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Hi guys,

I am (was?) up to the Mexican Hand Clapping Song in Alfred's book #1 when I traded in my cheap keyboard for a digital piano. Up until then I'd practiced routinely... but probably not well - and didn't pay attention to the rhythm and accents of the song. In particular, I treated the quarter rests as dotted quarter rests and the subsequent note as an eighth instead of a quarter.

I started trying to "re-learn" it on piano and found my progress very slow compared to what I was used to. My hands automatically moved towards the old, incorrect rhythm, and even the right rhythm - when I hit it - I didn't particularly enjoy. Even new passages and later bars I seemed to acquire much more slowly than what I used to. Over time I just accepted this was probably just my natural rate for learning a song on piano.

After practicing it, on average, maybe 1/2 an hour a day (in addition to other songs, scales, etc.) I decided to try O Sole Mio... and was remarkably surprised when I picked up the first 8 bars flawlessly in a little over an hour and a half. I'd learned more of "O Sole Mio!" in 90 minutes than what I'd learned playing about 6-8 hours of the Mexican HCS!

Can anyone else relate to this slow experience of "unlearning" bad habits? Did you persist with old songs you'd learned incorrectly, or throw the baby out with the bathwater and try new songs? I am debating whether I should persist with Mexican HCS or keep working at later songs in the book.

Unlearning bad habits is difficult for me too, not so much w/ timing and counting, but w/ fingering.

Yes, I did relearn the passages I had fingered incorrectly. My fingering problems had to do w/ smoothness and setting up for the next move, etc. My teacher helps me a lot w/ this though.

best wishes

Teachers rarely carry over repertoire from a previous teacher for that very reason. Throw the baby out!

sytadel,
that's not a bad habit, that's just a misread piece. You understand how the piece goes now, that's the lesson.

It's a waste of time and effort to unlearn and then relearn it unless you want to perform it, or happen to love it. I would move on to something else for sure.

If you can analyze that you're
using a dotted quarter rest--even
an advanced player wouldn't be
able to do that--you are doing
very well indeed and should not
be concerned.

Any advanced player (and most intermediate ones, too) would understand a dotted quarter rest.

Concern for playing skillfully is a good thing.

Only a troll or a crank would say otherwise.

Steven

Not to worry, you'll get there! It can be a pain to unlearn one thing and replace it with something better, but it's worth it.

One thing, though. When I do something like that I find a few week's break helps. Move on to some other tunes - do them - go back to what you weren't getting right. The break in time helps to see ir fresh.

I second kbk's advice. Put the piece away and move on. This is why it is so important to learn a piece correctly the first time, because it is almost impossible to unlearn the wrong notes or rhythms. Really, the only way to correct this now is to forget it, and maybe come back to it a year later and relearn it. Of course, by then you'll be far beyond this piece so it's probably not even worth doing that.

In the future, be sure to practice slowly enough so that you have time to pay attention to the correct rhythm and notes. Once you can play those accurately, then add the accents, dynamics, and articulations. As you become a better pianist, you'll be able to add these things right from the start, but it is easy to overwhelm yourself with too much detail on the onset of learning a piece. Focusing on notes and rhythms at first will help you to make less mistakes in the learning process.

Very very very hard, at least for me.
I "learned" piano very much on my own -- and 40 years later, I'm still struggling to "unlearn" the wrong basic ways of playing I got into.

Great point. This specific kind of mislearning would seem to be way easier to undo and overcome than most.

P.S. Another thought......just wondering:

For a piece/song like this, what's the difference if you play that particular aspect "wrong"?

Aren't there probably just different versions of it? Maybe even you were playing an alternate version according to what you had in your head, from hearing it. Such songs are usually "folk" things where it's sort of arbitrary how certain aspects are written out. I remember when I first played "Silent Night." The written version had both the melody and rhythm a bit different than usual, and in my naive child mind, I thought, "huh, everybody sings it wrong." Later I realized this was just an alternate version.

For the sake of learning to read music (and for studying other music), it's important to realize that you read it wrong from the book. But I don't see what difference it makes for playing the piece. I don't even see why you shouldn't be able to just keep playing it the "wrong" way, if you like it better. And from what you said about not "enjoying" it the 'right' way, I would guess that you DO just like it better the "wrong" way, and maybe the 'wrong' way really is better.

Here's a thing that I remember from when I was a kid: In one of the John Thompson books, there's "Shortnin' Bread." A friend played it at school, in one of those "talent shows." He played the rhythm ALL WRONG -- basically, syncopating a bunch of extra stuff. (The written version had almost no syncopation.) I was open-mouthed dumbfounded, literally. I had the grace not to say anything to him, since he seemed happy enough and the audience liked it fine. But since we had the same teacher, I did mention it to her, and she said, "Yes, I told him, but he keeps doing it wrong."

Years later, I realized that what he did was improve the piece -- even at the age of just 10 or whatever we were. The written version in that Thompson book was just 1 version -- and it wasn't a great version; it was very simplified. Update: The kid wound up becoming a big guy at MTV. And I, who played it "correctly," am just doing this.

If I'm right that this is a song that just has alternate versions, I would advise, sure, realize that you read it wrong, but play it however you like it, including even making other changes from the written version if you would like.

(OK, let the debates begin.)

I had assumed the OP had played the piece how it really goes rather than how it was notated. What's to debate apart from the bizarre number of posts you've accrued in 17 days? Hey, where's your life man?

I don't understand your point. I don't understand how it's for or vs. what I said.
If you're saying you don't like my posts, don't read them.
If you're wondering about my life, no need.

What's to debate is my point.

I agree with your main point, MarkCannon, that often these folk tunes are simplified or alternate rhythmic versions. If a student is playing Silent Night and it's written as 3 even quarters instead of dotted quarter-eighth-quarter (as it is usually sung), I will generally point out to them when I give it to them that they simplified the rhythm, but I give them the OK to play it as it should sound. Or, if I have a version with the correct rhythm, this is a great way to introduce the new note values to them by how they sound.

However, if a student is changing something that say, Chopin wrote I would have a hard time letting that go. It is one thing to play rubato, it is another to play the incorrect rhythm.

However, I thought from the post that the OP wanted to unlearn an incorrectly learned rhythm, whether it was how it sounds in its common usage or not, and not questioning whether or not he should unlearn it or leave it.

That is truly a breath of fresh air coming from a teacher.
Don't get me started.... I think the opposite approach not only stifles creativity, but it makes the student wrongly question his sense of music.


....and that adds creativity on your part.
"Thinking outside the box," and utilizing the personal things that happen with a particular student as a takeoff for something new and useful.
P.S. One thing I like about how you put it -- and which I hope others will catch -- is that you're acknowledging the view that maybe the score has it 'wrong', and the student's instinct wants to 'correct'/improve it. And IMO that should rarely be discouraged for the sake of playing 'correctly' some alternate version that happens to be printed.


Absolutely. As I said, I'm assuming that what we're talking about it something very very different than that.


Yes -- but I thought his wanting to do that was maybe misguided and based on some assumptions about what's 'right' or 'wrong.' I was trying to do him the favor of letting him know that maybe he was going on good instincts in the first place.

I do exactly the same.

I assumed I would get yelled at for saying it's OK and even advisable for him to just play it "wrong."
"Debate" was intended as a euphemism.

But mainly I realized I was introducing a new aspect to the discussion, and one on which there would be opposing sides.

Hey Mark I considered saying what you did about it's your own version and how that doesn't matter.. but decided to be brief for once

But since you've started it, my students change pieces all the time especially in the first year when the pieces are more ummmmm inspiring of improvement. It's really an understanding in my studio that the very end of a piece can be "improved" or personalised. My strongest students are usually the ones that do it the most. I'm talking extra notes or chords or re-voiced chords, not just the situation where a student makes the rhythm more authentic as this is always a good idea.

I always point out the deviation for the sake of understanding the written score, and they always say "yes but it sounds better my way" I just love kids. Exceptions: when beginning a piece that is for an exam or competition i warn them to remember to play as written and explain why. And if I find their alteration tasteless I'll tell them why without mincing words, but again it's really their decision. Of course as they progress there are fewer pieces that want improving. They seem to understand that Bach say is not usually improved by their efforts, but I still wouldnt stop them.

When I started teaching I didnt know that this would happen so it was pretty funny. I had only one student and each week I'd write a piece or 2 to teach him the next thing, and he'd come back the next lesson and play My pieces with his improvements. Hehe