Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Adult beginners - what is your number one question/problem?

This, in spades. Except I do as others do and play in rhythm, and dynamics and phrasing, from the beginning. But the "no improper tension" is key for me for making anything musical, or playing at tempo, and being able to play for long periods of time - a 3-hour contra dance (not that we play all the time) or someother long gig - with no injuries or fatigue.

Cathy

In regard to slow playing:

I believe playing music gives us some type of endorphin or other brain chemical release that we crave. Playing slow seems to diminish that release causing people to want to play fast, even if they are not ready for the proper speed.

Just a theory of mine...

Interesting thought.
There must be some intrinsic value to playing too fast, because we keep doing it even though it certainly isn't improving our skills.

Mark... I agree! Sometimes, it's a treat to play perhaps, just a few measures of some music you really want to perform, even if played badly. It just feels so right! Occasionally, you will learn something useful at the same time, that you can apply to a piece you're currently "enduring". It also involves hearing and attempting to play it at the "tempo" and style that you have internalized. Conversely, it can lead to somwhat sloppy playing, as I'm finding out from just starting with a teacher after three years of self-instruction. But that little shot of endorphins serves to motivate at some lean musical times!

My teacher says this is all about wanting to prove to your ego that you can. Feeding our egos - while most certainly tempting - does very little to benefit us in the long run; in fact, in this case and most others, giving in to your ego actually works to our detriment.

edit: this is why humility (the arch nemesis of the ego) is said to be the most important attribute for a musician

I still like the brain chemicals hypothesis. I think my ego notices how bad it sounds too fast and with so many errors.

My ego is always in check..he knows he's a hack...

I think there is something to be said for playing a piece faster than normal tempo too. NOT when you're beginning a piece of course, but when you know a piece pretty well, and want to polish it, sometimes playing it well at a "too fast" tempo makes it much easier to play properly and smoothly when you slow it down to the normal tempo. Also, sometimes I make more mistakes playing slowly than I do playing quickly. If I'm frustrated and making the same mistake over and over, sometimes playing a phrase (or bar, or whatever) as quickly as I can a few times makes my brain get out of the way and allows my fingers to just do their jobs. Sometimes when you're going too slowly you over-think things.

More often than not, the reverse is true, If I don't know the piece well enough to practice it at normal or above normal tempo, slowing down is what I need. But every once in awhile fast practice helps me get over a sticking point. Slow practice and fast practice are both tools, and in my opinion they both have their place.

Bob - It sounds like your piano teacher is a bit too much of a Freudian devotee! But in the Freudian realm, a little ego may be necessary to counterbalance the self-doubt imposed by society (the Super-Ego) e.g. "You really can't do it!" ..."You have no talent." Lastly, Freud was a man of little humility, but intense curiousity! He recommended Heroin to his Morphine-addicted medical colleague, who died from that sterling medical advice. Always check the quality of advice ...no matter how well-intentioned!

We are advised to practice slowly, even in "slow motion", but how does one give appropriate "time" to an eighth note compared to a quarter note when going in slow motion?

As a beginner you will soon learn that you can play at any speed but the note values are relative to each other so quarter notes take four to make a hole note so note values never change.

It is like going around a corner on a bike. The corner never changes, but the speed that you take the corner means you lean more or less as you take the same corner everytime at the slow or fast speed.

My No. 1 question:

Why cant I learn faster?

And No 2: If I can learn faster, then how?

You fingers can type or stroke a machine button at between 200 to 300 stroke a second. It usually takes 2 plus years to be able to go that that speed. Funny enough, it isn't the fingers it is the brain that has to learn to go at that speed and it takes on average 2 to 3 years for almost everybody regardless how bright or less bright you are. Next, you should know that if you learned the piano as a kid or you learned to type very fast, and you don't type or play the piano for 10, 20, 30, 60 years and then go back to typing or playing the piano - it will only take you 6 months to be as good as you were when you were 4 years old, 10 years or, whatever. The brain need 6 months to get back to the speed or performance level. So there is no magic to the brain. The good thing is that the brain doesn't really age in the sense that as long as your brain is functioning normally you can start playing the piano at 10 or 70 years old with a normal brain, and the brain will make your fingers go at 200 or 300 strokes a miniute.

So that is why very, very old piansts can play the piano like they did when they were 40 and are now 80. Fingers and brain will work.

I like your ego.

Michael-99 I'm having to have to learn that "slow-down" technique after three years of being on my own and it is a hard thing indeed! But even from the time I started out, I tended to think of measures and time signatures in terms of 3 grade fractions. If a 4/4 time measure has 2 quarter notes and 4 eighth notes, by rational mathematics, you're going to have to play those eighth notes twice as fast as the quarter notes to play them in an equivalent time frame ...no matter how fast you're playing a measure. Thank God, playing music has a fairly simple mathematical basis - if it involved solving differential equations, I'd be out of luck!

Going too fast.

* Going too fast.

* Going too fast.



I'd like hear more on your thoughts about practice speed. When is a person going too fast? What is an appropriate speed? Is too slow, better than too fast? From your emphasis, I take it this is the number one issue leading to poor practice, and if I may extrapolate, wasted effort.


There is only one speed to type or play the piano or to learn a cash register, for example. The speed is that you can never, I repeat ,never play the piano if you make a mistake. Why? Well, when you play the piano and you make a mistake it sounds wrong, it is wrong. To function as a piano player or typist you must do it correctly/without mistakes else it is useless.
So you read and play the music as a beginner slowly without mistakes. No, absolutely no exception. You keep playing the music hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year without mistakes else you have to slow down to the no mistake speed. Effectively if you play the same piece day after day etc. you will be able to play it after months of doing at a greater speed but always without mistakes.

So if you are learning a new piece after 40 years, you still have to play the new piece at a very, very slow speed and gradually increase over many months playing the piece without mistakes. So nothing ever changes.

Beyond the shadow of any doubt. The biggest thing I work on as a beginner. My biggest "problem". Is....

Getting my base brain, my autonomic thinking/nervous system, my nervous system, my muscles, my body, to work each finger independently and in unison, all at the same time.

That is way beyond anything else in difficulty for learning piano myself.

I'm sure many piano teachers have said to their students that like the tortoise and hare ... "Slow and steady wins the race", but sometimes it does seem like an eternal one! I've often wondered that in some future it would be possible to copy someone else's brain patterns down to the neuronal sequences and dendritic layout that you could play piano or any other complex skill exactly like your favorite artist! Kinda like an iBrain mp3 file! "Only $1.29 each!" Probably none of us will be around when that biotechnology exists. I have moments when I wish it did! But I've realized that for the most part, in a complex skill like mastering the piano, that the most satisfaction comes in seeing that the journey really is the destination!

Emissary52,

You are not alone. I had music lessons over the years on a sax so I knew to be very careful about bad habits. Recently I realized that when I was playing hands togeather and there was a tricky measure, I would look at my hands. So I immediately had to fix that and make sure I look at the music and never at my hands. And, of course, I didn't have to look - it was just a bad habit that I created.

The idea that it is wrong to look at the hands is false. You want to be able to read music, and you want to not use hands as a crutch. That is not the same thing as not ever looking at the keyboard.

keystring,
Of course that's true, but the problem is that often beginners rely too much on looking at the keyboard. The constant need to look down and then back up at the score causes them to play the music unevenly, or even worse they lose their place on the score and have to start over. It can be a source of great frustration, especially for beginners. It's not that one should never glance down at the keyboard to get oriented or to make a movement of the hands, it's that you want to develop the skill to be able to do that out of choice rather than necessity.

The beginner's habit of constantly wanting to look down at their hands also prevents them (or at least delays them) from developing a good sense of touch and measurement on the keyboard because they use their eyes when their hands could do just as well. That's why some teachers emphasize playing without looking at the hands. It's so that their students won't develop those bad habits.

Beyond the shadow of any doubt. The biggest thing I work on as a beginner. My biggest "problem". Is....

Getting my base brain, my autonomic thinking/nervous system, my nervous system, my muscles, my body, to work each finger independently and in unison, all at the same time.

That is way beyond anything else in difficulty for learning piano myself.

Well, I will share my story with you how I learned to play the piano. First of all I had a stroke, I have learning difficulties and I am dyslexic. In a nut shell, you should not be having any problems. I am 63 and started to play the piano about a year to a year and a half ago. In my 40s I played in community bands and had a saxaphone teacher but was still a beginner playing the sax. Back to the piano. So I started to play the piano because I had some health problems and couldn't sit up for very long so I thought if I sat at the piano maybe I could distract myself to be able to sit up longer. Back to the piano. So I opened The leila Fletcher piano course book 1. It starts on page 9 with a few easy measures and I played them slowly and without mistakes. Since I could only sit at the piano for about 10 minutes before getting tired, I would sit at the piano for 10 minutes and then return to the couch. I would do this as often as I could throughout the day and would depend on my strengh but I played page 9 everyday where it says very imporantly to - First, play and say the letter-names of the notes. - in other words it is important for you, or me in my case to know the name of the piano key name under your finger that you are play at all times and to say it as you play it.

So from there I played page 9 and the pages that followed always playing the pieces and rewviewing the pieces everyday day after day, every week, week after week reviewing always from page 9 forward. It was always awesome to play those pieces and I enjoyed that very much so much that I fell in love with playing the piano.

When I got to page 24 a shocking thing happened. My brain felt like it was going to explode and I was worried. You see what happened was that for the first time in my life I had to play two notes at the same time without mistake. The first thing that happened was that I would freeze, look at the music, look at my fingers and gradually play the treble clef note and the bass clef note at the same time very slowly. As long as I didn't have to play two notes at the same time, I could do just fine, but if I had to play two notes together, I would freeze and slowly played the notes together very, very slowly. I was not happy with what had happened, but as usual, kept playing all the pieces from page 9 to page 24 many times everyday, day after day for weeks and months and in about 6 months I was able to play that piece okay but cautiously without mistakes. So it took that long to learn to play that little piece. Now is there good news. I finished book 1 and enjoyed it very much and play and reviewed the pieces everyday. To this day I still play book 1 from start to finish and play the best that I can. Of course I can play those pieces quiet well, but of course, it has been a year. When I moved to book 1 of John Thompson, a little more advanced, to my surpise and excitement I could play two hands together slowly but my brain would not seem like it was going to explode. My brain had trained my brain to play notes together. Because I reviewed all the pieces and still do and I had learned those pieces well, it prepared me for the next book. So you see it is a very slow process of training the brain and even with my broken brain, I learned to play hands together without mistakes. You can never give up. Always play without mistakes and always enjoy the journey because it will always be a life long journey.