JEFF MANCHUR: PIANIST
  • Home
  • Biography
  • Now Happening
  • Pianist
    • Mozart in a Month
    • Choosing Joy
    • Audio and Video
    • Repertoire
  • Blogger
  • Teacher
  • Contact
  • Home
  • Biography
  • Now Happening
  • Pianist
    • Mozart in a Month
    • Choosing Joy
    • Audio and Video
    • Repertoire
  • Blogger
  • Teacher
  • Contact
Search

Teacher sayings: Reading analogies

4/15/2018

Comments

 
Occasionally I find that a certain theme shows up in my teaching, with all my students, whether they're little kids or college performance majors. It just happens to be one pedagogical or performance idea that I'm thinking a lot about that ends up applying to a majority of my students. Eventually that idea either becomes a mainstay of my teaching or it disappears.

Sometimes it's a saying, but this week it's been an analogy.

I always try to shift how my students practice, especially older ones. I talk endlessly about strategies and techniques (which I summarize in an e-book, which you can get for free by signing up for my mailing list on the right). I talk about isolating sections. But I find it really difficult to break their mentality that practicing means starting at the beginning of a piece, playing through till they make a mistake, stopping and restarting at the point of the mistake. I could go on about the errors here, but the point of this post is to discuss the analogy I've been trying out. 

I've been comparing this kind of practicing to reading a book, but not really reading. We've all experienced having words in front of us, knowing that our eyes are going over the words line-by-line, but our conscious brain isn't receiving any of it. We're 'reading', but we aren't processing; our mind is on something else. 

At the piano, so much of student practicing is skimming the piece, and allowing little conscious processing attention until we realize there's been some kind of error. 

In the past, I've asked students how they would go about memorizing several paragraphs from a book. Would you read it through, starting at the beginning and going to the end? Then repeat (not even any washing or rinsing). 

Of course not, they would study one sentence at a time, repeat it, review it, think about the point its making. When they can recite it, they add another sentence.

If it's academic writing, we need to be able to track the argument the author is making. Study the thesis, the background evidence, and weigh that against the process of study, analyzing application of the results. Paragraph by paragraph, we can break down and analyze the overall structure. 


Even my young students understand this at a gut level, when it comes to reading and learning or understanding a text.

I'm not sure why students have trouble applying these reading analogies to piano practicing. Perhaps seeing the final musical composition as a whole creates a desire to approach learning and practicing a piece as a whole. Maybe with text it's easier to see individual moments and practice and rehearse as such. 

I've had success with students breaking this habit, make no doubt. Sometimes they make the connection and change their habits drastically. Sometimes I force students to practice only individual measures by covering all other measures up with sticky notes. Sometimes I point them to a random number generator app, have it dictate the single measure number that they focus on. Or, number every system of the piece and practice just one line at a time.

But so often, we talk about why it's so important to practice in small, isolated sections. They understand these analogies. We pull a random number generator and declare we're going to play one single measure. We talk about the difficulties in this measure, and what the student needs to pay attention to. Then the student goes to play it, and they try to continue past the measure. They don't seem to believe me that I mean literally, stop at the barline, or at a predetermined section.

I wonder awareness of stopping points comes from a general mastery of piano playing. Maybe it's easy for me to practice this way because I've synthesized piano technique, artistry, theory and history to such a degree that I can become aware of good isolated practice segments at a metacognitive level. I'm still exploring the best way to instill this practice in my students. I'd welcome anyone's input on this issue!
Comments

    Subscribe to my mailing list for updates on my activities and special access to my recordings and performances.

    * indicates required


    ​"Modern performers seem to regard their performances as texts rather than acts, and to prepare for them with the same goal as present-day textual editors: to clear away accretions. Not that this is not a laudable and necessary step; but what is an ultimate step for an editor should be only a first step for a performer, as the very temporal relationship between the functions of editing and performing already suggests." -Richard Taruskin, 
    ​Text and Act

    Archives

    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    June 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011

    Categories

    All
    Alex Ross
    Amy Beach
    Artistic Messages
    Artistry
    Audio
    Bach
    Best Practices
    Boring
    Chamber Music
    Chiara
    Chopin
    Clapping
    Cliburn Competition Report
    Competitions
    Concert Reflections
    Contemporary Music
    Creativity
    Enjoying
    Extraordinary Recordings
    Glenn Gould
    Influential Books
    Intellectual
    Learning
    Listening
    Liszt
    Messiaen
    Mozart In A Month
    Nature
    Performance Practice
    Performance Traditions
    Pianistic Intentions
    Piano Business
    Practicing
    Richard Dare
    Richard Taruskin
    Rising Stars
    Serialism
    Subjectivity
    Teacher Sayings
    Teaching
    Textual Fidelity
    Time
    Video

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Biography
  • Now Happening
  • Pianist
    • Mozart in a Month
    • Choosing Joy
    • Audio and Video
    • Repertoire
  • Blogger
  • Teacher
  • Contact