(27) Fast Play Degradation, Eliminating Bad Habits

Play any composition at full speed (or faster), and you may suffer "Fast Play Degradation" (FPD). The following day, you can't play it as well. This happens mostly with HT play. HS play is more immune to FPD and can in fact be used to correct it. FPD occurs probably because the human playing mechanism (hands, brain, etc) gets confused at such speeds, and therefore occurs only for complex material such as HT play of conceptually or technically difficult material. Easy pieces tend not to suffer FPD. Students who try to speed up HT can run into FPD problems and the standard solution had been to only practice slowly for long periods of time which wastes too much time.

HS practice is the better solution. This simplifies the music, reduces confusion and erases any bad habits that formed during fast HT play. One effective way to avoid FPD is to always play slowly at least once before quitting.

The most important thing about FPD is the knowledge that it exists, so that you don't get caught off guard, and know what to do to cure it. If you don't know anything about FPD and experience its symptoms, you can suffer psychological problems because nothing works for no known reason.

Bad Habits: Beginners start out with numerous bad habits that are readily identified by teachers. It is the teacher's job to prioritize them and correct them one by one. Common bad habits are poor touch, over-use of the damper pedal, weak (timid) fingers, stuttering, wrong speed, lack of rhythm and musicality, uncontrolled motions, etc. Bad habits are the worst time-wasters in piano practice because, once formed, they take such a long time to correct, whereas preventing them is much, much easier, if preventive measures are taken in time.

Some beginners bang away at the piano without regard to musicality. The student equates loudness to excitement. This happens because the students are so engrossed with the practice that they forget to listen to the sounds coming out of the piano. It is important to cultivate the habit of listening to yourself, and it is the teacher's main job to show what "musical" sounds like. The ability to distinguish between musical and non-musical is the most important skill that students must cultivate. Listening to yourself is harder than many people realize because many students expend all their effort playing, with nothing left for listening. The best way to get around this problem is to videotape the playing and listen/watch it to find ways to improve. There is no need to videotape all your life because that will waste too much time. Do it enough times until you learn how to listen to yourself and you will be able to listen while practicing.

Then there are those with weak fingers. This is caused by not relaxing, and not letting gravity take over. The student lacks confidence and subconsciously lifts the arms, which creates stress so that speed and musicality become impossible. These students must be taught the full dynamic range of the piano, how to make use of this range and, above all, to relax. Students practicing on old pianos with compacted hammers that are not voiced can develop "weak fingers" because such pianos produce too much sound when played normally. The best solution is to hire a piano tuner who knows how to voice the hammers.

Still another bad habit is playing at the wrong speed, either too fast or too slow, especially during a performance when students get excited and lose the sense of tempo. The right speed is determined by many factors, including the difficulty of the piece with respect to the technical ability, what the audience might be expecting, the condition of the piano, what piece preceded or will follow this piece, etc. Some students might tend to perform pieces too fast for their skill level and end up making mistakes, while others are timid and play too slowly, thus not taking full advantage of the music. Playing slowly can be more difficult than playing at the correct speed, which compounds a timid player's problems. Those who perform too fast can become psychologically discouraged because they make too many mistakes and become convinced that they are poor pianists. These problems apply not only to performances but also to practicing; those who practice too fast can end up thinking that they are poor pianists because they make errors and progress is slow. Slowing down just a little may enable them to play accurately and beautifully and, in the long run, acquire technique faster. To combat this problem, some schools of piano do not allow fast play at all. That's not optimal, because the students will learn at a slower pace.

Beginners often play mechanically like a metronome, in an effort to "play accurately", and because they have not been taught the meaning of musicality. They need to be taught that rhythm is a language, and that the small deviations from strict timing are used to communicate musical concepts, etc..

Poor tone quality is another common problem. No one is listening during practice, so tone doesn't seem to matter; the student may not even be familiar with the concept of tone. Students must always strive for tone, because it is the most important part of the music. Good tone cannot be produced on a lousy or unregulated piano; this is the main reason why students need a decent piano and why tuning, regulation, and hammer voicing are more important than most students and their parents realize. Listening to good recordings is the best way to wake up the student to the existence of good tone. If they only listen to their play, they may have no idea what good tone means. On the other hand, once they pay attention to tone and start getting results, it will feed on itself and they can learn to produce sounds that attract an audience.

Stuttering is caused by stop-and-go practice in which a student has a habit of stopping to replay a section every time there is a mistake. At a mistake, always play through it; don't stop to correct it. Make a mental note of where the mistake was and practice that section later. Fish out a small segment containing that mistake (typically a few bars) and work on it. Once the habit of playing through mistakes is established, students can graduate to the next level of anticipating mistakes and taking evasive action, such as simplifying the section, maintaining the rhythm or melody through the flub, or even speeding up just a little and using hand memory to carry you through. These skills must be practiced every time you hit a mistake. Most audiences don't mind, and often don't even hear or remember the mistakes unless the rhythm or melodic line is broken.

Slowing down at anticipated flubs can be a dangerous thing. No matter how well it is memorized, playing anything is still dependent on hand memory. Slowing down can change the stimuli for hand memory and increase the chances of flubs. Often, you can prevent a flub by speeding up so that you depend more on hand memory. Therefore experiment with both approaches during practice. Without prior practice, speeding up is a scary thing to do during a performance.

The worst thing about bad habits is that they take so long to eliminate, especially if they are HT habits. Therefore nothing accelerates the learning rate like knowing all the bad habits and preventing them before they become ingrained. For example, the time to prevent stuttering is when a student first begins piano lessons, when a few stops here and there seem harmless. In the beginning, most students don't stutter; however, they must be immediately taught to play through mistakes — it is a skill they must learn. At this stage, it is easy to learn; to teach a stutterer to play through mistakes, on the other hand, is a very frustrating task.