Probably the Most Important Skill You Should Improve

I'm not sure, but this is probably my first blog post with a clickbait-sounding title.

This post is more observational and reflective, and less about technique or how-to, but I will probably follow up with more articles in the near-future to discuss the technical side.

Not everyone wants to or honestly can become a top-level concert pianist.  Very precious few pianists become virtuosos.  If you stick with piano long enough, you can become a piano-for-hire.  You can be worth the pay to play for churches, voice lessons, choral concerts, etc.  It requires good technique.  It requires some musical sensitivity and intuition.  It requires exploring plenty of early advanced repertoire to bring up your average level of difficulty in experience.  As I've been working many gigs lately, the most recent where I showed up for a 2-hour performance with a flutist and just played from the books she brought without practice, and as I've been doing 3-4 days per week at UNCSA in classes just playing what was put in front of me, I've concluded...

No skill is more valuable to the pianist-for-hire than sight-reading!

Here are some reasons why:

(1) I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating.  The better your sight-reading, the less time needed to learn the music.  By dramatically improving your ability to play music correctly the first time, you can transform a 10-hour job into learning music into 5-hours.  Actually, if you get good enough at this one skill, you might change it to 2!  If you take two pianists with similar technique, but only one is a superb sight-reader, and give them the same piece to learn on a level that is close to their average experience, the elite sight-reader's first attempt could very well sound like the 5th or 6th day of practice compared to the other person.

(2) If you are a pianist-for-hire, it's EXPECTED!  I don't flex my ego and say "ah, no worries" after being offered the music in advance.  More often than not, I'm not given the option or the time to get it in advance.  I have to show up and play well the first time.  And I promise you that the first time you're put in that situation will be among your most stressful music experiences.  I still remember the sensation of panic, and it probably took 25 or more experiences before it eased up.  Now I enter these situations with mostly confidence.  There is still unease, especially if it's for theatre auditions where I don't want to be the cause of an actor being shaky on their performance when they're trying to land a role.  But I know I can do it!

(3) This is a variation of the first reason, but it needs emphasis.  The music I sightread for hire is not the music I'm spending hours on for myself.  It's what I'm being asked to play for a situation.  If I'm having to practice that, then I have no time for myself on the piano.  On a 250-page book for a recent show, there were about 8 measures(!) I felt like I had to practice.

I can picture your thoughts while reading.  "That's great, David. Good for you!  You're an elite professional, and I'm just learning.  This is out of my reach."

And my response is:  First, I'm not a natural sight-reader.   I entered college with 12-years of piano lessons under my belt, and my sight-reading was so inadequate for voice lessons that I had to take a semester course in the basics of sight-reading.  I learned the basic skills I was lacking in how I approached music, and I used the following summer to explore an exercise that probably doubled my abilities before I left.  Second, I'm not that elite.  There are plenty of other skilled pianists in this area who sight-read even better than me.  Third, it's something I've thought a lot about since college, and come up with exercises to improve this skill for myself.

My next article on this topic will be on what kinds of things you can do to become a better sight-reader.  For now, I hope you're convinced of the importance!

Reach first, then build the staircase

Yesterday, I was walking in an athletic park with a soccer field, when I saw this giant tire along the track.

Well, I'm an on-and-off calisthenics enthusiast.  I was actually here to use the pull-up bars shown in the distance.  I've seen the videos of athletes or crossfit trainers flipping these tires for exercise, and I always wondered, "What's the big deal?", so I tried it.   For the record, I tried 4 times...

I couldn't lift it.

I couldn't even budge it.

I could barely get it to wiggle.

To think something would be easy only to find that it isn't even something I can come close to doing is, well, humiliating.  There are times in the past where I would respond in anger, criticizing my shortcomings and maybe even calling myself a failure.  Another common response might be for me to go pick an exercise that I can do well just to show myself I'm still good at something, and then keep doing it.

However, after years of teaching and making myself be mindful of how practice works, and how progress is made, I've come up with what I think is the healthiest response for anyone aspiring to be better.

"I can't do it now.  I MIGHT not be able to ever do it.  However, I can build a staircase to get from here to there, and see how far I get."

If you are on the ground floor and you look up at even the next floor when it's an open floor-to-ceiling section where you can see all the floors, imagine that there's no stairs, no elevator, no escalator, and you have no rope or anything to help you climb upward.  Trying to get to the next level seems insurmountable.  A staircase makes it possible, even if it's a really long staircase.  Even if you're out of shape, you can still take one step at a time at your own pace, and rest as needed.

What is the staircase? 

The staircase can be a lot of things.  It's a list of the easier tasks that can progress to harder ones.  My step 1 was to go to YouTube and see a tutorial in the technique of how to stand, how to position yourself, how to use your leg during the motion...and I wasn't doing any of that.  My next step might be to find a much smaller tire to get used to the technique.  I might also want to practice more on squatting and dead lifts to improve the two movements involved in lifting a tire.

In music, your destination might be playing your music much faster than you can.  You want to play it with the metronome on 150, but you can barely do 60.  The metronome becomes a staircase.  Step 1 is 60.  Step 2 is 65.  Step 3 is 70.  Step 4 is 75, and so on.  It's not the only way to speed up a piece, but it's a reliable way to make some measured progress.

Another goal might be playing a piece of music that is way too difficult for you.  There's a canyon between Chopin's Prelude No. 4 and his Prelude No. 8.

 

If you can play the first (#4), but are nowhere near the 2nd (#8), then you should try #6, then #20, then #2, then basically all of the others with the possible exception of #16 in some order, and then you're ready for #8,  You might have to start very, very slowly, or hands separately, but either way...you are in the midst of your staircase.

And now for the final point that might be a bit painful...

You might not make it.

I might not flip that tire.  You might get about 7 preludes learned, and then hit a plateau.  You might decide some day...maybe you could learn it a long time from now, but you just don't find the time it takes to succeed worth it.  And that's okay.  It's actually okay to reach for something, and not make it.

The important thing is to REACH.  Your staircase has no purpose until you have a target.  That staircase may be too long for you to get to the end.  But you need to move ahead.  There are certain pieces I have played in my life (Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata, Chopin's Revolutionary Etude, Tchaikovsky's 1st Concerto, Liszt's Concert Etude No. 3) that were milestones for me.  They represented, at the time I learned them, something I didn't think I could have done before.  They also represented something I could barely play slowly when I started.  Two of those pieces took me the better part of a year.  My current piece like that is the Piano Sonata from Samuel Barber.

Every piece I've learned like the ones mentioned above have left me better prepared for a whole new level of music.  I'm now accompanying voice lessons on a regular basis for the first time since college, and finding myself well-equipped for every piece I've had to sightread.  I'm thankful for taking the time in the summer of 1996 to play through (not practice, but just sightread) the entire 48 compositions of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier books 1 and 2.  I'm thankful for the time I took since May through late August to play through the entire 19 Sonatas and 3 Fantasias of Mozart.  All of that has made me ready to sightread music for voice lessons.  I'm thankful for every piece I've played that made me question my ability at first.  I'm not ready for the Barber Sonata to sound anything like it's supposed to be, but I'm reaching for it, and building the staircase.

If you at least reach high, but don't make it... you'll still almost certainly be better off than you were before!

3 More Small Projects to Push Yourself as a Pianist

As I mentioned in my previous article, when you have some time to practice, it's good to do some things to push yourself as a pianist.  The first three were (1) Learn something by ear. (2) Create Your Own Variations of a Piece, and (3) Buy a book just for sight-reading and play all of it.  You can read my article for more details.  Well, here are 3 more projects to consider.  As a reminder, you don't have to do all 6 of these ideas.  Take 1 or 2 if you prefer.

4. Memorize 1-4 pieces per month

What to do: For this project, take only a piece that you ALREADY know fairly well with the music.  You are simply going to take it and memorize it.  Some of you memorize slowly, and others quickly, and thus the flexible number with how many pieces you memorize.

Why: Wouldn't it be nice to go anywhere, sit down at any piano, and just start playing some music even when you don't have sheet music with you?!

Pro Tips: I'm overdue for a blog post about memorization, but for now, here is my most important tip: Utilize your 3 senses of sight, hearing, and touch.  When you sight-read, you should not watch your hands, but when you're trying to memorize something, DO watch your hands.  See what they look like as you play a passage.  Listen closely to how it sounds when you play.  (Trying to repeat a few measures with your eyes closed is good for this and the next part of this tip).  Finally, pay close attention to how it feels in your hands when you play.  Additionally, remember that you can transition from one to another.  Try a few measures without looking.  Then try it again while you check your music.  Then again without.

Extra Credit: Start memorizing your current pieces.  I'll confess: I try to memorize every solo piece I'm learning for myself.  Part of it is because it's a habit I've had since I was 6 and has never been discouraged.  The other reason is that I just want to get off the score.  And the more you practice memorizing music, the sharper you get.  (Note: the more mature brain does have a harder time than a younger brain.  Even with all my experience, it still isn't as easy for me now as it was 30 years ago).

5. Plan your own 20-30 minute concert

What to do: Memorized is best, but with music is fine here.  Pick your favorite pieces and even write down a performance order.  Practice those pieces and see if you can make a concert out of it.  What do you do with this once it's prepared?  See the extra credit section.

Why: There are 2 traps easy to fall into: One is letting one particular favorite piece distract you from learning new pieces.  Another is practicing only new music, and ignoring old pieces that you actually enjoyed.  What's better is to take a group of pieces that you can sit down and play at anytime.  They become the pieces you truly enjoy, and reminders of why you love the piano.

Pro tips: Limit preparation to no more than 3 pieces at a time.  Once you have those down, play them once a week, and add up to 2-3 more that you're focused on improving.

Extra Credit: It's fine if all you want to do is play this concert for yourself, but how about schedule a concert for your family, or maybe even invite a few friends over.  Actually type out a program, and print some copies.  Have everyone bring some snack food and drinks and make a party out of it.

6. Teach someone one of your old pieces.

What to do: Find someone you know who doesn't play piano, or is on an easier level, and teach them one of your pieces. (Note: Be careful if this person has a teacher.  Some teachers are picky about not having possible contradicting instruction.  Your best bets are people not currently taking formal lessons.)

Why: It's common knowledge among all teachers that nothing makes you a better musician than learning how to explain what you know to someone else.  It really makes you think about how you do things.  Your practice will never be better after you learn how to share what you have.  

Pro tips: Keep it really simple at first.  Maybe you just want to teach a section, or teach a really easy piece for you.  Like everything else, teaching well requires practice, and it's good to start small.

Extra Credit: Here's a suggested essay.  What would you have to know and teach if you were a regular piano teacher?  Write down the things that you can get better at as a player, and think of how you would fit each element into a lesson.

3 Small Projects to Push Yourself as a Pianist

It's the first official week of Summer.  School is out.  There might be some opportunities for some of you to make some progress on the piano since you have more time.  But instead of just spending more time on general piano practice, consider taking on one or more of the projects below.  To keep this blog from being too long, I'm including just three ideas for now, and I will share a few more next week.

1. Learn something by ear.

What to do: Go to YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, your CD collection, a movie soundtrack, etc...and listen to something you enjoy.  Listen to just a few seconds at a time over and over, and then try to play what you hear.  If it's beyond your ability to play exactly what you hear, then be content to play even a simplified or abridged version of the music.

Why: Music is an experience you hear.  In formal lessons, we spend so much time exploring music that is fed to our brains by our eyes that we don't often use our ears enough.  Figuring out something in any form without sheet music is very satisfying.

Pro Tips: Sing along as you listen.  Keep singing as you try to play the melody.  Then figure out the chords or accompaniment separately.

Extra Credit: Don't just play the music.  Get some blank manuscript paper, and try to make your own transcription.

2. Create Your Own Variations of a Piece

What to do: Take a piece of written music (It should be an easy level for you) and play through it.  Then you can choose to just improvise (play freely on the spot), or brainstorm and write down your own variations of it.  Change one or two things about it.  Change the rhythm, change it from major to minor (or vice versa), change the meter (ex. 3/4 to 4/4), add notes to the melody, or try different chords.

Why: First of all, you are taking music and truly making it your own.  Second, it is a great way to understand music when you start changing the elements of an existing piece.

Pro tips: Start with something simple that you can play fairly well.  More complex music is harder to arrange.  Only change 1 element at a time until you feel comfortable with it.

Extra Credit: Write your arrangements down on manuscript paper, or make a recording.

3. Buy a book just for sight-reading, and play all of it.

What to do: Get a book (let's say at least 40 pages), and play through 1 or 2 pages per day.  That's it.  Don't practice it.  Don't correct.  Just keep playing.  Make sure your book is easier than the average music you're learning for real.

Why: Most people would list sight-reading as a weakness.  To get better at that specific skill, you have to practice that specific skill.  To have any value, you have to get music you haven't practiced before.

Pro tips:  Turn off the commentary in your head.  You CAN and SHOULD EXPECT to mess up a lot.  Keep playing.  Make a strong commitment to keep your eyes AHEAD of where you're playing by at least a measure.  There are 2 good approaches to sight-reading as far as purpose. (1) Play super slowly, and try to be as accurate as possible.  (2) Play close to tempo on the first attempt using a metronome, and get as much as you can.  You'll probably make a lot of mistakes on this approach, but keep going!

Extra Credit: Well...try 2 books!

What's keeping you from being a GREAT pianist?

For the sake of simplification, we're going to say that there are 4 types of pianists in the world: Bad, Average, Good, and Great.  I understand that there are transitionary levels ("below average", "above average"), which do not need to be mentioned since these imply moving from bad to average or from average to good.  I also won't mention descriptions beyond great (such as elite) which represents a very small percentage of people who play piano, and honestly... If you're old enough to read this blog, and are reading about about how to improve your pianism, then you probably haven't started early and fast enough to become elite.  But don't be depressed.  Being merely a great pianist is not only nothing to cry about, but it is a laudable achievement that is something to strive for.

However, most pianists are not great.   Bad and average pianists probably make up way over half, maybe even 60% of all pianists in the world.  Of the remaining 40-50%, most of these pianists are good, with only a small percentage being great or elite.  Why is this the case?  For reasons you'll see, climbing up the ladder in pianist categories is hard.  This is very important before we go on.  It's crucial that you accept this fact before moving on with this article, because I'm going to make a big deal of it.

Being GREAT at piano is HARD!

Being GREAT at piano is HARD and takes A LOT of time!

Some of you might be thinking: Really? Okay.  I guess I won't be a great pianist if it's going to be really hard and take a lot of time.  I'll go be great at something else that isn't as hard.  So, let me go ahead and tell you this before you go away.

Being GREAT at ANYTHING is HARD and takes A LOT of time!

So if anything requires difficulty and time to be great, why not pursue that on the piano?  Let's proceed.

This article is about becoming GREAT, but we have to quickly talk about how to get from bad to good.

TO BE A BAD PIANIST

Simply play during your lessons, and hardly ever in between.  Practice, if it occurs, is unfocused.  Or...take a few lessons, and stop.  Don't practice at all.

TO BE AN AVERAGE PIANIST

Practice at least a few days per week with some focus.  Practice on new and challenging material doesn't have to be a high percentage of your piano time, but it needs to be something regular.  Do this consistently for at least a year or two, and you will be an average pianist.

TO BE A GOOD PIANIST

Practice needs to become a HABIT.  You need to shoot for daily time at the piano.  You need to be focusing practice on new and challenging skills and pieces.  You also need to be taking lessons, or have someone experienced who can give you feedback.  How much time should you be spending?  Honestly, it doesn't really matter.  Practice 15 minutes a day with focus, and you'll eventually be good, but it may take many years.  Practice several hours a day, and you'll get good faster.  But practice 8 hours a day with just what I said, and you'll never be great.  Sorry, but it's not enough, and that's because time and effort are only parts of what make someone great.

What's keeping you from being a GREAT pianist?

1. You're not GOOD yet.

This is a simple test.  Is practice a habit, a daily habit?  Are you focusing on new and challenging material?  Are you taking lessons, and applying feedback to your practice?  You have to do this to become good.  You don't go from bad to great or average to great without passing by "good".  Check your habits.  This is not requirement 101, but 099...something you must do before you can move on.

2. You place too much value on comfort and satisfaction.

As I said, practice 8 hours a day with the habits of a good pianist, and you won't be great...IF your material and technique doesn't stretch you to your limits.  A runner who isn't huffing and gasping every now and then knows they won't get faster.  A weight lifter who doesn't feel the soreness of muscle burn isn't getting much stronger.  As a musician, you must face the facts: Stretching yourself requires DISCOMFORT.  Practicing in a way to be great will not feed your ego.   If you want to be a good pianist with great self-esteem, then take that piece you learned last year that you already know and play it until it's fast and fulfilling.  Being a great pianist will not feed your ego.  The road to being great is chock-full of potholes.  It is constantly under construction.  There are detours.  You'll have times where you wish you could just go back to the land of good and stay there.  At the same time, the road to great does make progress, and you are getting closer if you persevere.  The next few points are related.

3. You waste time on easy sections, and ignore what is difficult.

Unless you're trying to jump many levels ahead, almost nothing you practice is totally hard.  It has easy measures and hard measures.  In most cases, it should be simple to figure out which is which.  The ego-driven good pianist practices what is easy every chance they can, because it's fun to hear the accomplishment and avoid the brain strain of what great pianists do:  Dive in, struggle, and wrestle with the difficult sections.  Commit a large portion of your practice to the hard places.  Tackle them first, and tackle them often.  If you have pesky measures, there's a huge advantage to doing 5-10 focused minutes of practice on the same spot multiple times a day.  Give yourself a break, but keep coming back.  Don't get mad or discouraged while it's hard.  You WILL win every match eventually if you simply don't give up.

4. Your music is too easy.

Here's an easy guide to the levels: To be average, play music that average pianists play.  To be good, play music that good pianists play.  To be great, play music that great pianists play.  Now this is tricky, because the road from Clementi's Sonatina op. 36, no. 1 to Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata (still regarded as one of the most difficult pieces ever written) has many, many steps in between.  Your music should always challenge you, but never overwhelm you.  You need to be practicing music that will advance you a few more miles down the Road to Greatness.   Practice easier music to stay in the land of good, but with more property. This is where a teacher is invaluable, to help you move forward at the pace that best suits you.

5. You ignore or underemphasize your technique.

 If you didn't already, please click on the link in the above section for Valentina Lisitsa performing the finale of the Hammerklavier Sonata.  To achieve the speed and independence required to play that requires many hundred to thousands of hours on specific scales and arpeggios, not to mention etudes and exercise that mix these together.  Here's a fact: The speed of your scales is the limit of how fast you can play music with those scales.  The same goes with arpeggios.  Learn your skills, then speed them up, then learn them in harder ways, and speed them up again.  This needs to be a regular part of your practice.

6. You neglect your theory.

I've met good musicians who don't know much about theory, but I've never met a great musician who was lacking.  Theory requires study, written study.  The more you know, the better you understand what you're playing. 

7. You haven't mastered the art of Deliberate Practice

This is the most important distinction between a great and good pianist.  A good pianist can work on something hard, but the goal might be: I'm going to start on measure 1 and play to measure 16 as many times as I can within 20 minutes.  The great pianist looks at the really tricky measure 12 (the one with the chromatic scale), and practices ONLY that for 15 minutes.  They practice it super slowly focusing on fingerings and absolute accuracy.  Then they apply long-short and short-long rhythms.  They also approach it from the end, moving progressively backwards from the beginning.  They notice that it's kinda chromatic, so they review a chromatic scale.   They then get out a metronome, and work on the tempo.  They'll also do this tomorrow and the next day and so on until it's mastered.

This blog was inspired by a book that talks about this 7th step, one that I highly recommend to those of all ages: "So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love" by Cal Newport

By the way, there is nothing wrong with being an average or good pianist.  If you enjoy the fun side of piano, but get burned out from the challenge, this is not something to find shameful or embarrassing.  Music should, in the end, give you joy and serve your needs.  This article is only if you're wondering: what's keeping me from being great?  And the answers are: only your time, your resistance to difficulty, and/or your approach to learning.   Master those steps, and you'll too be great!

Welcome Newcomers, and Happy 2019!

This is just a brief post to welcome the several new students who have started with me the past couple of months, share a bit about what this is, and what I post here.

So first things first... Welcome new students!  Welcome long-time students!  Without you, I'm talking to myself and can't pay my bills.  I'm thankful for all of you, and wish you great musical progress in 2019.

Now, what is this blog?  While I have passions for composition and music theory, this blog focuses on piano.  When I mention something else like composition or theory, it's always in context of playing piano.  This blog is for my piano students, and anyone else who stumbles across it who is just interested in my take on the instrument.

If you look at the past several articles I've posted here, you'll find a trend:  I don't post much about technique.  You'll need to take with me privately to get the hands-on advice.  I post every now and then about something fun or trivial.  But this blog has found a home for me to share what I think is one of my specialties as a teacher: the art of HOW to practice as well as setting and achieving goals.

From age 6 to 18, I had a teacher who was great for challenging me and pretty good for technique.  However, her entire instruction for practice was..."you need to practice."  This was echoed by my parents.  I was encouraged to slow things down when I practiced.  It wasn't until college that I had multiple teachers who discussed how to approach music strategically and how to conquer difficult sections that I was able to understand that practice wasn't simply "play, try again, try again, get angry, try again, take a break, try again, hope it gets a little faster, try again, and get a little lucky."

The fact is: If you just play a piece often enough carefully enough, you will get better.  It may seem like it takes forever, because sometimes it does, but you WILL get better.  Here's an honest confession:  I'm a bit lazy.  I'm also quite busy.  I don't want to spend 2 hours practicing something if there's a way I can accomplish the same result in 30 minutes.

To practice well, you must first commit to the HABIT of practice.  This is why I tell every student the 5-minute rule: "5 minutes are better than no minutes".  Don't skip a day if you can help it.  The habit of practice is the foundation of learning and improvement.  After you've developed the habit, you need to work on your quality.  In private lessons, we address practice for your specific pieces.  This blog will hopefully give you general ideas and motivation in addition to your lessons.

There's 11 months left this year.   Remember this rule.  "Practice makes perfect" "Perfect practice makes perfect!"