Getting "unstuck" at the piano

There are times in every pianist’s life when practice doesn’t make perfect. We work diligently, we employ all the training and techniques possess, but for some reason a passage or perhaps an entire piece just doesn’t seem to work. We’re essentially stuck. Negative self talk creeps in—why do I always mess up scales/chords/leaps/timing/etc.?—and if we’re not careful, defeatism and despair join the chorus of self-doubt. Sometimes we try to fake our way through the problem spots and hope no one notices. Sometimes we abandon the piece, hoping that we’ll be more successful playing something new. Neither option feels satisfactory and we’re left asking ourselves, why am I not a good enough player to fix this?

Being stuck is always frustrating and defeating—in music and in life—and attempting to bludgeon our way through an impasse is rarely successful. Once we’ve established that the music we’re playing isn’t too difficult for us, we have to ask ourselves what traps us in this spot. It is a technical problem? Conceptual? Is it psychological? Or am I unconsciously hanging on to this block because I fear changing the situation?

Physical traps are perhaps the easiest to diagnose and fix. This is where we stop doing what clearly isn’t working and experiment with new ways of playing something. Nothing—no matter how unorthodox—should be disregarded at this stage. What if it actually works better to put your thumb on a black note? What if you find a different fingering than the one your instructor recommended? What if raising or lowering the piano bench makes the music easier? Assume nothing and try everything. And, if it still doesn’t work, consider enlisting the aid of an observer—an instructor, another pianist, or filming yourself playing. In my own playing, experimentation and help from an outside observer has solved many seemingly intractable problems.

Conceptual traps are a little more challenging because they consist of all the ways we’ve put the music we’re playing into a narrow box. We get hung up on thinking there’s just one way to play the music, or perhaps try to emulate another pianist’s approach to the notes. Sometimes it’s just plain old habit. Escaping conceptual traps requires us to approach the music from a new perspective. Listen to many different pianists play the music and note the way no two play it the same way. Walk or dance to a recording of the piece and see how getting it into your large muscles changes how you feel the phrases. A favorite technique of mine is to write lyrics to the melody. When I do this, I find myself expressing a sentiment rather than just thinking about playing the right notes at the right time. As with physical traps, experimentation is key. Sometimes the littlest, most unorthodox thing is the key that opens up a whole new way of hearing (and playing) the piece.

Psychological traps are so much a part of us that they’re the most difficult to recognize and dislodge. There are people in my family who have held grudges for decades. I know someone in his late 50s who still blames his lack on self-confidence on having been bullied in the 2nd grade. In my own life, I spent most of my 20s trying to escape the quicksand of the “I’ll never be good enough” trap. Every time I messed up at the piano, the voice in my head said, “that’s because you’re not a good pianist. You don’t deserve to be here.” Unraveling that mess took deep self-examination and the help of a good therapist.

Another insidious psychological trap is learning to examine what we gain through being stuck. Under the surface desire to fix a problem may lie several reasons why this block serves us one way or another. Perhaps being stuck allows us to evade the fear of growth. Perhaps being unstuck means we lose something else in our lives, as happened to me in my 20s when I freed myself from several blocks and launched my playing career—a move that cost me a couple of jealous friends. What I’ve learned is that when it truly matters, most of us are willing to sacrifice what we need to in order to move past the things that block our artistry.

Here’s what I’ve learned from a lifetime of dismantling my own traps: when we hear ourselves thinking “I’m not good at playing scales,” or “I always rush technical passages,” it’s time to examine why we hold these beliefs and ask if they’re still relevant today. Perhaps they were true years ago but are no longer true today? Perhaps we reinforce these old beliefs by choosing to hang on to them. Perhaps, if we let go of them and make better choices, the “problem” will magically disappear. I’ve seen this happen several times in my life and every time I decided to no longer believe the old script, my playing transformed immediately.

In my own playing, I find that when I get stuck somewhere in my music, I need to examine all three things—physical, conceptual, and psychological—as most of my “stuck-ness” seems to include elements of each. How do I know when I’ve freed myself? When my arms and fingers move with ease, and the music flows out of the piano as naturally as breathing. Those shimmering moments are gifts—things to remember when I get stuck in another piece someday in the future. Each time I “un-stick” myself, I have confidence I can do it again. And I know that in music, and in life, freedom lies in retrieving stuck moments, letting go of old things, and choosing a new path.

Photo by Eric Maclean, courtesy of UpSplash