Learning to play vs learning to concentrate

ShiroKuro · 2024-05-23T13:54:51+00:00

I am wanting to record some pieces this summer but I've been having kind of a hard time getting them "performance ready." The last few days I've really reali...

twocats

BartK today is supposed to be a practice day for me and I don't think I'll even make it to the piano 🙁

rogerch

I'm trying to play but here I am back at my computer!

I find that it's much easier for me to stay in the moment when I'm improvising than when I'm learning or playing someone else's composition. With improvisation there is less muscle memory to keep the music going so more attention is required.

Josephine

rogerch

I wish I could do that. I think you can feel completely free when you can improvise.

rogerch

Josephine I think anyone who plays piano can learn to improvise. I started about four years ago after a lifetime of playing from sheet music. It has been a lot of fun and I encourage anyone who is interested to give it a shot! You can start by putting away the sheet music and playing some random notes to see what sounds good

ranjit

I have also found this relatively difficult. Most recently, I managed to maintain concentration while performing the entire first movement of the Pathetique sonata on stage (8 pages), which felt like quite an achievement.

The way that worked for me: Split the piece into 2-3 "mini pieces" in your head, and then also split by major sections (a page or two pages). Usually, there is a point where there's a fermata or something and where you can take a breath. Then reorient yourself and imagine you're playing the second piece, not the first. The Pathetique splits perfectly in the middle (4 pages + 4 pages).

This is how I approached the Pathetique:
PART I:

Grave: first page
Second page: Pick up the momentum with the main theme
Third page: calmer
Fourth page: culmination
END
(Take a breath)

PART II:

First page (page 5 overall): Pick up and gather intensity, 0 to 100 very quick
Second page (page 6): High point of the entire piece with the third trill
Third page (page 7): Same as page 3 but in a different key
Fourth page (page 8): Same as page 4 but in a different key, followed by the ending.

HeartKeys

rogerch I think anyone who plays piano can learn to improvise. I started about four years ago after a lifetime of playing from sheet music. It has been a lot of fun and I encourage anyone who is interested to give it a shot! You can start by putting away the sheet music and playing some random notes to see what sounds good

@Josephine I found this video to be interesting for classical pianists who are fairly beginner at improvising.

My forte is improvising and I’m pretty advanced at it, but my mind is pretty anomalous. As for those who are used to playing piano by sheet, this video could prove insightful.

Would love your thoughts!

Pallas

I am highly distractible. My thoughts drift away, and errors pile up. No matter what I'm doing, I have the impulse to leap up and go do something else. I've found that the only way to focus better is by practicing focusing. Most people call this meditation, but many people who meditate seem to think you've only "succeeded" if you have an empty mind throughout the whole session. But a "successful" sit is any session where you notice that your thoughts have wandered and redirect your attention to a preferred focal point (like your breath).

So when I'm at the piano and instead of repeating my measure as planned, I'm thinking about dinner, I redirect my focus to my hands, my ear, the score or my breath, etc. Even 5 minutes a day of active focus practice helps build the skill. Like scales, but for your attention skill.

Just like with meditation, it's a good idea to let it be acceptable when you notice your focus needs adjusting. You just take note and adjust. But if you mentally berate yourself for "losing" focus, you might turn it into a real hangup and source of anxiety. Like, the last thing you want to do if you wake up in the middle of the night is check the time, calculate how few hours there are until the alarm goes off, and spend all of that time staring at the ceiling, resenting not being asleep. Better to just let it be ok, roll over, and go back to sleep.

BartK

rokhead To learn a piece, start at the beginning.
As you proceed to learn more, annotate sections with letters.
As you practice the piece for memorization, start at the last section you have learned and play it.
Next, back up one section and play forward until the end, or until a section you've not yet worked on.

Given labeled sections: A B C D E
E
D E
C D E
B C D E
A B C D E

That's great but also very time-consuming and you end up practicing some sections less. For me what works better is:
A B
B C
C D
D E
(if necessary) EA
Sometimes in the opposite order, starting with the end.

ShiroKuro

Animisha Maybe a seven-page piece is too much to start with. Maybe you can split the piece into two or three parts that you record separately and then glue together?

I don’t want to record separate parts and then stitch them together. Beside the fact what I want an authentic recording of myself, I also want to be able to play for people, so I still need to be able to play the whole piece through without losing my concentration.

Also, I used to be able to play, perform, and record pieces of this length with much less difficulty. But this past year has been a year of moving, new job, new city, lots of stress. And from Sept. to Dec 2023, I had the least amount of practice time I’ve ever had since starting piano (almost 25 years now!). So I do think it’s appropriate for me to “push” myself with this piece.

To the degree that this piece could be considered a push. Which to say, I agree with Bart’s approach, where you think about difficulty in (at least) two dimensions. Yes, this piece is 7 pages long, but in terms of technical difficulty, even the “most difficult” section is well beneath my overall playing level.

So I truly think it’s a concentration problem, and my ability to concentrate has gotten rusty, so that’s what I’m going to focus on.

ShiroKuro

By the way, as to Rok’s discussion of playing the piece “backwards,” I used to practice that way a lot. But at some point, I found that it’s more efficient to figure what where the trouble spots are, and focus on those as a practice goal. And then also focus on “playing through” as a separate goal.

Oh and btw, I know there’s a big (very good) discussion in PW’s ABF about memorizing right now, and this is actually the piece I said I would work on for the memory challenge. But I should also add that, ultimately, I don’t really care if I can memorize this piece and record it or perform it while playing from memory. Even if I do get it memorized,I’m going to play/perform/record it from the score because that will allow me to keep it as a repertoire piece. And based on past experience, I’ve found that memorizing a piece and then playing/performing from the score was actually the best way to get a confident result….

I just can’t get there right now, as I said when I started this thread, I think my concentration is really rusty!

Pallas

ShiroKuro Maybe I need to read about the Buddhist teachings on monkey mind...

First this. Then all the excellent practical piano advice!

Josephine

HeartKeys

Thanks! I'm going to watch it tomorrow (almost midnight here in the Netherlands)

I really enjoyed your improvs on that song you were looking for a while ago.

Stub

There's a lot of overlap in terminology here, but what I suffer from on longer pieces is lack of stamina. I guess one could say stamina was the ability to maintain concentration on every aspect of playing for the the entire length of the piece, but I think there can be a physical aspect as well. I will often start off just fine, but fade as time goes on. I need to find ways to release built up tension and reset both mentally and physically.

ShiroKuro

Stamina is a good way to put it as well. I do think it's a combination of physical plus mental, and we need to address all aspects, both individually and as a whole.

That's why it's so hard!

rogerch

rokhead Absolutely! Learning to improvise has encouraged me to invest much more in learning what music really is than I ever did when I was just playing sheet music! I'm still early in the journey and I have a lot to learn, which is great! I love learning and I'm enjoying the journey!

thepianoplayer416

The first thing many people get nervous about is being recorded. We can repeat a piece 1000x and the last practices came out nearly perfect. The minute we press record, there is the sudden anxiety and mistakes started to appear.

After doing many recordings, I no longer have anxiety over pressing recording. At the moment I can play play pieces up to 5 minutes. Last year I played the last 2 pages of a Bach Sinfonia (in 3 pages) at a piano store. Came out to about 4 min. For longer pieces I'd perform a condensed version considering my limited concentration level.

ShiroKuro

We’re getting ready to move, but once I get my new piano room set up, I’d like to just have recording equipment ready to go… or at least put out my iPhone tripod all set up… or something so that I record as easily as I sit down to practice.

Seeker

twocats

twocats I find that turning on a recorder is like having an audience! I'm automatically nervous.

It's great that recording puts you under performance stress. IMO the only way to get better at performing is to "practice performing". I believe that any of us can improve our performance by practicing performance if that is our intention. Will you make mistakes at the beginning, psyche yourself out? Probably, but I suggest you do multiple "takes". In my personal recording work of my #respite series I can tell you that getting a 3 minute piece down perfectly can take 10 takes. Maybe 7 of those 10 - if I'm really prepared - are okay, but don't exactly meet my criteria for what I am trying to convey. At some point in that repetition - practicing performing - I lose my performance nerves while keeping my performance adrenaline to get a good performance.

Hope this is helpful.

twocats

Seeker getting a 3 minute piece down perfectly can take 10 takes

It's nice to know that even someone who is used to performing needs to do many takes as well!

I've been documenting my final prep for a chamber music workshop in an informal way here. I really fell apart in the first few videos due to lack of sleep plus nervousness with the recorder watching me, but I did my 4th video yesterday and noticed that the nerves are already starting to go away! Perhaps it would be different if I felt like I had to get a "good take" but I'm sure that every bit of recording exposure helps.

Seeker

twocats

twocats It's nice to know that even someone who is used to performing needs to do many takes as well!
Absolutely, and I am not alone. IMO and experience, as someone who has made such recordings of my own solo performances, as well as someone who accompanied people for competitions, scholarship and college auditions, etc., THE MOST STRESSFUL PERFORMANCE SITUATION is making a single-take, no cuts allowed, VIDEO recording. This, at least for me and the people with whom I've worked, FAR exceeds the stress of a live performance, even in front of competition judges where a wrong note flashes by vs someone having the ability to "rewind" and review. If there's interest, I will open a thread on "Managing Performance Anxiety" on the appropriate board here. For now, I recommend one book that I routinely use with my students as a great place to start: "Performance Strategies for Musicians" by David Buswell. It's an easy read, but you won't get anything from it unless you do the exercises. Those are not easy, but I can tell you they work.

ranjit

Seeker with my students as a great place to start: "Performance Strategies for Musicians" by David Buswell

Thanks for the recommendation!

ShiroKuro

Seeker Managing Performance Anxiety

Yes please start this thread! I would say the Learners Lounge is the right place for it.

Re books, thanks for the recommendation, I’m off to take a look! Whenever this topic came up at PW, I always recommended these three : 1) The Inner Game of Music, 2) The Art of Practicing, and 3) A Soprano on Her Head. But it’s been years since I made an effort to read about performance-practice.

I should probably revisit the Inner Game, but I’ll start with your rec here.

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