Beginners: Age 0 to 65+

ranjit pianoloverus Absolute pitch is not necessary for audiation unless one thinks audiation means hearing a piece in one's head at the correct pitch.

No, the idea is that when you hear a piece in your head, it tends to be around the right key. With enough exposure, this sound memory develops. It is a distinct neurological mechanism from perfect pitch, and most good musicians I've seen have it. Like, I can sing a C and it's usually close to accurate, like within about a quarter tone. That kind of thing.

You say "the idea" but you're talking about your personal idea of what that word means. It's not even clear what you're referring to when you use the phrase "the idea", but I assume it's audiation . Then you say audiation is distinct from perfect pitch, which is exactly what I was saying. But you begin your comment with a "no".

Just because you can find. a video about developing perfect pitch, you can't assume it's true. If Chang was correct about perfect pitch being important and so few people(including Juilliard students) have it but it's really possible to teach it, then why don't they teach perfect pitch at all the top conservatories?

ranjit Like, I can sing a C and it's usually close to accurate, like within about a quarter tone. That kind of thing.

I believe the perfect pitch is much more than that. In the NYT article I cited:

Dr. Profita, who studied the piano and violin at the Juilliard School before turning to medicine, realized he had perfect pitch at age 6. "The minute I hear a note, I know it," he said. "A single note takes on a real nature, like an object. An A is an A just the way a table is a table."

In addition, people with true perfect pitch can identify all notes in a chord without thinking. You can find video of Rick Beato demontrates this amazing ability with his son.

This is the kind of perfect pitch that is born naturally, and it cannot be attained by training.

iternabe I believe the perfect pitch is much more than that. In the NYT article I cited:

Dr. Profita, who studied the piano and violin at the Juilliard School before turning to medicine, realized he had perfect pitch at age 6. "The minute I hear a note, I know it," he said. "A single note takes on a real nature, like an object. An A is an A just the way a table is a table."

In addition, people with true perfect pitch can identify all notes in a chord without thinking. You can find video of Rick Beato demontrates this amazing ability with his son.

This is the kind of perfect pitch that is born naturally, and it cannot be attained by training.

I know, and I agree. What I was saying was that I think what Chang meant to say there was that the sort of pitch memory that I was talking about can be trained. But he conflates it with perfect pitch. Although a part of me thinks that maybe he believes that "true" perfect pitch can be learned. Regardless, that to me felt like the least important thing there. The idea of "Mental Play" or audiation is extremely powerful imo.

I understand that many people might struggle with it, so I don't mean to say that everyone must be able to do it. But I think it is extremely important to playing musically, to the point where I can't think of an extremely musical player who can't to a pretty good extent, "visualize" the sort of sound they want to produce. And it can be developed early -- I know I did and it sped up the process of learning piano by a lot.

There was a video where a famous jazz musician was asked how he played musically, and he said, you know how when you imagine a piece of music, you kind of go "da, da, da...". Well, that's not enough, you have to imagine it go "DA, DA, DA..." in your head. It was funny but oddly instructive.

A lot of the issues with Chang's book boil down to him taking something that works in some cases, for some people, and generalizing it to the population as a whole. But a lot of what he says is still A valid way of approaching things, and often one that's not very commonly known by average piano teachers or students. So in that way, it is interesting. A lot of his tips around "post-practice improvement", the importance of sleep and breaks and so on predate Molly Gebrian etc. by over a decade, and are just as valid now. It provides an interesting framework for practice. I can't think of another book that tries to clearly lay out how practice should be structured in the same way. You can glean similar information (and at a higher level) from books written by other concert pianists, but I think those books are too difficult and inaccessible for beginners and are also usually targeted at more advanced students/teachers (Seymour Bernstein, Gyorgy Sandor, Josef Hoffman, Gieseking, just to name a few).

Kaydia Today I did a speed read through several sections of this book and reached these conclusions.

1. The author has a pretty high opinion of himself and his book, but his writing skills lag behind his scientific qualifications.
2. Most of the practice methodology is included in the Alfred's piano course books that I have been using, although the author does also include specific advice about things such as working on difficult measures in isolation, and recognising where note patterns are repeated in pieces, to enable people to mark them accordingly so as to help learn longer pieces more quickly.
3. Despite the author's broad assertion that, theoretically, most people could become "Mozarts", diving into the detail of the book he acknowledges that people who begin playing piano in early childhood have a much better chance of becoming concert pianists than those who start later in life. He writes: "Ages 13-19: This group still has an excellent chance of becoming concert level pianists. However, they may have lost the chance to become those super stars that the younger beginners can become." He also states that although somebody starting piano in the age group 20-35 could become a concert pianist, they are less likely to achieve that goal than others who began playing piano during their childhood and thus gained piano skills at a time when their brains were more malleable. All this is probably no surprise to anyone, but helps to keep expectations real for adult beginners.
4. The author gives detailed suggestions on how to tackle several key pieces such as Moonlight Sonata. This is a nice idea and could be very useful when I reach those key pieces, so I might revisit the book then.
5. The book provides some interesting insight and analysis into the composition methods of several composers, which helps to demystify how they managed to compose lengthy pieces of work by, for instance, repeating key patterns intermittently throughout a piece.

Some of the technical detail in the book went a bit over my head (well, I must admit I zoned out a bit in places) and I am not experienced enough to judge how valuable (or otherwise) Mr Chang's advice is, but some of it made sense, albeit I think much of it is explained better in the Alfred's AIO course books.

Certain things are achievable later in life. Not talking about learning to fly a plane. More like a new language or an instrument. A lot depends on your attitude how far you can push yourself to get ahead. The other thing is whether you think learning specific skills is useful or necessary.

My mom (80+) learned to use a tablet to send Emails & communicate with others by Email and other means. Coming from a non-musical family, mom would never get into music although she would prob be good at it. Learning to use a phone or tablet with a touch screen is easier than a computer and for many is a necessity.

Dad retired at 60+ and wanted to get into playing an accordion that hasn't been touched for years. He played a bit before but felt he had to start from songs like "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Lightly Row". Got himself a beginner book but quit after a month. He didn't want lessons with a teacher for many years. I learned violin in school. The music theory was a big help when starting piano years later. The other thing dad tried was to learn Japanese. After a few years of learning grammar & vocab, he was nowhere near a basic conversation level.

The assumption that kids learn faster /better than adults depends on the circumstance. Once I was at a gathering. 3 kids were sitting in front of a DP with a 1-page sheet (4 lines) their teacher assigned as appropriate for their level. They took turns trying the piece unsuccessfully. After a few months they all quit piano. During the Christmas break I took out a church hymns in 4 voices (SATB) and worked on it for a few days. And played through an arrangement of the English tune "Greensleeves" in 1 afternoon. The kids were half my age and struggled with the kinds of pieces I was able to learn easily.

Today people are living longer and get into hobbies later in life. Your age is just an artificial number. There are advantages to starting music as an adult. First, we pick the instrument. We play for enjoyment while many kids were forced into piano or violin by their parents. We have more life experiences than they do. We know many songs we hear while kids have to learn them from scratch. There are circumstances why somebody couldn't start piano earlier. In my younger days, piano wasn't my instrument. I wasn't ready then.