When practicing the piano, it’s important to develop good practice habits in order to find and remove rough spots. Your goal should be to achieve perfection in order to get the most out of your piano studies.
In the Part One of her series, Piano Practice That Pays, Dr. Lory Peters provided a variety of concepts to help piano students achieve piano perfection:
Practicing is made up of — perfect — repetitions of rough spots.
Pull out rough spots in digestible portions.
Find patterns and then block them.
Jackhammer rough spots into muscle memory.
Use long and short rhythms to smooth out the passage.
Test for perfection by playing perfectly — three times — in-a-row.
Insert back into context and test again.
In Part Two, Dr. Lory used different articulations to help find and fix practice rough spots:
Legato – connected
Staccato – detached
Two-note slur – connected, then released
Accent – attack with louder volume
In Part Three, Dr. Lory says that when little or no progress is being made on a rough spot even with correct practice, you might be:
Practicing too fast,
The length of your practice section is too large, or
The following are excerpts from the video Piano Practice That Pays Off – Part One. You can watch the video on YouTube.
Here’s a common situation. You have a piano piece that you’ve been working on. You’re playing it pretty well — except there are a few rough spots that you just can’t polish.
It’s pretty frustrating, isn’t it? My students and I have the same problem. It’s just part of being a pianist, or any musician, really. But in this article, I’m going to show you how to polish those rough spots — once and for all.
When a rough spot just won’t polish up for me or my students — even after lots of practice — then I know it’s time to take a good look at how it’s being practiced. If the practice routine doesn’t include lots of perfect repetitions, then the practice routine needs an update. And, that update needs to include enough perfect repetitions in order to establish dependable muscle memory.
Muscle Memory
You may not be familiar with the term, but we use muscle memory all the time. We use it when we drive a car, work in the kitchen, or find a light switch in our home. The motor skills we use to perform these tasks were practiced — until they became automatic. And, that’s the same thing we need to do in order to polish rough spots on the piano. We need to practice effectively in order to establish dependable muscle memory.
Pull Out the Rough Passage
The first step toward developing good muscle memory is to pull out the rough passage to isolate it and to concentrate our practice energy on the areas that need the most attention. . We have to break apart the rough spots into pieces and then put them back together again. Isolating the rough passage will allow you to focus your attention and your energy on the passages that need the most work. Once those have been worked out and passage, you can insert them back into the piece, where other sections may not be a troublesome for you.
Find Patterns
After isolating the rough passage, one of the techniques to make your piano practice more effective is to look for patterns in the notes. I do this every time I isolate a rough passage because patterns in the music can often be seen again and again in the piece. So, if you can work out the pattern, you are on your way to fixing any rough passage that has the same or similar pattern.
Use Intense Repetition
After isolating the practice spot, the first thing I am going to do is work on the notes through a process of repetition — intense repetition. Practice the rough spot over and over starts the process of developing muscle memory. We call this form of practicing repetitively “jackhammering.”
I’ll repeat the passage twice, then three times, then four times, then back to three, two, and one. I find that this kind of repetition slows down my hands so I can think before I play. Then, I’m able to set the pattern in my eyes, my memory, and my muscles.
Close coordination between the eyes, hands, and the brain will work to ensure that the passage won’t be a surprise for very long. And the next time it’s played, assuming that you have baked-in enough repetition, the passage will seem more familiar and less difficult. If you do this process of intense repetition, rough spots will soon be polished spots.
Perfect Three Times
One final practice technique is really just a test to make sure there has been improvement in the way I play a practice passage.
When I am working on a section that needs polish, I will repeat the passage until I can play it perfectly — three times — in a row. If I make a mistake, I’ll start over. And, if I keep making mistakes, I have to change something — if I expect a different result. I start with slowing down.
Why three times? Well, because in over forty years of teaching piano students, I’ve found that three is the magic number. If you can play something — three times in row — perfectly, then you’ve probably got it and can go on to practicing your next rough spot.
Putting Hands Together
The final step is to test the newly-perfected passage by playing it with my hands together. Getting your hands to work as a team is foundation to the piano and it may take you a bit to get the passage to work perfectly. If you need to, slow down the passage with hands together and even divide the passage into smaller portions. Then, you can test by increasing your practice tempo. When it is perfect in both hands, you can put the practice section back into context and test it again.
Conclusion
Let’s go over what we’ve learned.
Practicing is made up of perfect repetitions of rough spots.
It’s important to pull rough spots out of context to work on them.
The rough spots need to be in digestible portions.
Find patterns, if possible.
Jackhammer the rough spot into muscle memory.
Use long and short rhythms to smooth out the passage.
Test for perfection by playing perfectly; three times in-a-row.
Insert the practice section back into context and test again.
Review for the next few days.
I hope this article will help you smooth out your rough spots. We talked about several different techniques like finding patterns, blocking, jackhammering, using long and short rhythms, and testing for perfection. You can also review my YouTube video on this topic by clicking here.
If you find you need additional techniques to smooth out a rough spot, you can also try applying different articulations, like staccatos, and two-note slurs, and accents. These practice techniques and others are covered in this video on YouTube.
Just remember, only perfect practice makes perfect performing.
The following are excerpts from the video Piano Practice That Pays Off – Part Three. You can watch the video on YouTube.
Ready to give up when you’ve tried everything to smooth out a rough spot and nothing is working? Well, help is on the way. Stay tuned.
Hi! I’m Dr. Lory. Welcome back to our series. This video is part three.
When a rough spot won’t polish, even after lots of practice, we have to change something.
But, change what? Well, here are three things that could be changed – your speed, the length of the section you’re practicing, or your fingering patterns.
Slowing Down
The first thing I change is speed. I slow down. Slowing down allows me to look at the rough spot – note by note. I want to find exactly what is causing the problem. Once I find the problem notes, I can isolate them and use some of the techniques we talked about in Parts One and Two — like jackhammering, uneven rhythms, and different articulations.
But, I’ll do this at a slower tempo.
Another benefit of practicing slowly is that new information can be more easily connected to what we already know. Our brains can compare the new information with the old, can distinguish how they are the same and how they are different, and then more easily store and retrieve the new information.
This is much easier to do when we practice slowly.
How Slow is Slow Enough?
How slow is slow enough? If someone walking by can recognize what you’re playing – then you’re playing too fast. You know, sometimes my students tell me that they’ve practiced something so slowly that even they couldn’t recognize the melody. I tell them, then you’re doing it right.
You can also find your correct practice speed by using a metronome. I’m going to use a common rough spot from the first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata, Opus twenty-seven, number two, known as The Moonlight Sonata.
The section I’m using starts at measure thirty-two and ends at measure thirty-eight.
Let’s go through the steps I would take to see how slow is slow enough. My current practice speed is one-hundred-sixty beats per minute to the eighth note.
((Lory Plays))
Did you hear my hesitations? They tell me that I’m playing too fast. I’ll keep slowing down until I can play the passage perfectly.
I will cut my current practice tempo, which has hesitations, in half, to eighty beats per minute as a quick way to slow down.
((Lory Plays))
Wow! That is slow. But, there are no hesitations. And it was perfect.
So this is my correct practice tempo. Now, I will start speeding up until I get to the final tempo.
By the way, a technique for doing this will be covered in an upcoming video.
Using a Metronome
If I’m already practicing slowly enough – or I slowed down with the help of my metronome – and I’m still not making much improvement, then I’ll check the length of my practice section. It just might be too large.
And, this one is. It’s seven measures long.
Practice Section Length
But, how long is too long? If I can’t see progress within several minutes of practice, the section is too long. If you’re not sure, start with a smaller part and build up. Then, you won’t waste valuable practice time.
That’s what I’m going to do here – divide my seven-measure practice section into single measures. Then, I’ll start building them back up – in two-measure segments.
You can do this by connecting measures in groups of two. Then keep connecting measures until they are all back together.
((Lory Plays))
Fingerings
What if my rough spot is still – rough? Then, I look to my fingerings.
To pianists, fingerings are the way we assign a specific finger to each key to be played. And, when we do it right we get fluid playing, efficiency, and the sound we want.
You know, we have ten fingers but there are eighty-eight keys on the piano. So, we have to work really hard to get the right fingers on the right keys.
This is a very important first-step because once practicing begins, we develop habits and long-term memory. And, if we keep changing fingerings, we have to unlearn wrong fingerings and then learn the right ones.
I always have my students start with fingerings when they begin a new piece. Then, they check questionable fingerings with me before serious practice begins.
To keep from putting wrong fingerings into long-term memory, you might want to check fingerings at the same time you are shortening the length of your practice section. If you put that together with a slower practice tempo, you can catch any wonky fingerings before they become a habit.
One more thought on fingerings. The fingerings you chose at the start may actually be right – but they still aren’t the best choice because of the size of your hands, the expression of the passage, or the final speed. The only way you are going to know for sure is when a rough spot pops up, and your first choice for fingering just won’t work. You have to try something else.
Deciding on Fingerings
How could there be more than one correct choice for fingerings?
Let’s look at the fingerings printed in the score. These were chosen by the editor. Are they right? Yes they are – but they are not working for me. There are a few stretches that are awkward and the numbering pattern doesn’t match the pattern of the notes.
I’m going to try another set of fingerings that has a more digestible pattern and closer position changes. Once I make a final decision, I’ll use those fingerings each time I practice.
((Lory Plays))
You might be wondering – how I do find the correct fingerings for me? Good question! If you’re working with a teacher, he or she can help you.
If you don’t have a teacher, your score might have suggested fingerings. Sometimes the editor even gives you two choices. Start with those. You might still come up with your own. And, that’s OK.
If the music does not have fingerings, check out my upcoming video on how to find fingerings that work for you and the piece you’re working on.
Conclusion
Let’s review what we’ve learned in this video.
When little or no progress is being made on a rough spot even with correct practice, you might be:
Practicing too fast,
The length of your practice section is too large, or
Your fingerings aren’t the best choice for you.
I hope this video will help you smooth out your rough spots. In the next video, we’re going to work on speeding up a rough spot that is already perfect.
Remember, what Vince Lombardi said about perfection – Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.
Thanks so much for joining me today. If you found this video helpful, click subscribe and check out some of my other videos on YouTube. You can also contact me to schedule live online piano lessons.
