blog

The "Special Teams" of Piano Technique

2011-01-03T17:32:56Z

Anyone over the age of 12 has heard one of the most popular New Year's resolutions of all time: "This is the year I'm going to exercise and get in shape." No further comments needed on this one...

It does, however, bring to mind a few threads following my piece from January 1. As we begin our New Year ventures by envisioning the "end" of a new semester or period of study—culminating in a jury, a performance, a recital, or even the mastery of a piece in the world of amateur musicians)—be sure to include the role of "getting in shape at the piano" (i.e. technical work).

I believe technical work is an essential part of every musician's daily diet. If you are among those students who recognize technical gaps in your playing, this is the time to address them and work to assimilate these fundamentals. If you are among those fortunate students who have already integrated solid technical fundamentals—such as agility, independence of fingers, and tonal variety, among others—consider an analogy from football at this time: special teams.

Their name originates from the fact that they are part of neither the "offense" or "defense" teams of the overall football team. (My apologies to all those who know the game inside out!) But their role can be crucial to the score at the end of the game. Special teams players include field-goal kickers and the kick-off receivers. Without them, no team is complete.

In a weekend of a series of football games, my mind wandered: what are the "special teams" of piano technique? Trills, octaves, double notes, sixths, broken octaves, voicing technique, tonal development... certainly more than in football!

Many students assume that if they have agility and strength at the keyboard, they have the "complete technique." This is short-sighted and misinformed.

Here's where I circle back to the New Year's exercise resolution: how about identifying those "special teams" of your piano technique you'd like to acquire this year and get busy learning them? How about one a month: e.g. January, focus on trills; February, octaves; March, double notes; etc., etc.

It can bring new life into your learning and practice—and it holds the additional benefit of "cross-training." (More on that in an upcoming post.)

Back to the game... someone has just thrown an interception!

Kick-off photo credit: acaben
Field goal photo credit: Yourdon

The End Lies in the Beginning

2011-01-01T23:57:00Z

I have been on hiatus from blogging the last several months. Writing, immersion seminars and summer courses here at Studio 1301, a new class of international students in my CCPA studio and the 11th season of Rush Hour Concerts at St. James Cathedral, with its ever-expanding energy and growth, have kept me away from this space.

The recent holiday season and its accompanying break, combined with all the associations of New Year's, have drawn me to "crank up my computer" (as an old friend used to say) and write down a few thoughts in the first moments of this bright, young and new year.

One crisp little phrase has been roaming around my consciousness since early December; it finds its rightful claim on this particular day:

"The end lies in the beginning."

The Romans—of course—had an even crisper way of saying it; it was the mantra of my kids' high school, where I first heard it.

The end lies in the beginning. We've just finished a year of living; many who read this blog have just finished the fall semester of study, practicing, performing, and teaching.

We're beginning a new year today. What "end" do you envision for various beginnings you have signed onto today?

Rather than wandering into the resolution cliché, how about thinking of the "end" of a certain project, skill, way of thinking, of expressing yourself verbally, or in writing?

For those music students/majors who have just recently finished fall semester juries, what "end" do you envision in May of this year, and to that end, how will you begin your new semester of study?

What have you learned from the ending of last year that can inform how you go about things this year?

Take a moment in this holiday time of winter break and gather up your assessments, your learning. Sketch out what your "ending" of next term might look like, and work backwards towards its beginning.

Happy New Year! Here's to success-contained beginnings!

Calendar photo credit: rmkoske
New Year photo credit: sukanto_debnath

Let's Hear it for the Background

2010-05-13T15:40:00Z

I have been traveling in Spain these last few days and have learned a good many things. In Madrid, I visited the Reina Sofía museum, Spain's national museum of modern and contemporary art.

In it, Picassos, Mirós and Dalis abound, along with countless other masters of this genre. It is a treasure! I last visited this museum three years ago, but it wasn't until this trip that I understood why I find the works of Joan Miró so appealing: it is his backgrounds!

The colors are so vibrant, and even if a background reads "blue," close examination reveals that there are a mix and blend of colors that contribute to the energy and vibrancy of the "blue." I saw that the vibrancy of the background made whatever subject Miró painted in the foreground just pop with energy and interest.

Of course this brought to mind the role of the Alberti bass in the Viennese classics of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. I had learned the importance of the Alberti bass many years ago from Alfred Brendel, including how to play it technically. The effectiveness and uniqueness of the melody line above is directly affected by the energy and vibrancy of the Alberti bass "background" below it.

I love it when the visual informs the auditory!

And here, for fun, for all of you who work with the metronome (and I hope there are many of you!)—from the same museum, a picture of Man Ray's famous work.

Adios!

Reina Sofía photo credit: Miolo

Jury and Recital Preparation: The Final Days

2010-05-10T17:45:00Z

If nothing else: think pasta!

In the days leading up to your recital or jury, get plenty of rest, exercise regularly, get outside for air and sunlight and eat plenty of carbohydrates and protein. Don't forget to eat! Pasta, potatoes or rice accompanied by chicken or fish are especially good the night before a daytime jury. If you have an evening performance, it's good to eat pasta and protein for lunch, rest a bit in the afternoon and then "go to work" at night. Bananas are prolific backstage at The Chicago Chamber Musicians' concerts; oranges are popular as well for a burst of energy before going on stage.

Here, once again, the parallel between musicians and athletes is clear: tennis players have a very strict regimen of what they eat when on the day of a match. Musicians can learn a thing or two from this!

All in all, you want to feel like you have performed your recital or jury program a hundred times before the day of—and you will have, if you have followed my route outlined in previous postings. You will be very comfortable with all aspects of it, and, at the same time, you will be open to new insights and growth all along the way—including the concert or jury itself!

Good luck!

Plate photo credit: Jovike

Jury and Recital Preparation: The Last Two Weeks

2010-05-08T16:10:00Z

In the week or two before a concert or jury, you are clearly ready, if not eager to play.

Keep things fresh by reinforcing your work in the practice room with score study away from your instrument. This helps you see and understand your pieces from another angle, and you'll find them growing in new ways once again. Continue to practice "smart," doing whatever "housekeeping" you deem necessary, and play through your program once or twice during the week. By this time, you should be able to do a lot of practice in your head. (More on this another time!)

It's also great to find a friend you can play for—anyone who will listen! If you can't find anyone during this busy time, perform for your tape recorder. It's amazing what the pressing of the "on" button does to create an atmosphere of performance!

Score photo credit: Alfstorm

Jury and Recital Preparation: The Month Before

2010-05-06T17:15:24Z

Ideally, from about a month before a recital or jury, your program should be ready to go—this means that if you had to play your program then, you could pull it off with a good degree of success. You want it well internalized by then: memorized (of course) and an identity with the emotional intention of the music well established. The hard work of early learning stages are now behind you: you have mastered the notes, the technical challenges and the musical style. Now comes the fun part!

In the month before your performance or jury, you want to be focusing on "performance." Imagine that you are taking the program "on tour." You will want to balance what I like to think of as "daily housekeeping chores" with the continually evolving vision of each piece. In other words, don’t "perform" each piece daily, and don’t just practice parts of it, or play it through slowly. You need to mix it up.

Some pieces will need sheer stamina to perform: if it is Bach’s Goldberg Variations, you will want to build up performance stamina several months beforehand—to be able to focus 90' without interruption! Concerti fall into this category as well. For these, you’ll want to "run through" those parts of the piece which you can group together, gradually combining the parts. For example, in a sonata or concerto, practice performing the last movement alone a great deal until it feels "easier" than the preceding movements. Then, perform it with the second movement attached, and finally, from the first movement forward.

For average recital and jury length pieces, alternate days on which you choose to run through certain one or two works—i.e. "perform" them—as if in concert. Then, on the next day, focus on the parts of those pieces you "performed" the previous day which need more attention, or attention in a new way: perhaps you’ve discovered a new fingering which gives you a better way of executing the music. Or perhaps certain passages are getting "tired" and a bit sloppy and really need a good "woodshedding"—taken apart technically and cleaned up. Perhaps you’ve discovered a new and better way to "connect" sections of a piece and want to reinforce those transitions. The list is endless, as are the ways to practice in this "housekeeping" mode.

Divide your program in half, or thirds, and alternate performance with housekeeping practice. Every fourth or fifth day, play the entire program through: warm up well, as you would before a jury or concert, and then run through a performance of the entire program, pretending, say, you are playing at Symphony Center in Chicago, or Carnegie Hall in NYC, or the Purcell Room in London—each time, a different city in your mind. It will keep things fresh and you will continue to learn from each "performance." This in turn, will inform your "housekeeping" practice on "off days."

Carnegie Hall piano photo credit: Vidiot

Annual Rituals of Music Schools: Jury and Recital Final Preparation Tips

2010-05-03T17:30:00Z

While every school and university honors the year's work with final exams, we in music schools follow the additional ritual of spring recitals and/or juries. There are of course several common areas of both of these forms of "tests," but because juries and recitals involve performance, they require a slightly different approach.

As many I know are now involved in the final stages of preparation for either juries or spring recitals, I thought it might be useful to jot down a few "final preparation" tips in the next series of posts.

Let me begin by saying a few words about juries vs. recitals:

Juries are the "odd animal" here—neither playing for your teacher, nor playing for the public, you are playing before a panel of faculty and you know you may be interrupted at any moment to go on to the next piece. In fact, when you think about a jury, you are likely thinking, "Okay, I'll probably only be asked to play two movements of my sonata, because there isn't time for all three—and maybe just the first half of the Bach Fugue..."

Students usually give a good amount of time and energy to thinking about what the jury panel will ask them to play.

I suggest you scrap that strategy. It's a much more efficient use of your time in the short run to focus your energy on playing your best in the jury format. And, if you choose, you can use the jury format and experience as another useful step on your journey to become a concert pianist—i.e. someone who "works on the stage."

I would prepare your jury as if you were going to give a small or medium sized concert, depending on the length of the requirements. The key word here is concert. Prepare for it and go into it as if it were a recital. When you are interrupted by the faculty monitor with the next request, consider it "applause" from the audience, take a few moments to shift gears for the next piece (you can even imagine you have walked off and on the stage), and begin the next piece when you are ready.

I'll talk more about the stage in future posts and seminars, but for now, work on your paradigm shift: use any time you are on the stage to help make you a better performer. Like anything else, mastery of this takes practice, too!

Later this week, I will focus on the timeframe of a few weeks before.

Piano photo credit: Tunachilli

Who Doesn't Love a Full Moon?

2010-04-23T14:30:00Z

I've seen a lot of full moons over time—they tend to fill my kitchen with light right before I plan to go to bed, and keep me mesmerized in their unique light for over half an hour.

However, it was not until my spring break in the desert last month that I allowed myself the time to "experience" the moon in its full cycle of growth. It taught me a great deal about "commitment" and about the relentlessness of Nature, and it enabled me to make connections to my studio work.

I arrived in the desert on a night of the full moon. Extraordinary! The next night, it was gone. Nothing for two weeks, until, suddenly, without an email or a neon sign announcing its arrival, it was there again: this time, a barely perceptible sliver of luminous white light—a pencil-thin crescent, low in the sky, directly opposite the setting sun. I was told this was a “new moon”—that it rises as the sun is setting very low in the sky and each night grows a little fuller and a little higher in its rise, remaining a little longer in the sky before setting.

I made a point then to connect each sunset with the new moon and mark its progress. And, true to form, it performed exactly as described. I was struck by the noticeable difference each evening in the sky: fuller, higher and longer in the night sky. A city dweller all my adult life, I'd never had the opportunity to watch a moon grow this way. Life’s busyness or the weather impeded a daily monitoring. As I watched the moon grow to magnificent full, I was reminded of the ancient calendar-keepers. And I was reminded of something else:

We are all part of Nature, related (in this case) to the energy of the moon and its work in Nature. I took a cue from its “commitment” to its physical role in the natural world: steady, reliable, progressing in an ordered, healthy fashion, moving forward—no shortcuts, no artificial hurrying to get to the full stage… each step of growth built on the previous… no self-judging.

My thoughts turned to the learning and growth process in humans: all real learning is happening all the time if you are of a mindset to be open to it and surrounded by it. I was struck by the relentlessness of natural processes—the moon moves forward in its cycles regardless of the world's daily events. And so it is with learning, with practicing, with building a technique at the piano, or acquiring any skill, physical or intellectual.

If you have a chance, watch the moon's work, and take it into the practice room!

P.S. I can't wrap up my Spring Break series without one last tennis analogy, as the clay court season in Europe marches toward the French Open at Roland Garros next month. I watched Rafa Nadal win the title in Monte Carlo last weekend and was reminded of a quote about him in last summer’s New York Times Magazine feature.

Rafa's coach, his uncle Toni Nadal, said, "You play like you train... [Rafa] got used to training as though each point were the last one.”

Focus, commitment, working “white hot”... plenty of analogies to practicing for musicians. More on this to come!

Want to Stay in the Zone? Think Spring

2010-04-16T18:35:00Z

Midway through spring break last month, I was given a great new fitness book by a friend who keeps her finger on the pulse of all things interesting. Younger Next Year, by Chris Crowley and Dr. Henry Lodge, it turns out, is not just another “how to get results with minimal investment of time and commitment” tome, the likes of which seem to flood the market and our culture.

Its approach is terrific: it's co-written by a 70-year-old who is "getting fit" for the first time in his life, and a 40-something doctor who is documenting the process, explaining each step of the way from a medical and scientific perspective.

Here's what I like about the book: it's practical, it's real (it's based in a real human's experience and his doctor's scientific knowledge), and it draws from Nature in many of its principles.

In one section, we learn how Nature sends different signals to living organisms: a fawn born in the fall will take its food and store it for a long winter ahead, for survival through semi-hibernation. Yet a fawn born in the spring will take that same food and turn it into energy for new growth—in tissue, muscle, bone—all of which will help it to fend off enemies, hunt, and thrive through the warmer months.

The authors' point is that to keep growing, we humans need to keep our bodies in a "spring mode," particularly once we reach mid-age. Otherwise, Nature will respond to inactive signals and turn on the "hibernation" switch, which, from middle age on can read "decay!"

My mind turned instantly to the parallel again to athletic endeavour in a professional sense, which, of course for me, includes the work of the artist-athlete. It reinforces my central point that technical training does not stop when one arrives at the undergraduate or graduate level of schooling, nor when when one becomes "professional." On the contrary, it needs to continue regularly. It needs to stay "in the spring mode" and avoid "winter" at all costs. Or, to put it more crisply: You can’t stay in the winter mode if you want to remain "in the zone" technically.

So, whether in the gym or in the practice room... "think spring!"

Fawn photo credit: Slopjop

Moving Beyond Your Comfort Zone

2010-04-09T14:10:00Z

Having just posted a piece on "creating your own posse," I thought I'd share an example of how I followed my own advice. Last month, in order to take full advantage of the warmth and sun of La Quinta and the presence of a pool 75 feet away from my casita, I hired an aquatics workout trainer to work with me every other day.

Chanel joined my "posse" here, equipping me with new tools and a new regimen in a new environment: water. Not that water is a “new” environment for me—I love the water, both being in it and around it. I connect instantly to its energy. It connects me to the "Ur-energy" of our very first environment, when we were floating in prenatal bliss inside our mothers' bodies, with room service 24/7.

I'm always happy in the water—I spent a lot of time in it as a kid on swim teams, and in the summer, just horsing around. My body remembers what it is to "train" in the water and when I push the "stroke" button, it goes back to old long and lean strokes, triggering the endorphins that elicit well-being.

It's a great synergy.

Lately, I'd been more like a dolphin in the water: a few strokes here and there, but mostly just moving around, following my body in a playful way, as it released winter tension and resumed the coordination of lungs in liquid. But, in my second session with Chanel, I had an "Aha!" moment. After the flexibility and mild-resistance segments, she moved me into "cardio" and asked me to swim "as fast as I could" for four laps. She reinforced this by swimming alongside me and pushing me forward like a coxswain on a crew boat. "No problem," I thought, "I’ve swum laps all my life." Then, I realized that while I had swum laps all my life, it had been a long time since I had asked my body to swim as fast as it could! The cardio aspect kicked in immediately and then came the "Aha!" moment:

"To grow and gain strength, you have to push yourself—yes, even in the comfort zone of the water!"

"Of course!" you're thinking. "Where have you been in the last two decades of the fitness craze?" (In the studio, at the piano, but I digress...)

Truly, I knew this maxim and lived it daily in my work at the piano—but somehow, when it showed itself again in an environment I'd always viewed as a playground, it hit home more succinctly: you can still have a playground and grow.

And, of course, it took only a nanosecond for me to bring that connection to my work with my graduate and undergraduate students: you have to keep pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone to keep growing! Not to the point of pain (and this is where so many students go awry done the path of injury into the house of tendonitis), but to the point of having extended the challenge a bit more each day, whether it's faster octaves, longer trills, a Beethoven sixteenth-note passage with a stronger "Beethoven tone," or a truer legato in the left hand.

The gym, the pool, the track, the mountain path...they all have something to teach us about our work as musicians and "artist-athletes." I invite you to make the connection and bring it to the practice room!