice slow and advocated it myself to others, but after reading yet another of Richard's posts on slowing down, it just clicked that I really don't slow down enough to where I make it effortless, as he has described it. And I think that effortless is the operative word here. To add to Richards voice, I realized that much the same advice is given, in one form or another, in most of the books I've read.

With my teacher away for two weeks and me starting on 3 or 4 new pieces in her absence, I realized it was a good time to really slow it down. For instance the little Mozart minuet that I was working on was not difficult to put hands together at the slow speed I'd normally choose (after I had already played it for a while HS). But I would get random errors every now and then and I didn't really like the tone. Also I noticed that now and then a note or rest didn't get its proper full value. So I started slowing it down and didn't stop until it was just comically easy to play without error, with good tone, and with all the right note durations. If quarters at 60bpm wasn't working I dialed down to 40bpm. When the metronome bottomed at 40, I switched to eighths at 60 or lower. Whatever it took. It turned out I needed something quite a bit slower than my first choice... an observation that turned out to be true across the board with all the pieces I am working on.

I can't describe how liberating it felt to finally be able to think freely while playing the right notes the right way. Before long I found I was really looking ahead and thinking about dynamics, phrasing, and articulation nuances. Now I want to put those elements in and practice them just as slowly. Another benefit I didn't expect seems to be that I find it easier to just keep my eyes glued to the music. I have no idea why, but somehow that urge to look down all the time was also greatly reduced.

How I went this long without really knowing the meaning and the FEELING of truly slowing down is a mystery to me. What I would have done previously is keep drilling these pieces in sections and making occasional errors...thinking all along I am going slow enough and I am correcting them...but it would never actually get "easy" like it feels now on these pieces at slow speed. I do not think it will be any problem at all to speed it up from this point.

So, thank you Richard. I have applied this to the other things I am working on and the benefits are equally apparent.

Jim

<blush>

Thanks, Jim!

I'm delighted for you! Those difficulties will now vanish before your very eyes and pieces of great import and technical challenges will just seem a whole lot closer and a lot more accessible. You now have the key to the "big" door! Enjoy the treasures within!

JimF, you have inspired me for REALLY slow practice! Thank you to you for your eloquent description, and to zrtf90 for the impetus of posts that inspired you. I will report back on the results.

Jim F and zrtf90, I totally agree! Although I thought I was utilizing slow practice, I only discovered the value of ultra slow, mistake free practice a couple of months ago. It is definitely NOT for the impatient, but it really works! Impatience and the resulting mistakes are a killer for learning something new. The ultra slow, mistake free approach has really helped me deeply learn and prevent errors. I wish I had learned this earlier in my piano "career". I have older pieces that I have played with ingrained errors that are now very difficult to play error free.

My AOTW is playing through the entire Canon in D score (Galloway arr.) from memory. It took me awhile to nail down a couple of bars which are sixteenth notes in both hands because I couldn't find a good "hook" (i.e. the logic) for getting them into memory, but I think I'm finally there.

Lots of work left to do, but it does feel like an accomplishment to play the entire piece (even if it's real slow).

Sam - being able to hear what you're doing is surprisingly difficult. I tend to think I'm doing really well, til I record myself and get a reality check - then for a while I can hear all the flaws and weak points, until I think I've got it.... re-record and realize I still have work to do. Gradually I'm getting better at identifying but I still get "delusional" about how well things are going sometimes .

Dotted notes, well if you won't play for us, ok... it will still be fun to see that piece being played!

Rusty - great memory work - and I agree with Richard - keep learning new pieces! The more you learn the easier the next piece is!

Richard -I think I need to sit down with a piece of paper to work out your "keep it fresh" schedule but it does seem like it could be a great routine - thanks for sharing it. (BTW, I remember those scenes from Laugh-in)

Sand Tiger - isn't it great when something "clicks" and we feel "ah ha!" --- Sometimes I tell me teacher about these moments and though it is always something that is obvious to her, she loves hearing that I figured it out for myself


Andy - sorry to hear you had such a difficult time at your recital - but it sounds like you survived with a positive attitude and that's a good thing. I hope you can figure out what to do so you don't get caught off guard in the future.

Jim - thanks for sharing your thoughts on slow practice. Between what you and then Richard wrote, it is very clear to me that my idea of slow isn't really that slow!!

SwissMS - well, better late than never, right? Let's look at it this way --- even though we're a few years in to the journey there is still a long road ahead and we've got lots of time to implement this approach!

Stubbie - I love Canon in D --- why did you choose the Galloway one as opposed to any other? Did you try others or go straight to this one?


My ATOW is to have improved the dynamics in my baroque pieces. I'm getting the hand of doing staccato in one hand and legato in the other - quite a challenge, but fun. Next piece I start, I'm going to focus on doing that right from the start rather than adding it in later - in fact I think that I have to start paying attention to the dynamics much earlier in my study of any given piece.

Hi Everyone,

My AOTW was memorizing to bar 46 of Chopin’s Ocean Etude (I started this piece a few weeks ago and am trying to memorize as I learn it). My memory is still in that stage of having to work at it to get through that far, but at least it’s started. I’m only playing the piece using one or two octaves for now. I’ll learn the whole piece that way by memory then try adding more octaves.

And after reading this thread I tried slowing down Winter Wind. Wow I was shocked at how often I had to refer to the score for parts I thought I had memorized! Hopefully it will help me to work out some of the stumbling blocks and to get the tempo going even faster! (as I’m not even playing it at half tempo yet).

The third exciting thing this week was just watching on youtube Valentina Lisitsa’s concert at the RAH. Fantastic concert and great fun to watch!

Have a good week everyone! Sorry I don’t reply much to what other people post. Still getting the hang of posting on here. I’m often reading though.

V

Hi,
My AOTW is that I finished my first Helen Jane Long piece. Since it's memorized I'm in the "experience" phase, trying some variations on melody and expression - I know this can last forever...-. I want to do a record of it for the next ABF recital but, now, I'm preparing for my 3 weeks period of vacations. unfortunately I'll not touch a single piano key during this period....

Have fun everybody and sorry for not reply to your week achievements but I'm really busy.

Congrats!! I just bought the sheet music for Canon in D last week and I am excited to start learning it. I have chosen it for our wedding song so its special right now......and for the next 50 + years lol.

I've really enjoyed reading this thread. It's great to have a place to announce advances, great and small.

My AOTWs may be downright miniscule, but I'm pleased nevertheless with my progress since returning to the piano and PW: 1) I discovered it wasn't too late to join the 2012 MOYD and signed right up, and 2) I'm making good progress with Schaum's Adult Piano Course Book 1.

I don't know how newer editions compare, but my 1947 copy — No, I didn't buy it new, lol! — is really helping to rebuild my knowledge and skills. Plus, I rather like the musical selections. Although I'd planned to go back to Alfred's All-in-One and will at some point, Schaum is working for the moment.

Anyway, that's my update. Tiny steps for tiny feet, as the saying goes.

Regarding painfully slow practice, what inspired me to adopt this technique (and I am still in the process of adopting it because it requires saint like patience) was a video of Alexi Laiho (of heavy metal guitar fame) playing the Winter portion of Vivaldi's 4 seasons. For a teaching tool, he played the piece dreadfully slow. It does allow for an intimacy with the music to not play at tempo and to let tempo come with mastery. I like it.

Oh, my, I don't think I'm patient enough for this super slow practice. Inspired by the discussion here I've slowed down the bars I'm working on at times, but I like to hear it at tempo (even with mistakes) too much...

Meanwhile, "FarmGirl returns from work" is coming along well... I can play it slowly without mistakes, or at tempo with mistakes. I usually do the latter.

My instructor decided I'm way behind on scales and finger exercises, so I've been working a lot more on those lately. I can see how they're useful, and even like doing them mostly... and didn't realize until practicing my D-major scale that one of my pieces must be in that key! So, tired fingers this week.