@@andredelacerdasantos4439 I understand. I gave up on my first attempt with Invention 8 before I had this understanding with the process. Came back years later.
I felt same. I started learning it on my own...bar by bar with metronome. Then more work on it with my teacher. It was / is still a work in progress. Now learning a Chopin nocturne (in C minor) few bars at a time. Lots of stumbling blocks that take time to get over.
@@keys6 Dude, are you ME?! LOLOL. Same here. The Chopin gets easier but seemed so simple yet difficult at first. The chords look so easy, but he really mixes up the inversion to the point you are like What?! Learn the left hand first please please, and know what chord you are playing as in I, V7, IV, etc...then you have context with the melody.
That's Bach allright... it sounds relatively simple until you sit down to play it. Suddenly it becomes something thats hard to grasp and does funny tricks with the mind!! Then you realise he is actually The Goat of classical music, considering the amount of pieces he wrote and in a time where even the pianoforte wasnt invented . What a trendscetter he must have been, hahah :D
100% i might start learning something one day and still suck at it by nightfall. then i sleep on it, and the next day as if by a miracle i have improved so much! sleep helps you learn!
@@quintenboosje2437 ha, as if you read my mind, I wanted to write exactly the same thing; a power nap, forty winks or a good night sleep - all help the learning/practice; and as for going for a wander after practice, it of course helps too.
I have found that every aspect of learning to do the things of this life follows this pattern: Everything is hard at first. Then, it gets easy. Then, it gets fun. Then, you get good at it. After that, if you don't get bored and keep going, it will become a passion. Then, you become an expert. David's practice approach follows this axiom to a Tee. Thanks for the lesson. I love positive reinforcement.
During the early stages of some pieces I start to learn, I literally feel my brain going numb after a while - plus I get extremely hungry after a good practice session 🤣
Began studying with a piano teacher 2 yrs ago. We did weekly sessions but moving to biweekly. Your words and diagram will be helpful because practicing without design was not working. Thanks from a 77 yr old!
I am 43, back to my serious intermediate piano study yet again after 25 years of shenanigans and no proper playing. I pressed play on this when I saw the title. I continued to watch this when you drew a graph. I followed you when you started to talk about the subconscious. And I smiled and became a true follower of your channel now, when you described my daily mind wars and struggles. This has given me some consolation and immense power to push through again today for another day ... which I somehow forgot. Thank you.
I’ve learned classical music till Grade 7 but I suck at sight reading. I gave up on playing classical music and went on to play contemporary music as it only requires playing by ear and playing chords. I hope I can practice some easier pieces to gain some confidence back. Any pieces you recommend? Like Grade 3-5 pieces
@@mattdiu93the majority of contemporary music is actually even harder than classic* !!! You must be referring to the mindlessly composed popular (pop) contemporary music.
This was incredibly insightful. A big mistake I see myself do often is going too fast. I know this and would discipline myself to 4 bars. But I trapped myself in the practice stage. I mistake the click for "knowing the piece".
Great insights, and the note about there being no end to learning is very true. Some general tips that have helped me are: - Take short breaks often. There is a bell curve to each practice session. You start slow, you make progress, and then that progress starts to decline. When you feel the decline begin immediately stop and rest for 30 seconds to a minute. You have to give the mind and body a brief moment of rest. - One thing at a time. If you try to do everything at once then you will end up doing nothing at all. - The fastest way to get to reach your goals is by getting there very slowly. Which is why you must embrace the process and find joy in small progress. - Learn music you enjoy, but understand your technical level and focus on things at or around that degree. After some time you will understand how to gauge this appropriately, but in general if it feels too hard it probably is. - Practicing is only half of the challenge to reaching your goals. The other half is battling yourself to keep practicing. That inner voice telling you to give up is a lie, you have to ignore it but sadly it is very common and hard to ignore for most people. Even great musicians fall victim to this, it is a part of all of us and something we evolved to not die while starving in the wilderness. However, it is possible to ignore it and after a while it will be heard less and less. Good luck
I think that this educational concept applies to all other areas...sports, academics, writing, arts, crafts included... and D.L.'s explanation is right on with respect to learning and brain function...THANK YOU DL
It was my 40th birthday a few weeks ago. I’ve just started learning to play piano. After 35 years of playing guitar and a couple of other instruments by ear, I finally took the plunge and decided to properly learn how to sight read. It has been a life altering experience for me, being able to see the music really does change everything. I find myself listening to songs that I love and visualising the rhythms. Advice like the tips in this video are absolutely priceless. I haven’t hit the point where I’m practicing a piece ad-nauseum (yet), but hopefully this will prepare me for what is ahead for learning complex pieces! Thank you sharing this advice David, it really really is helpful!
Dear person, “sight reading” is a specific thing that is something else. You’re talking about “reading music”. Not to correct you but to prevent confusing conversations with people.
As an artist, I learned to draw the skeleton limb by limb. I drew the lower leg bones over and over, and went from up to the upper bone or femur. I drew the hand bones over and over, and I drew the skull over and over. Eventually, these drawings became almost as easy as signing my signature.
I'm in my 60s, have a MMus in performance and am a professional church musician (organ/piano). There is a lot of music that I can sight-read and learn quite quickly (choral accompaniments). When I can't, to be perfectly honest, I still hate the "learning" phase. It is slow and painful, and it is very hard to have the discipline to do the slow careful work at the beginning. I think you make many good points, in your video, but one you didn't cover so well was the fact that, (unless you are a world class musical genius maybe) you still have to go back to the slow, learning stage if the music is technically challenging, to keep it in good shape. If you don't, it will get sloppy and you will no longer be able to perform with excellence...at least that is my experience. There are concert level pieces that I used to play very well, but I would have to go back to almost square one to resurrect them....that is really hard, 'cause you feel like you "know" them, but you body doesn't anymore.
Very true. I enjoy sight reading bc I’m pretty good at it (at least compared to years ago), but keeping something in your repertoire is tough, I must practice it a lot.
So true. Might be harder for someone as skilled as you because it’s such a culture shock from the highest level of performance. Just guessing. As an amateur who has come back to an instrument after decades of not (after reaching a decent student level by the age of 14 and then quitting completely), I rather enjoy the slow learning part now. It’s still difficult, but I appreciate that it takes all my concentration- while it can be frustrating to try and fail at learning hard parts, to be able to truly not think about my boring repetitive life problems is refreshing. I can get into the process as much as the result. Of course I have to since my result is not going to be great, but I’m making great progress
I’m also a church organist and every time I redo, say, a challenging Bach chorale, I must start with the slow practice method, even though I’ve played it many times over the years. It does come back faster and more solid each time, fortunately. The rewards and satisfaction are tremendous.
Before I even start 'practicing' a new Bach piece' like an Invention` I spend time working on my fingering. Once I am comfortible with my finger placement only then do I slowly start to work on the piece, often measure by measure. Because I love Bach and my goal is to play it well enough to make it a part of me.
Very much the same in my case. My only problem still is that I need so much time working on new pieces that I almost have no energy anymore to keep the previous ones alive. So when I get back to them, I often have to "warm them up" and work through them again. I would love if many of Bach's keyboard music were a part of me. But still I cannot recreate them in an instant.
I needed to hear this so bad. I hired high level teacher am 58, I know music, but piano is not my primary instrument. I worked so hard for this guy, but I ran straight into this graph's reality. He put me right where I was uncomfortable, but could learn. I didn't realize how hard the progress would be. But the click has started to happen and it's getting smooth and magical.
Great video. Tbh I tried playing the Chopin etude you gave examples of and through some of the practice I changed my fingering to finger two instead of three in the middle notes when getting faster. I left it after a while like i do with a lot of music. I think I got to a lot of clicks but then dropped it for the next piece 😂 As an aside a guy called Paul Barton on yt does a great tutorial on the etude you're playing Blocking etc
Thank you very much David. In my quest to understand music, “and become musical,” I have been on an adventure that includes learning to play the violin, flute, trumpet, saxophone (three from the family), oboe, and now the bass. After years in this endevour, I now understand two things: 1. That I was musical before I started all this. We all are! 2. That the content of this video is possibly the most powerful tool one can have to become a musician… I said musician, not musical. But we don’t understand this at first.
Subscribed 👍I appreciate your grounded, no-BS approach to teaching. One thing that throws me off with a lot of RU-vid piano personalities is their constant "You just need to learn this ONE SIMPLE TRICK to have EXPLOSIVE PROGRESS" style of teaching. I understand a little positivity goes a long way but being honest about the amount of work that goes into cultivating real progress for me is far more reassuring.
@@cqreborn6989 I really appreciate that feedback! Nothing worth doing well is easy. By the way, I do have a new video coming out this morning about a single effective practice technique, but it’s not intended to be a quick fix video.
Good analysis, I would say it applies to any instrument. Anything that is harder than what you can sight read, will result in the two stages of learning and practice.
I love this video Have been trying to skip the practice part and sometims just get frustrated and stop But this video is an opening eye for me ...thank you doo much
bro you have so much important knowledge from different areas that are really important to do it efficient I appreciate it, I liked your words here for some reason 2:43-2:51, it sounds so right
@@davidlanemusic1 no never too late to learn! Thank you! I love my piano but as usual I don’t play or practice it enough, and kick myself for not playing it.
Great video. My parents had me in piano lessons when I was young and I need to rewire how I think about practicing piano because now I want to learn it, but still have this mental baggage of how I think about practice
Cheers David, that's a timely reminder. I find it difficult to sit in the learning phase sometimes. Another thing I struggle with is starting out in love with the piece, but after sufficient learning it starts to sound too familiar and actually boring. Sorry to leave such a long comment, but I hope some of the following is useful to others (I'm a 60-something returner after a few years of childhood lessons). One thing I try to do in the slow-playing phase is a bit of reinterpretation. What I mean is that when you play something much slower than its target tempo, you can add expression - slightly different dynamics on different notes, subtle rubato, and movement between legato and staccato, as if the piece was *meant* to be this slow. Some of these tweaks will have to be given up as tempo increases, but I suspect (I hope) this process also influences my faster playing, giving it more expression. Anyway, it can be a useful tool for avoiding the desire to speed up too early, because playing the piece slowly still sounds interesting, it's engaging creativity, and helping us focus on technique. However, saying this has revealed my other failing - playing through for the most part rather than chunking - but I usually do the latter afterwards to work on weaker sections. I try to avoid the other problem, of pieces I loved now starting to bore me, by leaving them for some time and moving on to something else for a while. After a week or two I will often regain my love of the piece again. It might cause another problem if I'm not careful - adding endless new pieces to my practice list, and hardly ever getting any of them to the satisfaction dot! I've got a dozen or so I'm working on, and three I can play *_mostly_* without mistakes. That last point reminds me of my main worry: I think I approach the satisfaction point at a very shallow angle. I've been able to play the Goldberg Aria, for example, for over a year without the score, and I still find my fingers straying to stupid places (F instead of F# is a common one). I'm not sure why, or if it's something everyone deals with unless they do a lot of practice of a piece for a concert, etc. This is one of those I was obsessed with, but now can't play too often or I begin to hate it! A final thought - partial help with the latter - is that the line goes on, as you said, beyond the dot, and every time we play something we should, I think, access our feelings at the time, and sometimes we should literally "play with" the piece (i.e. experiment with it). My favourite genre, baroque music, of course, gives ample leave to do this, adding - or leaving out - ornaments, etc.
So true! Learning slowly is part of the journey. This was drilled into my brain by my first piano teacher, nearly 65 years ago! I find the same applies to learning to sing a new song - your decide on the song, then listen to several others singing it well, then you study the voice nuances, and only much later do you start singing the song, polishing it to more than technique, with effortless expression. Thanks for making this so clear to newbie pianists!
You have be practicing something that is true no matter how elementary it is it has to be completely true to the piano or else you’re going to have a idea of what piano is and you’ll be lost before you even start
I’ve been taking piano lessons for a little over a year now & this video was extremely reassuring. I’ve grown a lot but still have so much more to learn. And it’s ok to take that time & to be patient ☺️
Im not even on sight reading yet, and yes its VERY tedious, I tried recording myself playing and i sound like a blind drunk person 😂 Im still learning scales and modes , I find myself switching up ways to play the scales because repeating the scales from begining to end become boring and daunting to me, My goal is to learn Bethoven's Moonlight Sanata, Duke Ellington's Satin Doll, and Do 9:00 n't Stop Believing by Journey. Whats difficult for me is the fingering for Dm7, and going from one chord to another quickly and smoothly along with playing the left hand TOGETHER with the right hand, even though im a lefty, I moderately know how to read music, but once I master my rhythm and speed plus fingering I think everything else will come easily. Im in my Mid 50's now by the time i am 70 i will be better, right now i am loving it and just enjoying the process one day at a time.
Just a very minor pushback I give to everyone who says they don't sight read - It's just what we call the 1st time you play anything, so you can't help but sight read. And without trying to get better at the specific skill, it will get better as your overall level improves, but then you can take focused practice eventually to improve that specific skill.
What an excellent video. The format and logical structure of the video made it really easy to understand. Thank you for sharing your expertise with us. I am now motivated to practise lol
I’m working through an arrangement of Autumn Leaves performed by Barney Kessel on guitar. Working on it purely by ear off the record. This video came right at the right time. Thanks!
Thanks for this! Good points for any learning endeavor. I have struggled to keep my "I need to be at, or should be at point "x'" mindset more practical. Your chart and insights are a practical approach to help. I have learned that 'expectations' is typically the main interference in my learning progress. I had to change my mindset of 'expect' to 'prefer' and focus on realistic goals vs. results. "Blessed are they that can control their expectations, for they shall be free of disappointments!" - 1st Opinions 2:17
I enjoyed this. I’m returning to the piano and have struggled with what to play and what to learn. And what to relearn. Wwould it bea good topic for one of your videos
Thank you for this, lots to think about. I have become to love the "Learning Stage". My mantra is "Play it as slowly as you can think it" at this stage. With no muscle memory at this stage I need to use my brain to work my hands. But even if I am playing something new at less than 50% of the intended tempo, I am still able to enjoy it as I am both learning and making music IN TIME.
Excellent video, and I’m not even learning an instrument right now. You give some very broadly applicable advice and reminders about learning anything new.
I am trying to become better at piano on my own (just for the need of helping myself with vocal scores as my instrument actually is singing) and I simply love to immerse myself into J.S. Bach's Little Preludes. I am learning these jewels very (very!) slowly, often only two bars per session. But I do understand them, every note gets its place and context, and I recreate them with my fingers. I simply love preparing and kind of unlocking new pieces, trying many variants of finger settings. It takes me an enormous amount of time, but it so much pays off in the long run as I really have acquired every single phrase and grasped its meaning and functioning. It took me quite some time not to worry anymore when I am proceding like a snail and to know that this is perfectly the right way.
I'm working through Thompson Level 2 now, and there was that click moment. There are still earlier pieces that I keep going back to, but I'm getting more organized in my learning phase. Loved this video, merci.
Good video, I have been learning for a couple of years now and I have managed to internalise this. It's been very handy for when I have been trying to learn a piece at the top end of my current ability and the challenge is getting to me, I can remind myself that steady application of careful learning has always (thus far) got to that "click" part where it starts to feel more natural easy. Great to help keep motivated!
I've been playing piano just a few months, although I do play clarinet. I am so glad I found this video. Being an adult learner I was getting frustrated with how slow I am playing piano with both hands together even though the is easy music. 3 weeks of playing 2 short pieces of music. Slow, and mistake after mistake thinking i will never get it right. Then tonight I practiced again and noticed I am getting a bit faster and getting more notes correct. Still nowhere near what it should be but I have noticed all of a sudden a change.
Very interesting view of the piano practicing! I teach the Suzuki method which teaches similarly the same techniques of practicing! Thank you for the great video!
Wow this just popped up on my feed.! I needed to hear this. I am retired and 75 years old. Needed to work my brain and hate crosswords . So started a free language app to lean French that was three years ago! I am still plodding on with that, but I had always wanted to play a musical instrument, because nobody needs to hear my singing voice.:) I bought a 16 string Lyre Harp all comments were its so easy to play.... Yes it you are not like me a complete novice in the UK... I sent for books and looked on line watched lots of RU-vid video ended up more confused:( Then a music school opened up in my little town, I had a word with them my bucket list aim is to read sheet music (if nothing else ) I am eight short lessons in and thank goodness for the patience and good humour of young Rob the guitar teacher. I think he is having fun seeing what can be done on the Lyre. But after all these years I am having fun and your video showed up at just the right time, thank you.
Thank you for this. I am working on the Goldberg Variations and I am still in the learning stage with the first 10. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever get to the practice stage. I avoid trying to play it near tempo to “check” how I am progressing, because I know it destroys all the painful work of slow practice.
This concept is difficult to grasp unless you've experienced it firsthand. I had been learning Bach's prelude and fugue no. 2 in Cm from the well-tempered clavier book I for a while, going slowly and mindfully. After a while, I randomly decided to play it at full speed (or close to it), and I was shocked that my fingers were, as if on autopilot, playing the piece just as precisely and smoothly as in the slow practice.
Thank you that was very helpful, going into grade 4 violin as an adult learner. Wow, some of the pieces RCM are really hard at the start, I'd think there's no way I can play this, and then like a puzzle the more pieces are in the easier it gets. So your curved line makes total sense, and I was thinking the other way and wondering why I kept getting advanced to the next piece, like they were too hard. It's like climbing up a mountain and then coasting down. I still wish the speed would come faster thou.
Thank you for that helpful insight. Personally, as an older learner, I find there is a bit of a "dip" down about half way through the second part of the graph. This seems to happen when my muscle memory starts to take over, but it isn't quite there, causing me to make some flubs. It takes a bit of concentration for me to work through that part. So for me, the learning curve is not always just going up! Any suggestion appreciated.
You're probably right in that, for most people, the graph is not entirely linear at any point. There's an up and down nature, especially in that first stage that is probably more obvious when you're applying it to something that takes multiple days. I do think the smaller the chunks you can allow yourself to focus on in practice will lead to the smoothest progression.
Guitar playing has a similar curve it starts slowly. can take a long while to polish something. Muscle memories are very necessary. Progress is more like a hockey stick curve long, slow, flat line then starts to curve up after a long time. Enjoy playing always, or it works, and you wintvstayvwith it .
Awesome realistic grounding of expectations and establishing a clear path. Totally on-track, and best, consolidated and concise presentation of the otherwise overly-fuzzy and oft-times disheartening path for learning to play the piano. PS - WHERE! have you been all these years? :-)
How does memorization figure into this process? Do you memorize as you go and if not at what point do you begin memorizing? Do you find that through memorization you have learned a piece in a more solid way?
@@marysdogsrescue that’s a good question, and I think the answer will vary from person to person. For me, I purposely memorize in the first half while working in very small sections that expand to longer sections, but I also know pianists who memorize at the very end as a natural consequence of really getting to know the music.
@@davidlanemusic1 yes, agreed. I do this as well. Really promotes learning the music well right from the start. It slows the process down even further for me, but worth it.
Thanks for the video. I have a question about the first half that often stumps me: how do I know I'm actually learning the right things (good technique, fingering, musicality, etc) if I'm not getting much positive feedback at the beginning in the form of actually being able to play anything? Sometimes I start to doubt whether I'm on the right path during the first phase, and I feel tempted to do things differently to see if the music 'clicks' sooner for me.
This is one of the biggest reasons for having a teacher, someone who can guide that early part of the process and keep everything on the tracks. If you don't have a teacher, you can try taking a video of your early practice and see how your technique is looking objectively. But I would strongly suggest taking lessons even for a season to get some regular guidance on things like you mentioned. Incidentally, it's way down my list, so I probably won't get to it until the winter, but I'll eventually do a Fingerings 101 video that covers the most common scenarios and guidelines.
Very, very helpful. David. Though my self-defeating bugaboo isn't in regard to practicing but to devoting time and focus on composition; not for ideas, with which I'm flooded, but for tightening, notation, instrumentation, etc. BTW, that's a great baritone you're packing there . . !
some people advocate learning a piece backwards. That is from the end...a few measures...then add a phrase before the ending and so forth until the beginning is reached. The piece will be learned and memorized. This applies to any instrument.
I do use this approach every time when I am at the stage of learning the piece by memory. When I am approaching the difficult passages in a piece, however, I directly aim at the hard spots first. But before that I need the idea of the whole piece. So at the very first, I sight-read (if ever possible) it and grasp its architecture and get an understanding of how the music evolves and why so. But working a piece into muscle memory from the back definitely is my most preferred way to make this process as easy as possible, I definitely agree with you! Many dear greetings from Switzerland.
I always wondered how to actually practice This is really helpful, and not only for piano players Edit: how can i know how to divide my practice time? If i practice X time and it's a really long piece, then how do i manage my time practicing (in general)?
Thanks! Practice structure has a lot of possibilities, and none of them are truly wrong. In general, I recommend only focusing on 1 manageable section of 1 piece at a time while just casually reviewing anything else you play during a session. It's audio only, but this podcast episode might also give you some ideas. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-CEEzxPYqwhM.html
The tricky part is that when a piece is played very slowly and only in small chunks, it's hard to perform melodic lines so that they can actually be digested. At least I can only reasonably work on this after I got capable of playing the piece reasonably fast. E.g., it's very hard to make a gradual crescendo if there's a one-second delay between each note - I just cannot "strike" each isolated note precisely so that it's just about a bit louder than the previous note. The same thing with ties, accents, the left-vs-right hand interplay, etc. So for me a great deal of learning actually starts after I learned the notes in the piece, because that's where I discover it all sounds too monotonic and boring, and I really need to incorporate some hand movements and potentially alter the fingering.
Thanks for your thoughts. All good points, but I would say that the same sensation of new/careful to familiar happens with each element. Every time you add dynamics or extend the phrase, I think it helps to take time to get familiar with that segment and then practice until it gets a lot better before you add something else.
I am learning Bach's WTK. Two fugues down, such that I can now practice them, as you say. Now, simpler pieces, for instance the gymnopedies, have gotten much easier to learn. What should I do in order to make WTK easier to learn? The practice itself is very motivating, but learning the pieces takes tremendous effort, weeks and months.
I would give yourself a lot of grace with the WTK. The preludes aren't easy, but the fugues are considered challenging by pretty much every pianist I know. I recommend a lot of slow practice, hands separately (while really emphasizing a consistent fingering), in small sections. What also has helped me is practicing backwards. Take an 8 measure section, and play measure 8 several times, then start at m. 7 and go through 8, then start on m 6, etc. Keep backing up your starting point until you can play the section smoothly.
Excuse me, but I would also add a 3rd stage to the processs: playing the piece in new circumstances. Different instruments, different audiences, different spaces, acoustically vs (semi) amplified, etc. , etc.. Good luck everyone.
That's a good point, but I still would fold it under the 2-stage system. To me, anytime there is anything new, whether that be adding the pedal or playing on a different instrument, you're in the new stage and have to get used to it. Now hopefully your new element isn't so complicated that you can't quickly get to the 2nd stage of practice.
Wow, David, very interesting video. I agree, it takes a lot of time and consistency to improve. I love that etude in C minor you played. ❤👏🔥What's the opus and number I can't remember ?
When i came "familiar" with the fantasia impromptu it Was like Meeting an complete narcistic asshole! I thought we will never be friends! But i knew i will do it and i did it and now i Play it everyday for warm up 😊
