Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum One Week Off - disaster

Having just returned from a holiday and not played for one full week I am rusty. This made me think.

I play by ear generally but If I could read music much better and continue to improve on my reading , a week off wouldn't matter because all I would have to do is sit down and play.

Am I right?

There is certainly nothing wrong with to improving your sight-reading skills. Might be a good thing to add to your ever-developing skillset.

I practice only sight reading for an entire practice session one day a week, then again two times per week as part of my daily routine.

Be patient with yourself.

Glen

not sure i see the correlation myself. I feel rusty after a holiday and I play by reading. Learning to sight read better is never wasted time in my opinion.

Rusty is rusty. You can be rusty at reading music, too

It's not unusual to be a little rusty. It's also not unusual to take 30 years off and then still be able to play the things you learned 30 years ago. After a short break it takes less time to come back to non-rusty. After a long one it takes longer to learn other things than it took to learn the stuff you can still play, although the passage of time is absolutely correlative to the fact that you're older and your physical body has changed

If you want to learn to read it's a great goal. But I don't think it will make a difference in the rusty - jmo.

Cathy

<<for one full week I am rusty. This made me think.

....I play by ear generally>>

After a week away from the piano, I'm sure I'd be a little stale as well. Unfortunately, these seem to crop up regularly.

Is this a memory issue? Do you mean that you'd forgotten the pieces you learnt by ear after 1 week away?

You should be able to take a one week break easily in your stride from a memory perspective. I've found the best way to achieve this when learning a piece is to incorporate increasing breaks (1, 2, 4 days, then 1,2, & 4 weeks etc ) away from the piece. Recently, I found it took around 40 minutes to get a piece "back" that I hadn't played for 4 months (but this was after 7 or more cycles of study).

I find if I only have a single cycle of study on a piece and drop it for 4 months then it becomes a "train wreck" and takes much more work to get back (but still a lot less than when first learnt).

Cathy, my physical body has changed!!
I was on a cruise from Venice to Istanbul and those cruise ships really lay on the food!

So yes, I have changed - around the waist!

Taking a short break is often beneficial because it allows time for the brain to sort out all the complex information that comprises playing the piano.

To illustrate, I had an adult student who struggled with learning a particular piece that was slightly over her head, but that she really wanted to learn.

After working on it for probably 6 weeks, she disappeared for 3 weeks due to a family emergency. She said she did not touch a piano during that time.

When she came back for lessons, she threw the books on the floor, and said that it was hopeless, now that she had lost 3 weeks, she would never learn that song, etc.

I responded by asking her to play it. She started playing it, and played it much better than before.

What I learned from that incident is that she was probably flooding her brain with information, without allowing for "digestion" of the info.

After a short break, you can be a little rusty on the exact note-for-note memory part, but somehow, on the overall playing part, there can be an improvement.

So I tell my students that taking a break from a piece is not doom, but can actually be helpful in the learning process, (providing the learning process was basically correct in the first place).

ps...I do not tell all my students this, because I fear that certain individuals will take it as an opportunity to not practice much at all!

Well, there you go!

Cathy

I'm with Rockett88... after I don't play for a day or so I seem to have made some improvements in my playing. Maybe I need to stop playing altogether!!

Take care!

Rick

No Rick...you play too good. Honest.

I think in part, it depends on how far along you are to begin with. Then maybe it depends on what you're playing and how far along you were with that.

I've only ever had a max of six days not playing. In fact I've only ever NOT played for those six days since I got my piano (my personal goal is to play everyday, unless I'm physically away from my /a piano). I didn't notice any difference when I came back. But maybe I'm still too new for six days to make any difference?

Wow, thanks for the complement, Rocket88! My goal is to be able to play half as good as you before I die!!

Take care!

Rick

My experience has been that this sort of thing is really serendipitous, or perhaps depends heavily on where in the learning process my brain is when I take the break. Sometimes a few days off leaves me feeling so completely klutzy and rusty that it can take another week just to get over the interruption, and other times it's clear that my mind used the vacation time for some essential housekeeping, because I come back to the piano with notably improved skills.

It would be nice to know how to distinguish the difference between my brain being vacation-ripe vs. times when it will suffer vacation-rot.

When you figure that out tangleweeds...please let us all know!!! Love your descriptive words for that dilemma...vac ripe vs rot. Love it!!

I have the same experience. Some say it's because your last practice was either good or bad and you have muscle memory. I read music--so I know my reading is not rusty...it's the eye/hand coordination. Sometimes my fingers just have minds of their own...so I don't think there is an advantage between reading music and not when it comes to a lapse in playing.

Great subject though...interesting to see how people handle it for sure!

Nancy