All posts tagged piano practice

So you’re practicing?

originally posted by: ingeniousx on tumblr

Over the past few months I’ve noticed that when I mention to people that I started practicing piano again I get a variety of reactions. Most look at me like I just told them I took up a new hobby like quilt making or needlepoint. One suggested that it must be “relaxing” for me. My students usually give me a sidelong glance as if they’re wondering why I’d bother practicing piano at my age.

Luckily, most have no idea of all the musical “baggage” that accumulated over the years- the self-doubt, the performance nerves and the deterioration of technique from not practicing. There were the nagging thoughts that maybe I should be improvising and composing rather than playing music of dead composers. There were the times when making music was drudgery – hours of playing background music for a women’s bridge tournament and Christmas gigs with endless repetitions of I’ll Be Home For Christmas. There were horrible accompanying jobs (the orchestral reduction for the Jolivet bassoon concerto). And even while teaching the old saying “those who can’t play teach” would sometimes start running around in the back of my head.

These days I’m feeling very fortunate. I have the best group of students ever and I’m making the time to play the music I really want to play (such as this week’s Rachmaninoff’s Etude Tableau Op 33 No 8 in g minor). Of course, some things have changed around here. The TV hasn’t been on since the Superbowl. The beds go unmade most days and the laundry piles up. Meals are take-out or super-easy to prepare. The piano is priority. Each week (now at week #20) I become more determined to see this year through.

Oh yes, and speaking of other people’s reactions to this whole piano practice lifestyle…once in a while I get a wonderful response.

Last night my Twitter friend, Rhea Borja (@RheaB) messaged me that she was inspired by the Go Play Project to record Schumann-Liszt’s “Widmung.” Here’s her first take! Have a listen!

And follow along to get updates on new weekly recordings by clicking “like” on the Go Play Project Facebook page.

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by C.S. on May 10, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Piano Playing
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Posted by C.S. on May 10, 2012

http://goplayproject.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/so-youre-practicing/

Choosing Risk over Perfectionism

Cover of "Art & Fear: Observations On the...

Cover via Amazon

Last week I received a marvelous book from an online friend. The book is Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It’s a quick read but it’s already full of highlighted sections and dogeared pages.  As I prepare my next installment of Schumann’s Papillons for recording on Sunday, I’m starting to wonder if I made a big mistake by jumping into this project so unprepared. I haven’t even looked at this piece in almost 20 years and I don’t even remember if I ever had it polished and memorized. But it’s a piece I love and one I want to keep in my repertoire.

I came across this nugget in my reading to get me over this hump and back to the piano bench this morning.

To demand perfection is to deny your ordinary (and universal) humanity, as though you would be better off without it. Yet this humanity is the ultimate source of your work; your perfectionism denies you the very thing you need to get your work done. Getting on with your work requires a recognition that perfection itself is (paradoxically) a flawed concept….Such imperfections (or mistakes, if you’re feeling particularly depressed about them today) are your guides – valuable, reliable, objective, non-judgmental guides – to matters you need to reconsider or develop further. It is precisely this interaction between the ideal and the real that locks your art into the real world, and gives meaning to both.

And as I finished the book this morning – this:

In the end it all comes down to this: you have a choice (or more accurately a rolling tangle of choices) between giving your work your best shot and risking that it will not make you happy, or not giving it your best shot – and thereby guaranteeing that it will not make you happy. It becomes a choice between certainty and uncertainty. And curiously, uncertainty is the comforting choice.

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by C.S. on March 29, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Piano Playing
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Posted by C.S. on March 29, 2012

http://goplayproject.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/choosing-risk-over-perfectionism/

The Pianist’s Sketchbook

Cover of "An Illustrated Life: Drawing In...

Cover via Amazon

The other day I was browsing through An Illustrated Life – drawing inspiration from the private sketchbooks of artists, illustrators and designers, by Danny Gregory. it’s the type of book that when you flip through the pages, I can guarantee you’ll want to run out and get a sketchbook and a set of pens and start doodling and sketching.

It got me thinking. Why should visual artists have all the fun? Why don’t classical musicians seem to want to pull back the curtain and show the world what inspires them and all the hard work that leads up to the final polished performance. What would be the musical equivalent of the artist’s sketchbook? The musician’s doodlings? The pianist’s process?

Well, I think I found it…. on Twitter. I’m lucky to have found some of the most creative and friendly musicians on Twitter. A tweet about a piece of music sends me right to IMSLP to download the score. Another tweet about a concert and I’m off to read reviews and find clips on YouTube. And a tweet about a productive practice session sends me right to the piano bench.

Here are just a few of the pianists on Twitter who have inspired me to take the leap and start my own musical sketchbook of pieces that are still a bit raw, the collection I call my “Go Play Project.”

Erica Sipes (@ericasipes) has recently been blogging and posting a video diary of her preparation of Beethoven’s 3rd piano concerto for an upcoming concerto competition. Her careful methodical practice has convinced me to pull in the reigns and take the time to check fingering and details and practice slowly in a way that no piano teacher or coach ever seemed to be able to do.

Jocelyn Swigger (@jocelynswigger) is keeping an audio practice diary as she learns ALL the Chopin Etudes, an goal many pianists probably have, but how many of us ever follow through? Hats off to Jocelyn and thank you for sharing the invaluable details of your practice.

The most popular pianist on YouTube, Valentina Lisitsa (@ValLisitsa) pulled back the curtain last summer when she live streamed her daily 14-hour practice sessions. Now if that wasn’t enough to inspire you to go running to the piano I don’t know what would.

And as far as tweets go, I find that James Rhodes (@JRhodesPianist) shares his love of piano with his Twitter followers in the most authentic and genuine way. In my opinion, his twitter feed comes very close to being the musical equivalent of an artist’s sketchbook.  How can any pianist not want to move away from his or her computer screen and head for the nearest piano after reading tweets like this and this and this?

Take a listen to this week’s addition to my “sketchbook” – Chopin’s Fantasy Impromptu, Op. 66.

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by C.S. on March 18, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by C.S. on March 18, 2012

http://goplayproject.wordpress.com/2012/03/18/the-pianists-sketchbook/

Mindfulness and Recording

Sunday night while I was recording the Bach-Petri version of “Sheep May Safely Graze” I realized one side-benefit of this weekly recording project is that I am forced to practice with heightened awareness. Pianist Jocelyn Swigger is learning all of the Chopin Etudes and shares her experience through a series of wonderful podcasts on her blog, Play It Again Swig. Here she talks about the element of consciousness that occurs when you practice in settings where there are people listening. She compares it to the aliveness that you feel when you’re performing on stage and talks about recreating that feeling in the practice room.

For me that “heightened awareness” comes as soon as I turn on my handy little ZoomH2 recorder. Suddenly I’m listening to inner lines, aware of every hesitation, and feeling the same adrenalin rush that comes with a live performance without the self-consciousness were there an actual live audience listening. Once I’m able to stop the mental chatter (where I question my sanity for giving up yet another Sunday evening to record a piece that’s still a work-in-progress and post it online for the whole world to listen to), I’ve actually experienced moments where my attention is fully on the present. This feeling of total awareness is what some call “mindfulness.”  This is when time passes in a blink of an eye. For me, it is these moments that will keep me coming back to these Sunday night recording sessions.

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by C.S. on February 22, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by C.S. on February 22, 2012

http://goplayproject.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/mindfulness-and-recording/

Rise and Shine

A teacher once told me, “You have to ask yourself whether or not you can live without playing the piano.”

But there was rent to pay and college loans were coming due, so like many pianists, I began to teach. For years I was happy to have music in my life even if it was just Middle C and the surrounding notes. I felt fortunate to be able to set my own schedule and work with many interesting and talented students.

But that question has always been gnawing at me.

Now that I’ve started this “project” I’ve hardly let a day pass without sitting at the piano. I feel like I’ve come home!

Today I was preparing a Brahms Intermezzo for next Sunday’s recording and I thought of this video my son and his friends made. (He’s the cellist.) Such wisdom in these lyrics.

You must rise and shine each day. Like there is no time to waste. You must get up, create, there is no other way.

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by C.S. on February 15, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Piano Playing
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Posted by C.S. on February 15, 2012

http://goplayproject.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/rise-and-shine/

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