How to get the MOST of your Practicing Session

you have probably encountered situation in your life when you start practicing piano and everything goes well until the very moment when you suddenly realize that while your fingers keep moving your mind is already somewhere else recalling a movie that you have watched yesterday or seeking arguments how to convince your relatives that vaccines don't turn wifi and bluetooth in one's body so in this video i will mention a few very important tips how to get most from your practicing session if you want to maintain the high level of playing or if you want to keep developing it expanding repetition and building new skills you'll need to keep practicing there is no great musician who stays in a great shape without practicing regularly however how much you will have to practice and how much you will be able to do within one practice session depends heavily on the discipline of your mind and on your practice and strategies when a student comes to a teacher and tells look i can't play this spot something doesn't work the most common answer unfortunately that they might hear is go practice go practice until you can play it what's your problem but i believe that i as a teacher should provide my students not only uh with the idea how should it sound but also how to practice it how to get there and usually for tricky spots i suggest mastering them in a few stages because piano playing is a complex activity and in order to play something brilliantly we have to use different parts of our brain and synchronize them because memorizing something is one thing and appealing to your memory uh to your memorization compartment of your brain is one thing resolving technical difficulties coordinating motions uh all this technical work is another part of our brain and of course creativity creating a vibrant convincing interpretation that's just another part of our brain so in order to master thompson complex we have to break it into stages and in this video i will show you examples how you can do that and i actually do teach online so if you're interested to study with me please contact me using the link in the description to this video and also uh check out my comprehensive courses dedicated to certain pieces or certain aspects of piano playing on teachable.com the link is also below so what is very important to uh keep in mind two things that will be motto for this video first one any work takes a time allotted to this work that's why if you want to master something fast just set up a deadline for yourself and the second one is that practicing is always a problem solving so before playing anything before starting practice and you have to set up yourself a very clear goal a goal that you can achieve within let's say 5 to 15 minutes something very local for example memorizing two bars or fixing one passage something that you can quickly get done and then as soon as you done it move forward set up a next goal just avoid repetitions avoid mechanical practice and when you don't really know what you're doing but you're just kind of seeking what to do with the piece and let me throw a few tips uh that i find personally very important for practicing piano and for mastering new pieces efficiently and quickly so tip number one the best way to become familiar with a piece is to listen to a recording to a performance of this piece some people would criticize this method but honestly all these uh counter arguments they don't withhold any substantial critique so if you want to get your the piece quickly in your ears listen to different recordings different performances and follow the score with your eyes the next step is of course defining the structure of the piece you have to understand how the piece is structured because very often a piece has a lot of repeats so just understanding where do you have a repeat section or where you have some similarities might help you to understand that maybe it's not so much work actually ahead then of course it also helps to define the most difficult parts of a piece because it's not reasonable to play peace to practice a piece from the beginning to the end each time you have to start from the most difficult sections and master them first and then move to the easiest sections then of course you have to shorten difficult things and simplify them break them down into simpler elements that you can comprehend because we can't really master we can't memorize efficiently something what we don't understand that's why we break things into small chunks of information in order to learn them faster if you play a spot for example 8 bars long and you play it through and somewhere between bars 4 and 5 you've got a problem you made a mistake what most of people would do automatically is of course starting the section again from the bar one and play it again through in hope that this time they will somehow magically overfly this problematic spot and that it will it will resolve itself on its own which doesn't happen of course so they get stuck there again and they start again from the bar one go to bar five make a mistake and go in circles and then after half an hour of practicing like that you say yourself oh i work so hard but this spot is unbearable it's so difficult no i'm done i go for a beer now so what you have to do in that situation is uh extract that very spot that is problematic that gives you hard time just start one bit before and you master just that very small fragment where you make mistake as soon as you fix it you start one bar before and see can you play it through or not if that goes well you start four bars before and see how you can overcome this spot now if the problem stays you zoom in again fix that particular spot start one bar in advance check if everything is okay and then start four bars in advance check if everything is okay so it's very important to extract the cause and find the issue and fix it first instead of endlessly repeating a larger section then of course we have to be very creative in learning difficult spots and i will be speaking more about difficult memory types later in this video but uh let's have an example uh for example from brahms concerto number one which i'm working on right now and there is a spot that is not really comfortable spot sounds like that [Music] and so on and in order to master it there is especially one part that is tricky this one it doesn't sound too crazy but it's kind of uncomfortable to play and in order to minimize risks we have to zoom in and be very creative in how do we actually learn this spot so for example at first we can learn it in pairs synchronizing movements making sure that each particular group is comfortable to play then we can play them still in pairs still in pairs in groups of two notes but marking strong beats because this spot is written in triplets one two three one two three one two three so in order to really know where the strong beats are i'm going to play it in uh groups of two notes but marking strong beats so it will be like one two three one two three one two three one two three one two so you see i'm playing lightly everything uh but strong beats and then we can learn it in groups of two still but oppositely so disconnecting the first one and grouping them from kind of up upside down [Music] making sure that i feel comfortable playing grouping them like that and then same thing but marking strong beats again one two three one two three one two three one two three one and then for example learning it in groups of three one two three always releasing the hands in between and coordinating motions in such a way that i would feel myself really comfortable playing that spot and then of course for example uh confusing yourself even more even further for example uh playing beats three and five and skipping beats four and six in order to make sure that you really know it from all sides [Music] and then oppositely you skip bits three and five and you play beats four and six so and then of course for example playing just one voice so and then a middle voice so i try to really approach this passage from different sides because when you get on stage you don't want to have some spot that you know you can play only every second time in hope that now it will be that second time and not the first one when you usually fail so uh when you got when you get on stage you really want to be sure that you have a control over everything that's why it's important to address issues and fix things if you feel that you're not sure somewhere then if you work in smaller parts for example if you learn a piece bar by bar it's very important to follow continuity rule a so-called continuity rule when you play for example a short segment let's say a bar but you don't stop on a bar line you always play till the first note of the next group for example let's say you're learning a mozart sonata and you work on that piece bar by bar so you have one bar and then have another bar [Music] and another bar and another bar so you don't stop in between you always play till the first note of the next group [Applause] here and you stop here and then you start from this same note [Music] and you lead it to the first note of the next position this is very important because in most of cases uh when students learn a piece they memorize it exactly as they see it in bars here have one bar here have another bar here have the third bar and within the bars they played perfectly but when they have to connect it and play in a flow they have this kind of lagging between bars and some stops between bars which is similar to a video game you know when you move to another area and the game needs like a few seconds in order to prolong next map so you're kind of stuck and then you can go further so this is a bad habit we have to get rid of as soon as possible and that's why continuity rule is a great help always learning till the first note of next group while mastering technically difficult spots i would suggest you uh getting uh to the real speed as quickly as possible but in short fragments so for example when you work on some uncomfortable spot like this prelude by chopin it's quite uncomfortable and of course it's difficult to play it perfectly in tempo from the beginning so i would suggest you to combine different tempi when you play the piece through you play it in a comfortable tempo coordinating your emotions but also simultaneously i would suggest you to try try to lift this to to a real tempo but in short fragments for example just four notes and then following the continuity rule [Music] and the next group [Music] this way of practicing is really good because you can you have an opportunity to notice which group for example is the worst one so you can concentrate on it and uh also playing in shorter segments allows you to control whether you are playing this in good quality or not then the fastest way to master a new skill to master a new piece is of course learning hands separately so uh i really advise you when you have something complex something uh difficult to memorize just learn different hands separately first that's the quickest uh that's the quickest way to master pieces and this is uh scientifically proved actually then i have a special video about four different memory types so that the trick is that if you really want to learn something quickly and uh be sure about this piece you have to use different types of memory and you have to train different types of memory because many people tend to learn pieces using just one type of memory for example motor memory so many students learn a piece with their fingers only without much thinking without much reflection on what they are playing and then they come to a lesson they have just a very a little bit of stress and the problem with macromemory is that when you have just a little bit of stress even a little bit of stress it fails so then they suddenly make a lot of mistakes and they tell me i i played it perfectly without you and now in front of you i can't play so i feel myself like guilty that i am the issue but the issue is that um if you want to play something uh with a good level of stability you have to approach this work from different sides training different memory types and motor memory is great it's important to develop from day one as i have shown already trying to lift the piece to a real tempo but you have to reinforce your knowledge with other memory types i have a special video about that check out on my channel and here i will mention just a few um brief points about that so what is very important about motor memory is that from the very beginning we have to seek for comfortable sensations so the stage one of your learning a piece should be finding comfort should should be coordinating emotions and resolving them that's why i would suggest you to start practicing a piece from a comfortable tempo and from a comfortable dynamics because usually we get tense when we uh either play too loud or very softly that's why for example these are uncomfortable spot from chopin's prelude i would start mastering it with a comfortable tempo and playing it meta forte making sure that i coordinate motions properly transfer the weight properly have a good connection uh to the keys and as soon as i feel myself comfortable i start moving a tempo start lifting a tempo gradually and just working on dynamics after i have resolved principal technical difficulties because if you would start working on artistic aspects of a piece before resolving technical difficulties most probably you will get just much more tense and you will learn the tension and then later you will always play this piece with a great amount of tension so at first getting rid of tension resolving difficulties and then on that base you already start adding other dimensions like artistic uh ideas uh interpretation working on dynamics and so on a few words about analytical memory so it's really useful to understand what you are playing that's why uh theory of music is really helpful so if you have some idea about music theory rules about chords and versions keys and so on it's of course very helpful because you can recognize structures you can recognize chord progression and thus you will be able to learn a piece faster and even if you don't uh possess a solid knowledge in music theory you nevertheless might work on peace analyzing what's happening for example there is a spot from mozart's sonata in c major so not a factual and most of people don't have any problems with memorizing this piece but there is one spot that gives hard time to many students it sounds like so in order to memorize it in order to never have any issues with this part we have to understand uh harmonies we have to understand harmonic progression and understand where harmonies change so beats number one and two they represent just a g major so my task here is just to understand that i have a g major chord here and keep in mind this pattern on the keyboard just see it visualize it and then as soon as i come to beat number three i have a c major pattern and then diminished chord b minor so analyzing the piece like that and playing it through as a harmonic skeleton first as a harmonic progression helps me to better understand what's happening here and usually that's already enough in order to get rid of any memorization problems if you have something difficult if you have something very complex then you re reduce it you make a reduction playing just the most essential stuff and leaving aside let's say more complex things like for example brahms concerto number one that i'm working on and i hope to produce a detailed course on this piece soon and there is a spot that might be tricky for many pianists so so in order to master it quicker we would break these complex tasks that includes polyrhythms that includes various technical challenges like these leaps in the right hand and so on we would proceed like one task at a time for example at first just understanding the chord progression for that i would play the left hand not as it is written but gathering all these sounds in chords and playing just the chord progression and understanding what's happening here so we have a g major uh dominant third z major back dominant modulation towards g major diminished then diminished chord d major so at first making sure that i understand this chord progression and then for example you play this chord progression in the left hand still playing it in chords and the melody in the right hand [Music] making sure that i understand this chord progression and making sure that i can play just a basic accompaniment this chord progression plus melody then for example uh working on polyrhythms in the right hand so at first concentrating on just synchronization so i don't think much about expressiveness but interpretation my task here is just to make it rhythmically clear meanwhile while while working the right hand of course resolving technical difficulties and finding appropriate motions uh coordinating motions for these uncomfortable uncomfortable leaves that are actually getting comfortable as soon as you find a correct motion and on my channel of course i uh dedicate a lot of time to coordination of movements to technique optimization so check out my courses and videos on that topic and only then when i have done all these steps i would synchronize hands together and then when i feel myself comfortable and when i really have memorized the spot really well i would continue polishing the interpretation uh playing with roboto playing with dynamics and so on and so on so it is important to make your work in steps clearly understanding the goal of each particular step and breaking complex things into smaller things not trying to swallow an elephant at once but but going through the piece in steps there is always a certain amount of progress that you can do within one spot one section in a day and that's why it's not reasonable to repeat it endlessly like a hundred of times because anyway doesn't matter how much times you will repeat it right now most probably it will go only to your short memory compartment and in order to convert it in order to transfer it to a long-term memory compartment you would have to simply return to this spot a few days in a row giving your time giving yourself a time to sleep on it to represent this information on the background of your mind that way when you learn at peace i would suggest play a four bars set a clear goal for example playing four bars without mistake but as soon as you have done it at least let's say once or twice don't try to repeat it more times than that go immediately to the new section because our brain is actually a very lazy and it tries to work as little as possible and that's why that's why quite often you might catch yourself on an attitude like when you have learned four bars and you already know them more or less and instead of moving to the next section you might tell yourself like uh yeah that's i know that already but it's not perfect let me just keep working on it and you keep repeating these four bars that has become your comfort zone again and again and this is just a trick of our mind to avoid going out of that comfort zone to avoid starting a new section because starting the new section it's it's an effort it would need you to concentrate again and we have to track such habits and just make yourself a rule as soon as you have done something a few times a couple of times just move on immediately don't get stuck on one spot try to cover as much spots as possible repeating them not too many times especially because when you work on a piece your progress would look something like like that so the first five minutes if you work on a spot with a good concentration you would make that much of a progress during the first five let's say five seven minutes maybe ten minutes okay uh and then if you keep working on that same spot for another 10 minutes you will get that much of progress on top because your attention span is already getting lower and if you will keep pushing you're not going to make any progress anymore in fact you will decrease so you will go down you will play it worse and worse that's why it's important to notice when you get tired from a spot when you has reached your limit of improving the spot for today and just leave it switch to another task make another spot and tomorrow you will return to that spot you will quickly repeat what you have done yesterday and you will quickly add another a good portion of development to that spot and this is way more um efficient than just keeping repeating at the same spot endlessly in hope that you will do everything within one day which is most probably not the case there is a great book about piano efficiency about piano learning that i personally very like and find it very helpful although some of my students think that it's a bit controversial but nevertheless i would recommend you to look into it it's called fundamentals of piano practice written by i forgot the name of the guy but i will leave you the link in the description in case you want to discover more helpful learning strategies i hope that this was helpful and gave you some fresh ideas uh have fun playing piano and see you next time

Channel: Denis Zhdanov

Views: 33,018

Keywords: Piano practicing, piano learning, piano for beginners, piano efficiency, piano lesson, piano masterclass, piano tips, how to play piano, how to learn piano, piano learning tips, piano technique, denis zhdanov piano, piano advanced, piano secrets, piano progress, piano playing efficiency, masterclass on piano, piano tutorial, tutorial on piano technique

Id: vBQoMzwC2Ec

Length: 26min 29sec (1589 seconds)

Published: Sat May 28 2022