CHAPTER ONE
Basic Practice Methods
(1) Practice Routines, the Intuitive Method
Many students use the following practice routine :
Practice scales or technical exercises until the fingers are limbered up. Continue this for 30 minutes or longer if you have time, to improve technique especially by using exercises such as the Hanon series. This is when you can really work hard to strengthen the fingers.
Then take a new piece of music and slowly read it for a page or two, carefully playing both hands together, starting from the beginning. This slow play is repeated until it can be performed reasonably well and then it is gradually speeded up until the final speed is attained. A metronome might be used for this gradual ramp-up.
At the end of a two hour practice, the fingers are flying, so the students can play as fast as they want and enjoy the experience before quitting. After all, they are tired of practicing so that they can relax, play their hearts out at full speed; this is the time to enjoy the music!
Once the new piece can be played satisfactorily, memorize it and keep practicing "until the music is in the hands"; this is how you make sure that it is memorized.
On the day of the recital or lesson, practice the piece at correct speed (or faster!) as many times as possible in order to make sure it is in top condition. This is the last chance; obviously, the more practice, the better.
Every step of this procedure creates problems, is based on false beliefs and will limit progress to about the intermediate level even if the students practice several hours daily. This method tells the students nothing about what to do when they hit an impossible passage except to keep repeating, sometimes for a lifetime, with no idea of when or how the necessary technique will be acquired. A teacher who can't even play the piano can teach this method! It leaves the task of acquiring technique to the student — the method teaches nothing. Moreover, the music will come out flat during the recital and unexpected flubs will be almost unavoidable, as explained in this book. All these problems are solved using "efficient practice methods".
The above practice routine seems so intuitively logical. Although human intuition helps us solve simple problems, when it comes to highly developed fields such as learning piano, intuition can not compete with learning tricks that past geniuses have discovered. Without these learning tricks, students are stuck with what we shall call "intuitive methods" , that are not based on the most efficient practice methods . "Talented" students, it turns out, have teachers, such as Combe, who know some of the efficient practice methods, or have discovered them through a lifetime of dedication to piano, and can learn unbelievably quickly. Any student can progress equally quickly if there is a textbook containing all the known efficient practice methods. Though "intuition" generally denotes something good, I have chosen "intuitive methods" to denote the old, discredited teaching methods because the best methods are usually counter-intuitive, as we shall see.
There are numerous books on piano [(83) Book Reviews: General Comments]; they all teach what you should play, such as scales, trills, a Mozart sonata, etc., but they seldom teach how to acquire technique so you can play them. This book is a compilation of practice methods for acquiring technique with explanations of why certain methods work while others don't. Without the explanations, there is no way to know if a method works or not. Just because a teacher used the method for 30 years is not a valid explanation because so many of them have turned out to be wrong. Textbooks will free teachers from having to teach the mechanics of practicing and allow them to concentrate on music where the teachers are needed.
Piano teachers know that students must practice musically in order to acquire technique. Both musicality and technique require accuracy and control. Practically any technical flaw can be detected in the music. Nonetheless, many students tend to practice neglecting the music, preferring to "work" when no one is around to listen. Their reasoning is, "I'll practice non- musically (which is easier because you can shut off the brain) until I can play it well, then I'll add the music." This never works because learning piano is all about training the brain, not finger calisthenics. Such practice methods produce "closet pianists" who love to play but can't perform [(42) Musicality, Touch, Tone, Color].
Using efficient practice methods, you can learn in less than five years, what you might achieve in fifty diligent years using the "practice, practice, practice" (intuitive) approach. This book is not claiming that it will transform you into Mozarts, Beethovens or Chopins, although that can't be ruled out. It only claims that you can learn to play their music with ease.