Week 2: First Steps

Dominic_Cheli
2 days ago
30replies

Week 2: First Steps

You’ve chosen your piece. Now the real work begins.

This week is all about getting into the music without worrying about perfection yet. First impressions matter. The way a piece feels under your hands, the sounds you’re drawn to, the passages that already feel natural (or completely confusing) are all part of the process.

This is the stage where pieces often feel the most fragile. Things are slow, uneven, and uncertain. That’s normal.

For this week, we’d love for you to share:

Early practice clips
First impressions of the piece
Passages you’re struggling with
Musical moments you already love
Questions or discoveries from practice

A few ideas to focus on this week:

Finding a comfortable tempo
Experimenting with sound and tone
Discovering patterns in the music
Identifying one or two “problem spots”
Practicing smaller sections instead of full run-throughs

Looking forward to hearing everyone’s first steps into the music.

- Noel_Nguyen
- 16 hrs ago
- Reported - view
What I find especially treacherous about muscle memory is that it tends to dominate in practice, only to maliciously abandon you in performance. I call it the great betrayal. Don't fall for it!
- Unfrozen Barroom Piano Player
  
  Peter_G
  
  7 hrs ago
  
  Reported - view
  , Such a wise and helpful discussion, I'm following with great interest even though (for a change) I'm not saying much (until now!).
  
  I'm just back from a week of travel resulting in about 10 days away from the piano. I had been working on memory spots before this trip, and I tried to make the most of 2 long train rides by studying the score visually and trying to connect it to my memorization and performance -- a very difficult thing for me.
  
  Back at the piano now, Mark, I'm noticing that I too almost always go BACK to the previous memory spot, and Dustin brilliantly elucidates why that is not a good idea. I'm finding it takes a real mental adjustment for me to move AHEAD instead. I have to make myself more alert to think of what's coming, instead of merely focusing on getting through what's in front of me.
  
  So now I'm trying to force myself to jump forward to the next memory spot at random moments.. And I find that one needs to pick different random moments each time, so as to avoid 'learning' a particular stopping point.
  
  (All of this applies to the B Major Prelude & Fugue WTC2 which I had roughly memorized before leaving and hope to play in Saturday's Community Concert -- my Rach Preludes for this event have picked up some rust but are still generally intact, so I'm going to try to resume "finishing" the Bb Minor ' as part of this workshop. I hope to post my Week 1 version soon, hopefully some time before Week 3. ).
  
  So anyway, thank you gentlemen for sharing your thoughts and expertise here. It's very enlightening.
- Akzent oder Diminuendo? • Hanon/Herz student
  
  Maria_F
  
  2 hrs ago
  
  Reported - view
  My teacher recommends both playing very, very slowly and rolling chords.
- Ken_Radford
- 9 hrs ago
- Reported - view
I am intrigued with the concept of ‘musical significance”. Every time my piano coaxes tones from me, are they or are they not musically significant? I may have missed the point...
- hot4euterpe
  
  8 hrs ago
  
  Reported - view
  Significant to the structure / form of that particular piece of music.
  
  Edit: Now that I am re-reading in less haste, I am not certain if you were joking and asking or just joking =)
- hot4euterpe
- 4 hrs ago
- Reported - view
My week 2 update so far:

With "Mouvement" this week I have been going over mm. 67-88 which precedes last week's section and collectively makes up the B section. I have also been going over the coda material (mm. 156 to end). It has been progressing well, I just need to find some time to record these which is my goal for this week.