• Store
  • Sign-up
  • Sign-in
Menu
Practising the Piano
  • Home
  • Resources
    • Multimedia eBook Series
    • Online Academy
    • Video Lessons
    • Annotated Study Editions
    • Repertoire Resources
    • Piano Technique Resources
    • Amateur Piano Groups & Clubs
  • Events
    • Calendar
    • Online Events
    • London Piano Courses
    • Practice Clinics
    • Online Performance Workshops
  • Blog
      • Practising
      • Learning Pieces
      • Technique
      • Performing
      • Teaching
      • Archive
  • About Us
    • Help & Support
    • Contact us
HomePractisingSilent Practice: The Art of Inner Listening

Silent Practice: The Art of Inner Listening

By Graham Fitch, 2011-09-30 Posted in: Practising, Teaching

Somewhat reluctantly, I have just sold on my Virgil Practice Clavier, having watched it gather dust and take up space for the past few years. For those of you too young to remember Joseph Cooper’s dummy keyboard on the BBC2 panel show “Face The Music”, a Virgil is a practice piano with adjustable sprung and weighted keys, and the only sounds it is capable of producing are clicks as the keys go down, and/or clicks as the keys come up (you can select the up-click, the down-click, both clicks or neither). If you turn the spring to its maximum, you get a key resistance that would challenge even Popeye on spinach day, or you can set it to an effortless “light” (and with all degrees in between). The clicks are supposed to indicate rhythmic accuracy, or (if you have both up and down clicks switched on) how precise your legato is (if the up-click and the next down-click coincide, then you will have made a textbook key connection). Panelists on the show would have to guess what piece was being played just from the rhythm of the clicks (the audience at home helped along by a soundtrack that would fade in after a while).

Silent Practice No. 1

Due to force of circumstance, I once had to learn a substantial recital programme of music for cello and piano (including the Chopin Sonata) on one of these devices. I was staying somewhere with no piano, and this portable contraption could be moved into my room easily by two people. To my surprise, I found the work very congenial! I was able to hear in my head the sounds my fingers would have been making, and in some ways this made me listen more. I was never troubled by hearing any wrong notes, and I wasn’t preoccupied with tone, balance and sound in the way that most of us pianists are most of the time. I could imagine the perfect sound in my inner ear and never have this disturbed. I had the odd moment on an antique and much-battered Broadwood in the local church once or twice a week so I could actually hear the fruits of my labour, then it was off to France to rehearse and play the concerts. Everything came out better than I anticipated, and I am convinced the Virgil helped make a virtue of a necessity.

Silent Practice No. 2

Some years later, on my monthly trips to New York, I would get up some time before my host and because it was too early to make any noise, I discovered I could put in a couple of hours of really profitable practice on the surface of the keyboard. I didn’t realise how useful this was until it was OK to make sounds and I discovered my hands were incredibly loose and well warmed up, and my fingers very much in control. More so, actually, than if I had spent those two hours practising normally. In my post on practising softly, I discuss the greater control needed to send the key down slowly from the surface to the key bed, observing that it is much more skillful to play pianissimo than fortissimo. To cause a key not to speak at all is actually quite difficult, because you have to inhibit the full range of the keystroke with every single note you touch. As in the dummy keyboard work, you can hear the music internally and you become very sensitive to the feeling of the fingers on the keyboard and the lightness of the arm. If a finger should be veering off course from dead centre of the key to the cracks in between the keys, you feel this more acutely too. Practising like this takes an awful lot of self control, and you have learn to delay gratification, but I commend it to you next time you want to practise in the middle of the night.

Silent Practice No. 3

When I was a student, I had teachers who extolled the virtues of silent practice, the sort where you sit with the score and study the structure, the harmonies, and so on, in your head. In those years I was reluctant to consider this a part of my practising – I’d do it, but on the train. Now, I think it is completely indispensable. Without a thorough understanding of the composer’s structure and message, how are the fingers supposed to know what to do? The mind has to be one step ahead of the hand, always. I’ve discussed this in depth in a previous post (along with Gina Bachauer’s quote) so I won’t bang on about it again here, but the good news for those still not sold on the idea is that scientists now know that inwardly hearing a score, and imagining the fingers executing their tasks actually starts the process of forming neural pathways.

For the sake of completion, here are two more practising suggestions that seem to belong here:

Silent Practice No. 4

Miming: The act of deliberately preventing keys from speaking either by touching the surface of the key or by depressing it partially. This can be done for ear- or finger training purposes. Some examples:

  • Play one hand as written while miming the other. This is beneficial in a different way from merely playing the one hand alone because you are using nearly all the muscles and reflexes of the two-handed version (i.e. it is not so far off the whole neurological picture). This will reveal all the warts, blemishes and inaccuracies that might be being covered up when both hands are sounding their notes. This is especially good when you really want to hear how controlled the LH actually is, since it is the hand we are not usually listening to actively. Expect a few surprises when you try this for the first time!
  • Play the top part in a chord stream while miming the lower notes, or play the melody line while miming the accompaniment. This develops independence of the fingers better than anything else. It is useful to play the top first by itself (with no muscular reference to anything else) before adding the mime, aiming to achieve exactly the same sound (this is not easy).
  • Mime one selected voice in a fugue while playing the others (extraordinarily challenging).

Silent Practice No. 5

Playing on the fallboard: the act of leaving greasy fingerprints all over the fallboard in a good cause.

If I am trying to get across a particular choreography to a student who is self conscious about temporarily sacrificing note accuracy during the process of learning these unfamiliar movements, I will close the piano and have them get the general gist of it in a situation where you can’t play any wrong notes – on the fallboard (a table would do too). The fine motor skills involved in achieving the precise version on the keyboard are not called for here, which allows the grosser motions to be practised first.

 

 

Tags: listeningmemorymimingsilentvirgil practice clavier

Related Posts

Tools for Memorisation

Tools for Memorisation

By Graham Fitch, 2012-05-31
Posted in: Practising

Here is the second part of my article MIND OVER MEMORY, published last year in Pianist Magazine. Remember, everyone who has ever played the piano in public has had that horrible experience of losing their way - including professionals and great artists. Here are some insurance policies you might want to…

Read More

Tags: evaluatefingersmemorypianist magazineskeletonstoppingtrackingtranspositionvisualisation
Tools for Memorisation
The History of Piano Technique: Studies and Exercises

The History of Piano Technique: Studies and Exercises

By Graham Fitch, 2013-12-13
Posted in: General tips

There has been much feedback and lively debate on last week's post about Czerny and his legacy of studies and exercises. It seems some piano teachers firmly believe in assigning them, whereas others are dead against them. Some take the middle path and may use them (and studies by other…

Read More

Tags: alfred cortotanalysisCarl CzernyCortotexercisesHanonHanon The Virtuoso PianisthistoryimaginationJohn Thompsonlisteningpeter feuchtwangerstudiesTaubmanGoldandsky YouTube Channeltechnique
The History of Piano Technique: Studies and Exercises
Schumann, Mozart, Muscle Memory & Double Notes

Schumann, Mozart, Muscle Memory & Double Notes

By Informance, 2023-10-12
Posted in: Learning Pieces, Practising

Our latest Practice Clinic recording features answers to questions on tackling double notes, pedalling, building muscle memory and tempo in works by Schumann, Mozart and Brahms.

Read More

Tags: BrahmsBrahms Intermezzo in A op. 118 no 2kinderszenenmemoryMozartpedallingpractice clinicSchumann
Schumann, Mozart, Muscle Memory & Double Notes
Chopin, Schubert, Mendelssohn & Liszt

Chopin, Schubert, Mendelssohn & Liszt

By Informance, 2024-02-01
Posted in: Learning Pieces, Practising

Our latest Practice Clinic recording features answers to questions on balancing chords, pedalling, mastering double notes and playing legato in works by Chopin, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Liszt.

Read More

Tags: Chopindouble noteslegatoLisztMendelssohnpedallingpractice clinicSchubert
Chopin, Schubert, Mendelssohn & Liszt
Keeping Repertoire Alive

Keeping Repertoire Alive

By Graham Fitch, 2011-05-10
Posted in: Teaching

It seems such a shame to spend all those hours learning a piece only to forget it after the exam or the recital. A piece, once learned, is an asset for the pianist and will need just a little maintenance every now and again to keep it in the fingers,…

Read More

Tags: examinationsrepertoireteaching
Keeping Repertoire Alive
Shifting Accents

Shifting Accents

By Graham Fitch, 2018-03-22
Posted in: General tips, Practising

I was brought up with a very craftsmanlike attitude to practising, and was shown concrete practice tools that I was supposed to implement between lessons. When I pass these on to my own students, I can always hear to what extent they have taken them on board. I understand the…

Read More

Tags: alberto jonas masterBurgmüller BalladeChopin Sonata in B flat minor op 35 finale
Shifting Accents

Previous Post

The Study Editions of Alfred Cortot

Next Post

A Make-Up Removal Tip

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

*

Sign-up To Our Mailing List!

Sign-up to our email newsletter for free resources, news updates and special offers!

TOPICS

  • Practising
  • Learning Pieces
  • Technique
  • Performing
  • Teaching

LINKS

  • Online Academy
  • Informance
  • Help & Support
  • Contact Us

© 2025 Practising the Piano All Rights Reserved

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
  • Privacy Policy
  • T&Cs
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website.OkMore Information