Welcome

This is a blog chronicling my attempts to take distance running training programs and adapt them for practicing piano. You can read an introduction to the project here and see my current program here. You can sign up on the left to get an email whenever this gets updated.

Technique in everything

I heard the dancer Bill Evans describe technique simply as “the efficient use of force or effort.” It’s brilliant. It really is what you’re going for! You have a goal: playing a scale smoothly and quickly, or cutting up an onion into evenly sized pieces quickly (and safely!). You figure out the physical motions that will get you there in the most efficient way. Usually these are based on your tools, biomechanics (an understanding of how your body is built to do those motions/which motions it does well), and focused use of only the muscles necessary (a release of tension). If you don’t use efficiencies, you often won’t achieve the goal. I should amend that; you won’t be able to achieve the goal quickly and with minimal fatigue. I picked the onion example on purpose, because I cook with onions a lot, and I’m ok at chopping them, but I don’t have great technique. I was telling my brother once that I wanted to get faster at chopping, and his response was great. “Why? I mean, you’ll spend a lot of time trying to get better at it, probably cut yourself, and save yourself, like, 10 seconds per onion, which would be a big deal if you were a sous chef in a restaurant chopping 100 onions, but pretty meaningless if you’re chopping one or two every few days.”

This goes back to my post about my schedule and how efficiencies are important. What I neglected to say is that the problem with efficiencies is that they take a lot of effort to get in place. It’s hard to work to figure out how to pass your thumb under your fingers in the really smooth and relaxed way. It takes a long time. And with some technique, you’re not really certain what the end result is going to be. There are things that we simply can’t measure. If I really focus on increasing the efficient transfer of oxygen through my capillaries as I run, will that actually work? Will 20 minutes of meditation every day for three weeks actually result in clearer thinking and increase the effectiveness of all my other practicing? Well, it’s going to take 7 hours of effort to find out. On the other hand, three weeks, in the grand scheme of things, is nothing, so why not try it and find out if it really is going to be immensely worthwhile? Choice paralysis? Because, I mean, I also want to strengthen my abs and muscles around my back and ribs to keep my back and body healthy with all the playing I’m doing. And I want to run. And this and that and a million other things. So choosing what techniques you really want to put the effort into honing is a very tough thing.

I’m about to start a group experiment with some people that is basically attempting to develop techniques around our use of social media and our devices. An information diet. This is helping to decide on what efficiency I work on because it is tying it into a social activity (getting together at a bar to talk about how to be intentional about e-mail/facebook/computers). It should be fun. I think one member of our group is going to write about it, so I’ll make sure to link to that.

 

Mental effort. How does technique work if you’re a computer programmer? Efficient use of mental force seems like an under-considered topic. We would take it as a given that some people naturally have better physical technique at certain things. Is being “smarter” in a certain subject or field just a natural ability to have better thinking technique in that area? Lets think about something (efficiently!) like addition. 1598723+983256. Go.*

 

What determines speed and accuracy in that? Knowledge of methods (line it up vertically?) that will get the answer faster and easier. Is that same as efficient use of mental effort? Focus – not thinking about other things. Intense concentration on the task at hand. Pattern recognition: the ability to know that 7+3 is 10 without counting 7, 8, 9, 10. When you think about, that’s totally a technique efficiency that took you a lot of time to implement, but you did it when you were so young that you don’t actively remember the work.

It’s important not to have too strong a focus on efficiency to the exclusion of “play.” There’s a great suggestion in the Seymour Fink piano technique book that all technique work be done with lots of focus and intent, but a minimum of desire and stressed-out intensity, as though you are a dispassionate observer.

 

 

I am terrible at being dispassionate.

 

*I think I was pretty efficient – I highlighted the text (numbers with addition sign in between) and pasted it into the search bar at the top of my browser. Answer in really just about two seconds. However, I never actually read the answer…

A vastly unfulfilled artist.

I am closing in on thirty. This mark does not intimidate me. It does not make me feel old. Or young. I have a poor sense of past or future. Ellen thinks that I may have a very active system of memory extinction and that what I deem to be important sticks and what I don’t (for whatever conscious or sub-conscious reason) just floats right through. That’s really neither here nor there. Why I say it, is because I feel like I may be at an unusual stage of my life in which to try to become a virtuoso. I try not to use that word blithely, or with any kind of social meaning. I’m not looking for fame and fortune. I really just mean mastery and control.

This desire is not new. I have often had this vague sense that I want to be “great,” and it was then, and is now, self-aggrandizing and product oriented (instead of process oriented) and comparative to others and hugely ill-defined. And because of all these things I’ve failed constantly. My college years were a mess of scatter-shot work in too many areas (still a problem) and always always always not enough work.

In the past five years though, I’ve had some very important life developments that have focused me in a new way.

Kids. I don’t know what to say about this. Life with kids is so granular that it’s hard for me to think about them in the big picture. I know they have profound effects, but most of the time I’m thinking that I should be putting away their laundry or figuring out dinner.

Ellen is in a seriously demanding Masters of Architecture program at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), which is a great school, and she is, and I am not puffing her up, one of the top students in the program. She started when our youngest was just 3 months old, and for the first year she took 15 minute breaks every few hours to pump for him. Each week she has one 11 hour day, three 13 hour days, and two 16 hour days and one day off. During the last two weeks of each semester it pretty much goes to all 16 hour days. Her focus and work ethic are hugely inspiring, bordering a little bit on jealousy. Can I say sexy too? It’s sexy.

I’ll see if I can get Ellen to write a guest post about how kids have focused her. She has much clearer thoughts about it than I do.

Teaching. It’s the best way to learn. My technique is so much better since I started showing it to people. I consciously try to figure out how I can take any exciting new thing I’m doing and appropriately teach it. My sister meditates with her Early Intervention clients (kids and families), because it’s good for them, and she wants to get better at it.

Ballet classes (a.k.a. getting paid to play 3 hours a day)

Running.

Show your work. Not your plan. I honestly think that I might just be totally lying to myself and that I am who I am and should recalibrate my expectations (dreams?) to a reality of a moderately fulfilling, hustling, professional pianist’s life. (who will inevitably get bitter by the age of 45?)

But I really do love practicing, and I’m smart, and I practice well.

Patton MacDonald is a percussionist, improviser, composer, Indian music fanatic and singer, professor, and endurance sport nut. He is my proof this week that “You are not special.” He says that he practices, composes, teaches, spends time with his family, and trains. That’s pretty much it. 80 hour work weeks are nothing to him because none of it is work, and because he values work and works incredibly hard. I think I get that (cause uh, right now there’s really not much else going on in my life but those things either, which is pretty much ok) and I hugely aspire to it. I think that I’ve never formed the habits to remove the distractions so that I could live that kind of life and be massively growing as an artist. That’s what this program is about. Mastery and control never are achieved. They exist on a continuum and as feelings, and there’s always something you can’t do. But at the same time, I know that I am nowhere near the level of artistry I can reach in this world.

With this blog I have a hard time determining the value of documenting process and change versus finished product. This post has been written and edited over the course of a number of weeks, and has helped to clarify and either cement or shift some of the initial ideas expressed. So here’s a big one: I am letting go of the words “virtuoso” and “mastery.” Why? Because of this.

He’s just right. It’s why this process has at the same time made me so excited and also made me feel like kind of a shitty pianist. I almost always feel like I’m starting from scratch.

What I’ve learned: Week 2

Mental practice for the win! Specific attentive mental focus on the exact motions. I’m not good at it yet, and it doesn’t instantly solve every problem and make me able to play my Chopin really fast and perfectly, but it helps. It is easy to delude yourself that you are better at it than you are, but it is incredible to analyze your own brain patterns for deficiencies. Easy to hear when you play a wrong note. Harder to recognize when you think a wrong note, or gloss over a specific finger on a specific note and how that feels.

SOS does kind of mean something. Focus stamina. That has been something that the running has really taught me. If my plan says 5 miles, I run until my watch beeps at mile 5. If my plan says slow practice on the Brahms for 25 minutes and then 25 minutes of mental practice, I set up my alarms on my phone and go to it until the alarms beep. I check my watch when I run, and I do always have it beep at me about my pace, and I did check the time once during my 25 minute mental practice session once (there were 3 minutes left). I wonder if I should work towards never checking.

It’s also interesting to think about what types of practice are harder or easier to focus on. I’m very good at focused analysis. A number of times this week when I had just specified “slow practice” I really drifted away from a slow practice of the exact motions (my intent) to a theoretical analysis of the piece. Now, that is extremely helpful to me. I have very strong physio-mental images of harmony because of my jazz background, so if I know that measure 52 is a B minor chord and that’s the vi going to a V65 of IV in measure 53, my hands find it really well.

I want to focus in the coming week on doing my work at the earliest feasible time every day.

A jazz transcription program

I found somewhere where difficulty in practicing is clear and makes sense!

I pushed a student to come up with a few tasks that she wanted to tackle this summer and said that we would come up with a practice plan. She wanted to focus on technique and transcribing. She already practices well for about an hour a day on piano and another hour on oboe. (Side note: it is very interesting/intimidating/inspiring/fun to teach a student who is better and harder working than you were at their age. I’m pretty sure I practiced a decent amount, but I think I was terrible with consistency. It was a long time ago, though, and I don’t really think much about past selves.)

So we’re going to do a daily half hour of scales and arpeggios (with a variety of practice techniques – see the bottom of this post), but the transcription process gets interesting.

Again we’ve got a 7 day cycle.

Day 1 is 25 minutes of transcribing entirely away from the piano. Just a recording and a pencil and paper. Write down everything you can hear, from the form, style, instrumentation, rhythms, to specific notes and voicings. Do lots of guessing. Get a lot down on paper.

Day 2 is at the piano (or horn, or lyre). Check your work from the day before. Practice playing it. Do more transcribing, but use the crutch of your instrument freely.

Day 3: you work on playing a previously written out solo. They’re all over the interwebs these days (including my buddies at sokillingman.com). Or buy a book. You could work on any number of things here. Playing it along with the original recording is important. Taking favorite licks through 12 keys. This part of the work is going to focus less on ear training and more on analysis and technique.

Off day.

Rinse and repeat.

So, how would this jibe with my 5 principles from the running program?

1. It has a great mixture of steadiness and variety.

The steadiness is there with the transcribing and generally working on copying other people’s jazz language, but also mixes it up by changing how you’re going about it and how much you’re stretching your ears versus your technique.

In addition, my student’s idea was that each month she would focus on a different form: a month of blues, a month of rhythm changes, etc. This would be great because you could increase the complexity of the work over whatever time frame you have set out for yourself. Obviously, you could do things other than “form” as well You could do a new tune every month. One artist per month. I’ve heard of sax players starting with Cannonball Adderly and many pianists talk about starting with Horace Silver.

2. It is goal oriented.

I don’t have a great idea for this yet. My student has a college jazz band audition, so that’s a great one, but simply a gig or jam session that you knew was a few months out and was important to you could be a good end date.

3. You don’t have choices.

Set. That’s why you write it out specifically on a calendar. No choices saves all your mental energy for the work.

4. You see clear progress.

Hopefully the mixture of time away from the piano and at the piano will simply make you faster and more accurate with your ears. You’ll recognize more patterns, you’ll feel like you’re able to listen deeper quicker. There’s something very exciting about connecting the wide-sweep enjoyment of line and rhythm and tone etc. to “oh, I can hear that they just ended that line on the third of the six chord.”

5. (shhhh, don’t tell anyone, but you get high)
It can be pretty fun to nail a technically difficult solo, especially when you get to the point of playing it right along with the recording. Playing along with Bud Powell gives me a sense of chasing a roller coaster. I’m convinced that, consciously or not, this is sometimes why composers write technically challenging sections. It’s not really for the audience’s benefit, it’s for the endorphin rush you as a performer get when you nail it, which spills out emotionally into whatever follows, and audiences get the emotion.

Day one really is hard. It stretches your ears. You really feel like you’re just lost! Your head is swimming. This puts you in a very psychologically uncomfortable place. This is a good place to be in. A place of brain elasticity. You want to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. This is language immersion. It’s why the Foxboro Jazz Improvisation camp is such a fantastic experience.

Days two and three should be pretty straight ahead, although I suppose that all of this definitely depends on your level of experience and how good your ears are.

I’m really hoping that this student embraces it, because this very well might be the next plan that I take on. One training program at a time though.

Samuel Fink. Feldenkrais. Somatics.

I am a working musician. I seriously thank my lucky stars for this fact on a regular basis. But it creates a challenge with this program in that there are days in the summer in particular when I’m already playing the piano for 4-5 hours on a given day (mostly ballet classes). If I’m going to add 2-3 hours of practicing on top of that… I think it will be very important to have a pretty conscious focus on injury prevention, and I hope that a focus on some fundamental techniques may improve overall playing ability at the same time.

I don’t currently have the benefit of a private teacher (with a wife in grad school and the aforementioned salary of a working musician, there’s no available money for that), so I have to figure this out largely on my own. I’m going to try working through “Mastering Piano Technique” by Seymour Fink. I’ve never looked at this before, and I don’t have a great sense yet of how it jibes or doesn’t with my college teachers. Before college, I don’t think I had any conception of how to use my wrist effectively, so getting that mechanism to work freely (and how that movement was applied to a musical need) was probably the biggest technical achievement of that time. I also read Effortless Mastery, which was a big influence and I spent a lot of time playing the left hand of Bill Evans Peace Piece and through that, discovered some things on my own about arm carriage.

Fink advocates for 10 basic piano motions that are to be first practiced away from the instrument. He talks about the importance of taking your time with these, and I get why. They are dense, complicated motions, similar in some aspects to some of the fundamental motions that I’ve seen taught by Bill Evans (the dancer), who I have had the gift of accompanying this last semester. It’s pretty clear to see the transference between piano technique and dance technique, especially if you’re watching a great pedagogue. Actually, ballet classes have also been very eye opening for this as well, as they have a number of very clear basic motions that are practiced over and over and over but are the obvious building blocks of the larger motions, which are then the building blocks of an expressive vocabulary. There’s another project/book – what pianists can learn from dance pedagogy! Someone who had a mastery of Seymour Fink’s techniques could easily just do a group class twice a week that taught, clarified, and drilled these movements. Holy crap, even better, you get a great dancer to help you choreograph these movements in interesting and musical ways, and then have one pianist each class accompany the others.

 

Alas, I find out, not but 4 hours later that, like most great ideas, it’s been done! At least partially. I guess it, or something pretty similar, is in the curriculum at the Longy School of Music right here in Boston.

 

This book by Alan Fraser, “The Craft of Piano Playing” also seems very promising. I just did some reading about his techniques and then did about a 20 minute exercise where you move your spine in a variety of ways while sitting, and I swear my playing was 20% more fluid and beautiful right after.

 

Fraser is big into this guy Moche Feldenkrais (great name!) who has also been very influential in Alexander Technique and for a lot of modern dance. I’ll be taking a three day Feldenkrais dance class in about a month. This could be a really great new area for me.