players-blog

3. Sight Reading

Sun, 15 Mar 2015 23:31:30 +0100

3. Sight Reading (daily routine)

Sight reading should be a daily habit, even only a few lines of music. Ideally a page or more daily is recommended. A highly respected teacher friend of mine told me that 5 mins. per day would have yield a significant result in as little as a month. Reasons for doing this daily include growing in one's fluency with getting the music off the page and through the fingers into music accurately. This is especially useful for things like accompanying other musicians (aka 'Collaborative Piano') which I have done over the past few years with singers, violinists and choirs.nbsp; Doing this daily sharpens the ability to read so that the music is able to be played at closer to the intended tempo with fewer 'clams'(sour notes according to Billy Joel!).
   So, the effective sight reading process ideally starts with a '1 minute analysis' of the piece of music. A first main thing to look for are the key(s) of the music, so what scale(s) is it using- (key signature and starting/ending notes of the piece), then visualize that scale when you play the piece. But before starting, also check how the clefs are thru the piece; always treble on top, bass on bottom or other? Also, time signature, so # of beats in the bar and what kind(1/4 or 1/8th). Then note the overall style, smooth legato, unslurred detached, staccato? What's the LH style? Solid chords, arpeggiod, Alberti bass(root, 5th, 3rd, 5th often, in sequence), or other patterns?One more thing to look for which may be helpful is hand position changes(if there are only a few of them). That's probably most of what you want to take the time to absorb before embarking on your reading of the music to play it.
   Sight reading is most effective if done with music which is 2 grade levels or more below your current piano playing ability level.
   Hope you enjoy your daily 5 minute cruises!

#2. NEW Memory work.

Sat, 26 Jul 2014 23:43:50 +0100

2.- NEW memory work

In the daily practise routine, if there is enough time, new memory work should be a part. For me this takes between 15 and 30 minutes. I usually try to get a page done for the day. This may need to be reinforced for 1 to 3 days following to consolidate the work.

I'll do a phrase or 2 at a time, often needing to play the first few beats a number of times to get started, then adding the rest of the phrase and playing over and over until I can do it without error, and then a few more times to do it in a steady-ish rhythm without errors 3 or more times. Then I move on to the next phrase do that until memorized, add it to the first, play those 3 or so times with no errors and so on until the page is absorbed into my (thick) cranium cells. I'll get the page playable with few to no errors 3 or more times and then I'm done for the day.

For the subsequent days, I check that the page is playable with a relatively steady beat and few to no errors 3 times. If not, I repeat the memorization process in the above paragraph as required to re-do the memory work of that page(and any previous pages). When I can start the process with few to no errors on any day, then I can tackle the next page until the song is done. When a song is able to be played with correct notes, I find there's often required a week or more of doing it 2 or more times by memory daily until it can be played with a steady beat and up to tempo. The more times I do it per day, the sooner the song becomes memorized. Performance readiness for a newly memorized song happens after a week or so of playing it daily up-to-tempo.

#1- Memory Songs

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 06:16:12 +0100

Regarding #1- This is an area which gets missed in young players practicing because they get absorbed in the tasks of the week as assigned by their teacher. But if dedicated time is set aside daily, even in a modest amount of say 10 minutes, 3 songs can be reviewed(re-played) which the player or student(is that you?!..) did in past months or even years.

An important part of this module of practice is to actually make up the list that contains songs previously mastered which the player either wishes to be able to play for people or themselves, or which the player believes others will enjoy for all the various reasons that people enjoy music. When I first made up my list of maybe 10 songs and pieces, I did it with the titles down a column on the left and then 10 or 20 columns to the right of the longest song title for dates that I rehearsed the songs. I stuck a new date in the first column to the right of the song titles and began checking off the songs in the list as I played them. So after a few days I’d checked off the whole column of the last date and put in a new date and began checking those off as I did them. Doing this put me in far better shape to perform than I’d previously been, and has enabled me to play cocktail parties on just a few days notice where over an hour of material has been required to be played with a fair polish on it.

Far too often, players or students let previously mastered material slide, never to be brought back into performance shape. This is a sad waste of precious effort and energy I believe. As players, we often get tired of music that we’ve worked on enough to polish, forgetting that the excitement we once experienced as we brought that music into near perfection, is a sharable feeling that gets passed on to people that we would play the pieces or songs for!

Practise Tips

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:54:07 +0100

the Daily Practise Routine.

In a piano player's daily routine should be a number of items which are sometimes not made clear during lessons. They are:
1. Memory songs (one's Repertoire)
2. NEW memory work (partial or full memorization of a page or    so of a song or piece of music)
3. Sight reading music
4. Technique (scales, chords, arpeggios, octaves, riffs, etc.)
5. the songs which are in process of being perfected(at least     1 at all times)
6. Recording- an optional item, only for when songs have been     perfected AND steeped for awhile.

Regarding #2- this often gets neglected from a players routine, perhaps because of thinking there's nothing the player would like to memorize at this time, or they just don't think of doing it very often. However, there are at least 3 good reasons for doing it anyway. One is that a large repertoire becomes an important factor for success in increasing the likelihood for a person to be called upon to play at any given time, as well as for the player's success in being able to play material which would be pleasing to the listening group whomever that may consist of, or for whatever purpose (fulfilling a 'musical need' shall we say..). A third reason is the simple exercise of it; exercising one's mind. Like any physical activity, this mental activity serves to strengthen and practise the neuro-pathways which are involved in memory, and enable increased speed and efficiency in future efforts of memory work.
   So when this is brought into the practical application, let's say the player(maybe you?) memorizes a page a week only in this manner, that becomes approximately 50 pages of music in a year. Now depending on a person's level, that would amount to an average of 10 to 50 songs per year. This is around an hour of music. In 2 years, the player would be able to play their own concert if they maintained their repertoire of memorized songs! And they would be able to eliminate a number of their less favorite or non-applicable numbers! The challenge of maintaining a Repertoire is a subject for some discussion also. I'll do that in another post.. Play hard!

Trills

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:48:20 +0100

from http://web.ncf.ca/bf250/speed.html

Keyboard Technique - Speed

I often get asked how I can 'move my fingers so fast'. I don't feel that my fingers are fast: listen to Artur Schnabel or Vladimir Horowitz - I grew up with their sound. Anyway, the simple answer to what I can do is practise - practise until all movements seem entirely memorised by fingers and arms, so that I do not have to be consciously aware of them. But there are others.

Muscle relaxation

It was from my violin teacher Artur Garami that I first learned how important it is to avoid muscle tension. During all my lessons with him, half his time was spent circling me, watching with eagle eye for any hint that one muscle was fighting another. At first, I would have to stop playing, put my fingers on my muscle with his, feel the tension, then concentrate on it while thinking "relax - relax ...", even force it to extend with an opposing muscle. Eventually, I was able to tell almost every muscle in my body to relax as directly as I could tell it to contract. Tension kills the sound of a fiddle - its sound must lift the bow off the strings, its body must move air, not be clamped by the player's body.

Playing a keyboard, the benefit is different. If a muscle starts to get tense, the opposing muscle has to work harder to move. Then that muscle has to relax further or the return motion is impeded still more. Tension kills speed, and it kills control.

Place one hand in normal playing position, on a table. Concentrate on relaxing it, totally. Use the other hand to lift a finger, then release it. Watch the exact motion the finger makes when it falls: the base joint returns to normal position first, then the mid one, while the end joint will probably not return to its relaxed angle until after your finger tip has contacted the table. Then use the hand's own muscles to pick the finger up. Then, relax it and watch the motion - it should be exactly the same as when the other hand lifted it. If it isn't, you aren't relaxing the finger muscles fast enough, so keep working at it. Practise this with every finger, wrist, arm and shoulder muscle. (Pick your location for this - I nearly got expelled from school in grade 5 for 'fiddling with my fingers' !)

Approach trills the same way - with one finger at a time first. Using two fingers, it's easy to hide tension - playing repeated notes with one finger makes tension obvious. Once you can play a note repeated with any single finger at half the note speed of a scale or two-finger trill, you can be satisfied that you are relaxing your muscles totally between each motion. The finger should never leave the key, but just move the pluck depth of the plectrum. It can't be done that way on a piano action, and it drives pianists nuts! Scarlatti obviously did this, cf. K.141 or K.455. K.141 in particular can be used to display the technique, with each finger in turn, two-finger 'trill' fingerings on the same note, then with all fingers flailing as pianists have to.

The goal is to be able to relax every muscle used in playing as quickly and as directly as it can be contracted.

Double trills

The muscles of our hands are interconnected to aid in holding and manipulating things - harpsichord playing had no role in its evolution! So, our playing must adapt to our hands.

I often am asked whether my use of double-third trills in Scarlatti (cf. K.450) is appropriate, by those who misquote Couperin to argue that it is 'impossible'. (Actually, in the original French, Couperin just said that he didn't think it worth learning at his age, but recommended that young students try.)

I believe that Couperin was talking of a trill played with fingers 2 and 3 in parallel with another played with 4 and 5. Anatomically, that is indeed next to impossible, even slowly. (In fact, I find even the sustained trill of Scarlatti's K.357 with it's simple 5th finger obligato extremely awkward.) But, pairing the thumb and 5th finger, to alternate with paired fingers 2 and 4, fits our hand very naturally, especially with 2 and 4 both on sharp keys.

I'm certain from his notation that Scarlatti knew this technique, but I confess to finding few places in Couperin where it works. Double trills are a very powerful sound, best used sparingly.