Spring Cleaning a Repertoire Piece

Do you have a favourite piece you just love to play, but end up feeling disappoi
nted that you're just not doing the piece (or yourself) justice each time you drag
it off the shelf?
If you learned it thoroughly from the start, remember with anything we play we c
an't just put a cork in the bottle and expect the genie to emerge fit and healthy
after the passage of time. Some of the great pianists have described the process
of relearning, restudying or resurrecting works that they may not have played f
or a while but there is no pianist worth his or her salt who does not labour in
the practice room.
Shura Cherkassky described his practising thus:
I practise by the clock, for me this is the only way. Four hours a day. If I was
n't absolutely rigid about the whole thing I'd go to pieces. You need iron disciplin
e sheer will power. So many great talents disappear about a short while because
they get conceited and don't work properly anymore. You have to work all the time.
(From an interview with Stephen Hough, 1991)
I would like to propose a challenge. Take a piece you would really like to get o
n top of, but have never felt totally comfortable with probably something you ha
ve never really done the basic groundwork with. Decide on a timeframe that is me
aningful and realistic to you and set aside a certain amount of time daily to at
tend to this task. It might be a week, it might be a month. You are about to und
ertake a commitment to a process, the end result of which will be palpable and w
ell worth the effort. Before embarking on this, do a few things to motivate you
and to reawaken your love for the piece. This might involve some background read
ing or research into the piece, or listening to a few different recordings.
Here are the first few stages of a multi-stage process (I'll wrap it up next week
or it's just going to get too long):
Stage 1
Make a firm resolution not to play through the piece or any section of it either
before, during or after this practice regime, unless instructed. Remember that
every wrong note, misread chord, fudged fingering or passage regularly glossed o
ver is etched permanently on your motor cortex, deeper with each repetition. The
good news is that this is also the case with each correct repetition!
Take a pencil and place it on the end of the keyboard, within reach at all times
.
Divide the piece into meaningful sections like tracks on a CD and number them. Y
ou might prefer to use a photocopy for this purpose (see my post on this).
If you haven't done so already, make sure you have worked out a good fingering and
written it in your score. Be generous with how much fingering you write in you
won't need so much when you are playing the piece through, but you will need to kn
ow exactly what fingers go where when you are playing one hand alone, or startin
g from the middle of a phrase. Spend a whole practice session on this one thing
it will be so worth it later on.
If you don't like the fingering in your edition don't hesitate to change it to somet
hing that suits you. Once you have settled on something that works for your hand
, stick with it. This is most important, as you will be forming muscular habits
that will eventually become automatic. If you struggle to come up with a fingeri
ng, search for your piece on IMSLP. If the piece is out of copyright, chances ar
e there will be a few different editions of it online, each with a different edi
tor's fingering. You should find this enough of a prompt.
Stage 2
Unless the piece is a very slow one, we are going to work at half and quarter sp
eeds. It is up to you whether you use the metronome some people find it very use
ful as a structure in their work, others find it intensely annoying and counterp
roductive. Do use it to find out your ideal tempo (or tempo range) for the piece
, and write this down in the score. From that, you can figure out what the setti
ngs are for half and for quarter speeds.
Isolate any particularly difficult spots and place them in quarantine. Quarantin
e is a designated activity that you'll return to many times during the course of a
practice session think of it as an intensive care unit in the hospital for pati
ents who need constant supervision until they are strong enough to make it by th
emselves. You can attend to each of these excerpts not only before you start you
r practice but also in between, afterwards and at odd moments here and there (co
mmercial breaks, while waiting for the kettle to boil, in your head as you sit o
n the train, etc.). The quarantine list will change regularly as patients recover
and can be discharged. You may be sure, however, that the ambulance will arrive
soon enough with fresh ones.
Select a numbered track (it doesn't have to be the beginning) and work with each h
and separately, playing in units of one bar plus one note at a time. It is helpf
ul to add the extra note over the bar line, since this is the note we will finis
h on, and the note we will start from when we play the next bar. Do this at quar
ter speed if you have good concentration, or at half speed if you prefer. Do it
with your full attention on the fingering, the sound and the meaning of the musi
c (insofar as is possible with just one hand). If you make an error, STOP IMMEDI
ATELY and go back. Aim for three perfect repetitions in a row with each hand sep
arately.
Repeat the above step with both hands together. Remember, you are not allowed to
play at full speed yet!
When you have practised 2 bars like this, join them together and practise the tw
o bars as one unit three times perfectly in a row at a quarter or half speed (fo
r other suggestions in the same vein, see a previous post on the subject). Go ba
ck to your separate hands work for bar 3, and then bar 4 and join these together
in the same way. Then, bars 1 to 4, 4 to 8, 1 to 8 and so on until you reach th
e end of your designated section for the day.
Bookmark any especially awkward bars and put them in quarantine.
Stage 3
Go over quarantine spots in exactly the same way as in Stage 2.
Divide your remaining time in thirds. Spend the first third going over your prev
ious day's work (on whichever track you chose), using exactly the same approach as
in Stage 2 but in units of 2 bars rather than I bar. Still aim for three perfec
t repetitions in a row, exercise patience and enjoy the process of deeply ingrai
ning all the right notes with their correct fingerings. Do this religiously, wit
h an attitude of devotion and craftsmanship, knowing that you know it! You'll be c
overing the same ground as yesterday but it will be quicker and easier.
Spend the remainder of your practice session on the next track (or another track
of your choosing), in exactly the same way as Stage 2.
End by spending a few moments going over the quarantine spots from the beginning
of the practice session.
Stage 4
Continue in this vein, interspersing quarantine sessions into the routine work.
Divide the practice time so you go over previous work as well as a new section.
Before you start the new material, spend some time on the track you practised th
e day before (let's say track 2) as well as your work from the day before that (tr
ack 1) I feel three days' contact is good before letting a track go for a while. O
n the third day, you might dispense with the separate-hands work and just contin
ue at half speed, now in 4- or 8-bar units. Immediately stop for errors and corr
ect them there and then.
You'll need top concentration and discipline with this process, especially as you
are practising very slowly. It's not easy to stick to unless you know how to dela
y gratification and can take satisfaction from the process itself! I'll show you h
ow to gradually bring the piece together next week, but for now stick with the a
bove stages for a week.
The great teacher, Theodore Leschetizky had this to say about concentration in p
ractice:
Concentrate during every second of your practice. To concentrate means to bring
all your thinking powers to bear upon one central point with the greatest possib
le intensity. Without such concentration nothing can be accomplished during the
practice period. One hour of concentrated thinking is worth weeks of thoughtless
practice. It is safe to say that years are being wasted by students in this cou
ntry who fail to get the most out of their practice because they do not know how
to concentrate. A famous thinker has said: The evidence of superior genius is th
e power of intellectual concentration. (Great Pianists on Piano Playing by James
Francis Cooke, p.92)
Efficient Practising for Busy People
This is the follow-up to last week's post, in which I outlined the first few stage
s for cleaning up a piece beset by errors, stumbles, approximations and other an
omalies that might have crept into the playing either as a result of overplaying
, or faulty (or incomplete) learning in the first place. Actually, the process I
describe is good for initial note-learning as well it's just a thorough method fo
r inputting the correct information into our brains, ears and fingers in as deep
and permanent a way as possible. We build our house on bedrock and not on shift
ing sands.
Routine Maintenance
Let me clarify what I mean by overplaying. While I am fascinated by all the neur
ological research I read in other blogs, I am not a scientist and my findings co
me mostly from my wonderful training and from my own experience as a pianist and
teacher. One thing I know for certain is that playing a piece over and over aga
in usually leads to sloppiness, imprecision (as motor skills lose finesse), enn
ui and a certain staleness. The clue to keeping everything in tip-top condition
is the use of routine maintenance procedures in the practice room. This includes
slow practice (for fast pieces), fast practice (for slow pieces), working with
each hand alone, practising in sections and many other practice tools I have giv
en before. I include quarantining those areas of the piece that cause you troubl
e isolate these spots and work on them daily, before during and after your sched
uled practice. Don't think that just because you have learned a piece, you can now
put the cork in the bottle and avail yourself of the contents whenever you feel
like it. A car enthusiast will spend as much time tinkering with the engine as
they will driving their prized vehicle, and a keen gardener never stops pulling
out weeds, trimming borders or snipping with their secateurs. Playing a piece of
music at the piano is mystical and magical, there are so many elements that nee
d to come together to make it happen divine inspiration being pretty low on the
list.
Our Inner Craftsman
The satisfaction we get from routine maintenance or learning new pieces from scr
atch has to come from delaying visceral gratification and developing our inner c
raftsman. It's the journey that matters as much as reaching the destination. In or
der to trust this process, we had better have an idea of the process from the st
art. Personally, I get a great deal of satisfaction from slow practice and from
refining small sections. You'll have noticed from last week's stages that practising
like this just once is not going to make that much difference it's a bit like tak
ing one pill from a course of prescription medication. Carefully going over the
slow practice the next day, and again the day after that is where the rewards li
e. Do whatever you need to do to resist the almost overwhelming temptation to tr
y it out at speed perhaps think of a dose of slow practice like a coat of paint
that needs to dry before you can put on the next coat. Invest in this, learn to
enjoy it and return to it regularly.
The Sight Reading Approach to Learning
Unless you're a crack sight reader and can deliver polished performances at sight,
I recommend one preliminary read-through only before the disciplined, organised
work begins. A maana attitude to proper learning of a piece, while giving us a l
imited amount of instant pleasure is actually the shoddiest possible of foundati
ons if we have any aspirations to perform it at any point in the future. If we a
llow ourselves repeated buskings where we guess at those passages we don't have th
e patience to work out thoroughly, or gloss over others where our random fingeri
ng is clearly not working, we can expect a shoddy end result no matter how much
time we put in later. By then it is often too late, and we can expect to reap wh
at we have sown, no matter how lofty our vision of the music or how talented we
are. Just think how much time, energy and money has been spent today propping up
The Leaning Tower of Pisa compared with how much it cost to erect it in the fir
st place!
The One Bar at a Time Approach
So what happens after Stage 4 from last week's post? There will come a time when w
e'll need to return to our intended speed, but I recommend doing this in small sec
tions. Perhaps a phrase at a time, or even a bar at a time. If we have been work
ing at half or quarter speeds, we can gradually speed things up until we reach (
and even deliberately exceed) our performance tempo goal. Or we can practise lit
tle bits fast, gradually adding more notes or more bars until we have a longer s
ection. I'm going to repeat a chunk from a previous post (The Weakest Link) to sho
w you what I suggest.
Even though we don't usually tend to hear music in this way, most pieces are divid
ed up into bar units. For our practical purposes, let's take each bar as one link.
If we are concerned about our ability to string each of these bars together int
o one long chain without breaking down, there is a great way we can practise to
test this as well as to reinforce and strengthen the links. Here is the process
:
Play from the beginning of the bar and stop just over the next bar line, on the
first note or beat of the next bar.
You can do this up to speed, slowly or very slowly. You have the option of going
through your piece in this way with each hand separately.
Leave a silence before starting from the note you stopped on and then play the n
ext whole bar, ending on the first note or beat of the following bar.
The silence can be of arbitrary length, or (if you prefer) leave one whole bar's w
orth of silence.
Continue until you reach the end of the piece, or your designated section for th
at day's practice.
If you stumble over any bar, it is important to be able to play it flawlessly an
d fluently before moving on. If you want to be really secure, you could consider
repeating each bar three times anyway. In that case, make a rule to play each b
ar three times correctly in a row.
So why have I entitled this post Efficient Practising for Busy People? This seems
like a lot of concentrated work, right? Well, yes it is! If you're a busy person,
you are usually an organised person and this mindset is necessary for efficient
practising if you want to see real results. The paradox is that, by incorporatin
g some of these ideas into your practice time, you'll actually reach your target m
uch quicker than aimless meanderings at the piano. Have a couple of pieces you p
lay, select others that you actively work on.