Once again we are blessed with that chunk of time, and find the piano calling…. What to practice? Today’s post is Part 2 in our occasional series exploring different possible answers to that question. For today, I’m thinking about feeding ourselves a balanced diet. A healthy pianist and musician thrives on varied nourishment of many different kinds, from many different sources.
Although there are times when it’s all we can do to stay focused around learning one piece (or so we tell ourselves), let’s at least consider the possibility of something broader! How about a rich, varied multi-course feast at each practice session, instead of just another bowl of the same old cat food? Work on our main piece might seem to go more slowly this way, but is that really such a bad thing? And for that matter, is it even true?
Just as today’s post is FAR from the only answer to the question of what to practice, also the list you’re about to read below is equally far from the only answer to the question of what might make up a balanced practice diet. We certainly benefit from a healthy rotation of items on this list! But here is one possible sample menu.
A well-balanced practice session might include:
Some technique exercises
Some scales and/or arpeggios
Some chords and chord progressions
Some attention to theory
Some work on rhythm
Some work on balance & voicing
Some sight-reading
Some work on ear-training
Playing something old & familiar
Working on current pieces, using many different practice tools you read about here!
Some improvising/composing
That is a lot, isn’t it? What would it feel like to actually do all of this (or even, say, half of it) in any given practice session? Notice that working on current pieces is included here as just one component, out of many—although so often, that is all we’re spending time on! And don’t get me wrong, it’s that one—our beloved repertoire—that is, for so many of us, why we play at all. So….uh, do we really need to do all that other stuff?
Let’s delve into it a little bit. First of all, to take an approach like this, in determining how to use our practice time, is to orient ourselves not just to learning pieces, but to building skills. That’s a little bit different. It involves recognizing, in a general way, what the requisite skills for playing music on the piano are. It involves both the humility to acknowledge that our skills could use some development (or at least maintenance), and it also points to having enough confidence in our future path that there is motivation around the building of skills: we know we’re going to use them! We are willing to be patient now, for fruits we know we’ll pick later. Also, we are interested in the material of music itself. We have a general mindset of curiosity. We are curious about what music is made out of, and we are curious about how human hands play this marvelous machine. Interest begets interest (to paraphrase Clifton….or was it Claude Frank?), and every different element on this sample practice-diet shows us another facet of the jewel.
Also: giving ourselves a comprehensive, well-rounded plateful of things to work on is productive, since we know that our brains thrive on novelty. Repetition and structure are important too, to be sure, but we learn better when we mix it up! Doing just the same one or two things, day after day after day, is not a recipe for optimal retention and growth, and certainly isn’t conducive to inspiration. It’s dry cat food. More another time on practicing in alignment with how our brain works.
Another way to think about it: If we find we’re resistant to this idea because we are all about our repertoire—if we are fully engaged with our one piece, that glorious piece that is the reason we’re practicing at all—if we are fully aware of its complexity and its challenges, and allowing for the likelihood that it holds secrets we haven’t yet unlocked—then, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that that piece would want us to do all that other stuff! Maybe we can honor our piece by bringing to it the best skills we can, the better to meet it where it lives with at least a minimum of struggle. That way, we won’t have to employ our cherished piece as a crude laboratory, asking it to teach us rudimentary things we could’ve figured out on our own time. Wouldn’t it maybe be better to show the piece up front that we’re serious? Doesn’t it deserve that? We really love this piece—but it might not want to marry us if we haven’t been to therapy first! For example: would it be right for us to take our own, personal areas of dysfunction (issues with counting dotted rhythms, say, or a blind spot regarding the pedal, or an addiction to rushing—tendencies firmly entrenched long before we and our piece met), and to somehow pretend they are issues-we-have-with-this-piece? Relationship issues, rather than our own personal work? Practice mirrors life, and all….. On the other hand, hmmm. Music is astonishingly forgiving of our foibles (and let us give thanks for that every day); and, I suppose, why not learn how to count your dotted rhythms in op. 111……?
Okay, actually I can think of several reasons why not. Starting with the fact that if we don’t yet know how to count a dotted rhythm, then for now, op. 111 is simply out of our league. Face it, grieve briefly, then let it go! There are other fish in the sea. The point is, a well-rounded practicing diet serves us a) when we are feeling truly hungry for each course of our feast, interested in developing our whole range of skills for their own sake, interested in how music works and in how we play; AND that same well-rounded practice diet also serves us b) when what we really want is to play that one piece as well as possible! Knowing we’re cultivating everything we’ll need, making sure our ears and hands and minds are all alert and on board, we bring our best to our interaction with the piece. Lines of communication are already open. We’re ready to glide past the difficult, awkward preliminaries and find understanding, even common ground. We might find we enjoy working on it much more now, because we can go so much deeper with the music so much more quickly. Maybe all that other stuff didn’t slow us down at all!
Yet another way to think of it, for those who would like to have their cake and eat it, too (because cake is definitely on this practice-feast menu): we could, if we choose, use our one piece for just about everything on the list we started with. Maybe not quite everything on that list, but a lot of it (have we sight-read the last movement yet?). Yes, that might seem to involve doing what I just cautioned against, like using our magnificent piece to teach us basic rhythms (when what it wants is to be conversing with us about the mysteries of life). But it doesn’t have to be that way! It may not be necessary to reach for outside materials and exercises so much, if we bring the right kind of attention to all those things within our piece. The difference is in our clarity and in our attitudes. The piece is all the more likely to be forgiving if it can see that we are devoting our respectful, caring attention to its every aspect—even those aspects we may sometimes be figuring out as we go. Instead of plowing ever forward, skimming, sweeping under the rug, stopping just long enough to approximate and pretending to understand things that we don’t understand at all, we’re specifically noticing, thinking about, and attending to all that we encounter. The rhythms in this piece, yes; its chord patterns, voicing issues, the relationships and contrasts it contains within itself… its form…. its technical challenges, how we might play this or that part of it with greater ease…. what it is expressing, what we relate to in it…. its personality, its points of tension, its underlying attitude…. We aren’t glossing over anything, in a hurried and misguided attempt to just somehow play the piece anyway without really knowing what’s going on. (I mean the state in which we dimly ask, but do not answer, questions like, what key am I even in? What’s that weird chord doing here? Why does that note have so many little pointy things on it, and what do you mean, change pedal?) Those blessed with “good ears” are perhaps especially susceptible to the temptation to just try to play the darn thing anyway, and as problems go, it’s a good one to have—but let’s don’t allow any ability we may have to “fake it” to cause any long-term damage to our relationship with this piece.
In other words: tell it you love it every day, and spend a few minutes working specifically on your voicing in it every day, too. (Hint: those two things are one and the same….)
We might include the basic conditions of the piece as an extension of it, and practice our scales and chords accordingly. Scales, arpeggios and chord progressions were on our sample practice menu, remember? Theory was, too, and there is obvious overlap there. Instead of practicing lots of scales and chords in the abstract, as pure exercises, we might focus on getting to know them in the keys of our pieces. Playing a particular scale, along with the basic chord progressions in that key, is like taking a tour of the city we’ve just arrived in. It’s a generic, impersonal tour, but still it shows us all the features of this musical “place.” D-flat major has very different landmarks, different geography, a different vibe than A major. Becoming fluent with the scales and chords that live here, we come to trust that we can find our way around this key with ease. If we’ve come to know the key or keys of our piece thoroughly (we hung on that tour guide’s every word, obnoxious though he might have been), then we won’t get lost on our way to our date! We won’t have to sheepishly admit to this piece we love that we got our wires crossed, played all the wrong sharps and ended up in Hoboken. Maybe it would be better to master our scales and chords, in the keys we need, before we reschedule.
When we practice in these intentionally multi-faceted ways, we are honoring all parts and aspects of our piece. We aren’t just playing it. We are getting to know it deeply, and in the process, we appreciate and love it more with each passing day. And yes, though it may feel at this point like a side benefit, we are building our own skills at the same time…. And the skills we develop here will transfer to the next pieces we play. They’ll build and build, and before we know it we’re on the train (the right one this time—and it’s right on time, whenever it happens) to meet op. 111 after all. At a beautiful restaurant with a fabulous menu. And the music we find ourselves face to face with there, for which we are finally truly ready, takes our breath away.
If you find yourself intrigued about including more different elements in your practicing: an upcoming post for subscribers will shift gears and break this down, with specific examples of how exactly we might divide up an hour of practice time. We’ll look at the multi-course feast model, and also the one-pot stew. Either way can give us all the nourishment we need! Happy practicing, and if you’re enjoying Pride & Practicing, please share it on social media.