On Relaxation at the Piano: A Snippet

A student wrote that when he returned to the piano after a long break because of injury, he intentionally chose pieces that were not physically demanding. He felt he had a tendency toward over-use injuries and wanted to take it easy.

Some four years later he is injury free except for some soreness that develops when he wants to “let go.” But he feels he has the same tendencies he had to overcome when learning to trill, which is to tighten up. Relaxing (my italics) in this circumstance seems even more challenging for him.

I think one should be able to play the music one wants without over use issues. One should be able to let go musically without experiencing soreness.

It sounds as if he might have some misunderstanding about how the playing mechanism works. Relax is just as problematic as tense when it comes to playing the piano. We can't really direct individual flexors or abductors to relax or flex.

My teacher used to say that if you relax you'll fall off the piano bench, meaning that the terms are too general. Her answer was to find out how much of each is needed (very little) to produce the desired result. And her solution was to direct the attention to how the fingers, hand and arm are aligned and what kind of movement is required, for example, to transfer the weight of the arm from one finger to the next. This automatically replaces the general concepts (relax/tense) with specific movements that can be monitored and controlled. The end result is a feeling of virtually no feeling at all; it is as if the fingers are moving slowly, though the passage is quick.

If this student is serious about wanting to correct these issues, I think some retraining is in order. How much effort does it really take to stand on one note or to walk from that note to the next?

Musicians Are Smarter

In case you were wondering whether to practice today or not, please read on:

A new study found that musicians might have brains that function better than their peers well into old age.

Courtesy of the Huffington Post - full article here

Researchers tested the mental abilities of senior citizens and discovered that musicians performed better at a number of tests. In particular, musicians excelled at visual memory tasks. While musicians had similar verbal capabilities to non-musicians, the musicians' ability to memorize new words was markedly better, too. Perhaps most importantly, the musicians' IQ scores were higher overall than those who spent their lives listening to music rather than performing it.

The experience of musicians also played a role in how sharp their minds were. The younger the musicians began to play their instruments, the better their minds performed at the mental tasks. Additionally, the total number of years musicians played instruments throughout their life corresponded with how strong their brains remained years later.

The study also found that musicians who took the time to exercise between symphonies had even higher-functioning brain capabilities. This finding supports another recent study that reported people who walk regularly maintain healthier brains. With that in mind, perhaps joining a marching band now will make you the smartest person at the retirement home in the future.



ORIGINAL RESEARCH:
 
Summary:

While it is known that practicing music repeatedly changes the organization of the brain, it is not clear if these changes can correlate musical abilities with non-musical abilities. The study of 70 older participants, with different musical experience over their lifetimes, provides a connection between musical activity and mental balance in old age. "The results of this preliminary study revealed that participants with at least 10 years of musical experience (high activity musicians) had better performance in nonverbal memory, naming, and executive processes in advanced age relative to non-musicians."

On Grouping Notes

The technical grouping of notes can be different from the musical or notational grouping of notes. An understanding of this idea is crucial to the successful playing of quick passages in works by Chopin and other pianist-composers, including composers from earlier periods. In Chopin’s “Winter Wind” Etude, for example, the four sextuplets sometimes fall technically into  groups of four starting with the fourth 16th note, played by the thumb. If this is not understood, the passages can feel quite difficult. Grouping notes together for technical reasons can make the difference between a very difficult execution and a very easy one.



The ability to play fast depends on an understanding of how to group notes. The longer the passage, the more important it is to find sub -groupings. The hand can’t “conceive” of an indefinite number of notes or a long string of notes without establishing milestones along the way. If the composer writes “17” over a group of notes that are to be completed within a certain time frame, it is important to decide on how to sub-divide that group, i.e., three groups of 4 and one of five, or some other grouping that makes sense in the context. This does not mean that accents will be heard; the group of “17” can still sound like a single unit, a flourish, if that is the desired effect. How those sub-divisions relate to the other hand is also a primary consideration.


Group from the more dense, the heavier combination of notes. For example, in passages where chords are interspersed with single notes, it is much easier to feel a starting point at the chord, regardless of which part of the musical beat it comes on. In Chopin’s G Minor Ballade, on the third page, an arpeggiated figure primarily in single notes contains a chord of a fourth placed on a weak part of the beat that occurs every three notes. By feeling a start on the chord (or a feeling of “down”), the passage immediately wants to move with ease. In my view, Chopin meant for these chords to add rhythmic interest to the passage, an agitated syncopation.


Group notes together in order to avoid stretching the hand. In speed, it is more efficient to allow the hand to remain in a relatively closed position than it is to keep it open. Over long passages of quickly moving notes, if the hand remains open, with the fingers trying to do their work against that “stretch,” it is possible to cause strain resulting in fatigue.

Group notes together in order to facilitate leaps with complex metric designs, i.e., short to long. The hand can’t go both to and from a quick note. In general, a short note belongs (technically) to the next longer note, as in dotted rhythms.




Group notes together in order to facilitate a change of direction. Notes moving in the same direction are often grouped together. It is at the turn-around where a technical issue may arise and this is a good place to look if a passage does not feel easy.

Practice hint: Having decided upon a particular grouping of notes within a longer, continuous passage, practice the group with a silent landing on the first note of the next group. Usually, the problem has more to do with how to get from one group to the next and not so much with how to play the notes within a group, that is, the notes under the hand.

On Memorizing: A Snippet

A student who reads quite well but had been having trouble memorizing her music asked about a plan for memorizing. So often, students rely on mindless repetition to somehow hammer the music into their brains by striking the piano with their fingers. This can result in too much reliance on digital memory, to the detriment of the other memory tools: aural, visual and intellectual.



Here's a basic plan. Once you've tried it, you can adjust it to suit your own predilections. 


1) Make a conscious decision to memorize. "Accidental" memorizing is usually muscle memory primarily and this is not totally reliable.


2) Select a small amount of music to consider. This could be the first measure or the first phrase. It could also be a particularly complicated passage in the middle of the piece.


3) Look at the example and notice whatever you can about it, i.e., there is a broken chord figure; there is a scale figure; the R.H is the same (or different) as the L.H; one hand leaps while the other stays put; one hand makes a leap but to the same note 2 octaves higher. I even say these things out loud. (My cats seem to enjoy that.)


4) Play the example from the score very slowly.


5) Look away from the score and play as much as you can, still very slowly. Repeat this process until you can play that example reliably, still very slowly and deliberately. The slow, deliberate playing will help you engage the other types of memory: aural, visual, intellectual, minimizing the digital.


6) Move on to the next section and repeat the process. Do not try to connect the two sections yet.


When you can't concentrate anymore, stop. At the next practice session continue where you left off. When you have finished the new material for the day, then go back and review the old material, one section at a time, or if it feels right, try playing 2 sections together. You may need to refer to the score again; this is normal. But you can tell yourself that you know this material.


Once the piece is learned and up to tempo, practice playing the entire piece excruciatingly slowly. This takes away much of the digital memory and will help you locate places that are fuzzy. It is also a useful test, though more difficult, to practice away from the piano. Close your eyes and see your hands on the keys playing the piece very slowly, thinking of each note in advance of playing it.

Legato Playing

Legato at the Piano, A Snippet                                                                          

In a discussion on legato, a contributor to Piano Forum opined that she didn’t accept the notion that the piano is a percussive instrument. This is like not accepting the notion that the earth is round. I have my faults, certainly, but I’ve learned to accept and deal with the laws of physics. When my head stopped spinning I thought to myself, well, she is probably lost in that world where we artistic types often go, the world of wishful thinking. I responded: “My piano has hammers that strike strings. What does your piano have?” I heard back: "Good point. My piano has a choir inside, with an organ to accompany it. Sounds like yours has a wrecking crew. What the heck, to each his own." This was a good response, I thought, and quite funny. And food for thought.

That writer has identified the place where opinion and fact collide. Or to put it in more useful terms, where imagery and practice collide. On the one hand, imagery is great. It can help us to conceptualize a desired result and for some pianists, some of the time, that may be enough. But if it isn't enough, what then? For me, knowledge wins out over fancy; I want to know how.

Legato on the piano is an illusion at best because the piano is a percussive instrument. Some of the advice offered in the forum discussion was right on the money, i.e., a finger legato is about over-holding until the next note is depressed. There is another important factor, though, and that is how the finger connects with the key. For a finger legato, always play from the key, not from above the key. This cushions the attack and makes the connections seem more legato. Since "quality is determined by the number and prominence of overtones," the faster you strike the key, the more the upper, more dissonant partials are set in motion, making an even more percussive sound. Isn’t physics a great science?

Consider  playing succeeding notes in or under the decay of the preceding note. This will give a very nice
simulation of legato; it also implies a dimenuendo, which may not be called for. In any case, take care to consider where in the phrase hierarchy each succeeding note belongs. After a long melodic note, for example, listen well to how the phrase continues. Does the phrase require a new impetus? Or should it sound like a continuation of the long note? Is the phrase rising dynamically or falling? Music is not a democracy; not every note gets an equal vote.

Finally, perhaps more importantly, it's the legato pedal, sometimes referred to as syncopated pedal, that needs particular attention. The pedal gives us the ability to over-hold a particular note while moving away from it, thus creating a sense of legato. The way in which the key is depressed is still important. With the pedal down, strike the next note with just enough weight to override the reverberating sound, to give the illusion of connectedness, the new note floating above the din.

Another contributor to the forum remarked, somewhat haphazardly, that everyone plays legato all the time and it isn’t necessary to practice it particularly. He maintained, “if it isn’t legato, it’s staccato.” At first I opted to let this go as, well, sloppy thinking, but it began to eat away at me.

Does everyone play legato all the time, even in Czerny studies (shudder), as he says? We know that up to Mozart’s time the default articulation was detached, changing with Beethoven, who reportedly quipped that “Mozart’s playing sounded like so many chickens dancing on the keys.” Since Beethoven’s time pianists have worked to develop a singing style, a legato touch. I think here the operative word is worked. I decided that arbitrarily putting one finger down after another thoughtlessly won’t necessarily produce the illusion of legato. It’s important to consider 1) over-holding slightly; 2) the manner of attack, i.e., from the key, not from above; 3) where the note comes in the musical hierarchy of the phrase; 4) how to use the pedal.                                        
     
Armed with this information, when imagery isn't sufficient, we can perhaps use the laws of physics to our advantage and bring that world of wishful thinking closer to a musical reality.

BOOK REVIEW

TEACHING PIANO IN GROUPS

By Christopher Fisher

Oxford University Press

Back in the days when piano instruction at the University of Southern California took place in the faded parlors of Clark House, a West Adams Victorian mansion, and practice facilities were located in old army barracks just off Exposition Blvd., I had my first piano instruction. It was summer. I was only ten and perhaps a touch more anxious than my age might suggest, but I was nonetheless a reliable ten and was allowed to take the red car by myself all the way to Exposition Park. I felt ever so grown up.

The trauma of that first day, though, found a place in my memory that no amount of therapy could possibly treat.  My mother read the announcement aloud: “Group piano instruction offered free of charge to children age 12 with no previous music training. The purpose of the class is to demonstrate group teaching techniques to university pedagogy students.” Well, I couldn’t contain my excitement. Piano! Finally! I’d been begging for years. Once when I was eight I underscored my frustration by announcing to my parents that “here I am eight years old and can’t do anything.”

One Saturday morning mother loaded us into the Plymouth, my older brother and me, and drove us to the edge of campus where a squadron of institutional green, wood-frame buildings stood. Miss Bishop greeted us on a landing at the top of stairs worn thin from the repeated scuffing of combat boots and led us inside. We were the last to arrive. She wore a gray skirt cut at the calf and a white shiny blouse, just like the pictures I’d been drawing from magazines, and there was a brooch pinned above her heart. I had plenty of time to study her, from her bobbed salt and pepper hair down to her sensible shoes, because she began with the first to arrive, the ones lined up at the other end of the room. There must have been eight or ten children and their mothers all waiting to be interviewed.

“What is your name?”

This part hadn’t occurred to me, the questioning. And as I was already an anxious child, I began to feel apprehensive.

“And how old are you?”

There it was. The question I hadn’t anticipated.

“Twelve,” came the reply. They were all twelve. My brother was twelve. You had to be twelve!

Miss Bishop came, one child at a time, closer to where I crouched behind my mother as I tried to disappear. But I wanted to be there even though I didn't belong. Well, the conflicting emotions became too much for me and just as Miss Bishop stepped up to me, to my mother really, looking around behind her, before Miss Bishop said a word, I started to cry. These were desperate, bitter tears, you understand, tears of complete and utter desolation because all hope of ever playing the piano was now surely gone. I was only ten. I was too young for piano.

Later when I entered the university as a piano major, Miss Bishop and I had a good laugh over that episode. And yes, she let me stay in the class. It was a wonderful experience. We made thunderous sounds that first day up and down the keyboard, two kids at each gnarly old upright. The class was taught by Bernice Frost from New York, if my memory is correct, and whatever her approach was, it worked for me. We began reading immediately from her book called “The Adult at the Piano.”  

I belabor all this here, excessively maybe, because some people feel that learning piano in groups lacks seriousness or effectiveness. I think Fisher’s book serves to dispel those notions. He introduces the topic with a history (but I searched in vain for a recounting of my own experience), including references to classes taught by Liszt, Chopin and Schumann. From there he continues with practical matters such as class sizes and logistics and a discussion of learning theories. All age clusters and levels of maturity are considered, including college-level major and non-major applications.

The writing style is academic; it smacks of the doctoral dissertation and is therefore on the dry side. But the information is valuable and considerable, well referenced and, though academic, clearly expressed. There is a passable index. The meat of the book, I think, is the section called “Instructional Strategies.” Here Fisher deals with the nitty-gritty and the esoteric. You’ll find strategies for teaching rhythm, ear training, reading, all aspects of keyboard harmony including improvisation and composition, repertoire and technology, including “Integrating Technology in the Group Piano Classroom” and “Videoconferencing Technology.” Many of these teaching strategies are appropriate in the private lesson, as well. I think this book is worth a look.