Week 2: First Steps

Michelle R practicing with eyes closed is a great idea! A couple of years ago, I had the wonderful opportunity to play for Ursula Oppens in a tonebase masterclass. The piece I played for her had some nasty leaps, and Prof. Oppens said: “You must practice them with your eyes closed!” And then she told the story of how as a college student, she was practicing in a big auditorium and the electricity and the lights went out. She happened to be working on the Schumann C major Fantasie which in the coda of the second movement contains one of the most notorious and dreaded leap passages in the entire literature. So she was forced to practice that piece in the dark, feeling her way around the keyboard - and, as you can imagine, she ultimately found it very helpful. 

Ken Radford Very nice Ken! Some very sensitive LH playing and great tapered resolutions!

Dustin Anderson Thanks for your encouraging words Dustin, they are much appreciated.

Sindre Skarelven Thanks for your kind words Sindre. I will be recording the next few tens of bars today.

Noel Nguyen I absolutely agree that relying on muscle memory is potentially disastrous !

I have recently started using a method I call anchoring points . I thoroughly memorize selected bars , potentially these could be completely random. If the inevitable memory lapse occurs, I just rewind to the ‘anchor ‘ and press on , rather than starting the piece from the beginning. If you have enough of these anchors , you may only need to rewind a few bars to get restarted 

In addition , I find that as I’m playing , and I know that my anchor is approaching, I feel a lot more relaxed …

Mark Cooper that’s an excellent strategy and certainly reduces performance anxiety! 

Mark Cooper Your checkpoint, or anchor point, strategy is excellent and a fundamental tactic of secure performances, particularly for longer works. You will find that most discussions of this suggest that you use musically logical points where a phrase begins or a texture changes etc. rather than random points (though I suspect your random points are probably musically significant in some way!). 

Most important though - in a performance - is to move forward to your next checkpoint / anchor point rather than backward. Advancing keeps the music flowing forward and your audience may not even notice the lapse! Going backward is a much more obvious correction and you run the risk of the exact same lapse taking place again (especially because you are now aware of it), resulting in repeated crashes and restarts. I've seen this occur in many performances from young students in lessons to experienced students at festivals, and even at university masterclasses. It is so common an occurrence that this could almost be a T-shirt, along with "It was so much better when I played it at home!". 

Dustin Anderson Great discussion and advice from you, Noel Nguyen and Mark Cooper ! Exactly what I needed to hear. I have been thinking about this as I have been working on memorizing and being able to play securely from memory without relying on muscle memory. I especially like your advice on moving forward to the next anchor point. Will keep it in mind! 

Dustin Anderson 

Dustin Anderson said:
"It was so much better when I played it at home!". 

I make many more mistakes during lessons when I am actively trying to avoid them than when I am practicing.

I basically don't have any performance anxiety so I am pretty sure it is just an issue of me thinking about potential/past mistakes and being distracted by trying not to make them. 

Sindre Skarelven 😂yes! And then he turned around, and I thought: “gosh, Mark Hamill really hasn’t aged well, has he?”

Vidhya Bashyam I didn't realize "first steps" was a Star Wars reference. I don't understand any of the references.

Noel Nguyen Absolutely. In practice, we are in our own safe space playing on the piano we know without any observer. We do not have adrenaline hitting us and are not overly self-aware. We also tend to focus on the attempts that go well and mentally erase the many tries that perhaps did not.

Then comes time to make a recording or perform in public and suddenly adrenaline hits, heart rate increases, fine motor skills feel blunted and we are self-conscious of everything we are doing which we perhaps realize, we don't actually know in places because it has become muscle memory without cognitive awareness of any landmarks / guiding elements (The Great Betrayal!).  

Muscle memory is an important component of getting into a flow state but it requires deliberate awareness of the movements we are making and the fingering we are using every time so that it will be executed the same way with reliability. When paired with the other elements you mentioned (like analysis, the 'shape' and 'feel' of certain figurations and, of course, the listening to the sound we are producing) muscle memory can flourish as part of the team of executions in a successful performance!

I say all this just to expand on your excellent points! Learning to play a piece and learning to perform that piece are definitely two different challenges. Once my students can play through a piece, I often tell them that they are now ready to being learning to perform it =)

Dustin Anderson thanks Dustin , point taken about moving forward rather than back to anchor points 

one additional useful tip from my current teacher , when practicing from memory, play the passages ultra  slow , this will substantially reduce the muscle memory element , and you will be reliant on actually knowing the notes to be played ( this can be further reinforced by playing with eyes closed)

Mark Cooper  Another easy way to throw off the muscle memory: rolling the chords! Try it, and experience a good simulation of being on stage, with that muscle memory gone AWOL, and the panic that is supposed to be exciting!