Piano Video Lesson: Why Not Playing is Practicing

Practicing, remember, is a thought process. The playing is not the practicing. It's the analyzing of what you've played in each repetition that is going to improve your playing.

Welcome to LivingPianos .com. Robert Estrin here with the secret of repetition in your piano practice.

Of course, repetition is an essential part of piano practice, but did you know that the essential element of repetition is not the repetition itself.

It's the time between the repetitions.

All too often I've seen students fall into a trap, and I'm going to demonstrate with the end, or right near the end of Ferrile, something you all know so you can understand the point I'm making here today, which can add value to your practice to make it more effective. So, you have these fast triplets at the end, and this is what a lot of times... Well, first I'll play it the way it's written.

Well, suppose you're playing it and it's not coming out that way, and there's a myriad ways you can practice it. And of course, I would suggest primarily practicing slowly. You could turn the metronome on at a comfortable speed, and you could do progressively faster metronome speeds, or you could work in note groups, as I've also demonstrated.

You could do rhythms. You could do so many things.

But that's not what I'm showing you today. I'm showing you how to deal specifically with just repeating something until you get it right, which I'm sure all of you do on a regular basis in your practice.

And you have to remember the repetition is not where the value comes in. This is what happens if you don't take the essential time between each repetition.

You're going to end up with a loop of missing it over and over and over again, essentially practicing playing it badly. That's what you want to avoid. How you avoid this is the time between the repetitions. That is your practicing. The playing of the passage is not the practicing. The playing is only a check of your work.

The work is up here between each repetition. So if you play it and something isn't clean, this is the way you approach it. Ah, where am I in the score? It's right here in this measure here.

No, it isn't. It's right here. It's in the middle of the measure.

I'm on the wrong page.

See? So I'm on... Now I'm thought. I found where I am. I figure out where I want to start.

So you find the spot.

Incidentally, one of the hardest parts about practicing is finding exactly where you are in the score. You make a mistake and you know about where the mistake is, but then you don't know exactly where it is. Well, guess what? Identifying the correction is number one.

Once you find where the correction is, you focus your attention on the correction.

Then you can first come up with a strategy for cementing that correction.

You find the spot to start just before it so you can repeat the correction. So in this case, I would start or you would start.

Once you've got the correction solidified, then you go back and see if you can put the correction into context, starting at the beginning of the passage.

Each time you play it, take a moment to think about what you just played. If it has come out absolutely perfect, see if you can repeat it perfectly again.

If there's anything that isn't quite right, identify the correction before you repeat it. This is essential.

Each time you play it, stop and think about what you just heard. Take the time between repetitions to study in your mind what you just played. Find the correction in the score, then implement the correction by starting strategically at the exact right spot before it that makes sense. Not right on the correction. That won't do you any good at all because you're never going to be starting on that correction. You have to be able to get into it. So you want to find the closest spot before the correction. Now initially just to know what the correction is, you might play that note, oh yeah, it's an A with the first finger, but then find where you can start just before it so you can either land on that note or land right after that note, then cement that, then go back. So each repetition you must analyze your work and think about what you want to accomplish each and every repetition. Once you fall into mindless repetition where you're just repeating things without listening to what you just did and coming up with a strategy to improve it, you are not practicing at that moment. You are mindlessly repeating whatever happens to come out.

Practicing, remember, is a thought process. The playing is not the practicing. It's the analyzing of what you've played and each repetition that is going to improve your playing. And that's the lesson for today.

And any questions you have, bring them to my attention here, Robert at LivingPianos .com, your online piano resource. Thanks again for all your subscribers and Patreon subscribers. I offer private piano lessons. I've got students in over a dozen countries and I've got a great setup so you can see the keys, you can see the pedals, you can see everything you need to see all in one place here at LivingPianos .com, your online piano resource. Until next time, stay well, keep practicing.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/why-not-playing-is-practicing/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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