The process of practising

Focusing

Are you engaging all your senses? Our minds usually wander away from what are at our hands when we do something too repetitively. Reading, listening, and talking all need keen attention or focusing power. Average people who live in this world has not fully engaged their senses when they are doing something at their hands. In other words, they depend on their subconscious to do something when the task is too repetitive.

The power of subconscious mind

For example, everyday, you wake up in the morning from bed, walk to the bathroom, pick up your tooth brush, squeeze out your toothpaste, start brushing your teeth, and while doing so, maybe only your conscious mind kicks in to think about “what is the plan of my day”. Every move before your planning thought of the day are automated by your subconscious mind.

Why could you achieve this kind of smoothness without even lifting a muscle of your conscious mind? Because you have repeated it everyday. You don’t fall down to the floor, while waking up, you don’t walk wrongly into kitchen while you subconsciously aim at entering bathroom, you don’t pick up the hair shampoo while reaching for toothpaste, you don’t make a mess all over the sink while you squeeze your toothpaste onto your tiny little toothbrush, and you won’t put your toothbrush to you eye and start brushing. These are quite perfect isn’t it? Well, if at the very beginning of your life, you always make a mess while squeezing your toothpaste, then you will be making a perfect mess before your conscious mind kicks in. The point is, repetition makes a movement perfect and smooth.

"Crafting" = practising

But, you have to engage your sense and your thinking mind in order to achieve your ideal. That is where your attention comes in. So, you started to read through your music score. You have a picture, a very general aural image. You will decide the detailed crafting while you break the sections down. The trick here is, human beings have very limited attention span. Average people can focus intensely for only 20~30 minutes. And after that, everything is just automation. So, every time when you start practicing, you want to spend the first 20~30 minutes on deciding how much you can focus and how you want that much section to sound like. It is like crafting at the first 20~30 minutes, then you repeats your “choreography” that matches your ideal aural image so that it is engraved into your subconscious mind. It is a boring job when you do the repetition. But the "crafting" part is where your creativity comes in. And when you connect all your some little parts that you had "crafted", you will get an exciting synergy of performance.

When all the hard work pays off, you will be a great pianist and never be afraid to be left alone with piano and a new music score. Because you will be able to bring the notes lying on the score to live with confidence.

H2O

Water is very important for living creatures on this earth including pianists. If you are dehydrated, you get easily exhausted. And you go no where. It is almost like a car without fuel. Even if you get a breakfast so rich in vitamins and various nutrients but not drinking water, you are wasting yourself and the breakfast.

Water is a solution for most vitamins and an element to burn your food for energy. For an intense activity like performing on piano without a music score, you can easily imagine how much calorie is burnt. You need calories burning for anything happening in your brain like retrieving the memory of the music scores, you need calorie for striking an action on piano. You know you need a good diet and that includes water.

When you feel tired or exhausted in a practice session, take a break, go get some water and fresh air, before continuing. You will realize it makes a big difference.

Take a deep breath (Rachmaninoff Prelude, Op.23. No. 4 in D, Pianist Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter)

Gently, the accompaniment starts, then the melody comes in, then the second melody comes in (together with the main melody), and the dramatic impact comes in then it resolves to the theme. It is so gentle, inspiring, and elegant with Russian flavor. Relax and enjoy. Have a good practice session today with relaxation!

Simple start

What is the point of starting simple? Imagine you have to run a marathon. Do you train yourself to start running a marathon? No. Because you will give up on the second day due to fatigue, muscle cramp and you might spend enormous time to beat yourself up over a quick failure.

Now let’s look at another way of starting. You start by walking 30 minutes for one week. Then, you start to brisk walk for the same amount of time for 2nd week. At the 3rd week, you mix brisk walk with jogging. The 4th week, you start to jog for the same amount of time everyday. And on the 5th week, you are already timing yourself through a marathon distance.

What do we learn here? We can gain steady improvement by starting simple. If we live a busy life, a simple starting step is like a good seed. It can be incorporated into your busy life naturally and you allow your mind to develop ahead of your physical movement instead of the other way around.

You can put your mind at ease instead of freaking out over it. You can gain momentum by even a small step everyday. The key here is simple- keep it at baby steps and repeat it daily. And there is a word appointed for this – discipline.

The Importance of Listening

What is the difference between listening and hearing ?
Your ears hear sounds. Period. But when the sensors in your ears send signals to your mind and your mind interprets the sounds, it is called listening.

Pianists who listens to others' performance usually advance much further. When listening, pianists interpret sounds according to the melody line, the texture, the touch/stroke, the rhythm, the pitch (not as keen as violinists), and the content of a chunk of sounds. (phrases, motives, sections, or movements)

Also, pianists listen with the physical sensation attached behind their minds. That physical sensation only developed in pianists after long hours of practicing. It is like when you close your eyes and listen, and somehow your hands feel excited over the rhythm. You could see or feel the hand movements on the keyboard without really touching one.

This is the pianists’ listening reaction to piano music. It is our subconscious reaction. That’s why we pianists get excited over piano music. It is fun and stimulating. That’s why it is important to listen to others when you are drilling your own repertoires. It motivates you mentally and physically. And you can achieve much more with momentum from the sound. It also sharpen your attention. Try it today and you will be thrilled at how much you can do by listening more.