Peter's Practice Diary (Beginner level)

Hi Peter William . Regarding scales, C major is actually one of the more challenging scales. Try B major (my personal favorite), C# major, F# major, or E major - they fit under the hand much better. And don't worry so much about speed. It is better to get the fingering and the feeling of arm weight into the brain before going for speed. My (shorter) scale routine until recently was one octave hands together at 4-8 seconds per note, feeling the weight into the keys and moving smoothly with the arm; two octaves at a quicker tempo (perhaps 60 to the quarter note, playing quarter notes), the speed dictated by evenness and ease of fingering; then two or four octaves at double that speed - my teacher says there's no reason to move to four octaves until two octaves is steady and consistent playing eighth notes with a tempo of about 80 to the quarter. And each scale will probably be in a different place of ease and speed. I had a hand injury last year (non-piano related), which has only recently mostly-fully healed, so my scale journey was interrupted. I had been doing all major and minor scales, four octaves, plus arpeggios, at a fairly decent speed - now I'm back to playing scales regularly, re-learning some of the minor scales, and finally practicing arpeggios again!

I also used the Hanon-Faber book (https://pianoadventures.com/product/hanon-faber-the-new-virtuoso-pianist/) for technique, though this was done under my teacher's direction. Without direction, it is possible for these to become merely "finger exercises" which is not the purpose of the exercises in the book. There are videos of the exercises on YouTube, but I really didn't like them. And we didn't do all of them. We still refer back to them when learning repertoire.

Peter William Michelle R 

Michelle makes a number of good suggestions. The suggestion to play slower scales with a focus on evenness and control in particular. Your tempo of 120 for the quarter and playing 16th notes is very fast for a beginner and the discomfort you mention is a warning from your body that you have excessive tension. It has nothing to do with a need to strengthen your arms.  
 

Two octaves slowly and evenly. Slow is smooth and smooth is eventually fast. You can’t rush fluency but you can rush tendonitis!

Peter William I mean, you can play scales at whatever tempo you like. It's just that you keep stressing that you are a beginner and that you are being cautious but your tempo choice just honestly does not align with that. Even a tempo of 108 as 16ths is quite fast. That is a tempo that would normally be required of late intermediate to early advanced players. Even intermediate players would be only be expected to demonstrate their scales at something like 60 as 16th notes.

I am not quite sure what you mean by rotation in scales but I suspect you mean lateral movement of the wrist since you mentioned the elbow moving sideways. Rotation is typically a term associated with forearm movement that involves an alternating pattern or repeated note as a pivot. Regardless of the terminology though, one of the reasons to play slower is to monitor those exact type of movements. They are a key part of eventually playing quickly without tension!

Peter William   It's a beautiful movement.  You've taken up a huge chunk to learn.  Do you ever learn in small sections before moving on?  Also, one method I learned is to even take a measure as a chunk,   and play it up to three times, very slow, until you can play it correctly, slowly three times.  then move on. Then you start linking the sections or bars into longer sections.  And since you stated you want to memorize, this works for memorizing as well. Takes more patience, but there is less hit or miss in our playing.  Anyway, you've probably heard this in all your readings and listening to all the channels you've subscribed to that you mentioned.  Thank you for sharing. :-)

Peter William Hi Peter, I'm flattered that you would ask me for advice, but I'm probably not the best person to give it, as I have virtually no formal training.  

I agree with Vicki and Dustin that a lot does depend on what your objectives are. If you're content with just playing some portions of your favorite pieces for fun, then you're doing just fine and there's no need for advice.  But if you're looking to get on a track of progressive improvement, you've already gotten some great advice above from Dustin, Vicki & Michelle.  And I think you would be well-served by getting a teacher.

Also count me among those who think 108 is very likely too fast for you to be practicing scales.  I think the object of practicing scales is not to play them at a certain tempo, but to try to improve one's technique.  Otherwise we are just practicing our bad habits and reinforcing them through repetition.

If I were you, I would take a piece that is comfortably within your reach, and really try to PERFECT it and play it from memory.  I personally have learned SO many things by trying to do that regularly. Perhaps your Prelude in C from the Well Tempered Clavier is a good candidate. Or I agree with Vicki -- maybe the Moonlight Sonata, with the Tonebase Tracks video as your teacher an guide. Based on your video, these pieces seem to be comfortably within your present capabilities.  

Maybe the Mozart Concerto should be given a rest and moved to the bucket list.   Remember, in addition to being beautiful, these concertos are showpieces. Mozart himself used them to showcase his playing as well as -- or even more so than -- his compositional technique.  Meaning:  they are darn difficult to play! and probably out of reach for you until you backtrack and work on some fundamentals. For that much effort you could be developing your technique on a lot of other different pieces.

Of course I am just an Unfrozen Barroom Piano Player and these are simply the things I would try next if I were you and wondering how I could get on the path to steady improvement. The mileage you get out of these thoughts may vary from mine. 

good luck and keep us posted of your progress!

Peter William I don't consider myself an advanced pianist and I don't have a teacher. Perhaps there's a connection there. Now that I'm able to practice more consistently I might be looking to change that. But like you I joined TB partly as a kind of substitute for a teacher. The technical lessons are really wonderful, but extracting a real benefit from them any one of them could take MONTHS of working on the techniques espoused, rather than just one or two run throughs of the video before moving on to the next one. 

The reasons I think you  might benefit from working with a teacher are: (1) it could provide you with guidance and a structured environment for progressing; (2) it would help to keep you focused; (3) it could help hold you accountible to finish something you started; and (4) it might help prevent you from hurting yourself by working on technical things the wrong way.

I advocate memorization because it forces you to look really closely at the music.  Eventually, when you get exasperated enough with trying to memorize one note after the next, you start to develop strategies for memorizing. In doing that you begin to notice things that can become 'pegs' to hang a memory or association on to -- things such as the structure of the piece, chord patterns, hand shapes, scale fragments, key changes, re-appearing motives, fingering solutions, etc. etc.--they overlap in different ways which help to lock them into your memory. 

None of this is easy nor derived from a casual purview of concepts. There's no way around the painstaking work of practicing and attention to detail IMO. So the fact that it's difficult shouldn't discourage you or cause you to think you lack innate ability. As with your tennis students, they're not likely to get much better from your instructions unless they get out there on the court and work diligently on implementing them.

Well that's about all I have to offer.  It's time for me to go back to the piano and try to follow my own advice!

Peter Golemme 

“The technical lessons are really wonderful, but extracting a real benefit from them any one of them could take MONTHS of working on the techniques espoused, rather than just one or two run throughs of the video before moving on to the next one.”

This is exactly what I realized after going through the video lesson on Chopin’s Op 17 No 4 Mazurka. 

My last teacher assigned me that piece. I raised my eyebrows and said, really? 

After months of struggling with the piece, that video showed me how much I had yet to improve, and how much I had to work on the details. It glossed over what was needed to play that piece.

Besides, it is a one way medium. I need a two way medium. I need to have someone listen and watch me play, and demonstrate how to improve.

For some unknown reasons, my teacher canceled a lot of lessons such that we never put in the painstaking work to improve that Chopin piece. I was driven to despair and almost gave up playing.

Now, I have a new teacher who has taken me back to fundamentals. She cares enough to do the painstaking, detailed work. 

I must say that you are an advanced pianist, and that you benefited from personal instruction, as you told me on here. Maybe you too would benefit from a teacher who would help you work on the difficulties you face.

I see musical instruction as having an oral component but also a physical component. It is a sport of the small muscle groups. My new teacher is working a lot with me on physical movement.

She took one look at me playing something and said I was too close to the keyboard. Well, she was right. I was tying myself in knots at the keyboard.

The reason is probably a silly one, that being that my dining table is right behind my piano bench and I was reluctant to push it back farther, lol. I have fixed that.

Larry K 

Larry K hi Larry, I’m glad to hear you found a teacher who will work with you. Your post is exhibit A to what I’ve been trying to say to Peter W.

Yes, I had a teacher 50 years ago, and it was really helpful, especially with regard to my technique and certain repertoire.

But-there is also a lot to be said for trying to figure things out on your own, which is what I have had to do for the last 50 years. A person can still accomplish a lot by practicing assiduously and mindfully, by experimenting/trial and error, and also by learning new stuff, through ,books, articles, conversations with colleagues, and, now, the superabundance of, Internet resources  

The ideal is perhaps a combination of  the two.   When you’ve hit a wall with your own efforts to solve a problem, a teacher can provide invaluable guidance, and perhaps get you over that bump, and onwards towards the next one!,

My father was a professor, and he used to say “all education is self-taught“. Perhaps an overstatement, but his point being, that you still need to apply yourself even when you have the benefit of a teacher.

I hope your lessons are fruitful and contribute to a satisfying musical life! 

Peter Golemme Thank you for your kind words. They mean a lot to me.

Your father was right but the work done by the student is on firmer ground when a teacher has provided the groundwork.

I owe professors for the groundwork they taught me so that I could have a career. Of course, the work was still mine to do, but they gave me a start.

Failure is all too common, and it comes in many forms. Two thirds of my freshman computer science class of perhaps three hundred failed the first semester. We all sat in the same lectures. By the end of four years, only twenty five graduated with a computer science degree. 

I am not against books, videos, websites, etc as learning materials but it can be easy to get lost, to not see a path. A good teacher gives you a path.

My teacher has taught for fifty years and currently teaches in two universities. I humbly put myself in her hands and follow her path. I will try to rise to the challenge. 
 

Speaking of alternate teaching tools, I realize that I have been foolish in ignoring a teaching tool that has been right in front of me for five years.
 

I didn’t need to buy those microphones to record myself. My Disklavier records my playing and pedaling, and plays it back to me acoustically. It is ruthless in showing me every flaw, and I get to hear myself from across the room. It is a magical device, and so useful for study.