The Song that Never Ends: Practicing Away from the Piano
Sometimes I have students with limited access to an actual keyboard – they go away on breaks and weekends, or their packed schedule just doesn't give them time with the instrument every single day. And one of the key aspects of effective practice is maintaining a daily habit. So what can they do to keep making progress every day?
Plenty! It turns out that there is a long tradition of learning music and developing musical skill away from the instrument. Many concert pianists, most famously Glenn Gould, were known to do silent "mental practice" with the score. Gould claimed it helped him develop a clear and complete understanding of the piece, before he started hacking away at the keyboard.
But Gould was a once-in-a-century musical genius; surely mere mortals can't follow his example, right? Actually, research shows that mental rehearsal improves performance almost as well as physical practice, even for beginners. When combined with just a little bit of physical practice, the gap between mental and physical practice narrows even further.
There are also a lot of possibilities that lie in between practice on the instrument and silent mental practice. These include physical and vocal exercises such as singing, chanting, hand drumming, and finger tapping. Many musical cultures, especially those rooted in oral traditions, start out new pieces with vocal and gestural practice. Tabla students in the Hindustani traditions, for example, learn to recite the padhant of a piece by heart – a sort of rhythmic do-re-mi – before they pick up the drums at all. And the Western system of solfeggio brings out musical shapes and sharpens melodic memories.
So, with these options in mind, how do we get started learning pieces on the beach?
Finger Exercises
Most beginning and intermediate pieces stay in a five-finger position for extended periods of time. That means that the majority of physical motion in the piece comes down to moving your fingers in a specific sequence. In more advanced pieces, tricky finger crossings can be practiced in the same way.
Fingering sequences can be practiced anywhere there is a flat surface: just place your hands in a comfortable, relaxed posture and rehearse the finger motions. Take care to press firmly – this actually makes a neurological difference and forms a stronger memory. Use your imagination to visualize the keyboard and feel the sensation of the keys against the sides of your fingers. Do this with a recording or silently imagine the sound of the music. Even better, you can sing along!
Tapping and Chanting Exercises
If you are already comfortable counting meter while you tap rhythms, this is a no-brainer. Any time you're waiting for the train or standing on line (i.e. any time you would look at your phone), you can mentally count the meter and tap the rhythm of a phrase. If you have the sheet music on your phone or an audio recording, so much the better. Just like practice at the instrument, you should go slow enough that you can be perfectly accurate.
For more challenging rhythms, it can be easier to tap in between the notes. That is, chanting the rhythm with "ta" and tapping on the rests or after the held notes. This works really well for pop songs, especially when they are syncopated.
For a detailed breakdown of how this works, check out my post on it.
Singing Exercises
It's much easier to play a piece when we know the melody by heart. Keeping your attention on the sound of the melody instead of specific finger movements improves performance.
When one of my students is learning a new part, we learn to sing or hum the melody right away. It doesn't have to be a polished vocal performance or even particularly on-key. Just getting a sense of the rise and fall of the musical line can help, and the cycle of breath gives great clues about natural phrasing. Furthermore, singing all the way through is a quick way to get a bird's-eye view of all the parts of the piece before we get into the microscopic detail of learning each note.
Solfeggio is a powerful tool for memorizing melodies, especially when there aren't existing lyrics to piece. You're probably already familiar with solfeggio from "The Sound of Music". It assigns a singable syllable (do re mi fa sol la ti) that relates to each note. This process is called "solmization". With the guidance of a teacher, it's pretty easy to learn the melody of a piece in solfeggio. The different syllables give additional memory support and make repeated patterns in the melody obvious.
Singing, humming, and tapping can all be combined to bring the elements of rhythm and melody together in a single exercise. If you can reel off the whole melody in solfeggio with decisive and confident rhythm, fitting the fingers to the proper keys becomes a minor detail. Your memory of the sound of the piece will provide a rock solid foundation for all the technical exertions to come.
Starting from Scratch
So now we come back to Gould's method, which unites all of these skills (solmization, rhythm practice, finger tapping) to actually start learning a piece away from the instrument.
Start small. A short piece from a beginning method book or a phrase from an easy piece will be fine.
- Look over the whole piece and take note of the major characteristics: What is the time signature? What is the key signature? What is the texture? Block chords, arpeggiated, Alberti, contrapuntal? What is the range of the piece? What is the predominant rhythmic pulse? Quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth?
- Take note of any outlying details, like hand shifts, key changes, unusual rhythms, drastic range changes. Mark them for special attention.
- I prefer to start reading the rhythm first – it's easier to do accurately at the start, and it is usually what falls by the wayside once melody comes into the picture. Tap out the rhythm in whatever way you can to be fluent and precise. Sooner than you think you should, put the hands together and tap out the combined rhythm.
- Write in complete fingerings for the entire piece. You don't have to write a number for every note, but your intended fingering should be clear to you. Mostly practice hands together, slowly, pressing firmly, observing staccatos, legatos, and dynamics. Visualize the keyboard and imagine the patterns you are following on the keys.
- Learn the solfeggio for the melody – I have beginners write in the solmization beneath the notes. If you haven't done much sight-singing, chanting the syllables is enough, but if you can sing and hear the pitches so much the better. If you're a sight-singing beginner, try learning the syllables and then singing along with a recording. Sooner than you think you can, start singing the melody while you tap the rhythm in both hands. Go slow!
- Do the same as 5. in the bass line.
This is a strict approach that mostly assumes you do not have a recording to refer to. I think that up to a point, following these steps with a recording can be very helpful, especially when learning to sing the melody and bass line.
As you can see, practicing away from the piano introduces some constraints that encourage very thorough and engaged practicing. Without the instrument to create the sound for us, we're forced to understand the piece more musically, creating more detailed and vivid musical memories. It also allows us to avoid some of the easy mistakes that can crop up in mindless drills at the keyboard, where technical issues dominate the attention, and weaknesses in memory can be glossed over. Finally, we can more easily see the shape of the piece as a whole work and understand the context of the musical details.
Mental practice doesn't stand alone; the same practice techniques employed with a physical instrument will result in more progress. However, I think removing the instrument from the equation allows us to deepen our understanding of the music and the process of practicing.