 |
Welcome to the Piano World Piano Forums
Over 3 million posts about pianos, digital pianos, and all types of keyboard instruments.
Over 100,000 members from around the world.
Join the World's Largest Community of Piano Lovers
(it's free)
It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!
|
|
|
|
65 members (brennbaer, accordeur, antune, Colin Miles, anotherscott, AndyOnThePiano2, benkeys, 10 invisible),
1,830
guests, and
306
robots. |
|
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
|
|
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 559
500 Post Club Member
|
500 Post Club Member
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 559 |
BTW.. Elena you're Puerto Rican?
What part?
I would imagine every single part of her. Rick
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 782
500 Post Club Member
|
|
500 Post Club Member
Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 782 |
Woops, I wrote earlier: None of what I've described above are my own thoughts (except the gallery analogy, which by the way only serves to cover the "plan" part of this method, nothing about how to actually create the plan based on the psychology of learning and technique factors, which is equally important.) I've learned this from him.
But I was just studying more of Bernhards writings over on pianoforum.net and saw in This Thread he wrote: 6. Practice does not necessarily mean time spent at the piano. In fact you can drastically reduce piano time (if you want to) by practising intelligently and efficiently. Think of the process of building a house. Knowledgeable builders will spend most of the time planning it (thinking about the house, drawing plans, making models), and then building the foundations (which will have to be carefully calculated beforehand), then putting up the building properly and finally decorating its insides.
7. For the persons that are unfamiliar with building, all they see is the putting up of the building. And all that they talk about is the decoration. When they ask about how long is going to take to build a house? They are flabbergasted to learn that the planning and the foundation are far more important than the building and the decoration. And will take far longer.
d'oh! I guess I didn't invent the building analogy   -Paul
"You look hopefully for an idea and then you're humble when you find it and you wish your skills were better. To have even a half-baked touch of creativity is an honor."
-- Ernie Stires, composer
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2004
Posts: 969
500 Post Club Member
|
|
500 Post Club Member
Joined: Sep 2004
Posts: 969 |
mound-
Thanks a lot for the information in this thread. I've printed it out (all 23 pages) and have read through and hi-lited much of it. I am anxious to try these methods with my own practice time. I appreciate the detail that you provide in your posts, which always seem to be well thought out.
Support our troops!
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 782
500 Post Club Member
|
|
500 Post Club Member
Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 782 |
"You look hopefully for an idea and then you're humble when you find it and you wish your skills were better. To have even a half-baked touch of creativity is an honor."
-- Ernie Stires, composer
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 2,653
2000 Post Club Member
|
|
2000 Post Club Member
Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 2,653 |
Fantastic information Paul! I'm reinvigorated. Anybody know where to pick up some spare time for cheap?
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 2,846
2000 Post Club Member
|
|
2000 Post Club Member
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 2,846 |
Originally posted by mound: Yes, this is a well documented phenomena in psychology.. That C. Chang book talks at length about it as well (look at the chapter on Post Practice Learning) - and you can make use of it every day to make your practices more efficient.
Pick a new passage you have never seen before. Try to play it 7 times in a row. If you can't do it correctly 7 times in a row, chop it in half and try again.. Do this until you have a chunk that you can play correctly 7 times in a row (yes, even if that brings you down to only two notes, and 7 is not arbitrary, you may have heard various areas of psychology of learning that talk about the number of unique things the conscious brain can retain at once.. it goes to that..)
Now that you've defined the appropriate size of the chunk to practice, continue to practice this chunk for no longer than 20 minutes. If it's a fast passage or something, alternate between a right hand and left hand passage (from the same piece or a different piece all together, work both hands equally) but then walk away (or take a break and move on to something all together different, don't repeat that work today)
Come back tomorrow and it may in fact seem you've forgotten it entirely. So repeat exactly what you did to learn that chunk yesterday, you will get it back to the point you had it at the end of yesterdays session, in a fraction of that time. Again, practice no longer than 20 minutes because anything more isn't going to have any additional effect.. Tomorrow come back to it, you might have it perfectly on the first try. If not, repeat the exact steps you took to learn it the first day and again, leave it. After 3 or 4 days, you will have that passage mastered forever.
In contrast, you could spend 3 hours on the first day practicing this chunk over and over and over again and tomorrow, you will likely be at the same point you were on the 2nd day in the above scenario, only you've wasted close to 2.5 hours.
Your subconscious takes care of an enormous amount of processing while you sleep. If you don't believe me, try it for yourself. Pick two passages of comparable complexity and go about learning one the way you normally do (read the notes, pick them out on the keyboard, practice an arbitrary length passage, regardless if you can do it correctly after 7 tries and repeat it over and over for half hour, an hour, two hours, whatever you would normally do.) Use the "7/20" rule for the other passage and after 3 or 4 days, see which one you know cold and which one has seen only marginal improvement.
Anyway - check out posts by Bernhard on the forums at www.pianoform.net, search for "7 20" by him, he goes to much better length to explain why and how this works than I can, I'm only talking about stuff I learned from him anyway
-Paul IMO that's the best way to learn a piece. Sightread it once very slowly, without stopping to practise a passage more than once, and taking as much time as possible so you get the notes right. Then the next day, do it again. And again. And again. And within a few playthroughs you will have the piece learned. You might need to practise a few passages seperately, but you will at least know all the notes. I learn't various pieces like this, and noticed that it is much harder to remember pieces with repeating sections than ones without.  (For example it took 4 playthroughs to learn Debussys Jarndin son ta Pluie, but it took just over 10 to learn Beethovens op.14 no.1 1st movement)
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 782
500 Post Club Member
|
|
500 Post Club Member
Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 782 |
Anybody know where to pick up some spare time for cheap? I'll sell ya 15 minute blocks for $5 a pop! hah.. seriously, honestly, now that I've discovered all this stuff, I have "found" 30-45 extra minutes a day, totally seperate 15 minute blocks.. 15 minutes that I otherwise wouldn't have even thought to practice in because "what the heck can I do in 15 minutes?" - but now, knowing that I have a specific goal that I can accomplish in 15 minutes, a goal that is written out in my log from the end of my last practice session, an attainable goal sitting there waiting for me, it's easy to grab that otherwise unused 15 minutes and go make progress. Does that make sense? It's like these methods allow you to do more with less time and simultaneously show you how to find more time to do more with. -Paul
"You look hopefully for an idea and then you're humble when you find it and you wish your skills were better. To have even a half-baked touch of creativity is an honor."
-- Ernie Stires, composer
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 782
500 Post Club Member
|
|
500 Post Club Member
Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 782 |
Max, I'm confused by your post. You first quoted what I wrote (about finding an appropriate chunk size to practice by determining what the biggest chunk is that you can learn after 7 repetitions etc..) Then you said that in your opinion, that is the best way to learn a piece. (I agree, of course, 'cause you quoted me). Then you immediately said:
Sightread it once very slowly, without stopping to practise a passage more than once, and taking as much time as possible so you get the notes right. Then the next day, do it again. And again. And again. And within a few playthroughs you will have the piece learned.
Which is the polar opposite of what I described. (you can much more effectively memorize small chunks and put them together than you can memorize one large thing by repeating it in its entirety over and over again day after day). Then you went on to say doing it like this is harder for pieces that have repeating sections, which from the "emoticon" you used, is as confusing to you as it is to me! My guess is that if you are actually able to sight read through a piece, repeatedly going through the entire piece at once, you are probably an advanced player, with advanced sight reading skills, where in fact, the "rule of 7" would produce exceptionally long passages purely because of your experience. Great! For less advanced students, myself included, your approach will surely lead to lots of effort and lots of frustration. -Paul
"You look hopefully for an idea and then you're humble when you find it and you wish your skills were better. To have even a half-baked touch of creativity is an honor."
-- Ernie Stires, composer
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 2,653
2000 Post Club Member
|
|
2000 Post Club Member
Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 2,653 |
"I have "found" 30-45 extra minutes a day"
I saw that the first time I heard Bernhard's method. Up 'til now we've been promoted to practice in times of 1+ hours. Anything less than an hour didn't seem worth lifting the fallboard for anything but playing for enjoyment. Now just the opposite is true.
Paul, I understand the 7 times in a row thing. But what I don't understand is this:
Say I have a half measure 7 times in a row without mistakes. You're saying to practice on the same half measure for up to 20 minutes when I can already play it, as I proved by playing it 7 times in a row. So what exactly is it that I'm practicing?
I'm reading through Bernhard's posts and they are brilliant! But it's a lot of material to get through. (I registered as Mycroft on that board.)
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 2,653
2000 Post Club Member
|
|
2000 Post Club Member
Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 2,653 |
Nevermind. I think, (think possibly that is), that this post by Bernhard answered my question.
|
|
|
|
Forums43
Topics223,390
Posts3,349,223
Members111,632
| |
Most Online15,252
Mar 21st, 2010
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
