Talent or Determination?

I received my Sydney Alumni Magazine in the post this week. It’s been sitting on my dining room table for a few days waiting to be opened. Once I got around to it, I was interested to read about Australian saxophonist, Jorja Chalmers, who is currently (permanently?) on tour with Bryan Ferry (of the ’80s rock band, Roxy Music).

Jorja taught herself piano at age 13, and picked up the Saxophone after that. She auditioned for the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (a mere 4 or 5 years later), and was accepted to study there, despite being somewhat intimidated by the greater experience of most of the other students. She describes herself as an “awful” student, yet her saxophone teacher remembers her differently: “Jorja had this incredible drive. She wanted to do well, and I’m not at all surprised that she has.”

You can read the full article at: https://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2017/10/04/living-the-dream.html

It is determination that brings success.  Raw “talent” isn’t enough. Irrespective of how good you might be at something, if you don’t want to do it, you just won’t do it. Wanting to succeed is not enough either: doing something about it, and in a consistent manner, does.

Starting lessons early is not an indication of success either. Only a few months ago, I had a conversation with one parent enquiring about piano lessons, who had heard from her friends that if her child didn’t start piano lessons by the age of 4 they would “miss the boat”. Yes, there are some pridigious young stars in the making, but my experience is generally quite the opposite. As a general rule, Kindy students struggle to adapt to their new environment of full-time schooling, often the child’s own interest is lacking, the determined parent must substitute discipline, and they typically drop lessons within a year or two.

It is a student’s own interest and inherent determination which is the greatest indicator of success, in any field, and they usually develop this well after the age of 5 or 6. Jorja Chalmers illustrates that, but she is by no means alone. My band teacher at high school began playing the trumpet at age 16, and quickly went on to a career playing at highest levels of the British brass band tradition. These people teach us that “talent” is born from determination, not the other way around. So, I tend to start most students in Year 1 or later: indeed, those starting as late as Year 5 often catch up to and exceed their peers before the end of Year 6. And if we learn anything from Jorja Chalmers, it is that this trend probably continues well into teenage at least.

Let me add one last word, about discipline. Determination itself must be learned. As I mentioned, Kindy kids don’t usually have it. It takes discipline – disciplining our children but also ourselves. Our children force us to face our own lack of determination. Will I give in to this tantrum, is or there something bigger at stake? I know parents who have consciously chosen piano lessons for the discipline it teaches, and then back it up at home with a structured routine of practice. Then, when the child shows an interest in something (anything!), they have the tools and techniques which will help them succeed. That’s when discipline becomes self-discipline.

Discipline isn’t the bad guy, quite the opposite. Just don’t assume that your child has “missed out” if they didn’t start learning piano (or anything else) early.

How I see myself.

“I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas.” 

― Albert Einstein

 

Just the other day, I was chatting with my son in Melbourne. Alex had taken part in a performance alongside a number of other artists, and he was relating the experience to us. Foremost in his mind, he walked away with the impression that the other participants in the show were of a significantly higher standard than he was. A number of them had professional experience on stage and he felt somewhat intimidated by their obvious abilities. The impression was so strong that he would have withdrawn from the performance had he realised this beforehand. Nevertheless, the audience’s reaction to his work and performance was favourable and warm, and in the final analysis he was glad to have taken part.

I guess that Alex’s reaction is probably pretty typical of most of us, when comparing ourselves with people of talent. But, bear in mind that we’re talking about someone who wrote and performed a musical in Year 12, which kept an audience entertained and engaged for its full duration of 3 hours. He’s spent the last few years rewriting and re-recording much of that show with the intent of a professional production in the near future. So, he’s no slouch.

I said two things to Alex in response, and related two stories of my own.

Firstly, an audience’s perception of a performance is always going to be quite different from the performer’s. A performer always notices every error, but the audience is often unaware, so long as you don’t let on. Sure, some things stick out, but a lot of the details often slip under the radar. A few years ago I recorded some of the music I regularly play for ballet examinations, to allow some of the dancers at a particular school to practise to my playing. A year or so later, having forgotten all about this, a teacher pulled out a copy of the CD, and I listened to it, thinking, “Gee, that sounds pretty good.” only to discover it was me! As I said, the perspective of the performer and the audience is completely different, even when they’re the same person.

My second story was from my childhood. Growing up in the UK, from the age of 5 to 17, I attended a number of church summer camps. The piano at camp got a pretty solid workout during those weeks – mostly “chopsticks”, but some of us actually knew how to play and so we frequently pulled out pieces we had learned during the course of the year. One of my friends played the piano rather well and I was in awe of her, and a little bit intimidated: her ability and her confidence outshone my own in every respect. We have stayed in touch over the years, often infrequently, but the advent of Facebook has allowed us to “talk” more often than was previously possible. Recently, we were talking about those camps and the subject of playing the piano came up. Well, blow me down, if she didn’t think exactly the same thing about me!

We often compare ourselves with others in one way or another. But it turns out the conclusions we arrive at are usually inaccurate. I could tell you to stop doing it, but chances are you would find that as difficult as I do, and there’s no use giving you yet another excuse to beat yourself up. But understand that what you think you see or hear is very likely to be untrue.

Besides that, self-critique is one of the reasons you become talented in the first place – listening to your own performances with a critical ear and desiring to make them even better is actually your greatest asset. Just so long as it doesn’t stop you performing in the first place.

“We are all failures- at least the best of us are.” 

― J.M. Barrie

Extraordinary

With a growing number of students taking part in piano exams each year, I originally thought to address the question, What does it take to get an ‘A’ or ‘A+’ on a piano exam? But as I write, I realise that much of this has application to any performance, and therefore any student. So, don’t put it down just yet.

There are a number of ways I might answer my own question. The most obvious way is to look at the criteria set out in the syllabus. I could, quite reasonably, just copy and paste half a page of text: tick all the right boxes and that ‘A’ will be served on a platter. However, trawl through words like, ‘hand shape’, ‘accurate performance’, ‘fluency’, ‘coordination’, ‘control’, ‘dynamic levels’, ‘expressive realisation’ … and you’d be asleep in no time.

I could break it down into layman’s terms: expect a ‘C’ if you can show that you know the scales pieces with a reasonable degree of fluency; play everything technically correct, expect a ‘B’; make it a ‘performance’, hope for an ‘A’.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s value in all of that. I can go through every criteria and demonstrate its importance to your playing. But really, it’s the wrong question.

Turn the problem around for a moment: think from the perspective of your audience. Imagine you are an examiner. For weeks at a time, you are away from home, shut in a variety of rooms, listening to an endless stream of children (mostly), playing pieces from a really very limited set of books. You can see how reading the syllabus quickly becomes a blessed relief!

Now, insert little Johnny or Jemma, who’s hoping for that ‘A’ this year. While it would be very easy to blend in with thousands of other hopefuls, the question is, how can I stand out? And that is true, not just of exam students, but of any student in any performance setting. How can I make any performance extraordinary?

So, I guess most people will be able to predict what I’m going to say, I do it often enough: practice. But this is less about the “What”, and more about the “How” and the “Why”. Just going through the motions won’t cut it, it’s about what you’re trying to achieve.

Your first goal will be familiarity with your music. Most people naturally stop here, as though “knowing” a piece is enough. It isn’t. In reality it is just the stable base upon which to build a creative performance.

Once you’ve learned the notes, look for the details: speed, volume, articulation, style, and the like. Yes, it’s about technically correct playing, but its also about making a connection with the music yourself and communicating that to your audience.

Then, step back from the piece and ask yourself why anyone would want to listen to your performance? Give them a reason. What kind of reasons? How about excitement, laughter, joy, peace, beauty, … What do you feel when you play? Can you communicate that to your audience? My favourite, though, is … surprise. Imagine that examiner again, who’s heard the same piece played the same way a myriad times, no doubt. Imagine giving her a “wake up call”, something to pique her interest, make her sit up and pay attention!

Another thing you will agree is vitally important is first impressions. In any music exam, that is supplied by … scales! Yes, they can be boring, and some candidates do have VERY long lists of them. But aside from helping you to play your pieces better, a sure knowledge of your scales is music to every examiners’ ears. On hearing a student struggle through their scales, an examiner is already deciding that a ‘C’ grade may be the likely outcome. But if that same student presents their scales well – without hesitation, at the correct tempo, fluently and evenly – they’re more inclined to lean towards a higher grade.

Let’s talk about making mistakes. A mistake need not be the end of the world, so long as it doesn’t become the end of the piece. Move through it rather than going back to correct it. An exam, like any performance, is not about showing that you can play something correctly. It is about performing. If you are listening to a concert, you don’t want to be subject to a constant stop-start-stop-start, as the performers go back and correct errors. To me it feels something like sitting on a train carriage which is constantly being jolted instead of moving smoothly forward. A simple error, quickly passed over, is easily forgiven and forgotten – don’t etch it in my memory by going back over it! To that end, I often recommend students practise playing through a piece no matter what happens: it’s not practising making mistakes, its learning to perform despite them.

Finally, let me say that some people are born performers! I teach one or two of them, and I am jealous in the extreme. However, for the other 95% of us, performance can be learned. Never forget that a performance is merely the end of a long process which begins with you alone with an instrument and a few pages of sheet music. It’s what you do during the intervening period that makes the difference between an ordinary performance and an extraordinary one.

War On Sight Reading (and shelf space)

Hello everyone,

I have been fortunate to have received donations of music from a number of sources. However, I have never had enough shelf space to house it all. So, it simply ended up in a pile in my office to deal with at a later date. That later date was today. I spent part of my morning beginning to sort through some of those piles in my office, and contemplating whether to simply throw it out, or build bigger shelves.

Then, I had an idea. Why not put some of it to work?

Here’s where you come in.

Many students struggle with sight reading, and as with most things, the simplest way to overcome that is practice. So, in the course of the next week or so, I am going to distribute some of the music I would otherwise throw out to students to practice their sight reading.

First of all, you may note the condition of the book you have just received. Some of them are falling apart, others look almost brand new. Be assured that IN EVERY CASE, these books are surplus to my needs. I simply have too many of them, and I am unlikely to use them myself, so it does not matter what condition they are returned to me, if they are returned at all.

Secondly, what should you do with them? I would like you (or your child) to spend NO MORE than 5 minutes during each practice session simply reading through some of this music.

You might look at:

• a few bars,
• a single line,
• a page, or
• a whole piece.

You can try:

• the right hand,
• the left hand, or
• both hands (when you feel confident).
• You can even just sit and name the notes.

The only important thing is that you spend a few minutes a day trying to read and/or play something that is entirely unfamiliar. So, each day, look at a different page or a different part of the same page. Open the book up at random and see what it contains.

Some of the music will look REALLY DIFFICULT. That doesn’t matter. Do whatever you feel comfortable doing. Then, as you become more confident, maybe try something that’s a little bit more challenging.

If you do happen to return the book to me when you’ve finished with it, I will pass it on to another student, and give you a different one. If you happen to loose it or destroy it, let me know and I’ll give you another one to try out too. Like I said, these books are surplus to my needs, so don’t stress about them.

Treat this like an experiment – Let’s see how your sight reading improves over the course of the next year.

I can’t play that. Yet.

We’ve all had the experience. The realisation that you cannot do something that has been asked of you, or that you expect of yourself. You may not play the piano, but the experience is a universal one. Any new challenge might be accompanied by these feelings. You don’t need to be a child either, it’s just that children’s lives are primarily concerned with learning.

Something else that’s almost universal about it: we do not like it at all. We each greet these unwelcome challenges in different ways. It is often accompanied with feelings of disappointment, frustration or failure, sometimes tears. I used to get very angry, I’d cry at times, perhaps bang the piano keys (I broke my piano once, but that’s a story for another time).

But there’s another side to this, buried unrecognised in the throes of my latest tantrum. To say “I can’t do this” is actually a statement of reality. Here is a thing you know you cannot do. It is important to know where you begin. The next important step is understanding that today’s inability says nothing about tomorrow: “I can’t do this … Yet.”

Several years ago, I read the following, although I can’t remember who wrote it: “There is no such thing as a difficult piece [of music]. It is either impossible or it is easy. The means by which it moves from one category to the next is practice.”

How will I conquer this new challenge?

There are all the usual techniques: separate hands practice, slow practice, memorising the passage, playing with eyes closed. These are good places to begin.

Take one step at a time. Some pieces might have a number of difficult passages. Choose one and focus your attention and efforts on that.

Identify the problem: what makes it so difficult? Be specific as possible. It might be a run of quick notes, a single chord change, an unusual rhythm pattern, coordinating the hands, a series of leaps. You will approach each in subtly different ways, and understanding the nature of the challenge will help you decide upon the best course of action.

Once that’s done, put it in context. As a young pianist, I’d focus on a particular issue and conquer it, only to have the bars either side of it fall apart instead. From this, I learned that I needed to slightly expand my practice – maybe one bar either side – so that I could move smoothly from the music I knew well, to the challenge itself and out the other side again. Typically that doesn’t take so long, but its an important part of the process.

Ask for help. Teachers exist to help their students do what was previously impossible for them, and to help them do it well. It’s what I’m here for.

So much for the techniques of practice, how about the emotional side? How can you keep from getting discouraged?

Walk away, or look at something else, then come back to it tomorrow. Understand that you’re not going to conquer anything in one sitting or on one day. It’s not because your stupid, it’s just the way the human mind works. Frequent repetition consolidates learning and new skills.

Remember past victories. You’ve been here before: true, not this exact problem, but you’ve met others and you’ve won! You can do it again. That can be difficult for a child to do, so it can be Mum & Dad’s job. Keep a note of your child’s accomplishments, especially the ones he really had to work for, and remind him of those times. Write them down if you need to.

Be ready to surprise yourself. I’ve played for ballet exams since 2003. This has involved learning a lot of music. I mean A LOT! In the first year I learned six grades worth of music in only a few months. About eight years ago the Royal Academy of Dance began issuing new syllabuses: more music to learn! Occasionally, I’ve been asked to play a new grade I haven’t seen before with only four to six weeks notice. Usually I look at the new work, and sigh with the enormity of it – “I’ll never do it!” But then I remember that I’ve done it before, and no doubt I will surprise myself again. No, I’m not unusually gifted, there are many pianists more skilled than me. I love playing the piano, and these challenges give me a reason to practise, that’s all. It’s simply a matter of committing the time required to gain the victories.

“You need to aim beyond what you are capable of. You must develop a complete disregard for where your abilities end. Try to do things that you’re incapable of… If you think you’re incapable of running a company, make that your aim… Make your vision of where you want to be a reality. Nothing is impossible.” (Paul Arden)

I Got Rhythm

[This article may require a couple of careful turns to read through. It’s one of my longest. However, I hope it provides some insight into the difficulties faced by the novice musician when learning rhythm.]

Rhythm is one of the fundamental “elements of music”. However, it is easily neglected, especially in the early years, and especially on the piano, when a student is typically playing on their own without the need to “keep up” with other instrumentalists. We can fall into the trap of looking at music merely as a series of disconnected notes to be played in a certain order. Yet rhythm demands that we play those notes for a specific length of time and in the context of other notes, and that brings with it unseen consequences.

So, how can we understand rhythm, and how do we perform it correctly?

Firstly, there is “the beat”, the constant pulse underlying every piece of music. Beats occur in regular groups, called “bars” which are separated on the page by “bar-lines”. When talking about beats in early music lessons, students often use the word “seconds”, but this is not quite correct. A second, the unit clocks use to measure time, is a set length of time which never changes. However, in music we talk about “beats” (or “counts”) because we can vary them from one piece to another, otherwise all our music would be played at the same speed, which would be boring.

Nevertheless, “beats” are similar to “seconds” in that we use them to measure rhythms. I’ve done that in this example. I have represented this rhythm firstly in musical notation, and then as a timeline, each box being one note. The bottom row shows the beats. This one is in “four-four time”, meaning [a] there are four beats in each bar, and [b] we are counting “crotchets” as one beat (the first two notes in this example are crotchets).

We talk about “beat” in the same way we talk about other units of time. Imagine catching a bus: it might depart “on the hour” (say, at one o’clock) for a journey which lasts “one hour” (arriving at two o’clock). So, the word “hour” can refer both to a specific point in time, and a duration of time. The same is true of “beat”: most of the notes shown here are played “ON the beat” and their length is measured in “beats”.

Looking at our example, note that the spacing of the musical notes approximates the rhythm being represented – longer notes are usually given more space, shorter notes are given less. This helps the musician appreciate the rhythm at a glance. However, it is impractical to do this consistently and accurately, especially where music contains both very short and very long notes.

Notice also, that the beat itself is not actually shown on the musical notation, apart from the bar lines. So, the length of one note determines when the next note begins, and to understand where each beat falls we need to know the duration of every note.

When we begin to learn music, we commonly think about the beginning of the note but forget its end. In doing so, we neglect the beginning of the next note, and we’re in trouble straight away! This shows itself most clearly when we begin playing quavers (see the pair of notes above the second “2” in the example). Students easily understand that a quaver is half a beat, and that two halves make a whole, but playing them is a different matter. You can see from our timeline that a pair of quavers occurring together will sound like a group of three notes – the third note being the one that follows on immediately from the quavers, each separated by half a beat. Students usually play them as a group of two followed by a pause and then the next note, but this incorrectly lengthens the second quaver.

This also manifests at the end of any piece of music. Our last note (a minim) is two beats long. It begins on the third beat of the bar, but where does it end? Imagine your bus leaves at 3 o’clock for a two hour journey: it will arrive at 5 o’clock. Our minim must end on the first beat of the next bar, and that is not represented in the musical notation at all. So, it’s common for students to end a piece of music on the fourth count, thus robbing our minim of one full beat of its duration.

Another difficulty occurs because of the way music appears. Students typically look at each bar, play that, and then begin to think about the next bar. This stop-start approach distorts the rhythm. The problem is often exacerbated when moving from the end of one line of music to the next. Imagine pausing at the end of every line while reading this paragraph, instead of at every full stop: it wouldn’t make sense. An experienced reader looks continuously through the paragraph, their attention flows from one word to the next without stops or pauses, beyond the word they’re currently reading to see what is ahead. A musician must learn to do the same.

Finally, while many students think that their main difficulty is playing quickly enough, the really problem is often playing slowly enough. We don’t like silences or lengthy pauses, so we tend to skip over long notes as unimportant, uninteresting or easy. We also fail to appreciate just how long our longer notes should be to allow us to play the faster notes accurately. Even when playing at speed, the main difficulty is usually keeping our fingers under control so that they don’t run away with us. So, from the outset, it’s important to consider the fastest notes in any piece of music, using those to set the duration of the longer ones, and then playing slowly enough when the time comes.

Here are some tips for getting rhythm right:

1. Get familiar with your music. The more comfortable you are with what’s on the page, the less surprises there will be to process on the way. Inaccurate rhythm is the first sign that a piece of music still hasn’t been practised enough.

2. Count. Doing so aloud is best to begin with. With practise, you’ll easily graduate to counting silently – and accurately – to yourself as you play.

3. Clap. When you first encounter a new or tricky rhythm, clap it through – this means you don’t need you think about the note names. Count aloud as you clap.

4. Slow down. Don’t play quickly just because you think something is easy. Things will probably get harder and you won’t be able to keep up.

5. Wake your hands up! One of the dangers of long notes is allowing your hands to relax on the keys while holding them down. Have your hands alert and ready to move on, with the weight of your arms supported by your muscles, not the keys on the piano.

6. Keep your fingers on the keys, especially thumbs, which tend to slip off the keyboard if they’re not used for a few notes in a row. The further they are from the keys, the longer it will take to get them back there when you need them.

7. Play with a metronome, or play with a friend. Nothing holds you to a rhythm like needing to keep up with someone else! It’s tricky at first, but well worth the effort. There are a number of free metronome apps available for download, so there’s no need to go to the expense of buying one especially. Some books also have accompanying CDs which you can play along with. And I enjoy playing along in lessons, too!

When an aide becomes a crutch

There’s a scene in the Pixar movie, Wall-E, which shows a kind of hovering wheelchair designed to help the elderly and disabled get around during their space cruise. Fast forward 700 years, and we see that all the humans who evacuated earth have taken to them over time (and everyone views the world around them on screens!) resulting in gained weight, decreased muscle tone and lost bone density. Intuitively, we all know that it’s not good for us to take it too easy. As much as we resist the idea, a little hard work and even struggle pays so many dividends in the long run. Health, fitness, strength, balance, alertness, mental function, there are very few areas of life which don’t benefit from a little practice and exercise. I’ve heard of the same notion being applied in some zoos – where animals aren’t just given their food, they have to climb, dig or forage for it just as they would in the wild.

Especially in the early stages of learning to read music, students are often tempted to write letter names or finger numbers under every note. In one way that’s a great exercise, because they have had to read through the entire piece note by note to do this, but once it’s done (and it is done only once) they are not actually reading the music at all, they’re reading their annotations.

In the short term this seem very useful, but in the long term it’s a recipe for disaster. Sure, it’s easier to play today’s pieces, but it can mean a student never actually learns some of the essentials and advancing becomes impossible. Recognising the same note name in a different octave, identifying new hand positions, finding those hand positions on the keyboard, changing hand position within the same piece, reading above or below the clef: a little hard work now saves a whole lot of work and frustration later.

So, let’s say your child is clearly struggling with a piece of music: what type of aide and how much help is appropriate and useful? The key is simple. An aide helps the student to think, a crutch saves them from thinking – and therefore prevents thinking.

Never write letter names under all the notes in a piece of music. Instead, you could:

• Photocopy the music, write note names on the copy but play from the original,
• Write ONE example of each unknown letter name on the music, and let the student refer back to it when it recurs,
• Read through the music on the sofa (more than just once),
• Play through the piece while reading letter names aloud,
• Memorise the mnemonics for lines and spaces on the clefs, and learn strategies for notes above and below the staves.

Written finger numbers are less problematic, but they can still prevent students reading properly. Avoid writing finger numbers under every note, instead use a few well chosen annotations – such as hand position changes (even these need to be abandoned eventually) or where fingering becomes more complex.

I’ve also seen and heard of students labeling piano keys with letter names. Instead, make it a game. Close you eyes, choosing any white key at random, then open your eyes and see if you can identify it. Begin by using a chart to help, but fairly quickly move on to working it out for yourself, using the chart only to check the answer. Some students remember one note name and count from there – that’s a good start, but challenge them to see how fast they can identify randomly chosen keys, or how many new keys they can identify in ten seconds.

A few students use memorisation or aural perception (“playing by ear”) to avoid reading the music. These are valuable musical skills (examining bodies such as the AMEB encourage the former and test the latter) however they have their limitations when it comes to learning new music. You do need to read music first before you can memorise it. “Playing by ear” requires that you have some knowledge of the piece you are learning which limits your repertoire somewhat (and who’s to say that your memory of the music tallies 100% with the printed page?). So:

• Practice playing new pieces of unfamiliar music.
• Don’t play a piece through for your child to hear, even if you can, insist they read it through themselves first.
• Don’t just tell them what the note names are, insist they read it for themselves, perhaps directing them to a chart which might help them work it out.

(This is one reason why parents without any prior musical knowledge can be just as effective – or even better – at supervising practice at home. It’s far better to discover music with a child than simply hand it to them.)

In the final analysis, the only way to learn to read music is actually to read music. Any or all of the above strategies may help. Remember, the aim is to exercise whatever mental muscle is available to the student: provide a little new information where necessary and give them opportunity to use it.

Musical Competence

A few weeks ago, the last of my three children obtained her driver’s licence. In the ACT, new drivers are required to master a series of “Competencies” before they are let loose on the roads. We can think about these in broad categories – knowing the rules of the road, knowing how to operate a car, then there’s all the little skills that become second nature (such as balancing the clutch), and actually driving safely in traffic.  Breaking musical learning down in this way provides a useful insight into the “Musical Competencies” required to master the piano.

A few things to note before I begin.  Firstly, learning music is a complex process, containing several levels of proficiency, often operating simultaneously. Secondly, while the student works sequentially through a progression of these competencies – beginning from the most basic, then to the more complex – each new piece of music contains elements of all competencies, and so the process is also cyclic, and what we learn in one piece is added to the student’s overall body of knowledge and informs future performances. It is also an unending cycle: there’s always something new to learn.

The most basic level is the ability to read the music – identifying the pitches to play, the note values, terms and signs – and much of a student’s first year or so is taken up with developing this foundation.

Understanding the written music’s instructions, or comprehension, is different from merely reading. What is the music asking me to do? Instead of seeing the music as a series of individual notes, can I string them together to create a melody? This is somewhat like the difference between the ability to read individual words as compared with understanding a sentence. The same is true of seeing a series of note values and reading a rhythm. And these two  (pitch and rhythm) must happen simultaneously. But we should also include questions like: How loud should I play? And how fast?

This leads to Technical Competence: Am I physically able to do what the music wants me to do? Can I play the notes in the right order with the correct rhythm at the appropriate speed? And can I do so fluently, without pauses?

Stylistic Competence is next. For example, what makes Jazz different from Rock, Bach different from Beethoven, and how does that affect the way I play? I once found a CD recording consisting of only one tune played over and over again – “Happy Birthday to You” – in the style of various well known classical composers. This illustrates the importance of this competency, the degree of detail it can involve, and the interest it brings to musical performance. It takes historical factors into consideration, and answers questions like: Should a grace note fall on the beat or before it? What are the composer’s intentions? We might also consider ideas of “interpretation” here. There is room for some creativity in every musical score (often performers vary the speed and volume, as permitted), but to what extent is this appropriate? Is there room, or even the demand, for improvisation?

Finally, Performance Competence: The “X factor” that takes notes from the page and gives them life and personality, turning them into music others want to listen to. This is difficult to describe, and I often resort to demonstrating particular passages rather than trying to put my intention into words. It’s equally difficult to say how one develops this proficiency, but a couple of things help. Firstly, confidence comes from knowing the music inside out. This is born from thorough preparation  – constant repetition, in other words, practice. Pianists are also encouraged to memorise their music: a few years ago I heard this described as “freeing the performer from the tyranny of the printed page”, and I think that is true. Performers account for the complexities of communication: musicians frequently talk about “exaggerating the dynamics” (loud and soft), because it is all too easy to “hear” one’s own intentions without projecting them enough for an audience to catch on. Lastly, we develop this by taking every available opportunity to perform.

Motivating practice: something to work towards

I grew up the eldest of five children, and by the time I was in my teens, we ALL played the piano.  I have no idea how my parents afforded all those lessons, my father on a minister’s wage and my mother didn’t work outside the home after I was born, although she was a trained teacher.  What I do know is that Mum had quite a regime going to fit five sets of piano practice in every day.  I was up at 6:00am in the morning, did my hour of practice, before getting dressed and eating breakfast, while my next sibling down did her practice and then number three followed on immediately after that.  The twins (the youngest two) had their practice sessions in the afternoon after school.

The other thing Mum gave us was opportunities to play.  I can’t remember any of my piano teachers organizing concerts or recitals for us to play in, but Mum would insist I play for visitors occasionally, and when grand-parents visited, it was compulsory.  These impromptu recitals always made me squirm: a typical introvert, I was never keen on the idea of “showing off”.

My biggest motivator proved to be piano exams.  After my first few years of lessons, I was always working towards the next exam, and I think the idea of having a specific goal – in my case a set of scales and exercises and three pieces – is what kept me playing more than anything else.  I remember getting terribly frustrated at times, wanting to give it all away, but for some reason I always told myself that I would give it up AFTER the next exam.  Of course, once the exam was over, having conquered the particular piece in question, I was ready for the next challenge, whatever it might be.  Mum & Dad always made exam days just a little bit special.  It meant a few hours off school, which was always fun.  But the big bonus was going for a special treat, such as visiting a cafe for an ice cream on the way home, made especially sweet by knowing that I was getting something my sisters weren’t.

Then, when I was 14, one of the organists at church retired.  Dad came home from a board meeting one night to ask whether I could take up the position.  It was my first “regular, paying gig”.  I started by learning one hymn.  It took me several weeks, but when I was ready, I played my one hymn in a service with Mum playing the rest of the service.  It all fell apart somewhere in the middle of the second verse, I think, but everyone kept singing as though there was nothing wrong, so I gathered myself and kept playing along.  For the next service I learned two hymns.  And so on, until I was learning four hymns every week, four weeks on, four weeks off.  The sheer volume of music I was learning, as well as my regular practice for exams, taught me how to sight-read, but having that extra bit of pocket money is what kept me coming back for more.

Every child is different.  I found my niche in accompanying others – for me it was easy to feel comfortable playing while someone else was in the spotlight or everyone else was distracted.  Other kids seem happy to be the centre of attention.  Whatever the case, I think it’s important to find some opportunity for young pianists to share what they’ve learned with others.  It doesn’t really matter what the occasion is, but deadlines have always been a useful motivator.  So whether its exams, playing for family, friends, or assembly at school, I would encourage every student to have an opportunity to play for an audience of some kind.  And then to make it a bit of a treat too, keeps us coming back for more.

How to begin?  End practice with one or two favourite pieces, music the student would enjoy playing for a someone else.  Have a couple of pieces ready for performance as needed.  I think it is important to note the difference between being proficient enough to play a piece and feeling confident enough to play it for others.  Confidence only comes with repetition, so while it may seem as though the student is wasting time playing the same-old-same-old, they are actually getting comfortable with the notion of performing it (of course, that should be only one aspect of practice, not the whole of it).  And when the time comes, make it a positive experience, one the student will want to repeat.  Praise is important.  Special treats don’t hurt either.

Motivation, Success and Practice

Time and time again, I see it happen.  But not always.

There’s the “honeymoon period”, when playing the piano is exciting and new.  Then after a while the shine wears off and practice become a chore.  Every student experiences this.  But then, for some, there’s a “eureka moment”, when everything just seems to drop into place.  A snowball cycle begins: the student experiences some success, that success is encouraging and leads to increased motivation which leads to greater determination to practise, which leads to further success, and so on.

It feels great to be caught up in this cycle.  It feels like nothing can stop you.  But I do notice a few things about it, and it raises some questions.  Firstly, I’m not in control of it – no one wakes up in the morning and just decides to hop on.  It’s a bit more complex than that.  Secondly, I notice that it doesn’t last forever.  Thirdly, not everyone experiences it, at least, not at the piano.

So, to my questions.  How do I get on something I’m not in control of?  And, how do I get back on once I’ve fallen off?  I think the answer to both questions is the same.

By now you may well have guessed what I’m going to write, but humour me a little.  Look at the three stages on that cycle.  I can’t just decide to succeed and I can’t just decide to get motivated.  Neither of those is under my control.  I might wait until I felt the motivation, but I will probably be waiting a long time (or mysteriously find the motivation when there’s something else I want to avoid).  Even worse, if I were to wait for success, I would never begin at all.

No, there’s only one place I can really enter the cycle: practice.  I don’t need success to practise – that’s obvious, because practice leads to success rather than following on from it.  But I don’t really need the motivation either.  Sure, motivation makes it easier, but I can practise without it.  Practice is the one stage of the cycle I can decide to do, because it is something I actually do.

”You don’t have to be great to start but you have to start to be great.” (Zig Zigbar)

There’s one more thing to observe: talent has nothing to do with it.  My wife once worked alongside a young lady who was among the top three female triathletes in the country.  She said that she was not particularly talented – she saw many more talented people just give up.  The one quality that took her to the top of her field was perseverance.  I’ve seen a number of talented students get nowhere because they were just not interested or lacked the self discipline required to practice when they didn’t feel like it.  In reality, the majority of people tend to call someone “talented” when they are merely successful.  I find that encouraging: the combination of talent and success is truly rare, and that leaves a lot of room for the rest of us to be just as successful as we choose.