There's no getting around it. After work, I need to decompress. I can't just dive into keyboard practice as soon as I walk in the door. I'm often tense and hungry. So I feed my cats, slouch in my recliner with some comfort food (usually popcorn) and catch up on email while listening to jazz.
This routine is fairly entrenched at this point (I've been doing it for about a month now) and it's rather mundane, but with a mindset change this same routine can become a portal to high performance.
A Secret Ceremony consists of everyday activities you do before practice or work, but the arrangement of these actions are meant to gently and incrementally narrow your focus and increase your intensity for the activity ahead.
So if I imagine each action such as going home, feeding my cats, putting on the jazz, making herbal tea and so forth is actually narrowing my focus and priming me for practice, my practice time should be more constructive. It's worked before. I did something similar before going to the gym with excellent effect. It resulted in my first book Zero to Superhero.
Today I started a course to enhance my future employment prospects. It will take approximately a year to finish, and there will be a final exam at the end. It's as important to me as this music project, so this will be yet another plate to balance in my day-to-day activities.
Piano and Song by Friedrich Wieck, under his alter-ego Dominie, gives advice that relates to my current predicament. It'll be the last passage I share from this book.
Don't be angry with me for my suggestion, ladies: you do not make enough use of the minutes. While our learned education absorbs so much time... we must be sparing of the remaining minutes. "Now I must rush to the piano! I must go to dinner in ten minutes: two scales, two finger exercises, two difficult passages out of the piece I have to learn, and one exercise to invent on the dominant and sub-dominant, are soon done; and then the dinner will taste all the better."
Well, my young ladies, how many hours do you think all those minutes would make in a year? But I hear you say, "What is the use of worrying to pick up all those stray minutes, like lost pins? We have a whole hour to practise every day, when nothing prevents." Exactly, when nothing prevents.
If in piano-playing, or in any art, you wish to attain success, you must resolve to work every day, at least a little. Sickness and other unavoidable interruptions deprive you of days enough. Practise always with unexhausted energy: the result will be tenfold. Do you not frequently use the time for practising, when you have already been at work studying for five or six hours? Have you then strength and spirit enough to practise the necessary exercises for an hour or more, and to study your music-pieces carefully and attentively, as your teacher instructed you? Is not your mind exhausted, and are not your hands and fingers tired and stiff with writing, so that you are tempted to help out with your arms and elbows, which is worse than no practice at all?
But, my dear ladies, if you practise properly, several times every day, ten minutes at a time, your strength and your patience are usually sufficient for it; and, if you are obliged to omit your regular "hour's practice," you have, at any rate, accomplished something with your ten minutes before breakfast, or before dinner, or at any leisure moment.
So, I beg of you, let me have my minutes.
I'm glad to see that 10-20 minutes of focused practice, several times a day, can really add up. You don't need to commit to several hours of “deep work” to make significant gains. Shorter sessions might even be optimal.
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Turns I misunderstood the concept of family chords. They are not the same as major chords.
Robin was kind enough to clarify the issue on Udemy's Q&A section, and it makes sense to me. Sort of. I understand there are thousands upon thousands of piano chords one can potentially learn. But for the sake of efficiency and health of my arms, it makes sense to only learn chords that are in songs I actually want to play.
Based on that realisation, I know what my next step is.
In other news... I finished Piano and Song by Friedrich Wieck today (with the help of an excellent audio recording by Librivox volunteers). It's a strange book, written in an eloquent style that is over-the-top. I found it enjoyable for just that reason, and because it offers lots of direction and advice for both piano teachers and students.
Here's Wieck's Rules for Piano Pupils. As you read this list in your mind, do it with a stuffy english accent and roll your r's.
You must never begin to learn a second piece until you have entirely conquered the first.
You ought to fix your eyes very carefully on the notes, and not to trust to memory; otherwise, you will never learn to play at sight.
In order to avoid the habit of false fingering, you should not play any piece which is not marked for the proper fingers.
You should learn to play chords and skipping notes, without looking at the keys, as this interferes with a prompt reading of the notes.
You must learn to count nicely in playing, in order always to keep strict time.
He also follows up with this advice:
Play and practise the bass part a great deal and very often, first slowly, then quicker, during one or two weeks, before playing the right hand with it, in order that you may give your whole attention to playing the bass correctly, delicately, and surely.
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Let's face it. Memorizing piano chords is not fun. I find myself dawdling, reading articles and doing other small errands during my day off instead of hunkering down on this homework.
In this book Duane mentions how some major chords are like Oreo cookies; black keys on the outside and white key on the inside (the Eb Major Chord for example). A quick search on the internet shows this mnemonic is used elsewhere, along with similarly tasty comparisons to blackberry jam sandwiches, marshmallows and chocolate / vanilla ice cream (Source: Color Score).
Sure, these learning aids sweeten the deal and help the medicine go down a little better (sorry, no more food metaphors) but it's no substitute for the physical, repetitious practice required to imprint these chords into the hands.
Time to practice.
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I've put aside So What for now and will learn chords instead, something I know almost nothing about. Chords seems like a world of knowledge unto its own. There are major chords, minors, diminished, augmented, dominant and so on. Branching out further into the unknown is scales.
I skimmed Google Play for a good introductory app, but everything seems over my head. Luckily, Robin Hall in his Pianoforall learning system has a straight forward, shut-up-and-do-what-I-say teaching style and starts with easy C family chords. I won't get into specifics here (Pianoforall is proprietary), but I will say he uses mnemonics and chunking to good effect.
If you're unfamiliar with the chunking technique, here's an excellent article on how it can improve your memory.
makes too much unnecessary movement, and tries to produce the tone in the air, instead of drawing it out with the keys.
He continues:
Above all things, I wish you to observe how I try to bring out from the piano the most beautiful possible tone, with a quiet movement of the fingers and a correct position of the hand; without an uneasy jerking of the arm, and with ease, lightness, and sureness.
Although this book was published 144 years ago and written in a hilariously antiquated style, it is timely advice for me at this early stage of my learning. When I practice, my fingers on the left hand feel unsure. My right hand contorts to play the chords and I rarely get a clean sound. When I see others play the piano, their fingers look relaxed and gently kiss the keys.
I'm working on relaxing though, and “drawing the tone out of the keys”. Whatever that means.
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When I get home from work I feed my cats and turn on the kettle. I have a pre-practice routine going: I sip a cup of Bengal Spice herbal tea and eat some dark chocolate (90% cocoa). It tastes awful, but the theobromine (a natural compound with a similar effect to caffeine) in the chocolate puts me in a relaxed, aware state of mind.
Then I strap on my arm braces and practice for 30-45 minutes. Today I imagined there was a piano teacher beside me, whispering instructions in my ear (not as creepy as it sounds). It seemed to work. I caught some bad habits and made corrections.
Tonight I also downloaded the sheet music for September by David Sylvian. It's a short, wistful, hauntingly beautiful song I'd love to be able to play someday. September is, in my opinion, an example of a third stream song (a genre of music I discovered only two days ago). Third Stream, Wikipedia tells us, is a synthesis of jazz and classical music.
Another excellent example of third stream music (that's agreeable to my ears, from what I've heard so far) is the album Arbour Zena by pianist-extraordinaire Keith Jarrett. I look forward to kicking back and checking out the full album after church tomorrow.
As for the “math jazz rock” thread found yesterday, I made a quick playlist this morning before work. You can check it out on Spotify. Two bands not mentioned in the thread that belong are Troyka (I added tracks Dropsy and Rarebit to the playlist) and Vixu. The latter is experimental rap-jazz (no rock) but with very interesting time signatures.
Thanks for spending this time with me. Talk to you on Monday.
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Only got a bit of keyboard practice in today. A few minutes in the morning and squeezed a few minutes into my crowded evening. With my tendinitis-riddled arms the way they are, it's for the best anyway. I need to be deliberate with my practice, to think about what I'm trying to accomplish before laying fingers on the keys.
Especially important is to anticipate any tricky parts ahead of time (a protip I gleaned from How to Play the Piano).
Speaking of tricky parts, at work I was chatting with a customer about math rock and how the genre is known for its interesting time signatures (he's a fan of The John Denver Experience). Later I did a search for “jazz math rock” and found this reddit thread. No time to listen to any of the recommendations tonight, but hopefully tomorrow.
Of the three songs I've practiced, So What by Miles Davis is most intuitive to my fingers. And it makes sense. I've heard the song a thousand times and know it intimately. It feels second nature to me.
When I practice the classical pieces, it's like I'm handling fine china. This tentative feeling I get will no doubt thwart my progress.
So, this seems to be key to learning, or at least to the way I learn: practice music you know and love. I don't know classical music, and admitted so in an earlier post. I appreciate it's uplifting, heavenward qualities though, and who doesn't want to play piano like Chopin?
Jazz is more in tune to my sensibilities. I should stick with it.
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