Best way to practice

Hello All,
As a beginner who is self-teaching, I would like to know if it is generally better to practice all parts together for fewer measures until you learn it, or better to spend the same time practicing the parts separate for more measures until all parts are learned for that portion, then put them together. Any studies out there that show which way results in the best learning in the shortest time? My current practice is to finger the manual parts, then play together, but I have a hard time not playing the whole piece through slowly rather than just repeating a few bars until I get up to tempo. I eventually learn it, but I'm wondering if there is a faster way. I have the Stainer book and Flor Peters, but prefer to spend most of my time on pieces I enjoy hearing that are within my reach e.g. 8 little preludes and fugues, and use the books to practice sight reading. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Craig

You might find some useful advice by searching on this forum:

http://www.abrsm.org/forum/index.php?s= ... howforum=2
http://www.abrsm.org/forum/index.php?act=SF&s=&f=7
http://www.abrsm.org/forum/index.php?act=SF&s=&f=28

where, IIRC, I've read some discussions about effective ways to practice.

It seems that a lot of people recommend practicing hands (and pedals) separately and slowly and then putting them together and speeding up.


While you're waiting for some expert advice, here's something to get the ball rolling ... though perhaps you shouldn't take much notice of me because I'm not a good enough player - and perhaps that's partly because I've never felt comfortable with that slow/separate thing ...

But, to describe what's usually worked best for me, I'd use the analogy of the way you see pictures build up on a website - at first, big squares with limited detail, and then more detail added in layers. That's because I progress better if I start with a rough overall idea of how it actually feels to play the piece, and at the right speed - even if that means playing dozens of wrong notes in the initial practice sessions. Then, as far as possible, I try to learn pieces at something close to the right speed - that's because I find that my hands tend to address the keyboard rather differently at different speeds, so playing fast isn't the same as playing slowly but faster. I also prefer not to break the piece down into separate hands, etc, unless I have to. Of course, the odd passages that I can't do at a reasonable speed do have to be taken slowly, perhaps just to make the notes sink in or to see how the hands interact, etc - and perhaps be played with hands separately, etc. I think I'd find ALWAYS practicing hands separately to be counter-productive to the effective learning of a piece, as well as a serious waste of time - I prefer to reserve that approach for only when I can't manage otherwise.

Unfortunately I'm impeded by being an poor sight reader, and that can interfere with what I just described, because there'll be pieces I can play without much difficulty, but which are too hard for me to sight read. So (while a piece is still unfamiliar) I sometimes have to play some sections slowly, even if I'd prefer not to, because I can't sight-read them fast.

One area where care might be needed is being sure not to get used to the sound of different speeds in different sections - eg if you can play some of the piece at the right speed, but are playing other parts slowly for a while - you mustn't learn unconsciously to expect the easier parts to be faster. In any case, it's worth checking occasionally with a metrome to make sure you're not playing one section faster than another unless you meant to.

It's been a while that I could practice seriously, but my organ teachers insisted that I should practice my pieces also in a one hand + pedal setting. "Ich ruf zu dir" or the trios are a good example on why that is useful. It is not very easy to do at first, since people with a lot of piano background might find it easier to master the hands first and then add the pedal, but it sure helps in the long run.

Sviatoslav Richter, one of the best pianists of the 20th century used to practice a page until he had it, then moved on. He also used a metronome. This might sound strange from an artist who played a lot of romantic music, Chopin, Rachmaninov, Liszt, etc. But he had a great technique.

my organ teachers insisted that I should practice my pieces also in a one hand + pedal setting. ... It is not very easy to do at first, since people with a lot of piano background might find it easier to master the hands first and then add the pedal, but it sure helps in the long run.

Yes, practice when you first move to the organ from the piano is a different thing from practice later. I too remember my organ teacher, at first, making me do a lot of exercises with pedals and one hand - largely pedals and LH, because (I imagine) all your experience on the piano has been that the base is (nearly always) in the LH, but then your mind has to accept that, on the organ, the pedals will handle the bass and the LH will do something else. You have to come to recognise that your feet are there on the pedals and are acting independently from your hands; you have to come to appreciate how important it is to have the pedals available - eg realising that it's easier to play a simple hymn tune with a smooth legato, if you include the pedals, rather than playing all four parts on the manual - and it has to come about that your feet go to the right pedals as automatically as your hands going to the right keys when you see the notes in the score, without any thinking about what the note in the score is, where the pedal is, and which foot should go on it. I think those LH & pedal exercises helped a lot to get the independence between the LH and feet, though what made it become normal to use the pedals was spending enough time playing pieces.

Hello Craig,

Here is a link to an amazing site regarding how to practice the piano. Similar techniques apply to the organ. This is a free pdf that consists of a few hundred pages. In short: hands separate practice, in short segments, followed by hands together practice -- the idea extends to hands and feet separate practice, followed by LH - feet, RH feet, Hands together, All together.

http://www.sinerj.org/~loyer/PianoBook/

Cheers,

Joe

Great link, Joe, Thanks! I think I am beginning to see some logic to practice. Since it takes repetition to learn a piece, it makes sense that the more reps you can do in a given time results in the fastest learning, and if you can do reps more than three times as fast playing hands and feet separate than together, that should be the fastest. I think of it like teaching a computer a macro-it only takes one repetition in that case, but the time between key strokes is wasted. I can see that as one gains experience sight reading, they can play more difficult pieces HT from the get-go. The book indicates that when you can play HS at about 150% of tempo, you can try HT (and feet, presumably), so if you could play three parts at about half tempo accurately, maybe it's OK to practice that piece HT from the start. I don't know. It is certainly more pleasurable to hear all the parts together. I think I have to take it case by case.
Craig

Hello Craig,

I have used this method of practicing short segments, played hands separately, but very fast and with a number of repetitions in succession -- with great success for my own repertoire and that of my piano and organ students. One particular piano piece, namely Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu, is something I taught myself in a relatively short period of time using this method. Several of my piano students have learned this piece -- we're speaking of students only 12 years old playing the Chopin Fantasie Impromptu with under four years' worth of lessons.

While, at present I do not have any organ students playing Bach's Trio Sonatas, I re-taught myself to get over many of the tricky hand/pedal work in the Fourth Trio Sonata in E Minor, heard on YouTube.

The free pdf should make serious reading for many people who frequent this forum.

Cheers,

Joe

I can add to the Fantasie Impromptu experience.

It starts with four notes played against three for some bars. That completely destroyed my previous pratice method of playing both hands slowly. At that point I adopted Joe's approach of separate hands and as fast as possible. When some facility had been achieved then the parts could be played together.

However, I found it really interesting to then try and play both hands together as slow as possible to get some control back into the performance. I used a metronome, played the four against three bars then slowed down the metronome and did it again. Strangely, when you have slowed it down a great deal you will then be able to play it even faster - should you want to.

Regards,

How would you approach Schubert's Ave Maria? I was going to learn that for Christmas last year, but started too late and gave it up. I am looking at it again now, but still haven't figured out the best way. There is a site http://kantsmusictuition.blogspot.com/2 ... hythm.html where the author outlines his method for dealing with different meters in the two hands, but I don't know if that's the easiest way or whether it will eventually produce a smooth rhythm for each hand. Thanks.
Craig

There is a site http://kantsmusictuition.blogspot.com/2 ... hythm.html where the author outlines his method for dealing with different meters in the two hands, but I don't know if that's the easiest way or whether it will eventually produce a smooth rhythm for each hand.

That analytical way of learning to play rhythms like three against two or four against three is helpful if you're not getting it any other way. I used that approach at first, but once I could play a piece with one of those rhythms, I just knew how it felt, and could usually do it automatically after that.

I don't think you should be concerned that an analytical approach might conflict with playing naturally and smoothly. It just props you up while you're getting started, like balance wheels on a bike.

Hello Craig,

I would like to address the question you posed in this thread, namely:

How would you approach Schubert's Ave Maria? I was going to learn that for Christmas last year, but started too late and gave it up. I am looking at it again now, but still haven't figured out the best way.

This is an age-old problem of how to coordinate the count of two in the right hand, and three in the left hand.

If you recall your grade school mathematics experience, the common denominator of 2 and 3 happens to be six.

This means that of six sub-beats, the right hand (with two notes) is played on numbers 1 and 4 as follows: 1 2 3 4 5 6.

In a similar fashion, the left hand (with three notes) is played on numbers 1, 3 and 5 as follows: 1 2 3 4 5 6.

The "composite" sound is heard as 1 __ 3 4 5 __ 1 __ 3 4 5 __, in which both hands hit #1, followed by left-right-left in the places occupied by numbers 3 4 5. (Notice that notes are played on places 2 and 6). It's the rhythmical equivalent of hearing notes played on sub beats 1 2 & 3, 1 2 & 3.

I hope this helps in some way.

Cheers,

Joe

Gentlemen, I thank you for your responses and what you are saying makes sense. Hopefully practice will make it familiar for me as it has for you.
Craig

There is no one way, and very few rules, except to get everything right in the end, but here are some things I find useful and one point from Educational Psych.

If it is too hard to play all the parts together, then by all means break apart your hand and pedals, and then put them together in different combos, i.e. hands together, R.H. pedal, L.H. pedal, all together.

Small segments well learned are generally better than plowing through with a lot of mistakes. One thing I find useful is to start at the end of a piece and learn my way backwards. That way when I have the desire to continue plowing on ahead because I am enjoying the piece, I am playing through music I have already practiced.

From Ed Pysch; The RULE OF THREE. If you do something three times in row the same way you have learned it for good, that includes mistakes. Try to stop as soon as you find yourself making a mistake, and get that section correct three times in a row. If you get it twice and mess up the third time, you must start the three times over. You will really see results with this, especially the next day after you´ve slept off all the errors and un-important stuff of the day. Essentially you are lowering synaptic resistance in the brain as you learn, and if the same synapses fire three times in a row, it then is learned behavior.

If it is contrapuntal music, playing throug each line (not each hand) will make you more musical. If you play through the alto, Tenor and bass, as seperate lines (ignoring fingering and which hand is going to play what) you will hear shapes and rhtyhms and lines that are interesting. If you can sing (many keyboard people can´t) sing the lines on some vowel and feel the lines like a singer. When you assemble the parts, see if you can make those same interesting features audible, even when they are buried in the middle of four or five voices.

Use rhythmic variations in difficult passges. Turn straight 16ths into dotted sixteenths and 32nds, then 32nds and dotted 16ths. then 8th followed by a 16th triplet, then return to playing it as written and it will just seem too fall from your fingers. Look for other patterns to use.
Do the same with articulation. Slur in groups of four, in groups of two, groups of three and the fourh note staccato, all staccato, all legato. Slur two, two staccato, etc. You will find you then have enough control over the notes to make them sing anyway you want to.
Hope this helps,
John