Basic Approach, Interpretation, Musical Training, Perfect Pitch

Teachers play a critical role in showing students how to play and practice musically. There are some general and useful principles of musicality. For example, most pieces of music begin and end with the same chord, a somewhat mysterious rule which is actually a result of basic chord progression rules. An understanding of chord progressions is very useful for memorizing. A musical phrase generally starts and ends with softer notes, with the louder ones in between; when in doubt, this is a good default principle. There are many books that discuss musical interpretation (Gieseking, Sandor), and we will encounter numerous pointers throughout this book. Clearly, education in music theory, relative and perfect pitch, etc., will be very beneficial to the pianist.

Musical training of the very young can be extremely rewarding. Most babies exposed frequently to perfectly tuned pianos will automatically develop perfect pitch -- this is nothing extra-ordinary. Nobody is born with perfect pitch, because it is a 100% learned skill (the exact frequencies of the musical scales are arbitrary human concoctions -- there is no natural law that says that middle A should be 440 Hz). If this perfect pitch is not maintained, it will be lost later in life. Piano training of young children can begin as early as age three to four. Early exposure of youngsters (from birth) to classical music is beneficial because classical music has the highest musical content (deep, complex, logic) among all the different types of music. Some forms of contemporary music, by over-emphasizing certain narrow aspects, such as loudness or simplistic music structures that do not stimulate the brain, can detract from musical development by distancing the brain from music.

A person does not have to be especially gifted to be able to play the piano well. Although you need to be musically gifted to compose music, the ability to move the fingers is not that dependent on the musical brain. In fact, most of us are more musical than we give ourselves credit for and it is the lack of technique that limits our musical expression at the piano. We have all had the experience of listening to famous pianists and noticing that one is different from the other -- that is more musical sensitivity than we will ever need to start playing the piano. There is no need to practice eight hours a day; some famous pianists have recommended practice times of less than an hour. You can make progress practicing three or four times a week, one hour each. If you practice more, you will of course make faster progress.

One of the most important lessons of this book is to play relaxed. What should you feel when you have learned to play completely relaxed? Firstly, speed ceases to be an issue, not only because it isn't that difficult, but also because you have an automatic speed limit called music, which will limit your speed long before you encounter any difficulties. You will feel that the fingers actually want to go faster, and you will often have to hold them back. You develop "quiet hands" in which the hands move minimally while the fingers fly. You can play even moderately difficult material and actually rest the hands on the piano and feel the fatigue decreasing as you play. Note that relaxation applies only to the physical playing mechanism; the brain must never be shut off -- it must always be intensely focused on the music, even (or especially) when practicing. Thus mindless repetitions of exercises such as the Hanon series is the worst thing you can do to develop stamina in your musical brain. If you don't develop brain stamina during practice, the brain will tire out part way through any performance and you will end up playing like a robotic zombie with no active control over the performance. This type of situation is what naturally gives rise to nervousness because, without proper preparation, your brain knows that the chances of success are slim.

Finally, total music education (scales, time signatures, dictation, ear training [including perfect pitch], dictation, theory, etc.) should be an integral part of learning to play the piano because each different thing you learn helps all the others. In the final analysis, a total music education is the only way to learn piano. Unfortunately, the majority of aspiring pianists do not have the resources or the time to follow such a path. This book was designed to give the student a head start by learning how to acquire technique quickly so that they can consider studying all the other helpful subjects. Statistically, students who excel in playing the piano almost always end up composing music of their own. Learning theory later in life is often not a viable option; for example, learning perfect pitch becomes more difficult with age, see details in section III.12. On the other hand, studying music composition is not a prerequisite for composing. Some musicians frown on learning to much composition theory before starting to compose your own music because that can prevent you from developing your own musical style.

What are some unique features of the methods of this book?
  1. They are not overly demanding, like older methods that require students to commit to a dedicated lifestyle to fit the piano instruction. In the methods of this book, students are given the tools to pick a specific procedure that will achieve a defined objective. If the methods really work, they shouldn't require a lifetime of blind faith in order to achieve proficiency!
  2. Every procedure of these methods has a physical basis (if it works, it always has one; the past problems have been in identifying the correct explanations); it must further contain the following required elements:
  • Objective: what techniques to acquire, i.e., if you can't play fast enough, or you can't trill well, you want to memorize, etc.,
  • Then do: i.e., practice hands separately, use chord attack, memorize as you practice, etc.,
  • Because: the physiological, psychological, mechanical, etc., explanations for why these methods work. For example, hands separate practice allows quick acquisition of technique by making difficult passages simpler (one hand is easier than two) and the chord attack enables instant acceleration to the final speed, etc., and
  • If not: problems that arise if uninformed methods are used, i.e., acquiring bad habits from too many repetitions, developing stress from practicing with fatigued hands, etc. Without this "If not", students can pick any other method -- why this one? We need to know what not to do because bad habits and wrong methods, not insufficient practice, are the main causes of a lack of progress.