Music Can Heal

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing."

-1 Corianthian 13: 1-3

With the love/intention to heal, you can directly see the purpose of harmonious music. Throughout human civilization history, harmonious music has been used harmonize the soul. Just like medicine to the physical sickness, music is the healing power to the soul. It can soften the hardest soul. Soul or spirit that lives in your body is supposed to be fluid like, smooth, flowing, strong, flexible, and growing. Harmonious music has been believed to be able to discipline your mind just like how gymnastic discipline you, body balance.

So, a lot of time we thought we are learning music to "have fun" we are actually healing our mind by listening to what we play. When you perform for others, you are healing others' mind. However, if you do it without your love to the audience and the music, it will be just empty sounds. You can hear the difference between a perfect performance with machinery accuracy but lack in spirituality and the humance performance with warm, flowing, and healing power.

That is why there is a music therapy field to heal certain emotional or physical pain. Next time, in learning a new piece, remember it is not just your finger gymnastic. You are healing your tired body, and your tired soul from the hectic day. Use your practice session to calm and nourish your mind.

Patience

When we learn to play piano, it is like living a life. We cannot force ourselves all the time to just improve at the pace that we want. It is about patience. A lot of time, it is weird that we don't have patience with ourselves. It is Patience that let you relax and really focus and learn. It is patience that allow you time to let yourself immerse in the music and the new material grow in you. When you learn a piece, you will reach a point where you have to just face the music and play. Not just thinking about notes, actions, and sound. You have to let the music come into you to play. That requires solid trust in yourself and the music. The trust allow you to "channel" the music through your body. Or you are like the springboard of music. You are vibrating the sound of music. So, when you are performing, remember that you are radiating your good will and beautiful perception of the world similar to the composer.

Also, love is giving time. If you love the piece that you are learning, you should invest quality time in it. And remember to cherish every little thing that you learn from the piece no matter how insignificant it seems. It is the secret of happy learning :)

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.

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.

Warming up to Practise Playing Piano

Remember to warm yourself up everyday.

Dancers warm up for their practice with yoga so that their body is flexed and prepped for the difficult position or movements. This is equally important for a pianist. We use our body to achieve musical means. Start your practicing sessions with stretching, taking deep breathes, tuning your mind to focus on improving physical skills and enhancing senses. Otherwise, you find yourself having muscle cramps on fingers/arm/shoulder, mind wandering away onto your shoplist or to-do list, or you are repeatedly playing the wrong notes. And you find yourself develop a bad habit, in opposed to your ultimate goal in practicing – developing good habits.

Skills are habits. But not all habits are skills. Why? Skills are good habits. It helps you succeed in bringing out your best performance. In fact, if you connect your good habits piece by piece, you form a good performance. On the other hand, if you have lots of good habits mingled with some bad habits, you will give a mediocre performance. If you have only bad habits, you can’t even finish performing. Bad habits are the last thing you want to develop from your practice session. And the first thing to do in your practice session is to sort out your bad habits and replace with good habits that work with your musical ideal. If you teach your fingers what to do throughout the practice, they know exactly what to do. But if you ignore them, they have no sense of direction, and they screw each other up instead up working as “a team” to achieve your musical means. You have to lead them, plan them, and train them like how you would train a dog not to pee on your carpet.

So, if you have a good practice session, the good habits become your second nature. It helps you a long way to play any other pieces with ease. Imagine, not just one simple “twinkle twinkle little star”, but also the whole Mozart’s theme and variations with full musicality. Try it today and you will find out that you can do it.