Alexandra writes:
I try not to use the word practice. A couple of the many dictionary definitions are ‘habitual performance’, and ‘repeated or systematic exercise’. You cannot do either unless you KNOW what it is you are doing! So a session at the piano is about LEARNING until such a time when KNOWING is reached. Then follows playing, and perfecting, both with a curious and enquiring mind. At no time do I advocate unmindful repeated ‘drilling’. All time spent at the piano should have attention and concentration so as to incur clarity of the text and freedom of muscles. (See my article on Piano Playing and the Alexander Technique). Unmindful practice doesn't make perfect, unless you can include perfect mistakes and a perfectly awful technique! Engaging absorbing and attentive study at the piano makes perfect, takes a lot less time, and is a darn sight more interesting along the way!
This chimes in with my own thoughts about spending time at the piano. Traditionally, a lot of mindless repetition occurred, such as the playing of scales, which was supposed to improve overall performance, but was this really the case? Research would suggest not. Studies over the last twenty years or so have shown that experts and masters in many fields have often performed many thousands of hours of practice, but those practice hours were not mindless, they were deliberate.
The Road to Excellence, edited by Anders Ericsson, a leading researcher on expertise, demonstrates how it is only thoughtful, considered practice that improves performance. Moreover, the point is clearly made that over 10,000 hours of such practice is enough to create what the world considers 'prodigies' with 'inborn talent'.
Now, I don't want to get carried away with this. I am not advocating deciding which Nobel prize you want your newborn to win and going all out to reach that goal. The dangers and cruelty of such a scheme go without saying. But it does show the value of practice (sorry Alexandra!) and if your child is going to practice you don't want to waste her or his time as well as your own by simply going through the motions of playing without really listening to or thinking about the music.
Last week I wrote about how I roped in my eldest son to give the younger one a fresh viewpoint on his performance and encourage him to consider his playing a little more. Unfortunately now the eldest son has returned to university and I'm left without a novel audience, so I have had to think of a new incentive. This is what I came up with:
With the help of Kaki and Cat I've been reviewing my son's review practice.
Since he started to learn to play, his sessions have always included pieces he has learned. As the number grew, we rotated them so that he played them all at least twice a week. As time has gone by, however, his playing of these pieces has grown stale and thoughtless at times. After all, children are interested in novelty, not repeating things they already 'know'.
This week I told my son that we would write his review pieces' main polishing points on a card of his choice, then if he played the piece well with all its polishing points included, we would put it away and he wouldn't have to play it again for another two weeks. The Kaki and Cat box contains lots of pretty pictures of cats in various poses, and he had a lot of fun choosing which card we would use for each piece.
 |
| Some cards were 'saved' for favourite songs |
So far, his performance of review pieces has noticeably improved and it's great to see him really thinking and trying hard. We will keep the cards for two weeks' time, when we'll see if he can match or exceed this week's standard, in which case the piece can be safely mothballed for another spell.
An unforeseen advantage of this method has been that it has identified those pieces that he really cannot play very well yet, rather than the ones where he just wasn't really trying. By default, the former remain in the review box and will get more practice.
I'm interested to see how his review pieces sound after their rest!
No comments:
Post a Comment