The power of problem prevention practicing

If there’s one thing I wish I’d understood when I was a young pianist, it’s that problem prevention is a whole lot more productive and enjoyable than problem fixing. I was reminded of this recently when I returned to a Chopin Étude I’d played in high school, only to discover that it was a mine field of misread notes, bad fingering, and sloppy choices. It took me a month to fix the problem spots, but every time I play the piece I have to pay close attention or muscle memory pulls me back to my original bad habits.

Looking back, I know why I didn’t choose to learn the piece carefully and cleanly: I simply wanted to play it, and I was willing to cut any corners I had to in order to rip through it—bad notes and all—in a flurry of dramatic sound. My sloppy teenage practice habits were helpful to me when I started teaching because I could empathize with the students who didn’t want to do the boring work. My empathy, however, didn’t stop me from teaching them what I learned through some pretty painful performance experiences: that productive practicing is about problem prevention because if we’ve done our jobs cleanly enough, we won’t have to solve a heap of problems later on.

Most poor practice habits center around counting, note reading, and fingering. No one is perfect, and errors creep in even when we’ve been thorough in our preparation, but addressing these three things from the first time we practice a piece will save us hours of correction in the future. I offer them to you in order of importance.

Timing

The pulse is the heartbeat of the piece, and the rhythmic patterns form the foundation that grounds the notes. We may be capable of sub-dividing the beats appropriately, but if we don’t maintain the pulse, nothing hangs together. When learning a new piece, find that pulse—that heartbeat—first, identify where each beat lands, and then fit each rhythmic pattern into it. Clap or count the timing against the steady beat of the metronome. Get it locked into your ear and your muscles before you hang notes on it.

More than one adult student has told me that they want to learn the notes first and then work on the timing. I understand the impulse (and even did this more than once when I was first learning to play the piano), but know that once a specific rhythmic pattern is in the ear, it’s almost impossible to correct it. Clapping and counting can feel like a waste of time, but in reality, this boring grunt work will save hours of frustration in the future.

Notes

Study the score before you play the notes. Look for repeating patterns. Analyze the form. Hear it—as much as possible—in your head before you play it. Better yet, hum or sing it to yourself. When you start playing the notes, this advance practice will help make the piece feel more familiar.

Learn the notes slowly, and learn them with correct timing. Slow the pulse of the piece waaaay down to give yourself the time to play the notes cleanly. Play one hand at a time, in phrases, and when you feel comfortable with this, combine the hands, in phrases, very slowly.

Try to avoid overreach—the grandiose idea that we can get all the notes of a piece learned in one practice session. Practicing in small chunks not only allows for more thorough learning, it gives us a sense of accomplishment as we see well-learned sections leading to a solidly-learned piece over time. Be patient. Resist the urge to rush ahead and choose instead to relish the journey of learning the music. You’ll thank yourself later.

Fingering

Ideally, the fingering suggestions in the score would work for every one of us. In reality, score fingerings are suggestions, not rules. It may take experimentation to find just the right fingering for specific passages. Start with the suggested fingering. If you encounter places where this fingering doesn’t work well with your hands, find one that does and then write the new fingering in your score so your hands learn to play the notes the same way every time you practice the piece.

A note: fingerings can change over time. I’ve discovered better fingerings in pieces I’ve played for years and in those instances I decided it was worth the work to relearn the passage with new fingerings. It was never an easy process, however—something to remember when I become cavalier about fingering choices in a new piece of music.

We play the piano not because we love to fix self-induced problems but because we love to make music. Problem prevention practicing may feel plodding and dull, but it’s a surest way to play the pieces we love with mastery.

Photo by Ruslan Laplatin, courtesy of UpSplash