It is possible to hack away at a trouble spot for several minutes, constantly repeating it and beating it into submission, and then be able to manage it, more or less. I am sure a statistician would be able to come up with the odds for this being so. Apart from being incredibly unskillful, it is a waste of time because the following day you will most likely be back to square one. Practising like this is like building your house on sand – some days all will be well, but on others, the whole thing just collapses.
In performance we can’t take multiple stabs at something, it has to be right first time and this fact needs to be reflected in our practice. Think about it – if we never practised errors, we’d probably never play any!
I would have to go further – it has not only to be right but also to feel easy.
There is no such thing as a Difficult Piece. A piece is either impossible – or it is easy. The process whereby it migrates from one category to the other is known as practicing. (Louis Kentner)
Trouble spots are like bad apples or unruly kids in a class. Left unattended, they ruin the good ones. Identify the trouble spots in the piece, those places that trip you up and cause you to stumble and fall (and affect subsequent parts of the piece you know perfectly well) and isolate them. They will usually consist of small parts, perhaps a bar, or even a couple of notes that derail you (but may of course be longer).
Put them in the equivalent of pianistic detention for a few days and give them special attention. For my younger students, I mark these in the score with square brackets and next lesson I will hear these extracts first. If they are still not right, I will work on them with the student but will make a point of not hearing the piece as a whole until these passages have been mastered (thereby training them how to practise).
TOP TEN WAYS TO PRACTISE TROUBLE SPOTS
10. Practise the spot ultra-slowly, also with separate hands.
9. Starting from the beginning of the spot, add a note (or a beat) and repeat this. Go back to the beginning of the spot and add another note (or beat) and repeat this. Etc!
8. Start from the end of the spot by playing the last note (or beat). Now add the note (or beat) before this, and repeat. Follow this process until you reach the beginning of the spot.
7. Start anywhere in the spot. If it is a longer section, begin from any bar. If it is a small section, begin on any beat, or any note.
6. To reincorporate a former trouble spot back into its surroundings, you can add the bar before (or whatever smallish section makes sense), and now begin from there.
5. Next, do this with the bar or section that comes after.
4. Finally, play the bar before, the bar itself and the bar after. Don’t forget to STOP at the end of your predetermined section, to evaluate (see 3.) and then repeat it. The tendency is to carry straight on – resist this though.
3. Use a feedback loop between each repetition so that you can identify precisely where the problem lies and mentally rehearse it before repeating it. You’ll be repeating with a definite purpose, and the feeling of starting each repetition from a clean slate.
2. Transpose (very slowly). Perhaps not for youngsters, but don’t put any limitations on them either!
1. Return to the trouble spot frequently throughout the practice session. Go back to it between pieces, so that you approach it from fresh each time. Also, make a special trip to the piano outside of your regular practice routine, just to play this one extract. This might take just a minute or two!
This is such useful, sound advice! Throughout this term, I have been asking my students to identify the trouble spots in their pieces, rather than have me highlight them, to encourage them to practice more productively and more carefully. I think I will adopt your habit of asking them to play the trouble spots first to check the practising has been done properly.
Mindless practice simply ensures that mistakes are “learned in” and then they become very difficult, and sometimes impossible, to unlearn….. I too have black spots – two bars in the Liszt Sonetto which continue to torment me. With that in mind, I’m off to practice…… 🙂
[…] Read Graham’s excellent advice here […]
Plus I will often ask to hear the trouble spots at half speed the next week, or even a quarter speed, and I mean that literally! The idea behind this, of course, is that the greater the time distance between notes, the greater the opportunity for the mind to focus on exactly what it has to do next (and thus the greater the chance of success).
I couldn’t agree more with everything you said!
Let me emphasize the tendency that you mentioned in #4. It feels so easy to morph into sightreading at the end of a predetermined trouble spot. A lot of discipline is required to STOP instead. But after practicing carefully and conquering trouble spots ~ maybe even in PUBLIC! ~ the benefits become much more obvious.
Speaking for myself, I have an aversion to making a fool of myself on stage. So there’s my incentive. 🙂
Thanks Gretchen. Yes, stopping is essential and it seems to go against the grain!
I use a post-it note to isolate the spot, and to insure that the student has the visual stopping place. Then I give it to them as a gift to use and omve around that week!
Great idea, Suzanne!
I have been trying to get my students to follow these steps for the last 37 or so years, but getting them to commit to regular daily practice sessions can be a challenge, let alone this kind of detail! I sometimes refer to it as practising as though you were attempting to complete a Jigsaw Puzzle: work at an awkward corner and get it right before slotting it into the whole picture (or taking it out of context and then placing it back in to make sense of the whole).
Thanks for your comment Jo. I don’t expect it will be necessary to go through all those steps for every instance, I simply wanted to give as many possibilities as I could think of (and there will be more!). I watched a fascinating programme on TV recently that described the work of portrait painter Chuck Close, who uses a grid system. A painting is made up of hundreds of small squares, but looking at the whole you’d never know. He says (and I paraphrase) it is easier for him to make lots of small decisions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chuck_Close_2.jpg. It strikes me that a piece of music is similarly made up of (often) hundreds of such units – namely bars – that coalesce to make a whole. The pianist had better know each of these units very intimately, and to have worked on each in isolation, before being able to expect a coherent whole to take shape. Perhaps it’s also a bit like making a quilt; many small squares of material stitched together to make something greater than the sum of its parts.
Excellent article Graham – if I was half as eloquent, I could have written exactly the same words myself! I might add that another step I include when playing beat by beat and extremely slowly is to generally always play legato, even if the final result will be staccato. That way, the hands better know the new positions required and fastest ways to get there! Thanks for another great post – if I lived a bit closer, I’d definitely consider a few lessons with you.
Thanks for that Tim – see my previous post about practising staccato passages legato, for the connections…
[…] Remember – a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Identify those spots in the piece that cause you to stumble and make sure to practise these before, during and after your routine practice. Even outside of your allotted practice time, you might wish to return to these troublespots for the odd minute here and there (while waiting for the kettle to boil, or during that annoying commercial break). For more on this, please see my post on this. […]
[…] and see how many different ways you can find. If you struggle with this spot, don’t forget to quarantine it. Begin your practice session with this sort of work, and when you move onto another piece, come […]