Thanks for watching, Louise! You got this!

Yeah there is a Huberman podcast with a neuroscientist or something that talked all about this and how mistakes jack stuff up lol

Great to hear, thanks so much for sticking around a piano video!

Yes! You learn exactly what, and only what, you practice!

Thanks so much, Massimo! I'm glad to see you here on this channel as well, and I'm so happy this was helpful for you!

Very interesting approach! I hadn't heard of this one, but I'll be trying it out in my own practice. It's not a "mistake" if your intention is to target leap distance slightly larger and slightly smaller. By the way, did you study with Noa at Juilliard?

@@PianistAcademy1 Nope, just learnt this from his blog.

@@thekeyoflifepiano could you leave a link to his blog? I didn’t know he had one!

Pleased you found it interesting. Lighting is often overlooked but I think makes a great difference :-)

@@TommysPianoCorner aesthetics are aesthetics

Absolutely! Thanks for watching, Bernadette!

Thanks for watching, Julio! And starting and stopping *can* be ok in certain types of practice. We just want it to be intentional when and why we stop, not just a habit, especially when it happens on the same beat over and over again.

Hey Diego! Thanks for watching! 300k sure would be nice... hey I'd even settle for 50k right now haha! I take it you found the video helpful :-)

Thanks so much, Jason! Yes, keep it up! If you have topics that you'd like to learn about but haven't found good videos on, just let me know! I can either point you to them if I've already made them here, or can get them on my list of new content to create for the channel.

@@PianistAcademy1 Thank you good sir. Keep up the great work. Your channel WILL grow. I predict MANY subscribers in your future.

Thanks for watching, Brian! Hope they help!

Sight reading and reading notation are quite different tasks than efficient and well structured practice. In a similar vein to the point of this video, you can't practice sight reading and also practice "well" or with musical or technical progress in mind. They don't go together until you are a pretty advanced player. Likewise, reading notation is it's own skill, reliant on pattern recognition and implementation in a variety of ways. Learning to become a better reader either comes across a very long span of practice time, or will come more quickly if it's the focus of practice, at the expense of working on other things, like technique, musicality, interpretation, ear training, etc. How everyone learns is a bit different, so there isn't a "one-size fits all" approach that works well. Listening is important, but not at the expense of learning by rote and mimicking what the ears heard without regard to truly listening to our own playing and how it differs from the recording. When this happens with students earlier in development, it can take a lot of practice to "undo" what was learned that's actually incorrect, but wasn't understood because the foundation isn't yet strong enough. Tempo, dynamics, memory, etc, they are all just the same as the topics I talk about in that they need to be addressed in their own time. For some students this might mean working on all of those on day one, right in the first practice session on a piece. For others, it might be a month later. And for most, all 3 of those will take their own dedicated time, not coupled with trying to practice in other aspects. And that is really the point of the video. The mind can only actively process one to maybe 2 new streams of information at a time. It's the new content that we are actively focused on that should have our utmost attention, so much so, that we do everything possible to avoid imprinting "wrong" information about those tasks. When the mind can accomplish those and add in more, then we move to an additional task, over and over, until we have learned to process all of the components.

Hi there, and thanks for the comment! First off, just like I mention in the video, let's address exactly what a mistake is and isn't. Earlier on in our piano journey, a "mistake" might be a wrong note... OR... a wrong rhythm... OR... a wrong fingering. We can't expect to get everything right always, from the beginning. For any particular 5 minutes, pick just one thing to work on "mistake free." I always advise students to choose learning correct notes over correct rhythms first. So, taking as many pauses where you need, start one phrase or even one measure at a time and work on training your hand and (subconsciously) your ear on the correct notes. Then, as we are able and without sacrificing correct notes, begin to add the correct rhythm in. If you need to experiment with rhythm to learn and feel it the first time, I'd recommend doing that "away" from the piano... could be on your lap, it could be just tapping the rhythm on the fallboard, etc. We just don't want to execute movement at the keyboard until we have a better grasp. As we progress, bar by bar, phrase by phrase, concept by concept, we can continue to add more and more into our "perfect" practice. The idea of repeating 10x across a mistake is sometimes good, but it really needs to be used wisely. I did a video here called "Avoid Power Saver Mode" that goes into detail about this. I also did a video explaining the 10x practice method as well. The most important thing about repeated practice is to make sure our mind hasn't tuned out what our hands are doing. It's incredibly easy to slip into unfocused practice... in which case even 10x correct repetitions won't translate into still knowing the passage tomorrow or the day after. I wouldn't drop back into simpler pieces, but instead adjust what "perfection" means during your practice. Focus on one thing at a time and slowly combine them when we are able, after more practice time.

@@PianistAcademy1 Thank you! I will take a look at the 10x videos you have. Tonight I really tried to make some better neural pathways with a piece I am learning, Hornpipe by Purcell. Going very slow, but nailing the notes and rhythm. Now just get my speed up. That is really what I struggle with. I get all these built in pauses from the early practices that are hard to get rid of. But I persist. Thanks again!

​@@PianistAcademy1PianistAcademy1 Thank you for this detailed answer. Your channel is on its way to become my favourite channel! Your teaching is so helpful and you explain everything so fondly.

@@vanessas.4625 Thank you!! And I hope to continue to see you around the channel!

Thanks for watching, Chris! And I'm glad you enjoyed the more advanced bits!

I don't have a video about that in particular, no. It sounds like we need a better roadmap to follow, or at least, build a few more landmarks that keep us going through a piece. This video might help a bit in the process... it's specifically about memorizing, but we can apply it in a variety of ways: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/d795atSorbuximg.html

Usually with LH skips, I'm choosing to aim for one finger or another, and let the chord shape follow if needed. So, for example, even with octaves I wouldn't aim for both 5th and thumb... I'd pick the one that needs the most attention to be accurate and aim for that, letting my knowledge of the shape of an octave in the hand do the rest. For me this is almost always aiming for 5 and letting 1 fall "where it may" knowing what an octave feels like. Because of this, I don't think I'd ever aim for an octave to aid in leaps to single pitches because in other cases, I'm eliminating the other pitches to make my leaps more accurate. I think I've answered your question here? But if I haven't, let me know! There's of course no one right way at the piano and even if I didn't use the technique you describe myself, I might try it out with students who have trouble with the single pitch method that I prefer for myself.

Work on pedal as soon as you possibly can. Yes, there is still and always a benefit in checking your practice without pedal, but too much work without pedal can lead to technical mistakes that will prohibit us from learning more and more, plus working without pedal doesn't train your ears to listen to bad vs good vs great pedal work, which is incredibly important in performance. By the way, when you are ready, I have a full course on this piece! You can check out the free preview of it here to help you as you learn: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/d7d6gNOQz5OxdIE.html And you can also listen to my own performance of the piece here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/pK1oedaemLPVlnk.html

Wow, thanks so much, really appreciate your help and taking the time/effort to respond (even on a clip that’s a year old)! I will definitely take a look at the links you sent over. Thanks again!

That’s right!

I think there can be various types of plateaus that take some specific kinds of practice and discipline to overcome. Sometimes it's literally just a matter of the need to extend practice time with the right focus. Sometimes we need to change an approach. No matter what, polishing always requires that the hands learn what I call "autopilot." Without that, we will always need to be too focused on the physical aspects of playing and we won't be able to listen and feel the music as well as we can or should.

I haven't read it, but I have read your review of the book on your blog! I'll have to order a copy and see what Westney says in detail. If you're familiar with "The Bulletproof Musician" podcast, there was an episode on May 21st called "The Superiority of Intentionally Imperfect Practice" that you might find interesting. The episode is only 9 minutes long and doesn't come to a fantastic musical conclusion, but it is eye opening. The host of the show is Noa Kageyama, current Juilliard faculty member.

@@PianistAcademy1 thanks for the tip. I’ll try to look it up. Westney’s book is very interesting. I think as with everything, it is important to apply the advice appropriately. Like many people, I reached the ‘plateau’ (not to say ceiling) that my intuition would get me to (around Grade 7/8 in my case), up to which point it almost doesn’t matter how you practice as everything is easy. Beyond that progress I feel is harder won. I despair when I see the well meaning advice of ‘switch on your metronome etc.’ - might be fine BEFORE the natural plateau we all have, but won’t get us beyond :-)

@@TommysPianoCorner I’m ordering the book but in the meantime, I’m very eager to understand what you mean about the plateau because that exactly describes where I’m at. I feel like every piece I get to comes to a certain point and I cannot polish it. Does that sound like a plateau?

@@mickizurcher I believe that with pretty much any skill, we have a certain amount of natural intuition that helps us get to a certain point with just a modicum of work. To get beyond that is simply hard work! This point will be different from one person to the next. For a non-musical example, I have seen people on their first experience of scuba diving look like they had done it all their lives whereas others appear in serious danger of drowning. I was in the latter category but worked hard and am now a Divemaster. Equally, with piano, some will progress rather rapidly to quite an advanced level almost effortlessly. Yet they will reach a point where even they need to really work hard to progress beyond where their intuition will take them. This is what I mean by the plateau - we reach a certain point and then find we don’t progress. This is basically where we need to get much smarter about how we practice as simply ‘practice slowly’ won’t cut it anymore. I hope that makes sense :-)

Many times, we shouldn't be starting over from the beginning in practice... and of course never in performance either. By the time we reach a point where we are practicing longer sections of a piece, like a 16 or 32 bar segment, from top to bottom, we shouldn't be having trouble with wrong notes or rhythms anymore. Those longer bits of practice should most likely be focused on musicality. And yes, recovering from a mistake is another art in itself. Not at all what I'm talking about in this video! But a very important skill to develop. If too much practice is "mistake recovery" then we are simply practicing making the mistake first and then fixing it... instead of working toward a no-mistake performance and then being ready to adapt in performance if the need arises. Your posture question is a good one. When I truly sit down for a practice session of bigger classical rep (not filmed lol) the bench goes another inch or two back from where it is and I lean in, probably about this same amount. I've liked employing a strong forward lean during aggressive passages for many years. It gets more of the lower back engaged with the sound and produces a bigger tone more easily than the vertical or near-vertical posture. All that said, it's a choice I make and it doesn't impact (in a negative way) my technical capabilities or tension in the arms during playing. I wouldn't begin to teach a student how to incorporate this sort of posture until they already have shown really great control and fluid technique. I was in my undergrad program and preparing for my first time soloing with orchestra when my professor introduced lower back technique to me.

@Pianist Academy interesting, of course leaning a bit forward allows to bring more energy out to the passages that need it, while in others it should not be necessary. I think the choreography of the performance also plays a big role in what we end up doing but let's not go there lmao, surely that is something i don't need to worry about.. *yet* :P

@@serwoolsley Yes, there can be a bit of choreography, but I'm also a fan of letting our motions speak directly from the music... nothing contrived. If the motion is born of the emotion and technique, it will likely be musical, efficient, and pleasant to watch!

Yes utilize both, at the right times!

Thanks for the Super, Jose! And I'm glad you enjoyed the performance :-)

I take it you found his 5 seconds here more valuable than the other 18 minutes I presented?

@@PianistAcademy1 succinctly for me it's the crux of the issue. I battle twords perfection using an impetuous of instruction over long periods, trying not to overthink.

@@beethovensg I do agree with Graham in that, for a great deal of our practice time, it needs to be aimed toward perfection in all of the ways he describes. But even with my advanced students prepping for auditions, it's rare they can tick all of the boxes, even at slow tempo. Beyond that, like I go on to explain here, slow practicing almost never leads us into the technique needed to execute fast/virtuosic passagework or octaves. In the cases that we *can* employ the slow practice work, it takes an incredible amount of body awareness to understand what "fast and correct" actually looks and feels like in "slow motion." I was recently watching a masterclass with Veda Kaplinsky of the Juilliard School working on Etudes with many students. One of the things she said, related to this topic, was that: in the passage in question in her class, fast and legato practice actually slows down to be more like piano dynamic and slight staccato practice. Without decades of practice and insights like that, it can be easy to think that fast legato should be played just like slow legato. But they simply don't connect. In a sense, I'm arguing that "the speed of no mistakes" actually still introduces one very important disconnect (or mistake) from performance tempo: the technique practiced at slow speeds is almost never the same way we use the playing mechanism at fast speeds. This is why, no matter how much slow practice a student might do on the Liszt variation I present, they'll never increase tempo to performance if they only practice slowly. In fact, students usually tense and lock up, creating extra tension, when they try to bring an only slow practiced segment up to tempo, which is the very opposite of virtuosic technique.