The temple remains.

Fragments of past transmissions echo below.

Tag: cp practicing music

  • Button-Pushing vs. Music

    The conversation went something like this:

    OP: Do you think I’ll pass my exam? (posted video)

    Me: Maybe you’ll pass, I have no idea. But, this isn’t music. It’s button-pushing. Play with the metronome and you’ll see where you’re deficient.

    OP: Thanks. I’m confused about how to count the beat with my mind.

    Me: Don’t try to count the beat in your mind. Count it with your body. Practice like this. (posted my video)

    Someone else: Michael, “button-pushing” is mean and besides, there’s lots of distractions. Counting out loud will be fine.

    Me: Counting out loud is a waste of time if you aren’t feeling the beat in your body.

    OP: Thanks. I’ll try to feel the beat. I think all the notes are played as 1 beat in your video.

    Me: There are 4 beats in each measure. Sometimes, there’s one note per beat (quarter notes), and sometimes 2 notes per beat (eighth notes). But always 4 beats in the measure. Don’t call them “half notes”, because that’s something else.

    OP: How do I use my body? Is it one beat every time you drop your wrist?

    Me: Yes, every drop is one beat. However, I’m not dropping my wrist. I’m dropping the entire forearm.

    OP: Thanks! It feels good. Highly recommended!

    Someone else: your a bit of a fool Michael. Plus i looked up your videos of your playing. Yes even the lady gaga one you did your ok player at best your just ok. So maybe worry more about your own playing

  • 6 Steps to Learning Piano Without a Teacher

    6 Steps to Learning Piano Without a Teacher

    How to improve piano skills without a teacher

    Ask this question in a Facebook group and you’ll be admonished by hordes of piano teachers that it’s impossible to improve at the piano without a teacher.

    What does your own experience tell you? Have you ever, without a teacher:

    • Changed a light bulb?
    • Sent an email?
    • Cooked dinner?
    • Made your bed?

    Of course, the teachers are going to tell you it’s impossible.

    (Follow the money. 💰)

    Ready to ignore the naysayers? Great! Here are the 6 steps you should follow:

    1. Improvise freely

    Give it a beginning and an ending. No correcting mistakes. No hesitating. No stuttering. No matter what. Enjoy whatever happens.

    Sit at the piano and play whatever your hands want to play. Trust them to do the work. It’s fine to judge them, but don’t try to stop them. Get comfortable with that first.

    This is useful if you feel bored by the music you’re working on. Keep experimenting. Remember that it’s called “playing the piano” and not “working the piano.”

    It’s also useful if you’re scared to play without looking at music.

    (This is a better use of your time than mindlessly scrolling social media.)

    2. Sit on the bench, doing absolutely nothing

    Feel what it’s like to physically sit there, not playing, not hearing anything. This is called “meditation.”

    3. Sight-read

    From beginning to end. No stopping. No hesitating. No correcting mistakes. No stuttering. Full tempo.

    Make it fun. If it’s not fun, you won’t do it.

    Tip: Feeling dispirited after seeing little progress after a year of practice? Don’t measure your practice time in years. Measure it in hours. You need more hours.

    4. Play hard music

    With zero expectation of playing it “well”. Go for it. Pretend to be a great virtuoso, even if it’s all wrong.

    When I was in college, I had a roommate who was on the golf team. Every morning, he woke up at 5:00 to run with the team.

    For GOLF!!??

    Well, yeah. Training should be hard, so that performance is easy. Play hard music so easy music feels easy. If you’re always performing at the edge of your ability, you’ll never play well.

    “But, shouldn’t I practice the piece only in small sections until I’m confident enough to put it all together?”

    Practicing the piece in small sections is the standard advice you hear from every piano teacher. Ignore it. Build mental resilience by playing all the way through.

    “I like to challenge myself to play some pieces that are at least slightly above my level, so when I’m able to master it I know I have improved.”

    I don’t care. Play pieces with no intention of mastering them. That’s a different mindset and it will open doors.

    5. Record your playing and post it online

    Not to ask for feedback, but rather to get uncomfortable. This is called “exposure therapy”.

    If you already do this, increase the frequency. Instead of once every 3–4 months, do it once a month. But, I would do it once a day… (and you will too if you’re serious about this.)

    6. Play from memory

    Especially when you don’t feel confident. If you get lost, improvise. Play for your phone, or for an audience.

    If you’re a timid performer, this will get you used to being watched.

    Learn ALL the skills

    Practice these, and also practice their opposites. Master all the skills.

    To build your confidence, make mistakes on purpose to get over your fear of being wrong. If you always avoid mistakes, you’ll never learn how to recover from them, and then you’ll hate performing.

    Go outside your comfort zone. Only look at your left hand while playing. Then, only look at your right hand. Then, look at a point off in the distance. Each one gives you a totally different experience.

    If it’s not fun, you won’t do it and won’t improve. Learn to enjoy frustration. Be an artist and turn your difficult emotions into creations.

    Find your own way of practicing that contradicts everything I’m saying here. Argue with me about it (you’re wrong, anyway).

    Push yourself.

    Tell the gatekeepers and naysayers to get lost.

  • How to Cure Perfectionism in Your Music Practice

    Musicians who identify as “perfectionists” should understand the following about what perfectionism is and how to cure it.

    Perfectionism is an anxiety disorder. It’s a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

    By “anxiety disorder”, I mean you’re afraid of making mistakes, and furthermore, this fear is making it hard for you to practice.

    Here’s the problem: even if you know you shouldn’t be afraid of making mistakes, it’s still going to get you. That’s because this anxiety disorder is deeply conditioned into your nervous system.

    The mere thought of making a mistake is enough to scare you.

    Logically speaking, “mere thoughts” shouldn’t be scary. After all, they’re only images and sounds, raw sensory experiences.

    But, few of us have been taught to see them that way. Instead, we see them as elaborate stories that are true. Our minds interpret them this way automatically.

    The only cure for an anxiety disorder is exposure therapy. That’s when you deliberately expose yourself to the thing you’re afraid of.

    So, if you want to cure perfectionism in your music practice, you’ve got to expose yourself to the fear of making mistakes, and the thought of making mistakes. All those sensory experiences must become comfortable for you.

    Good luck with that, when the fear of mistakes makes you want to run and hide…

    Now, I’m guessing you’re not literally running and hiding. Instead, you’re doing it subtly, deep inside your body. It manifests itself as an internal tension, barely visible to the naked eye.

    Maybe when you were a kid, you did run and hide. But now, no. You sit there and deal with it. Not happily, but you still deal with it (maybe even reaffirming to yourself and others that you should just suck it up…again, not happily…you can feel it in your body, deep inside…).

    Exposure therapy is necessary to untangle this. But, it’s scary.

    So, how do you get to the point where exposure therapy is possible?

    You must learn to see the thing you’re afraid of as being only sensory experience.

    For example, if you’re afraid to perform in front of a potentially-disapproving audience because you’re afraid of criticism, you can learn to see the fear of criticism as merely images and sounds in your head and sensations in your body. Once you see it this way, it’s much easier to be willing to expose yourself to it.

    We all know it’s hard to deal with rejection. But, when that fear of rejection is seen to be merely a story told by the mind, it becomes much easier to handle.

    Even better, when that story is seen to be merely images and sounds (still frames from a movie), nobody would have a problem dealing with it.

    The good news is that this skill can be learned.

    How? By practicing meditation. Meditation teaches you how to view your experiences as sensory phenomena.

     

    So, this is the point of meditation: it makes it easier to do exposure therapy. If you don’t meditate, you’ll have a hard time seeing your stories as stories (you’ll be too attached to them). Then, you won’t allow yourself to entertain the thought of making mistakes while playing, and you’ll be a rigid perfectionist forever.

    That’s no fun.

  • When your playing sounds “mechanical”

    When your playing sounds “mechanical”

    First, let’s get one thing out of the way: just because a teacher told you that your playing sounds mechanical doesn’t mean it does.

    (the teacher might not be expressing themselves very well)

    While we’re at it, let’s get another thing out of the way: your mechanical-sounding playing is not the fault of the metronome.

    Metronomes are convenient scapegoats here, because after all, they are machines. But, yeah. No.

    There are two reasons your playing might sound “mechanical”:

    1. You’re not playing all the features of the music.
    2. You’re struggling with the mechanics of playing.

    These are totally different.

    1. You’re not playing all the features of the music.

    If you don’t recognize that there’s a phrase of music, you won’t play it as a phrase. If you don’t recognize a cadence, you won’t play it as a cadence.

    When you don’t notice the details that are in the music, you won’t play them. You’ll only play what you do recognize.

    This doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. It only means you’re not doing enough right things.

    2. You’re struggling with the mechanics of playing.

    When you’re fighting with your body trying to get it to do what you want it to do, you’re not giving your attention to the music.

    This doesn’t mean you aren’t being “musical”. It only means you’re too distracted by other things to allow your musicality to express itself.

    It is wrong to think of playing as being on a continuum with “musical” on one end and “mechanical” on the other end.

    That continuum might be useful for the music critic, but it’s not useful for the player.

    —Michael

  • Teach Yourself Piano

    Your success in teaching yourself to play the piano will depend on 3 important factors:

    Motivation

    You need to be in this for the right reasons. Learning a musical instrument is not easy, and it will take time.

    The Right Exercises

    You must train yourself in the correct way. It is always better to be working on the right thing than to be working hard on the wrong thing.

    Sustained Effort

    If you put in the right kind of effort, over time you will succeed. Don’t make the mistake of quitting too early.

    Get my e-book

    I wrote this ebook because I want to share what I’ve learned about what’s wrong with the way the piano community treats “amateur” pianists. I don’t like it, and I want to change it.

    It is rare to see something written for serious adult amateurs, and by someone who went that route. I had it on as an audiobook while doing chores – the first chapter on various aspects regarding teachers, I was saying “right” and “certainly” out loud a few times. 😀 A lot of the things, I wished I’d heard this when I first started my first ever lessons some time ago; it took me years to at least partly find my way out of holes due to some of those things.

    Inge

    Amateur Pianist

    Get Your Copy of “Take Yourself Seriously”

    Frequently Asked Questions about Learning Piano

    Can anyone learn to play the piano?

    If you’re asking if you’re talented enough, the answer is “yes.” Provided you are physically capable of playing the piano, you will learn if you do the right things. Yes, of course, some people will learn faster than others.

    Am I too old to learn piano?

    Does it matter? You are whatever age you are, and you’re not getting any younger. If you enjoy playing the piano, then play. It doesn’t matter how much time you have “wasted”. That time is gone, and you will never get it back. What matters is the present moment, because this is the only moment you have to make decisions about how you want to spend your time.

    Is it hard to play the piano?

    This depends on what you are trying to achieve. Rather than think of things in terms of “hard” or “easy”, think instead in terms of specific results. You should understand that anything is possible, if you put in whatever work is necessary.

    Ask yourself the following questions:

    • What kind of music do I want to play?
    • How well do I want to play it?
    • How much time am I able to dedicate to piano practice?
    • How much frustration can I handle?
    • How long do I expect it will take to achieve my goals?

    How long will it take to learn the piano?

    It depends on many things. I know people who have spent years in piano lessons, and are still beginners. And, I know people who have been able to play at a professional level after only a few years. How long it takes will depend on (just to name a few factors):

    • What you mean by “learn the piano”
    • How much time you spend on piano practice
    • What specifically you do during that practice time
    • Any habits you have which might get in the way of good practicing
    • Any habits you have which might help good practicing

    How should I start learning the piano?

    Do what you’re interested in. Follow your curiosity.

    Also, check out my course.

    That doesn’t seem very specific. Can’t you offer something more concrete?

    If you’re looking for book recommendations or a step-by-step plan, that’s hard for me to give. I would have to know more about you, to know what you need.

    Also, you should understand that I am only going to teach what I know. That may or may not be what you need, and it is biased toward my own interests. This is true of all teachers, and you should keep that in mind when talking to teachers.

    How should I learn to read music?

    Learning to read music is like learning to read a language. It will take you a while to master it. If you expect that you are supposed to understand everything all at once, you will only get frustrated.

    The basic rules of music notation are simple. But, you will need to read many pieces of music before they really start to make sense. So, make that your priority. 

    What do I need to learn in order to be able to play the piano?

    It depends on what you want to do, exactly. Are you interested in:

    • Learning a few popular songs to impress your friends?
    • Filling in for the organist at church?
    • Giving a solo classical recital from memory?
    • Composing your own music?
    • Playing chamber music?
    • Exploring as much of the vast solo classical repertoire as you can?
    • Improvising jazz?
    • Applying to a degree program in piano?
    • Teaching piano?

    Each of these goals requires you to learn a large set of skills. It is worth getting very specific on what you want to accomplish. Then, you can work backwards from there, and figure out what you don’t know.

    Do I need a piano teacher?

    Many pianists attest to the fact that they could not have gotten where they are without a teacher. Likewise, many pianists are happy learning on their own. Consider the following questions:

    • What exactly are you expecting a piano teacher to help you with?
    • Do you enjoy teaching yourself new things?
    • Thinking about teachers you’ve had in other subjects, what did you like/dislike about them?
    • If you’ve taken piano lessons in the past, what has worked? What hasn’t worked?
    • If you’ve tried teaching yourself piano, what has worked? What hasn’t worked?

    There are many different ways of teaching piano. Different styles of teaching are better suited for some types of students than others. So, there are a lot of variables here.

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