Hi all!
This week I have three very cool things for you:
1. A brand new tutorial for a song of one of my all-time favourites: Sting. Wow.
As many of you that know this world-famous masterpiece of a song 'Fragile' might recall, the song is not originally played on piano but on guitar. So again, you can watch and observe a fine piece of 'creating a piano part for a non-piano song' from chords and harmonies. Very educational, yes?
2. A little story, with a moral that is actually a golden tip / lesson, to keep in mind whenever practicing ANYTHING (this also includes non-piano related practices).
It is about the importance of practicing the RIGHT thing. Sounds kinda… 'duh' when you say it like that, but read on and you'll find a very valuable strategy, that many, many students don't nearly take seriously enough. It will speed up your learning curve exponentially.
3. A few questions for you guys about me -yes or no- implementing some improvements for -hopefully- helping you out better and better in the very nearby future.
I'd love to get one or two responses to this one, preferably in the comments below this post (hopefully to trigger a nice set of reactions and thus a more valid 'overall' response for me to consider).
Now a normal person would of course start with number 1, but... I'll start with 3. Just for kicks. 😉
3. A QUESTION for future implementation / improvement of my lessons (regarding The tutorial for 'Fragile'):
Would you, or would you not like:
- Me to SPEAK in future tutorials (you'd hear my voice explaining what I'm doing)?
- Me to give an in-depth explanation with written text and pictures, like with previous lessons? OR
- Me to give an in-depth explanation on film. Like a video lesson where you'd see my face and hands (split screen) and I would be talking/explaining. (so which -if any- of option 1 or 2 would you prefer?).
Enjoy the tutorial, and while you do, please keep these three things in mind. When you're finished watching and playing, please tell me your thoughts in the comments below! Mucho appreciado.
1. Fragile. Piano tutorial.
As an experiment, I'm just going to let you watch and learn from this video only.
If you miss anything please let me know in the comments! (the three things mentioned above are suggestions, if you'd like anything else please let me know too).
If you're all good with just this video and don't require anything more, please also let me know!
2. Practice the correct preach. A thought on learning in general.
In the post 'Timing is everything' I gave you a quick look at the importance of timing in general and especially keeping a steady tempo.
Music is just not the same when it stammers and stutters. It needs to be smooth. Flowing. Grooving.
The thing that I see with many of my students, when they show me a piece they're working on and play it to me, is a very smoothly grooving first thirty seconds, forty seconds, sometimes even sixty or seventy seconds and then: a stutter.
A hiccup, a mistake or any other unwanted, tiny little unpleasant surprise. Damn. I was so totally enchanted right up until that moment!
What went wrong? She played so beautiful, no flaws, nicely grooving, flowing, no false notes and then suddenly that stop and even a few wrong notes in the voicing! Blown her chance? No. Of course not.
Don't get me wrong, I'm trying to give you tips on getting better here, not pissing you off and making you feel like some kind of miserable failure. That would be the absolute last thing I'd do.
Please don't think that you cannot ever make mistakes and don't over-value them. Mistakes can happen. Sometimes they're not that bad, or don't even matter at all. Actually, they're great to make and learn from. But you'd rather not make 'em too often, right?
So let me give you a thought, or rather, an insight with a golden tip on practicing the correct thing, so you can ultimately limit your mistakes to as few as possible.
Every repetition, good or bad, counts.
What I mean by that is the following: When, in the above example, I see this student of mine play and here her make a mistake like this, one that is kinda 'out of place' or 'strange' because she played the rest of the piece so good, I know immediately what the problem is.
When practicing, she's 'ignored' the most important part of the song: her mistake.
She has been focussing (read: 'effectively' practicing) on the piece that she liked better: the first seventy seconds.
That was the part of the song she fell in love with when first hearing it. This love made it easy for her to find the discipline to learn it, flawlessly and in the correct tempo.
But when 'practicing' the whole piece, every time she got to the point after those first seventy seconds, where that other 'difficult part' came by, she missed it. Incorrect timing, few wrong notes, whatever the mistake was, she IGNORED it.
She never did what she should have done from the very first time she made the mistake: 'isolate' it, correct it and repeat the difficult part CORRECTLY a few times.
The thing that she, and many of you might not realise when practicing, is the above statement:
EVERY REPETITION, GOOD OR BAD, COUNTS.
What this means is that every time you play something, you 'rehearse' it and it becomes a habit. Your brain as well as your muscle memory see it as a 'repetition', ignoring the fact if it is a 'good' or a 'bad' repetition.
In other words: everything you repeat is printed into both your brain and your muscle memory, whether it is good or bad, so every time you make a mistake, this is being 'remembered' as being the 'correct' thing by your unconscious brain and your muscle memory.
Every 'repetition' of a thing that you did not intend to do (play the wrong notes, incorrect timing, whatever) makes it more likely for you to do the same thing, make the same mistake again. Making it a very unwanted habit.
Preventing wrong habits.
- When practicing, focus on the thing that you can NOT yet play, in stead of over-repeating the things that you can already play.
Remember that the goal of 'practicing' / 'rehearsing' / 'studying' is to get better. You can only get better when trying or practicing things that you cannot yet do. Get out of your comfort zone, extend beyond your limitations, overcome them and don't get stuck over-repeating the things that you can already do perfectly. These things will get better too, once you master something that is more difficult.
- Adapt the whole song to the pace (tempo) of the part that you can play LEAST.
If you, like this student of mine, can flawlessly play the first part of a song in the original tempo, but you know there comes a part (after about… seventy seconds?) that you cannot play in this tempo, you'll continuously hiccup at that part, if you start playing in the original tempo.
SLOW the first part DOWN to the tempo in which you can play both the transition to the 'difficult part' as the difficult part itself. This way you'll 'repeat' the correct thing, and speed up the learning process the whole nine yards (not to mention rule out the possibility of NEVER playing the whole song flawlessly. Yes, this happens a lot with people repeating mistakes to many times).
Remember this story and these above two points whenever trying to learn something new. It'll really help you a lot, I promise.
Final thought:
"It's very educational to make mistakes, just don't repeat the same ones too often."
- That one you can tweet the hell out. ;).
In the comments below, please tell me:
- A difficulty that you've stumbled upon that kept tripping you over. Something in life or in a song that you constantly made the same mistake with. Did you make that mistake from the start? Did you try to correct it and repeat the correct way a couple of times? Did that erase the flaw?
Don't be shy, share your story! We could all learn from it.
- Your favourite quote about mistakes (hint: one of my all time favourites: "An expert is a person that has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field". - Niels Bohr. Nice.)
- If you'd be so kind, give me your thoughts on the questions (1,2,3) I asked and, while you're at it:
would you prefer if I would tell you more stories like this in future posts / newsletters (I got pleeeeenty) and if yes would you prefer:
4. Written text, like this one.
5. Me telling you these kind of stories on video.
Any other questions are -as you know- always more then welcome!
Cheers and happy playing.
Coen.
