On Sight Reading


There is really no such thing as "sight reading." Sight reading consists of learning to recognize already familiar patterns that are put together in different ways, very much like the way letters are put together to form words. This sounds like evasion, I know, but if you consider the topic with this idea in mind, you will conclude that the best way to learn to sight read well is to do it on a regular basis.


I know this is how I developed my reading skills. From my first piano book, The Adult at the Piano, I was armed with the ability to associate note-heads with keys of the piano and I was off and running through any literature I could get my hands on. And incidentally, being a fluent sight-reader will open many doors, sometimes lucrative ones.


There are sight reading exercises available that approach the topic in this way, gradually increasing the types of figures that are combined. But I've concluded that that approach is too dry and a-musical. It's best to have available some pieces that are several levels easier than what one can actually play.


Some procedures:


1. Scan the piece before playing, noticing the composer's directions and any oddities, i.e., accidentals, tempo changes, etc.


2.  Think of a tempo that should work for the quickest passages.


3.  Set that tempo and don't stop for anything. If you have trouble, go to the next beat or next measure, but keep the pulse going. Teacher/student duets are great for this and there are many such collections: Diabelli Op. 149 & Op. 163; Four Centuries of Piano Duet Music by Cameron McGraw in four volumes and graded for difficulty. These are not transcriptions, but rather original pieces for piano duet.


4.  Make a conscious decision from the start to try to notice all musical directions in the score: dynamics, articulation, etc.


5.  Keep eyes on the music; not on the hands.


6.  Always look ahead in the score, not at what has just been played.

7.  No mental judgements while playing. A post mortem afterwards, if you must.


8.  Keep in mind that the objective is to make music, not just rattle off notes.

On Practicing (Again)

A student writes: "So I play every single day, at least 3 hours and some of the time feel like I am in control of my playing completely, while other days I feel like I never played piano. "


Well, everyone has a bad day. But what this student describes probably has as much to do with focus at that particular moment as with preparation. 


But I suspect the quality of his practicing is deficient in some way. This is a valid subject to bring up with a teacher. How should I practice? What should I do with a given passage?


Briefly: For me, most practicing is under tempo and in small segments. In this way details are more easily absorbed. I begin with the most problematic spots; I almost never begin at the first measure (unless that's a problem spot). Then, there is another type of practicing called "performance" practicing, in which I play through without stopping and then take stock of how it sounded and how it felt.


A lesson, for me, is not necessarily a performance in which the student plays through a piece. I would rather the student show me the places where he/she has trouble, rather than try to hide problems (as one does in a performance). We can then work on the problems together.


Ideally, the working-out process protects us from making errors. If we first decide on technical solutions (fingerings, shapes, what the hand needs) and then work these solutions in gradually from slow to fast (not slower than you need or faster than you can), then the learning process is always positive. I point out that a learning process is always taking place whether it's right or wrong. So, it behooves us to practice thoughtfully and with deliberation. Avoid rote playing at all costs.


(See my post On Practicing elsewhere in the blog.)

The Pressure of the Practice-Room Peer

It's Not A Competition


A student traveling abroad wrote to me of his experience at Steinway, where he had rented a practice room. My student is fairly new to formal piano study, though he has worked on his own for many months. He has the advantage of being able to learn repertoire very quickly and is able to play quite creditably several of the WTC, all movements of the Moonlight Sonata and a few of the Chopin Nocturnes, all from a very secure memory. (I find this ability to be remarkable.)


He found himself in a room next to a much more experienced pianist who was practicing a modern, very complicated-sounding piece, which had an intimidating effect on my student. He apparently began to feel inadequate, even to the point of not being able to remember the pieces he had come to practice. 

So let me say this: Comparisons with other pianists are both inevitable and futile. It can turn you into a ghost. Try to avoid listening to other pianists playing your repertoire (I know!). If you do listen to recordings, listen to more than one performance of the same piece in order to prove to yourself there can be differences in approaches. This will give you permission to be your own pianist. Go to live performances when possible, as these are more human and can be very instructive. When I was working on the Liszt sonata, I had the opportunity to hear Emil Gilels play it in Los Angeles. It was a piece he had recorded and was known for. Well, it was a wonderful performance in many ways, but not at all pristine. Over the years, I've had many such experiences hearing the great and famous appear in public as human beings. Finally, try to limit your comparisons to yourself of today with yourself of before. Revel in your progress and this will give you courage. We have to evaluate our performances in order to make progress, so take note of your needs (notice I don't say weaknesses). Be kind to yourself in the process.

My student says he left early because he just couldn't concentrate; this practice peer had ruined the whole thing. And when he snuck a peek into the neighboring room he saw a young Asian man, dancing wildly at the keyboard, and looking everywhere BUT the keys. "Seriously I don't know how his fingers found the notes, he was moving so much." My student had the impression that this other pianist could play any repertoire with ease and his own efforts, my student's, seemed to pale in comparison.


The pressure of practice-room peers! This is something most music students in conservatories have to deal with. But since my student hadn't been in a formal music school, he had no experience of this. It takes getting used to. I remember the practice room days when there would be a constant awareness that someone could hear what I was doing. Sometimes, it was difficult to resist the urge to perform, instead of practice, which are of course two different activities.

What really is at issue is the ability to focus and concentrate on what you have before you. It takes a fair amount of discipline sometimes not to be drawn into someone else's work. But this is, after all, what we have to learn to do for successful public performance. And it is not a reasonable assumption that this other pianist would be able to do your work better or even as well as you. But even that is of no consequence. Your practicing is only about you. Patience with the self is a necessity for improvement. I advised my student to try it again.


Side note: It's not necessary to look at the keys at all in order to play with accuracy. We have among us exemplary pianists who are without sight.

Chopin's Birthday: Mystery and Confusion

I read recently several posts offering birthday greetings to Chopin. At first I felt really guilty that the date had come and gone and I had forgotten to notice, not that I had noticed in the past, but it occurred to me that the act of noticing can be a way of participating in the composer's legacy.  But then there it was in black and white, or rather back-lit on my computer screen, the following: "I love Fred but he is rather overrated."  I really don't understand this. What is overrated? Surely not the B minor sonata or the set of ballades, which were completely original at the time; surely not the collection of noctures, an  imaginative development of John Field's opera in the same vein. Well, okay, don't get me started. Chopin wrote music that was startlingly original, music that advanced the level of piano playing and created new ways of thinking about sonority. It seemed at the time (almost) to come from nowhere and there was no Chopin school to follow, so he remains unique to this day. I think Schumann was right in his initial review of Chopin's debut: "Hats off, gentlemen, a genius." Even those who call his work high-class salon music are mistaken. There is considerable depth to be found in those shimmering sonorities if you just listen past the surface. There ensued much discussion on the topic of offering birthday greetings to a dead person. I believe the word inane was used.  Well, of course, if that were all there is to it, it would be just so much silliness. The act of remembering, though, is what is at issue and that is for the living. The music is very much alive and a part of our collective consciousness. To pause and reflect on this and the work of a great artist is how we grow, how we live. The following is from an article I found at the Chopin Society Uk and helps to explain, if not resolve, the mystery of Chopin's birth: "The mystery of Chopin's birthday The Manor of Zelazowa Wola Fryderyk Chopin was born at Zelazowa Wola in Mazovia, in the Warsaw region of Poland.  His father Nicholas had been born in France in 1771 in Marainville, a village in Lorraine – a area which at that time was ruled over by the Polish King Stanislas Leszczynski. Nicholas, of humble origin, but very able and intelligent, had accompanied the Polish agent of his village to Warsaw in 1792, and from then on identified totally with Poland, preferring to speak Polish rather than French. In 1802 Nicholas Chopin was engaged by Count Skarbek to be tutor to his four children at his estate of Zelazowa Zola, and in 1806 he married a poor relation of the family, Justyna Krzyzanowska, then living with the Skarbeks and acting as their housekeeper. The couple had a daughter in 1807 and then moved out of the main house into a thatched cottage close by, where their only son was born on possibly the 22nd of February and possibly the 1st of March 1810. The child was named Fryderyk after Fryderyk Skarbek, the Count’s eldest son, who was to be godfather. Actually they had to wait some time to receive the 18-year old Count’s consent, as he was studying in Paris, and when the christening eventually took place on the 23rd April at the parish church of Saint-Rock in Brochów, a proxy stood in for young Fryderyk Skarbek. The date of the birth was duly entered as the 22nd of February in the baptismal register. (It is interesting to note that Chopin’s godfather was to become a distinguished economist, historian and writer, and that he and Chopin became good friends in later life). Despite the date in the parish register, Chopin’s family always celebrated his birthday on the 1st of March. To complicate things further, Jane Stirling – his Scottish pupil and benefactor – said that Chopin had told her she was the only one who knew his real birth date. She wrote it down, put it in a box, and this box was apparently placed in Chopin’s grave in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. Some sense can be made of this. In the nineteenth century people were much more vague about actual birthdays than we are today, and in a Catholic country such as Poland the name day would have been just as important, if not more so. However, in Britain it is the birthday which counts, and one can imagine Jane Stirling asking her beloved Master when his birthday was, so she could give him a present. He may have told her, adding that she was not to tell anyone else, as he did not want a lot of fuss. Whether the writing in Jane’s box would even be legible now is dubious, so even if it is the real date we may never know the truth. The Chopin Society celebrates the 22nd of February, as our Founder, Lucie Swiatek, favoured that date, though generally the 1st of March is more frequently regarded as correct." I am absolved of guilt. Since the day is in question, it matters little if I observed the correct one. What matters is that I remember, which I do as I play and teach his music.

On Competition

It's Not a Competition:

At J. conservatory, the students of Mme. L. always won the concerto competition. It was expected; it was the norm. The student contestants expected it. Mme expected it. The entire school expected it. Yet, all of the teachers entered their students, pressing them into this futile exercise. X., a friend of mine who studied with Mr. F., prepared the concerto du jour, Mozart Coronation, to the exclusion of virtually all of his other repertoire. He was an obsessive/compulsive personality, as it seems many of the students were in those days (probably still are) and prepared as if his life depended on it. He told me he didn't want to disappoint Mr. F, but I know from other conversations that his unsupportive parents figured in the mix. His mother once visited his room near the school and pronounced it the product of a sick mind. Well, X. told me, maybe this time a different teacher would produce the winning performer. Wouldn't that be an upheaval. Maybe Mr. F. would get the respect he deserves.

The piano faculty assembled, along with Maestro J.M. and his conducting staff. The students congregated in the corridors, where they waited for their time to audition. Some, of course, would be in the practice rooms up to the last possible minute; X. was one of these. As a graduate student, I was somewhat above the fray. I'd lived enough to know that life didn't depend on only one performance, or on any one event, unless that event included being run over by a bus.

X. appeared on the scene just seconds before his appointed time. I was there to listen from outside, as he had asked, and gave him by best thumbs-up smile. He played like an angel. They let him play the entire concerto through, including the cadenzas, which I took to be a good sign. I waited by the stage entrance to congratulate him but when the door opened X. ran right past me muttering "I missed a note, I missed a note" over and over all the way to the men's room, where he vomited violently. X. played like an artist, suffered terribly and the winning contestant did not come from the studio of Mr F. that year. X. was last seen on a Kibbutz in Israel. In this case, the jury lived up to its pretrial publicity.

Producing Synchronized Chords

A student wrote to me complaining of "wobbly" chords. He meant that in accompaniment passages of repeated chordal figures he often broke the chords
unintentionally. His solution was to rigidify his fingers, lifting the unneeded fingers away from his hand, in order to force the correct fingers to play simultaneously. This is no solution at all, but rather a prescription for disaster.


In order to accommodate different finger lengths, it is better to allow the hand to be slightly flatter and avoid gripping or locking the hand into a fixed position in order to force all the fingers to be the same lengths. No matter how hard you try, I promise you that the fingers will always be different lengths. By flatter I mean that the hand should maintain its normal curvature, not curled into a claw.


The manner of depressing the key, then, is downward, of course, but also slightly in the direction of out toward the torso. It is as if the intention is to move outward, but at the point of key contact there is a tread on the end of the finger that prevents an extreme slide outward. It is not necessary to leave the surface of the key. In fact, it is in most cases better after depressing the key to ride it back up just beyond the point of sound in order to repeat it. This has the effect of allowing the participation of the forearm, ever so slightly, in order to control the downward weight. It is a mistake to think of this as either just a finger movement or a wrist movement.


Try this in various combinations of white and black keys.


Happy chording!