Stress in Piano Practice/Playing 1
Practice! Practice!! Practice!!! Does practice on the piano have to be so demanding?
I always like to stress to all of my students that playing music is not nearly as difficult as it seems. It does not take a genius to be a good musician. You can learn to do amazing things with your hands. It just takes the desire/motivation to do so, and don’t forget practice! “Practice makes improvement.” Think about it, to excel at any profession/activity/hobby/sport/etc., it takes a lot of practice.
But does it have to be torturous?
Many professional pianists spend an hour or more daily on techniques. This can comprise exercises like Hanon (five finger exercises which cover many different patterns) or Dohnanji or Cortot for finger individualization, scales (which can be played hands separately and together - in similar motion from the octave, the third and the sixth [sometimes other intervals as well], in contrary motion from various intervals, on arpeggios, which usually include major, minor, diminished, augmented, in all their inversions), chords & patterns [which would also involve all the variations of root chords and voicings, circular and stepwise patterns…], and studies (pieces which concentrate on a particular technical difficulty like studies of music sheets).
A technical training of this kind is required by most pianists if they wish to be serious contenders in the highly competitive world of the profession. It is very similar to the kind of training an athlete would be expected to do [and a musician should be regarded as an athlete, but with an added responsibility for the artistic and intellectual dimension that music requires]. An enormous amount of repetition is needed by most people just to keep reflexes active, automatic, and simply to keep fit.
Some pianists reach a stage where they feel that they get all the technical practice they need to keep their playing in good order through the music they are playing. Others feel they have to do designated technical practice every day. This amount of practice seems to depend on the pianist's natural ability (although this picture can be confused by the fact that some pianists do not like to admit to the amount of work they actually do!)
Simultaneously, and perhaps above and beyond all these kinds of practice is the constant refining of sound, the never ending striving for evenness in scale and arpeggio passages, the search for different qualities of sound, experimenting with chord balancing and pedaling to find as many colors as possible, and phrasing and articulation. In chord balancing, the fingers have to learn to play with at least two different levels of tone in the same hand (melody and accompaniment), and often three or even four simultaneously.
Through all this preparatory work, the pianist is striving to find the emotional or ‘spiritual’ meaning of the work, the subtleties and balance of the structure, and to find ways of communicating all this to the audience as though it is a fresh inspiration of the moment.
So, practice time can differ enormously from pianist to pianist. Basically most pianists practice as much as they have to in order to prepare music for a deadline, and this time will be different with each individual, varying from three hours a day to ten or more. My personal view is that more than four hours a day is unnecessary for most people if efficient practicing techniques are used.
Next time, I’d visit some causes of stress and other related practice topics.
I always like to stress to all of my students that playing music is not nearly as difficult as it seems. It does not take a genius to be a good musician. You can learn to do amazing things with your hands. It just takes the desire/motivation to do so, and don’t forget practice! “Practice makes improvement.” Think about it, to excel at any profession/activity/hobby/sport/etc., it takes a lot of practice.
But does it have to be torturous?
Many professional pianists spend an hour or more daily on techniques. This can comprise exercises like Hanon (five finger exercises which cover many different patterns) or Dohnanji or Cortot for finger individualization, scales (which can be played hands separately and together - in similar motion from the octave, the third and the sixth [sometimes other intervals as well], in contrary motion from various intervals, on arpeggios, which usually include major, minor, diminished, augmented, in all their inversions), chords & patterns [which would also involve all the variations of root chords and voicings, circular and stepwise patterns…], and studies (pieces which concentrate on a particular technical difficulty like studies of music sheets).
A technical training of this kind is required by most pianists if they wish to be serious contenders in the highly competitive world of the profession. It is very similar to the kind of training an athlete would be expected to do [and a musician should be regarded as an athlete, but with an added responsibility for the artistic and intellectual dimension that music requires]. An enormous amount of repetition is needed by most people just to keep reflexes active, automatic, and simply to keep fit.
Some pianists reach a stage where they feel that they get all the technical practice they need to keep their playing in good order through the music they are playing. Others feel they have to do designated technical practice every day. This amount of practice seems to depend on the pianist's natural ability (although this picture can be confused by the fact that some pianists do not like to admit to the amount of work they actually do!)
Simultaneously, and perhaps above and beyond all these kinds of practice is the constant refining of sound, the never ending striving for evenness in scale and arpeggio passages, the search for different qualities of sound, experimenting with chord balancing and pedaling to find as many colors as possible, and phrasing and articulation. In chord balancing, the fingers have to learn to play with at least two different levels of tone in the same hand (melody and accompaniment), and often three or even four simultaneously.
Through all this preparatory work, the pianist is striving to find the emotional or ‘spiritual’ meaning of the work, the subtleties and balance of the structure, and to find ways of communicating all this to the audience as though it is a fresh inspiration of the moment.
So, practice time can differ enormously from pianist to pianist. Basically most pianists practice as much as they have to in order to prepare music for a deadline, and this time will be different with each individual, varying from three hours a day to ten or more. My personal view is that more than four hours a day is unnecessary for most people if efficient practicing techniques are used.
Next time, I’d visit some causes of stress and other related practice topics.