Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum "Eureka" Moments?

This is probably really obvious to everyone but me, but...

I was practicing playing random major scales. The program would give me the key signature, and I had to play the scale, but there was a time limit to start. I was having trouble deciphering everything quickly enough to know where the sharps and flats were before starting. After a while, I realized they're really predictable. Sharps start on the left and go from the left black key in the group of 3, then the left black key in the group of two, then next from the left on the group of three, then the next from the left in the group of two, then the last in the group of three. Then you're out of black keys, so you go to the white key left of the group of 3, and then the white key to the left of the group of two. Flats are the same, but they start from the right side instead of the left side. Realizing this made it so much faster to see a key signature, count that there are x number of sharps/flats, and automatically know where they are on the keyboard without even thinking about it.

Defintely not obvious to me---and definitely useful.

Thanks for sharing

I'm curious if anyone has had an insight they might like to share that others newer to the learning process might benefit from. Maybe the "eureka" moment that made a piece "click" or enabled some sort of rapid progress to be made--or some technique to fall into place.

I had two such moments yesterday during and after a lesson.

The first was very simple: I had been struggling to play an uptempo passage. My teacher suggested a looser wristed approach. This immediately brought the part to a presentable state. I generally have a fairly light touch but was tensing up in anticipation of difficulty---Perhaps the worst thing one could do.
Simple, tangible, immediate impact.

The other was after sharing with my teacher that I thought one of the pieces I've been working on sounded poor. She disagreed and suggested I record myself. For some reason I had never done so. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that she was right---and more importantly-- I was also able to make some minor tempo/dynamic tweaks to other pieces for an immediate impact. Wish I'd been doing this all along.

I realize that neither of these examples are novel or new ideas---low hanging fruit---but perhaps someone else may find this useful.

I'm curious to hear what others might have to share.

Recording yourself can be very discouraging early on, You picked a good time to start.

When it seems like small pieces of advice are having a big effect, you could argue that that's because of all our previous work.

enw10 - Thanks for sharing about the flats and sharps. I didn't know that. That's cool!
Antihero - Talking about recording yourself. When you have been working on a piece for awhile, sometimes you don't really see the improvement where your teacher can. What I do is record a new piece fairly early in the learning process and then again when I pass the piece. Sometimes I'll record it a few times in the middle of my learning it. I save all these recordings on my computer in a folder with the date that I passed it with the name of the piece. I also make a paper copy of the piece and write the dates that I started and finished it and keep it in a three ring binder by date and year. I then have all pieces I've played in one location and can go to the recording if I want to or just play from my binder. It's an encouragement to see my progress this way. In January I will be starting my third year.

I'm curious if anyone has had an insight they might like to share that others newer to the learning process might benefit from. Maybe the "eureka" moment that made a piece "click" or enabled some sort of rapid progress to be made--or some technique to fall into place.

My eureka moment came years ago, but a book I bought recently, (How to Blitz Sight Reading by Samantha Coates), reminded me of it because the author had formalised what I had discovered back then. It was simply that for sight reading (and playing in general), physically understanding the rhythm is a major factor. While we are taught to count, and initially encouraged to count out loud, it is often too demanding to count, think, look ahead and play, all at the same time. So recognising various rhythms needs to become as second nature as playing in keys with accidentals.

In the aforementioned book, the student taps out the treble with the right hand and the bass with the left (while counting). Seems easy enough until you hit your own personal wall. For some of these exercises, it might take me several days of test and sleep before the rhythm becomes more natural, and only then is it any use trying to do the actual exercise as a sight reading exercise.

As a side benefit, doing tapping exercises that were a little advanced of my sight reading level, made exercises at my actual level seem much easier.

What I have found during the journey, is that my eureka moments are generally me just finally getting something my teacher has already been telling me for ages.

Thousands of these moments will combine to make you a great player!

AOTW Achievement of The Week is filled with moments like this.

I'm not sure what AOTW means. Could you please elaborate?

One of my Eureka moments (I've had a few, but they didn't always lead to much) was from watching a Graham Fitch video on practicing.

If you found that video worthwhile, I just wanted to mention that Fitch has an entire series on practicing of multiple parts and volumes. Some are free to read for Amazon Prime members.

Thank-you, that is very interesting. Will have a look although I don't have Amazon Prime. I have watched a number of his videos and kept links to them for later use, but so far haven't needed to go back - his approach makes things 'sink in' rather well - kind of slow absorption, but goes in quite deep (or maybe I've just forgotten what they were about. )

Slow practice.

When I practise, I slow down till I don't make mistakes. I read somewhere that a repeated mistake will take a lot of practice to get rid of it.

This thread here.