Practicing Smart: A Staircase

            This post is a prequel of sorts to a series of posts that is going to start next week. This series will hopefully be beneficial to all who read it. One thing with which I must preface this whole blog is that I am what I call a “process-oriented” teacher, not what I would call a “goal-oriented” teacher. In other words, I do not teach students for performance evaluations, competitions, or recitals. While I think these things are extremely important, I am far more interested in the means whereby I help a student achieve their performance goals, than in the goals themselves.

I have already written a post on common practice mistakes, with some solutions offered. What I hope to do with this post is offer more of a detailed practice plan and not so much a troubleshooting guide, so please forgive any repetitions from before. I think most piano teachers spend time showing their students exactly how to practice only to have the student completely ignore their guidelines. And once upon a time, that would upset me. However, my students all know that it is their prerogative to practice as they choose, or not practice at all, and I will not get mad. They also know if I am not 100% satisfied with a piece, we will not move forward. We will spend as many weeks necessary treating the lesson as another practice session, until they get it. This is something which tends cause a tremendous amount of stress within my “goal-oriented” colleagues.

That being said, most of my students (including those who don’t practice as much as I’d like) move forward at about a “normal rate”, through their music. This is because of the work that we accomplish in their lessons. I recall a mentor once telling a story of something said to her, the gist of it being that a student could go from week to week without practicing and as long as they are attending their lessons, and the teacher is doing their job, the student will make progress. Of course, what this story didn’t mention was that the progress could be extremely slow. Progress is progress, though!  I think in the moment that I heard her tell that story I changed my outlook on lessons. I began to ask myself, “How can I help this student in such a way that even if they don’t touch a piano between lessons, they can come back next week better than they were today?”

This plan can be used by the teacher and student in the lesson, as well as by the student at home.

Step 1: Divide the music into sections, by phrase, usually about 4 measures in length. Make sure to end each section on a beat, and never the division or subdivision of a beat. This is important for students in the development of continuity and flow between phrases.

Step 2: Starting with the first section, work out the coordination of the correct notes with the correct fingerings, without rhythm. One way to ensure that the student is ignoring the rhythm is to tell them to play each note as though it is a whole note. Make sure that the weight of the arm picks up and drops by rotation to a point of balance on the fingertips on the keys. Check that the fingers are in their natural curved state, not curled (“pulled”) inwards or collapsed (“pushed”) outwards. Ask the student to listen to the quality of the sound they are creating. They should be creating solid, beautiful tones, in the mp-mf dynamic range, regardless of written dynamic.

Step 3: Once the notes and fingerings are comfortable, add the rhythm. Go slowly enough that the student can listen for the quality in their sound and continue to be aware of the physical traits discussed in Step 2.

Step 4: Begin working on articulations and pedaling. Again, the student should still be paying attention to the details of the previous steps.

Step 5: Add dynamics and phrase shaping, if they aren’t already beginning to happen. Students must listen especially closely here. Each note/ chord must be voiced appropriately but it must also be planned musically in terms of both the preceding and succeeding notes. This may also require some attention to physical choreography in terms of the arm moving in/out, up/down, and side to side. If the student is playing with both physical freedom and good musicality, there is no need to address the choreography with them.  

Step 6: Repeat Steps 2-5 with all other sections. For a PDF checklist with these steps click here.

One of my teachers often said that trying to play a piece with musicality before you can play with technical accuracy is like trying to hang beautiful pictures on crumbling walls. I mostly agree with her. In my vocabulary, “technique” and “musicality” are deeply intertwined, and one should not be developed without the other. This means of practicing allows the student to experience both technical fluency and musical artistry rather quickly.

Neither the technique nor musical artistry will develop to their fullest potential if they are trapped in a body riddled with tension. Next week’s post will begin the discussion of how the body and mind can be liberated to allow our students to truly blossom as musicians. As they learn to develop their ears (see this post), the rest of their body will learn how to create the sounds that their ears are learning to desire.