How to Improve Stamina in Piano Practising

How to Improve Stamina in Piano Practising

by | Nov 1, 2021 | 0 comments

Inro

A lot of my students find hard to practise the piano. “Really, Nikos? Welcome to piano teaching!” I hear you say—I can hear your laughter from here…

Well, listening to my students complaining they find hard to practise is not something I take lightly. It always tantalised me why a student who loves the piano, adores its sound and wishes to, perhaps, venture into the dark side of it (becoming a pro), find it hard to practise.

At the same time you hear stories of the practising routine of famous pianists, or how some friend of a friend practises for six-and-a-half hours daily, that make you wonder. Mind you, when you hear a pianist claim they practice for eight hours a day, they normally last for about a couple of days, at its maximum, and then stop practising, of course. This is because pianists tend to overemphasise the feat itself and not their everyday practising shenanigans.

 

Solution

So, after a lot of contemplation, and evaluating what most teachers suggest to their students, I came to my own conclusions: First, practising the piano is like any other physical endeavour; it requires stamina, focus and, of course, physical readiness. It’s not just sitting at the piano and start practising.

Even if we complete all of our warming up exercises to the letter (preparing ourselves for the demanding nature of our pieces) this is not enough to make us practice daily, let alone practising with enthusiasm and flair.

Practising the piano requires the strengthening of our own stamina; if we could improve our sitting-at-the-piano endurance, we will eventually become more content pianists. Here, the old cliché expressions we say to our students, such as “just sit and practise” or “why not practise regularly”, are not that helpful. The reason is that, simply, students, being human beings, cannot justify orders that try to persuade them to suffer on a piano stool. They just can’t practise for long because it is tiring and, dare I say, super boring.

We have to condition our pupils to withstand the intensity of a practising session.

 

How to condition our students to endure practising

 

We do that by asking them at the beginning of the year (or when they first start lessons with us) to simply practise for a minimal amount of time. I suggest starting by practising for a maximum of 10 minutes per day. But every single day.

Practising the piano is like jogging. Many people find jogging extremely hard to do — one reason is that they think they must jog for an hour, like their friends do. It’s impossible because they haven’t conditioned their body to withstand that much pressure on its joints and muscles for an extended period. They simply need to start by jogging for two minutes/day, and perhaps increase it by a minute/day until they reach their desired duration of exercise.

It is the same at the piano. You cannot just expect a beginner to sit for 20 minutes every single day doing a mind-strenuous procedure—you are asking for trouble. You must ask them for 10 mins/day and built up from there. The following month ask for 12 mins/day and keep increasing their practising by two minutes per month. By the end-of-year, expect the student to practise for a maximum of 20 minutes/day, and that would be enough for their first three to five years.

And of course, students should use a timer when they practise. If the timer goes off, perfect! They should stop practising. They are “legally” allowed to leave the piano area and go play. If they still want to do a bit more practising, that’s fine, so long they don’t practise for more than just a few extra minutes—remember, they need to come back tomorrow again, eager to repeat their practising procedure.

Here, the parent should act as a guardian of the student’s right to finish their practising on time. Parents should encourage their kids not to keep practising but to stop practising, because their kids “have practised enough for the day”. And they should happily congratulate them for practising those 10 minutes.

Last

This is how students built stamina. Slowly and with strategic practising timing. Not with “please”, “why don’t you” or “If you practise, I will…”

Students need conditioning to keep being happy when practising, and it is our obligation as pedagogues and guardians of their mental and physical statue to show them the way to do it.

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 27th October 2021, by Nikos Kokkinis

 

A Big Thank You To

 Rick Whittle on Unsplash 

for this amazing image I used for this article. Please do visit his page on Unsplash.

 THANK YOU!

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Do Bodily Positions Matter in Pianism?

Do Bodily Positions Matter in Pianism?

by | Oct 1, 2021 | 0 comments

Attention: Not for the sensitive and sincere individuals. If you’re easily offended, please exit this website at once. This text is not politically correct. It is vulgar, insensitive and contains harsh and disrespectful expressions to facilitate an enjoyable read. Read at your own discretion.

 ❦

In an era when personal looks are of supreme importance, where young people think more about how they look on social media rather than how they look inside, where computer apps are sold to make our ugly faces look not ugly and our massive bellies to look not extended, it goes without saying that everything visual is of high importance in our futile human lives.

Visuals were always important, of course. From the pyramids of Egypt (please, tell me why they were built other than vainly showing off?), to the majestic Statue of Liberty, or to the grandiose Eiffel Tower, all those monuments inadvertently symbolised one core thing through their impressive visuals: the human vanity at its grandest. Behind the supposed grander meanings of their elaborate constructions, it’s all visual, my dearest pianists. It’s all affectation and self-love.

So, on the piano, positioning of body parts such as fingers, hands, shoulders, heads, legs and noses does matter in our musical lives. But not because they necessarily make an audial difference, but because they matter to our gullible audiences. And what do our vulgar and antediluvian audiences want? To get through the night with cheap tricks and showing-offs and make themselves feel cultured and important. I’ve told you before, I am not interested in the least in making friends with this website.

 

Do bodily positions matter in pianism and in musical performance in general?

 

So, is there a correct bodily, finger or hand position on the piano?

Well, I think there is, but it is unique for each one of us. This “correct” position cannot be found in a textbook however, and is not one size fits all, I’m afraid. This position can only cater to our unique bodies and cannot be emulated by anyone else as long as this person is not… cloned, that is. And even then, there is the element of our distinct upbringings that renders our body’s state impossible to replicate.

In my minute studies of music and the piano, I came to conclude that positions, such as of fingers and hands, have zilch end-result on our artistry. And to be honest, by studying the various pianists’ visual demeanours, the worse they were, the better.

The ugliest, the fattest, the slouchiest, the less Instagram-like pianists, were, and are, the ones that we place today on the pantheon of pianism. Well, in classical music, at least. Come to think of it, though, I am super fat and, arguably, extremely ugly, however I still haven’t made a mark with my playing. Hm. Go figure.

So, who cares if you are fat, with a nose pointing to the side, with dangly teeth and hair that have thinned? Who cares if you have veiny hands, arthritic fingers, broken and greasy fingernails, and your piano stool is about to collapse from your mammoth physique? For one, I am not interested in the least.

I just have no interest in your external imperfections or utter ugliness. It’s none of my business to attack your horrid fingers on the piano that can make Frankenstein’s look like Barbie’s, compared. My standards are quite higher than that – I won’t fall in the trap of judging anyone’s physic.

I only care if your sound is the right one. I only care if your audial product is efficient and if you can transcend me with your individual interpretation. I care if you respect the composer and understand her plight. Nothing more, nothing less. No attires, no grandiose bodily expressions or superfluous talkings can make me appreciate art more than the sincere pianist sitting on the piano with his cheap suit trying to perform a Brahms sonata.

So, stop worrying about whether you have the right hand or finger or back position. And what is this right position, anyway? No one will tell you—except for the piano itself.

The piano is eventually going to structure your body parts and force you to do the right thing—but only if you want to reach the depths of pianism.

Sound is paramount. The rest is noise.

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Copyright © 30th September, 2021 by Nikos Kokkinis

A Big Thank You To

 Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash 

for his strong image I used for the composite image you see at the top of this article. Please do visit his page on Unsplash.

 THANK YOU

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The Slingshot Effect On The Piano

The Slingshot Effect On The Piano

by | May 1, 2021 | 0 comments

The Slingshot Effect On The Piano, Or How To Increase The Tempo Of Your Piece When Nothing Works.

Do you know what is the most common thing students and pianists want to achieve with their pieces? Is it to make them softer? To make them more convincing, perhaps? Well, none of those noble things. In my minute experience as a piano teacher and aspiring pedagogue, what most students want most of the times, is to make their pieces faster.

That’s good, though! Besides, I do not know of any pianist (dead or alive) that was considered a great by just playing second movements of sonatas. Do you know of any? Most of the pianists that we consider great are the ones that play, as an old friend used to say, frantically.

You’ve got to play frantically if you want to be considered the next Michelangeli in this show-offy world. You will never achieve true greatness with second movements, nocturnes, adagios and the rest of lesser pieces the professional musician secretly despises and frowns upon – well, when you ask a pro pianist if they like second movements and slow pieces they would bend over backwards to persuade you they do like them. But they fully well know those pieces won’t cut the mustard in the 21st century pianistic arena. You’ve got to play frantically… Welcome to human superficiality.

So, it’s no surprise that most of my students always want to notch up their speed and always feel that their playing is not sufficient to enter the sphere of real pianism.

“I have to play it faster, sir,” they would say.

“Oh, I wish I could play it as fast as you, miss.”

“This pianist on YouTube plays my study in less that a minute!”

And so on and so forth – you get my gist. By the way, they never seem to say, “I wish I could play it more slowly and poised, sire.” Oh, well.

❦

But enough of my rumbling and let’s get on with the franticness of our pieces.

So, for the purpose of this article, the initial problem a student wants to solve is how to increase the speed of a piece that doesn’t seem to get any faster. Here’s how most students would practice; they would start from practising the piece at their current fastest speed, and then they would try to push the tempo forwards, starting from that very speed. Most of the time the speed will not increase sufficiently, of course, especially if the piece is virtuosic. When they finally play the piece a little faster, it lacks clarity in both technical and musical articulation, and it feels unbalanced in its structure. 

And so they despair.

They would come to their teachers confused, lacking of confidence. The teacher, more often than not, will resort to saying the same cliché things, such as, “play it a bit slower”, or “just keep at it”, or even, “your technique is not there yet” (Guilty your honor).

Playing slower is, of course, a sage thing to suggest. Who wouldn’t agree. But the secret here is how slow should they play. This is where I suggest my pupils to utilise my “Slingshot Effect”.

The Slingshot Effect 

 

So, what is that slingshot effect that I so pretentiously advocate, then? To start, I would say that the slingshot effect is not a step-by-step analogous action of the slingshot transferred to piano technique. If I was to support this claim, I would significantly add to the preposterousness of this website. 

The slingshot effect is just a sort of freely fashioned expression to get the student’s mind geared towards how they should practise.

To simplify the demonstration of this technique, I won’t use tempo markings but beats per minute (BPM). Follow the steps below with precision.

How the slingshot effect works

Say that your desired ultimate speed of the piece is at 120 BPM.

1. First, stop practising the piece at once. If possible, leave the piece to settle – Three days without practising it should be sufficient.

2. In your next practising session, practise the piece at 50% the speed you normally practise it. Not just a little slower, but close to 50% slower. Repeat at that slower speed for at least a couple of times. Example: You usually practise the piece at 100 BPM. You practise it at around 50 BPM. (Speed 1 = 100 BPM. Speed 2 = 50 BPM.)

3. Right after you complete part III from above, increase the speed significantly and closer to your intended speed of 120 BPM (perhaps increase to 115 BPM). Do not practise your piece at your usual speed (Speed 1).

4. Repeat steps 2 & 3, daily.

That’s it. You will miraculously increase the speed of your piece and, hopefully, keep it up there.

Why the Slingshot Effect Works

 

By significantly decreasing the speed of our piece, we allow our brain more time to contemplate its doings, and also let our fingers to “sit” better on the keys.

The slingshot effect reinforces the influence of good muscle memory practices and just leaves our minds free to apply speed.

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The Metronome Effect

The Metronome Effect

by | Mar 17, 2021 | 2 comments

The metronome is this lovely machine that keeps the tempo for you boldly without allowing you to deviate from it.

as a matter of fact, we all owe to have one, so if you can afford a proper old-fashioned one, just buy an electric one. However, as you know, music is not always played in inflexible tempi and needs to swing freely. The vast majority of the piano repertoire is not to be performed robotically. Except if the composer has specifically indicated that you must follow the metronome precisely – However, no great recording or live performance is played with the precision of a metronome. And that’s the point of it all – we should count when playing but not sounding like robots.

However, this little musical dictator that we call “metronome” can be a very useful tool to us if used sensibly and cleverly. Here’s what I mean by that: the metronome, I have concluded, can massively accelerate our mastering of a piece. How? By starting at a much slower tempo and getting gradually to its normal speed. Everybody knows this method. However, I have tried to refine this tactic by using what I call the “Metronome effect’’.

I discovered the Metronome effect when I was studying Bach’s first prelude and fugue in C many years ago. I remember that I had only a day to learn the fugue, and I was sitting on the piano desperately thinking of how I was going to get through this. Then it came to me; I took my little white metronome and started from the beginning by playing each crotchet on 40.

However, and here’s where the secret of the metronome effect lies, I promised to myself that I would not increase the tempo if I haven’t played the previous part with no mistakes. Playing the piece at 40 BPM, felt was so easy. The same was at 41 BPM one. No mistakes. At 42, even though I was feeling a little bit more challenged, I still managed not to make any mistakes.

It was until I reached 42, when the first wrong note came in. That was it. I had promised to play the passage again and at the same speed. Torture? Yes, but three hours later, I could play the fugue really successfully and without slowing down at the more technically complex parts. Of course, I knew that the piece couldn’t have sounded robotic, so I was then ready to practice it more naturally, and giving more thought to its musical flow.

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Copyright ©May 2010,  by Nikos Kokkinis – Republished with a new image from Wikipedia on the 17th of March 2021.

 

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Mezzo-Staccato and Non-Legato: Two Sides of the Same Coin?

Mezzo-Staccato and Non-Legato: Two Sides of the Same Coin?

by | Oct 1, 2020 | 0 comments

One question that pianists ask every so often is the following: Does mezzo-staccato simply means non-legato?

My answer derives from my provenance as a student of the English Piano School—a pianistic school that (surprisingly to many) exists, and to my mind has one main axiom: Attention to detail. But what is the English piano school is a subject for another article, one that I will tackle one day, hopefully. Anyway, attention to detail is what helps us separate the different notions and aftertastes of notes and can show us that different articulations have different names.

Now, coming to why mezzo-staccato is different to non-legato, it is indeed a question that has two answers. And that’s only to start with…

Firstly, if the definition of mezzo-staccato was firmly established in the pianistic world, it wouldn’t need an endless charade of debating, a constant going back and forth explanatorily, or philosophical nights with cheese and pinot noir from Patagonia. And secondly, because the articulation simply contains the word “staccato” in its name. If it wasn’t affiliated with staccato and was closer to the notion of legato (or non-legato in our case) it wouldn’t have had that staccato word hanging around.

I often (usually out of the blue) ask my students the following question:

“How much is one plus one?”, only to be looked at as if I were some kind of mad person (not that I’m not) and I receive the following reply:

 “Um, it’s… two sir”, they would softly reply looking at me perplexed,

followed by me saying

“Are you sure?”

“Um, yes, sir!”, with a smile on their faces.

The reason I ask this question is to persuade my students that if something in life is well established, it does not need regular examination of its validity and it does not have a controversial status. One plus one equals two indeed, and no-one in this world can deny it. Whereas, If I asked my students “what is fast in music?” Or “who is the best pianist in the world?”, they would have had a different story as to why their opinion is the correct one.

 

 Scolding commences:

So, yes, do make this “leap of faith” and believe it: Mezzo-legato is not the non-legato; if we want to fix our salty soup we do not add sugar, if you get my gist (Wait what?). A drink that is non-hot does not mean it is medium-cold, okay? Non-hot means it is not lip-burning hot but still lingers to the sphere of “hot”—it is by no means medium-cold and you should be extra careful when you are trying to consume it. So.

Same with the dreaded mezzo-staccato. Mezzo in the Italian language means ‘half’—medium, middle, in the midst of something. Staccato means ‘detached’. Of course, you could argue that the etymological zeitgeist of every word constantly changes, and that we should not take every word too seriously and perceive it to its face value, per se, still, mezzo-staccato, means medium STACCATO! Okay? Medium, what? Medium-Staccato!

S T A C C A T O. ST – AC – CA – TO. S-T-A-C-C-A-T-O. Yes, it’s my website and I can do whatever I want. (Sorry, by the way).

Okay. Now that we have established (through my bullying) what mezzo-staccato is and none of you have any objections (!) 👀,

*with a woman’s soft and deliberate voice*

let’s get to how to play this articulation on our wonderful instrument.

 

 Appearance

The articulation is presented with a slur & a dot on a group of two or more notes:

mezzo-staccato example

 

Play

  1. In piano-playing mezzo-staccato involves the use of pedal. We tackle the quavers above as we would if they were simply written as staccato, but by adding the pedal, as well—the pedal could be half-pressed, fully pressed, and so on and so forth. Sometimes the pedal is not written, but assumed.
  2. The notes of the mezzo-staccato are naturally treated as part of a group and not as individually articulated entities.
  3. The mezzo-staccato articulation is often used in pianistic passages where the composer desires a sense of ethereal sound combined with a kind of a pitter-patter feel.

 

 Difference to other short articulations

Mezzo staccato is different to staccato, since it requires invariably the use of pedal; otherwise it would have been almost impossible to distinguish between the two.

It is different to tenuto, because it doesn’t require the note to sport its full value, nor pushes for a sense of crescendoing as on every tenutoed note.

Again, its distinction to non-legato is apparent since a) non-legato passages do not necessarily require the use of pedal, b) the non-legato is closer to the notion of legato (as forcefully presented above), c) non-legato should be held for almost three quarters of its full duration, in contrast to the mezzo-staccato which should be held for up to half of its full duration, and d) because non-legato is more versatile since contextually can be used in more compositional circumstances.

 

In context

 In Liszt’s Années de Pèlerinage II, in the Piu lento section we encounter this passage which requires the use of pedal in every beat (à chaque mesure) to facilitate a sense of broadness in the sound that gently prepare us for the finale’s eminent agitation:

mezzo-staccato example 4

 

In another of Liszt’s works, Paysage, from his Twelve Trancendental Etudes, the use of mezzo-staccato is ample. Here’s an instance were Liszt intensifies the serenity of the study’s landscape descriptiveness:

mezzo-staccato example 2

In Beethoven’s Op. 111, a little after we are introduced to the tempestuous Allegro con brio ed Appassionato, Beethoven chooses to not continue with the uniformity of the rushing semiquavers and opts for extra turbulence by hitting the breaks by repeating the previous phrasing with mezzo-staccato. Here are bars 30-31:

mezzo-staccato example 3

As with all piano music it all depends on context of course (how convenient, eh?) and you should exercise caution when trying to interpret works that have been established in the ears of audiences and in the scholars’ doctrines. And always remember: no matter what a website, an article or a self-appointed expert says (*cough), nothing can beat the piano teacher in the class.

Copyright © October 1st, 2020 by Nikos Kokkinis

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All examples above were engraved in-house using the music engraving software Dorico.
Muscle Memory: The One Caveat

Muscle Memory: The One Caveat

by | 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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Copyright © 1st of April 2020 by Nikos Kokkinis

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