Nikos Kokkinis | Piano Practising

The Old Man and the Sea and Its Pianistic Symbolism

by Nikos Kokkinis | Aug 1, 2020 | 2 comments

Premise

So, Santiago, an old-aged fisherman nearing his last days on the sea, goes out to fish after an eighty-four-day unlucky streak. He finally advances towards a huge marlin and wants to catch it. However, the marlin, strong as it were, entangled itself in the nets and is pulling Santiago’s skiff all over the place. When Santiago finally exhausts the marlin and straps it to his skiff, he feels that by taking it to shore and selling it, he might just be able to call it a career.

Pianistic Symbolism

Marlin

The marlin here is our dream piano performance. The bigger the marlin, the more successful our piano performance.

Santiago

Santiago the fisherman symbolises us, pianists, the pianistic demise that old age will surely bring to us. He symbolises our need to show to the world that we still got it and can just about pull a last successful performance off, longing to show that our capacities as pianists haven’t deteriorated through time.

Skiff

The skiff is our proudly owned, modest pianistic equipment, that hasn’t matured enough through time to compete with the big players, but is still sufficient to us, and can still elevate our playing when needed.

Manolo

Manolo the young boy symbolises the new guy/pianist/teacher that is lurking around the corner to push us aside and succeed where we didn’t have the nerve to succeed. It is the changing of the guard, so to speak, of the old ways falling prey to the new. The new guy (Manolo) will always support us and encourage us to do great things because deep inside he knows that we’re finished. Our pianistic road is reaching its ultimate destination, but the new guy out of courtesy doesn’t want us to feel it.

The Sharks

The sharks are our peers in music. Behind their standing ovations to our performances, and their big, appreciative smiles, hidden is their desire to steal a piece of the action, to our disadvantage, of course. We can never really fend them off, however. Still, now and then we do manage to stay under the radar and succeed through our own persistence, always to their concealed condemnation.

Carcass

The carcass symbolises our pianistic demise on the concert stage. The audience will still be able to see that behind our clumsy playing there used to be a good pianist, but whom they couldn’t identify on that occasion. They will acknowledge our playing Honoris Causa, and rush to lift us on their shoulders before we bit the (pianistic) dust.

❦

Hemingway’s colossal masterpiece offers life consolations that could last us a lifetime. Its symbolism can be transferred to many of our everyday struggles, and it never fails to educate with its laconicism. It is a novella that casts an eternal shine to all of our dreams so we never forget them, and promises that it is never too late to find what our inner self desires.

Regarding the piano, this work can teach us that the ultimate performance is always out there somewhere, waiting for us. It shows that our ineliminable old age will never succeed to conceal our true identify as artists. If anything, it reassures us that as long as we are conscious of what the standard of our ultimate performance should be, we do not even have to accomplish that ultimate performance.

It is as if our best self will always show, no matter what.

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Photos by Daniel van den Berg and by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash. Many thanks to both artists for their Wonderfull works used in this article.

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Should You Seek Your Students’ Approval?

by Nikos Kokkinis | Aug 1, 2020 | 0 comments

Intro

Approval seeking was always (and will always be) a common predisposition to mammals like humans. Humans seek and crave approval from the others in order to simply carry through with their existence. Approval-seeking can be found in all of our personality traits, and in all of our everyday doings.

Together with this relentless craving of approval, we have taken to compare ourselves to the others, and thus, making our lives even harder than they already are. And all this laborious psychological endeavour leads to nothing less than constantly falling short in our expectations of ourselves. Great, isn’t it?

Oscar Wilde famously said, “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken”. Behind those two unassuming sentences hidden is the massive psychological world that we call self-acceptance. Self-acceptance is difficult to achieve for us pianists. Mind you, for those of us who tackle students, self-acceptance is paramount in our road to pedagogical excellence; if we haven’t accepted ourselves, how can we teach some fragile souls to accept their sound and art? How can we ultimately lead our pupils to accept themselves? So, self-acceptance must be one of our foremost priorities to mature both as teachers but also as performers.

I, Nikos Kokkinis, writer of this website, long so much for any external approval from my peers and from everybody else that I have gone to great extents to hide it. For instance, I rarely comment on social media and I do not write online about me or about any politically sensitive issues because I want to hide my ineptitude in so many aspects of the everyday life and in my art. However, I do not know why, but I do not crave the approval of my students—but, I am willing to learn more about why that happens.

I suspect that one of the key reasons I despise the notion of student-validation and approval is because I hate the ever-pleasant and voguish teachers. I hate the politically correct correctness of the smiley pedagogues, and I despise the teachers who reassure their students that everything is possible in life if they “really want it”. Really? Can a 75-year-old start violin lessons, become the next Heifetz and play a solo violin recital at Carnegie Hall? No. That’s my answer. But obviously I’m not pedagogically sufficient for some of my fashionable peers. For some, anyway.

Should You Seek Your Students’ Approval

Should you seek your students’ approval? My belief is that you shouldn’t, since seeking approval in music (and in life in general) can only lead to pedagogical failures:

Here’s some of the caveats of approval-seeking in the musical arena:

Approval-seeking can disorientate our piano teaching process and result to undesirable pedagogical effects on our students’ progress; when we crave approval, we usually fall into the trap of constantly endorsing our students’ playing in order to make them like us, and so, our students, basically, do not progress. Here, honesty needs to come to play, and we must clearly tell our students when they play well and when they don’t. Students need to be able to trust themselves and they do not want teachers that cannot rate them precisely because, at the end of the day, students won’t be able to trust their own instincts if the teacher constantly does not mind whatever they play—Bear in mind, that students subconsciously always know when a teacher lies to them.
Approval-seeking can lead us to agree in default with a decision made by a student after consulting voguish mentors (as you have noticed I like the word “voguish”)—Mentors can be the student’s relatives, coaches, teachers, friends or people that possess an accepted social status; we must stand strong and support our position, even if it is the least popular.
Seeking validation from students is a dream for the voguish teacher (sorry) who quickly grabs the opportunity to become politically correct with whatever is currently in fashion; naturally, the voguish teacher will rapidly develop oversensitivity with things such as, repertoire, popular politicians, zeitgeisty solutions to save the earth, dietary choices and of course, my favourite, “tolerance”—tolerance, whatever that means, becomes a career-advancing tool for the voguish teacher, especially for whatever currently is… guess… in vogue. Later, of course, tolerance for the validation-craving pedagogue becomes a distant memory from a trip to a trendy nearby protest.
Approval seeking can make you a weak partner in the music business because, well, partners want strong and clear-speaking partners. If you constantly agree with your peers in an effort to become likeable, then they will eventually consider you a weak “player”, someone whom on his services they cannot fall back on if things become harder.
Pianistically, approval-seeking is a universal “decease” because you will make performing decisions according to what the others want and not according to your artistic views. You do not want to become a performing “sheep” following the zeitgeisty flock of an audience—yes, audiences are always, always zeitgeisty in music too, because they follow the spirit of their era (ok, you’re not). Notable exceptions that managed to escape from the claws of the horrid musical zeitgeist of their era were Vladimir Horowitz, Andras Schiff and Glenn Gould: those unassuming fellows made their fingers do the talking and, of course, you know what followed: total hypnotic performances that will arguably stand the test of time.

End

So, STOP IT—I know you crave your students’ validation. I do.

However, you wouldn’t want to become an approval-seeking zombie, per se, in life. Equally in music, approval-seeking is malign and can destroy your pedagogical and artistic integrity.

Ok, you’re free to unsubscribe.

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Many thanks to the wonderfull photograph used in this article. The Photo is by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash. Thank you Marco.

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Why It Is Hard to Unlearn a Passage

by Nikos Kokkinis | Jun 30, 2020 | 2 comments

Learning and, especially, keep learning perpetually is what makes our species special according to the… “experts,’.

I enclosed the word ‘experts’ in inverted commas in an effort to be sardonic, because firstly, I do not share this belief by the experts and secondly, because, repeatedly, “experts” are being proven wrong. And, surprisingly, science—that claims to be the gatekeeper of all explanations—is being proven wrong and surprises itself all the time. Funny, isn’t it?

Here’s one of many examples where science surprised itself: Hungarian scientists claim that they might have found a hint of a fifth force of nature hanging around. This claim only surfaced a couple of years ago, my dear readers. Not in the early 2010s nor while Einstein was the master of the universe or prior to the landing on the moon. It happened after we landed on Mars, after Steinbeck wrote the Grapes of Wrath, and after we claimed the distance from the Sun to Antares to be roughly 550 light years. Actually, according to my personal calculations with a precision ruler, the distance was only 549,3 light years.

While we were superbly enlightened in other disciples—such as in Psychology, where we claim to almost fully understand the human psyche(!)—this trivial fifth force, that, by the way could drastically alter the way we think about the universe, skipped our attention. Hm. Go figure… So, ENOUGH with the “experts”. And, to be honest, isn’t it just plain un-scientific to claim that only science can explain everything? It is in my poor and over-simplifying mind.

But enough with my disrespectful ramble and let’s get back to learning and unlearning.

The Reason Unlearning Is Hard

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an art, but a habit.” Aristotle said. Fortunately for Aristotle he didn’t have to listen to any of the voguish modern pianists… otherwise, he would have said: “We are what we repeatedly do without wrong notes. Excellence, then, is not an art, but a habit to play fast and without mistakes. Following the composer’s instructions is reserved for the non-virtuosos; the scholars”, he would have added philosophicaly. But fun aside, Aristotle said it all behind his effortless lines. He insinuated that habit is a powerful state humans find hard to break.

“Wait, what? How did you come up with this extravagant interpretation, Nikos? And on Aristotle’s sayings, of all people.” I hear you ask.

Shush. It’s my article, and I can come up with any explanation I want. Keep reading.

The scraping off of a music passage from our minds and relearning it correctly is a hard and time-consuming endeavour. Breaking the “habit” of playing it wrongly is often no mean feat.

This process of learning, relearning and unlearning is constant in our lives because, after all, we are human beings, and it is only natural to make mistakes. But, mistakes are to be corrected and this correcting usually adds time to the time we took to learn that mistake in the first place. In the case of musicians, when we correct a previously learned passage, we really subtract time from meaningful musical ventures, from pieces to indulge in and from professional opportunities. Nothing less than that.

Here’s a simplistic explanation of what happens when we relearn something.

States of learning a new passage

First State	Second State	Third State	Total:
We do not play the passage	We practise the passage	We play the passage
1	1	1	3 states

States of correcting a passage

First State	Second State	Total:
We correct the passage	We play the passage
1	1	2 States

Thus, if all states, from learning to unlearning and learning a passage correctly are added together, we come up with five learning states in total; two more unnecessary states from just learning a passage accurately on the first go.

Those last two excessive states are the ones that people who we call professionals avoid. Professional musicians are (mostly) conditioned to evade unlearning, and coming back to Aristotle from above, they make a habit of avoiding any unnecessary learning impediments. Indeed, for the seasoned pianist, avoiding learning something incorrectly is a habit. And thus, by having this wonderful habit, they make art.

How to Avoid unlearning Something

Well, this part of the article is the easiest one to grasp because, simply, we all know how to stop the act of unlearning something. We just need to commit to a conscious effort to learn a passage properly from the very first time we see it. It is often easier said than done, since we are constantly preoccupied with our everyday things in our lives, but there you go.

Phhh… go and practise now.

Many thanks to the wonderfull photographs used in this article. The artists are: Lucas Vasques and Lauren McConachie. Photo by Lucas Vasques on Unsplash. Photo by Lauren McConachie on Unsplash

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Muscle Memory on the Concert Stage

by Nikos Kokkinis | May 31, 2020 | 0 comments

As with tennis players that can react to a millisecond in time and make the ball over the net, hitting it the right angle by responding perfectly to the opponent’s shot to produce a winner, equally, technical choices of a pianist will be reactively produced on the concert stage to save the day.

Muscle memory, this inner force that is always there, has driven humanity to realise its craziest ideas and pushed our species forward to great heights.

Muscle Memory is Everywhere

It was Heminway’s habit of standing up while typing on his various typewriters—of the same brand— that, arguably, made him the writer that he was. Unbeknownst to his readers, his unconscious muscle-memory traits on his writing act, helped him to unload his mind on works such as The Sun Also Rises. And that’s just one example of many:

It is muscle memory that enables the hurdler to instantly recover after contacting the hurdle and allow him to finish the race.

In the olympics, downhill racing demands the rider to constantly adjust the balance of his body while shooting down the trail; that endeavour is merely physically possible due to the unconscious application of muscle memory.

Oh, the beauty of muscle memory… Isn’t this part of our existence great? Well, yes, as long as we subconsciously teach our bodies the right muscle memory, i.e, in the case of us, pianists, applying optimal technical approaches on our pieces. (Read more about relearning a passage here.)

On the Concert Stage

For performers, the stage should hopefully be where our optimal technical decisions come to fruition. It is on stage where our unconscious part of our minds takes the stage (pun intended) and leads the way to our act; there’s no time to correct, to reflect or to, contrary to what the romantic pianist believes, interpret. We just react. Interpretation has long been pre-decided in the confines of our practising room and there’s nothing we can now do to improve upon it or to radically alter it. Muscle memory is the boss here.

Many years ago, it was muscle memory that saved the day when I gambled on the penultimate chord of Liszt’s Appassionata Trancendental Étude, in the Holywell Music Room in Oxford; My performance of the piece was going unexpectedly well, when just prior to the finish line nerves got the better of me and I started to rattle inside. Still, I managed to not allow anxiety feast on my imminent pianistic demise and, reactively, crashed my left hand on the F minor chord at the bottom of the piano—that chord was nothing but correct, and at the time this mistake stripped me off of any positive emotions about my performance of the piece. Little did I know, however, that this iteration of mine of Listz’s finale would eventually make me a master-of-never-stopping pianist (as a friend of mine used to say); I would never stop on matter what or fall victim of guilt to my earlier performing shenanigans—I would march on to the end of the piece.

Muscle-memory has done its trick one too many times in my concerts, not only because it was there, readily-available, but, somehow, because I trusted it and let it do its thing when I needed it. I never questioned it by contemplating what I should do next when things got scary in a concert—I never insulted its generosity. Muscle memory just works. It is always there for us pianists, to push the music forward and, like a fantastic life vest, carry us to the end of the piece.

We just have to trust it, not fight it or bypass it.

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Muscle Memory: The One Caveat

by Nikos Kokkinis | May 1, 2020 | 0 comments

So, when you do something repeatedly for many, many times, your body learns it and then it repeats it efficiently and with ease. This, pretty much, what muscle memory is.

It is like when we are cycling; we are not thinking “now I am going to do a pedal stroke with my left foot and at the same time I will be raising my right foot while releasing tension on the pedal, and then, I am going to repeat this same process with my right foot.” No. We just set our minds to our preferred destination and let our feet do their task—A task that we have practised countless times and has been embossed on our minds forever. Of course, we would still have to deliberately contemplate the pedaling process, but this thought is being done with minimal strain on our mental capacity; the muscle memory of our feet kicks in and we will just follow along.

Equally, the same applies to any disciple that involves repeated use a particular part of our bodies that possesses muscles; seasoned painters use muscle memory to draw a perfect circle. Pole vaulters to jump over the bar. Writers swear on their writing routine because they have learned to work with a particular set of tools that free their minds and let them concentrate on the story—So the saying goes that an artist’s tools are sacred. And they are, indeed, because they closely relate to a muscle memory. Talking about writers, Cormac McCarthy used his beloved Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter for over 40 years. And when it broke he didn’t choose a trendier tablet to “write” at Starbacks; He used another, same typewriter, to continue his art. As you may appreciate, muscle memory exists everywhere.

Olivetti-Lettera-32

Figure: An Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter similar to the one used by Cormac McCarthy to write his novels. A possible reason he insisted on writing with this typewriter is that he found comfort in using his preferred tools; muscle memory at its best.

One Caveat:

Now let’s move on to the piano, because, as you may understand, the examples to reinforce the importance of muscle memory are innumerable.

First thing to realize is that our hands (and feet, and posture, etc.) do not know what is right or wrong when playing the piano—Our brain does. Our muscles only learn to play what they are instructed to play. They cannot judge the legitimacy, per se, of what they play. And as we all know, the more we play something the more we chisel it on our minds.

If we instruct our hands to play a wrong note, they won’t know if the note is indeed wrong, or otherwise. Our hands will just play that wrong regardless; equally, they will wrongly phrase a passage, they would keep stopping at the end of a phrase, and generally they would remember to do the same thing if this thing is done repeatedly for a certain amount of times.

So, when you ask yourself “Why I keep playing that F instead of the correct F sharp?” The answer is because you taught your hand to do so (by playing it incorrectly). Or, you might have said to yourself “I cannot play this piece, it is too hard for me.” Yes, again the reason is because you have taught your hands to use a specific way to approach this type of music, and now it is very difficult to let go that muscle memory and start afresh.

To finish this, I would say that not only can we teach our hands to play correctly but we are responsible when “teaching” them to play wrongly, too. As I said, hands do not know right from wrong—our brain does. What hands repeatedly do, they learn it as is.

So, our ultimate task when practising a piece is to minimize the number of wrong doings we inflict upon our hands, and increase the amount of times they do right.

Let’s tame the beast of muscle memory and keep it our friend in our life’s pianistic journey.

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