Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Business Travel - how do u practice?

For those of you who are serious about learning piano, what do you do when you travel for business/work? Obviously it's v rare that you can find a piano that u can use for practice in a hotel. I found that whenever I travel for work, my practice and momentum take a small hit. I usually need a couple days (sometimes even longer) to get back to where I was before the travel. I'm thinking maybe I will start making copies of the music that I'm working on and "practice it mentally" in my hotel room.

I'm interested to see what other ppl do.

There has been a long discussion here before regards a small lightweight dp with weighted keys. But if you are flying I don't think there was anything really suitable.

Mental practice is an amazing thing. There's a lot of discussion out there about the benefits of visualisation.

Here's a link on the web. It's not the best one. But it has basics.

http://expertenough.com/1898/visualization-works

Here's a link that talks about visualisation in music (for improvising jazz musicians).

http://www.jazzguitar.be/forum/getting-started/17112-practicing-backward-visualization-learning.html

If you skip down to #19 here

http://brenthugh.com/piano/piano-practice.html

there's stuff about piano practicing through visualisation.

Visualisation is "your mileage may vary" and it's a skill that gets better over time.

Be very interesting for the rest of us if you were to give it a good try - because experience is the best teacher - and report back.

It's a great question that concerns many of us and that breaks down into several sub-issues: "travel pianos" (digitals and dummy keyboards); locating available acoustic pianos at one's destination; alternative practice techniques (visualization); and more.

The idea of a separate "traveling pianist" forum or sticky thread has come up, but unfortunately nothing has been established.

I mostly do mental practice, and if I happen to be near a piano perhaps take advantage of that. There are some who travel with a lightweight keyboard, but personally I don't know how much benefit there is to that over mental practice.

There are some aspects of practicing mentally that are good no matter if you can get to a piano or not. Most of my musical ideas come away from the piano, and when I'm at the piano it's more focused on technical aspects, and then later, executing the musical aspects I worked out before.

Yes, it takes a bit to recover, but that's life, it's not a race, and if you get to where you want to be in learning a piece, it's OK if there are a few bumps along the way.

And Morodienne's approach is a very valid approach.

OTOH, there are those of us who very much want to practice on piano keys while traveling.

For that group, mental practice doesn't scratch the itch. There are a lot of different ways to pursue that goal. Many have been discussed on these boards before.

Unfortunately, the comments (many very valuable) are scattered through hundreds of Piano World postings across several different forums and are very difficult to find.

It would be great if the OP (and the rest of us traveling pianists) had one place we could go in Piano World to discuss these issues.

Thanks for everyone's input! I actually have never thought of mental practice until this thread. That term just never came to my mind and nobody has ever told me about it. When I thought of making copies of the score and "practice it mentally", I thought I was a crazy enthusiast!

anyway, I'm travelling and am in a hotel room. This is my first time doing mental practice and it's great! I have never tried that before and I htink when you are reading your music in front of a piano, your focus would be on playing. Now without a piano in front of me, I found that I'm much more focused on the score/music! Even though I have played this piece many times, i feel like I'm actually "getting to know an old friend".

Mark P. thanks for posting the link about practice. I actaully read through the whole thing and it's a really good material.

thanks again!

Special case: My wife had to have surgery that required a week in the hospital. It was too far (6 hours) for me to commute. She also had to stay in the motel for a week after the surgery, near the doctor.

So I bought a keyboard, stand, drum stool, and headphones. Practiced in the motel room for 2 weeks.

This only worked because we drove there. I can't imagine taking the keyboard on a plane...

Sam

Go to the Apple store and buy the small, lightweight 25-key midi keyboard that connects to your iphone.

It's not as rare as you might think. For non-budget hotels booked outta the blue, I usually find I can use whatever piano is in the atrium or the bar about 50% of the time.

I learn which hotels let me use the pianos and then make a point to rebook them when possible.

When planning leisure travel, I usually look in advance for places with a piano--you could easily apply this to booking business travel.

I bring the little Kawai keyboard along by car, too. But I make do with the hotel furniture. Sometimes they provide an ironing board that works as a stand. Usually their desk and chair with a phone book works OK.

I can identify with this issue! Every time I go to a hotel, my first order of business is figuring out how to jerry-rig the furniture and seating to make it possible to play conveniently on little travel digital.

Sometimes it's not easy...

RX2! Great great to hear that's working for you!!

Hi I am late to join the thread - being busy this week. Anyway, this is really my kind of subject. In fact i had to be in NY right before the Mazurka recital due data. I was in NY 10 days and prior to that, I had to travel Grand Canyon etc with my niece from Japan. I touched the piano 2 days when i was in NY (Sad). I came home 2 days before the due date.

I did significant mental practice for the first time. I did not have a choice. I looked at the score while picturing the keys. I then played with my fingers on the table with imaginary articulation and dynamics, yes crazy! Whenever I got stammered i looked at the score again and did backward practice on the table again until it flows better. When I went back to the studio on the next dayI flew back to AZ (we have Saturday piano studio at the community college), my teacher was actually surprised that I got better. She hadn't heard me play for over 2 weeks. Actually I have not heard myself play for approximately same amount of time either. Yeah, it works. Now i do this even though I have piano at home.

Last time I travelled for work I found a hotel that had a piano in the lounge area and was able to practice every evening on it. Turned out to be out of tune and with people around, both of which were good for me.

Haven't had many problems adjusting to my teacher's piano since.

Same here, and I made $7 in tips.... ;-)

I do that sometimes too, but I usually have to tip the other people in the lobby.

Easy. I go to the bar and drink. If the place has a piano, sometimes I'll see how much money someone will pay me to stop playing.