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Advice on Getting Better from an Accomplished Piano Player (2011)

492 points by davesque 7y ago

aji 7y ago
the author invented a definition of "flow" which is different from another common definition which roughly means "getting in the zone" and the result is dangerously clickbaity imo i do my best work when i'm in the zone and it has nothing to do with whether the work itself is challenging or not. in fact, the more challenging something is, the easier it is for me to stay focused if i feel like i'm making progress
- ska 7y ago
  I don't think this contradicts what the author is saying. The claim boils down to this: you will do your best work in a state of flow, but you will improve your capabilities faster outside of it. Flow is great for productivity but not for changing how you do things. At a handwavy level at least, it seems to be true in my experience. It is certainly true that not all practice is equivalent, and you can put a lot of hours into "practicing" something without making any real progress in your skills.
  - Jimpulse 7y ago
    Flow requires difficulty that correctly matches skill. If it's too easy, it isn't a state of flow. Rather, it's just coasting on autopilot. Flow usually equates to deliberate practice.
    - ska 7y ago
      flow usually equates to deliberate practice. I don't believe this is true at all. If it's too easy, sure, that's not flow. But same is true if it is too hard. Deliberate practice intentionally and introspectively focuses on changing your approach. If done correctly, I think this will easily break flow. Deliberate practice is never relaxed - but flow can be. To reference the OP, there was discussion of intentionally focusing on and making the difficult parts of a piece harder as a form of practice. That doesn't bring flow, but allows the flow state later when you play the piece "for real". I think this generalizes well.
    - klodolph 7y ago
      What do you mean when you say “flow”? I think your idea of flow might be quite different to mine.
    - ralphstodomingo 7y ago
      No, the kind of state of flow you're mentioning lacks the necessary consciousness for it to be deliberate practice. The emphasis on deliberate: you can either focus on executing over a period of time (flow) or focus on being mindful about how you're executing things (deliberate practice). Sure, there's an overlap, but I think the concerns you'd have to deal with each are completely separate from each other.
- bumby 7y ago
  What you're describing is more aligned with the thesis of the book "Flow"...namely, that flow occurs when we are at the outer cusp of our capabilities. In other words, when the task is difficult enough to be challenging but not so difficult as to become frustrating.
- Jeff_Brown 7y ago
  I can't speak to the relative merits of flow vs. (what's the opposite? self-consciousness?), but I can testify that the vast majority of musicians practice dumb. They just recite, or jam; they don't target the hard part, or new ideas, although they might say they know they ought to -- and more cerebral work like ear-training or learning the combinatorics of music theory (mapping the possible chords and scales, and ways to combine them in serial or parallel) aren't even on the radar.
  - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
    My partner is a professional pianist and she very definitely repeats the hard parts - over and over and over - until they're fluent. This isn't rocket science, and it is something professionals are taught to do.
  - baddox 7y ago
    I think there is considerable value in the "dumb" repetitive mode of practicing a musical instrument. In my experience, it's pretty much the only way to commit guitar scales and shapes to muscle memory. This is particularly vital to playing fast or improvising. My guitar instructor (who was a phenomenal player) talked about playing blues licks over and over again "to get them into your fingers."
    - Jeff_Brown 7y ago
      While I agree that it has its place, I'm opposed to over-reliance on muscle memory. I believe it restricts you to what you've drilled, even to the exclusion of very close neighbors. But I'm also not trying to play extremely fast. If my goal was recital rather than composition, I would use it more. My recordings[1] are mostly total improv, free jazz, with a vocals track (later deleted) that states what chord changes are coming up, and then improvise over the first instrumental track while listening to the chord announcements. https://soundcloud.com/jeffrey-benjamin-brown https://soundcloud.com/jeffrey-benjamin-brown
    - fortpoint 7y ago
      I'm nothing more than an amateur musician but I had the chance to study with Charlie Banacos and one of the things Charlie emphasized was avoiding relying on muscle memory. All the exercises I received from Charlie forced me to be consciously engaged in the act of playing- never outsourcing things to muscle memory. I think that largely this was to avoid falling into mechanically playing over changes and to be actively engaged in thinking about the music at the moment it was happening and responding to it creatively.
- atoav 7y ago
  As a musician myself I must say that flow isn’t important for practise, much more important are breaks Going at something for 3 times half an hour with hours in between is more effective than going for hours straight. And this kind of focused time method also works well for programming. With programming it is harder to decide where to put the break. Breaks don’t mean you have to do nothing, you just have to do something that is mentally different. When I take a programming break, making music, soldering or reading is quite a good programming break.
cortesoft 7y ago
The title is catchy, but I don't think it exactly fits the article.
- dang 7y ago
  Ok, let's try the subtitle.
henning 7y ago
This shows that by using cherry-picked examples, you can prove anything. Elite musicians are all super relaxed and chill? Some are, some aren't. For every story of a relaxed musician, I can find you a super successful one that would literally run from gig to gig on weekends. If you're willing to ignore all evidence to the contrary and willing to use a single study to confirm what you already believe, I guess life becomes a lot simpler. Probably helps sell more of them books, too. Working on your weaknesses can be good if that's something you've avoided doing and doing so would help you advance your skills. What a weird, confrontational way Cal Newport has of getting a reasonable idea across. It's one of the infinite number of things that are neither necessary nor sufficient to create "success" or be "elite", because those are largely in your own mind and based on how you feel about what's happened rather than what has happened.
- president 7y ago
  Exactly, these types of reads are inspiring to people but they mislead people into thinking there is some special "formula" to becoming successful.
- Hoasi 7y ago
  > This shows that with using unrepresentative, hand-picked examples, you can prove anything. True, but the pianist in the article still makes good points. > "The mistake most weak pianists make is playing, not practicing." as I understand it, means that the pianist found repeated confrontation with difficult parts was beneficial versus sessions repeating the music in full from beginning to end. What he says is about seeking mastery first. To be a great musician, first you need to have taste, that cannot be downplayed. If you have the right taste and an idea of what the music should sound like, then there are mostly technical traps you need to tackle to achieve a great performance. The pianist doesn't mean to say that once you have done the hard parts you shouldn't enjoy playing the music in full—that's would be stupid. No great performer ever stops in the mid of a piece and get along with it being great. But it is much easier to find "flow" or whatever you call it, once you have mastery. And one is not exclusive of the other, that's maybe Cal Newport's interpretation or simplification to match the goal of his article. > "Weak pianists make music a reactive task, not a creative task." and > "In performance, weak pianists try to reactively move away from mistakes, while strong pianists move towards a perfect mental image." ring particularly true and are useful tips.
0815test 7y ago
Interesting perspective. The author's basic point is that you should, to quote the article, "Avoid Flow. Do What Does Not Come Easy". This is in the context of playing piano, so it might be a pitfall there. In my experience though, "doing what does come easy" is a reasonably foolproof and enjoyable way to enter flow; but you can still maintain that state subsequently while meaningfully challenging yourself. Your mileage may vary!
- tdhoot 7y ago
  I think Malcolm Gladwell or maybe someone similar called this "deliberate practice". The idea is that you can't become an expert by just doing 10,000 hours of practice. The practice has to be pushing you forward for it to count.
  - thanatropism 7y ago
    Goes back to Heidegger at least if you trust Hubert Dreyfus. Maybe more. Heidegger at its core is an "antiplatonism of lived experience". I really can't recommend enough reading two very different interpretations of him, namely "Tool-being" by Graham Harman and "Being-in-the-world" by Hubert Dreyfus. Books are cheap. Get these. Most Netflix shows are bad. Read these books instead for two or three weeks.
dang 7y ago
A little discussion from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14712361 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14712361
- ramblerman 7y ago
  Interesting, that with the original title, "Flow Is the Opiate of the Mediocre: Advice on Getting Better" the discussion centered more around people getting defensive about Flow.
  - dang 7y ago
    Yes: titles are by far the most influential initial condition on a thread. It's shocking how deep that rabbit hole goes.
jrochkind1 7y ago
It's specifically about practicing/drilling. Which is definitely important to musicianship. The article doesn't even suggest musicians ought not to enter a "flow" state when performing. I'm not sure how important it is to programming. While I know some younger coders who "practice" and "drill" programming problems, this is pretty foreign to how I've learned to program (over a couple plus decades). I've just... programmed. No shade, whatever works. But as a kind of aside, I'm curious how many programmer readers of HN do "practices" or "drills" of programming (and what stage of your career you are at; even the most expert musicians have to keep practicing and drilling. I think expert programmers just... produce programs). (But I did find this article enlightening and I predict useful to my amateur musicianship! It's not a bad article at all. I'm just not sure how applicable it is to computer programming -- which it does not claim to be, but I assume is why it was posted on HN -- I think they are very different skills and practices. The muscle memory/physicality aspect of musicianship just doesn't apply to programming I think).
- knicholes 7y ago
  When I was a student, I'd practice writing various search/sorting algorithms by hand to remember them in my free time (even after the tests) but reality set in where I don't need to be able to actually code these on the fly, so I stopped.
- QuercusMax 7y ago
  The only time I've ever "practiced" or "drilled" was when I was getting ready for interviews. This was as much as anything so I could get used to writing code on a whiteboard (although I actually typically just wrote out on paper). Definitely do some serious practicing when I'm trying to learn a difficult piece of music, though.
- samkater 7y ago
  I think being a musician and programmer both require practice. As a musician, I would practice a lot of mechanics - producing the desired sound in a specific way every time. When practicing programming, I personally (and suspect most) would practice certain elements of mental recall. In some cases that would translate into a mechanical memory (vim and tmux key-strokes in particular for me). But I sometimes also force myself to not use IDE shortcuts (or copy-paste) when I am trying to learn a new library or other programming paradigm. For example, I thought learning how to do "Pandas Python" after being fairly proficient in normal Python (and general programming) was hard in making that mental model shift. But I would learn ("practice") by forcing myself to type things that I could have copy-pasted. I think the key is to be aware of what you personally require to become proficient at something. My programming practice methods might not work for everyone, and I know a lot of people who seem to instinctively "get" a new programming process. As you say "I think expert programmers just... produce programs" - this is the best place to be in! You are subconsciously "practicing" but it is wrapped up in your daily life that whatever worked to become an expert has become a habit and is no longer the burden of "practice."
jdreyfuss 7y ago
I assumed this was going to be about avoiding flow while doing actual work, but this is only in the context of practice and training. I can see the argument for avoiding flow and focusing on your weaknesses when your goal is self-improvement (and to take the jump from there that it's important to set aside some time to focus on self-improvement), but that doesn't apply when your goal is actual output, which is the majority of the time when it comes to most of our jobs
- ska 7y ago
  This is a good point where professional musicians and other performers are in a bit of an unusual position, their ratio of practice to "productive" is pretty unusual in other fields. I suppose (professional) athletes would be another example.
HiroshiSan 7y ago
For anyone who wants to get a more in depth look at how to improve at something by one of the leading researchers in the field, check out the book Peak. Anytime I read an article like this or anything on how to improve, the concepts are explained in depth in the book.
segmondy 7y ago
meh, this is called "deliberate practice" which is discussed extensively in the book "Talent is overrated" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practice_(learning_method)#Deliberate_practice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practice_(learning_method)#Del...
jefftk 7y ago
My experience is that the choice isn't "playing for fun" vs "deliberate practice" it's "playing for fun" vs "not playing". If practice is fun, I'll do a lot of it and get better. It's not especially efficient practice per hour, but since I do a lot of it it helps a lot. If practice is not fun I just don't play, and I don't get better. The advice in the article is probably right for people who want to be the very best, but probably wrong for most people who might read it.
- klodolph 7y ago
  I think you may be forgetting point in your history where you needed deliberate practice to get to where you are now. If you only ever choose between not playing and playing for fun, you will never get better. The transition to playing only for fun is the point where improving is now left to chance—not that you completely stop growing, but you become more entrenched in your existing practices and your skills crystallize at their current level. The saying goes “practice makes permanent”.
  - pier25 7y ago
    Piano skills are specially not permanent. Some stuff remains for sure, but you lose a lot after a couple of years of not playing.
    - ngcc_hk 7y ago
      Really? Never heard of this even it makes sense. But could they come back like cycle skill?
      - pier25 7y ago
        I've heard this from a couple of concert pianists in my family, and I've dabbled a bit myself too. Basically lost my 3-4 years of playing after a while. I can still play scales and chords, more or less, but I've tried learning again and struggle even with basic pieces.
  - jefftk 7y ago
catacombs 7y ago
> To Master a Skill, Master Something Harder. I like this. It can definitely be applied to programming. For me, my goal at getting much better in JavaScript and Go has taken me to mastering C.
rshudson 7y ago
Anyone apply deliberate practice to software development? I would be interested to hear applications. I can imagine data structures and algorithms and coding competitions, but I've always struggled with the concept of drills for improving skills as a software developer. Would love to hear ideas from others.
- DenisM 7y ago
  Whenever I code something moderately challenging, I come back and do it again, and maybe again until it’s good and proper. I love history rewrite in mercurial. The code gets better, but the business outcome remains unchanged so it may look like waste. But it’s not waste - the micro skills acquired in the exercise accumulate.
  - bmj 7y ago
    The code gets better, but the business outcome remains unchanged so it may look like waste. Herein lies the issues for many of us in the corporate world. Unless I am get the rewrite done in the current testing (assuming the feature I'm working on isn't already test complete), convincing the testers to re-test is basically impossible (to say nothing of the project/product managers).
  - leib 7y ago
    It's waste for the business but good for you
  - sitkack 7y ago
    I do this with cooking, kinda, let me know what you think. 1. Make the thing from a book, verbatim, change nothing 2. Synthesize a new recipe from 3-5 recipes, changing stuff at will, but within the range for each ingredient 3. if excellent: goto 2; else: goto 4 4. Continue to make this dish, using this recipe, from feel until the output consistency is always delish Being good means being creative and then being able to consistently hit the required output quality. “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times.” -- Bruce Lee
JDevlieghere 7y ago
I wish more developers wrote code with a mute keyboard.
kazinator 7y ago
Some of this advice echoes that in Fundamentals of Piano Practice by Chaun C. Chang. https://fundamentals-of-piano-practice.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://fundamentals-of-piano-practice.readthedocs.io/en/lat... Chang precisely recommends the same thing: don't just practice by going through pieces from beginning to end repeatedly. Being a scientist, he quantifies that with efficiency arguments, which are along these lines: if a five minute piece contains two-bar difficult passage, then you can only practice that passage twelve times in the span of one hour. If the passage is only ten seconds long, you can practice it twelve times in just two minutes, which is 30 times more efficient. One tools is to use a metronome to find the stress passages in a piece. Without a metronome, we hide the stressful passages by slowing down subconsciously. Set the metronome at a baseline rate at which you can play everything. Then gradually crank up the speed. Then the stress points show up: passages where you fumble. Chang makes astonishingly clever observations about speed. Basically, speed has two extremes that are easy: very slow, or super fast. It's just as hard to slow down from high speed playing as it is to speed up slow playing. The initial argument he makes is that there is no faster way to play three notes than to just hit a three note chord with three fingers, which is easy, and "infinitely fast". Moreover, it is basically easy to slow down from that "infinite speed" a little bit; if we hit the chord so that the fingers are staggered slightly, we will play a fast arpeggio. A really fast run of notes is like that: hitting groups of notes in this manner, and changing the hand position in between those groups.
- Pimpus 7y ago
  Hah, that is an excellent book. I remember it pissed off one of my friends who claimed that slow practice is the best way to learn. Glad I didn't listen to him, I use these techniques when learning all kinds of stuff. Glenn Gould practiced by playing fast: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qB76jxBq_gQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qB76jxBq_gQ
  - brooklyn_ashey 7y ago
    Glen Gould also practiced by playing slowly and very slowly and so on. He practiced by singing and not playing, and yes by playing at speed and as has been mentioned as something bad... he practiced pieces sll the way through for hours on end
ken47 7y ago
“I, and the other strong students in my department, did practice less than the weaker students,” he said. This is quite misleading. -Locally-, it might be true that weaker students practice more than strong students, to compensate for their weakness. But on average, great piano players practice much more than mediocre piano players. It's easy to find examples, but I'll name two that I found in my first two Google searches: Lang Lang (virtuoso classical pianist) - 6 hours a day Oscar Peterson (virtuoso jazz pianists) - 6 hours a day I'm --certain-- this is the norm, not the exception.
- devin 7y ago
  Indeed, Al DiMeola is another example. I used to do 6 hour practice sessions with some regularity. What you practice during that 6 hour session matters, however. If you "play" for 6 hours, you can't call it practice. They're quite different.
- bsder 7y ago
  Agreed. I simply do not believe they practiced less. I know a couple technical folks who are smoking good at their instruments, and basically said: "Look, I spent time in <strong musical program> as an undergraduate. One group "has it"--they're the elite. I'm in the second group. I'm practicing my ass off, and I'm not deaf. I'm gaining some ground on the best in the second group, but it's REALLY slow as they're practicing their ass off, too. Maybe I can reach the bottom of the elite group after 4 years. Maybe." "Or I can get a CS degree. And still play my instrument. And get amazing gigs simply because I am more than good enough and am always available when a cool gig comes up since I don't have to worry about money."
  - brooklyn_ashey 7y ago
    Maurizio Pollini still practices like crazy- lots of hours. More than I do! (he is way better than I)
- rukuu001 7y ago
  6 hours a day is plenty for a professional working musician, since they’re going to be performing, dealing with students etc. Serious students will do up to 10 hours a day tho.
egypturnash 7y ago
I don't know if I would say "avoid flow" but "working on what does not come easy" is definitely a thing I found important in my journey from "kid who likes to draw" to "ex-animator". Whenever someone asks for advice on breaking art block one of my suggestions is to go draw something they hate to draw. This attitude became ingrained enough that when I was taking pole dance class later in life, my instructor noticed that, unlike most beginners faced with a new move they were having difficulty with, I'd make myself spend time experimenting with it instead of falling back to refining earlier basics I was more than good enough for at that stage of my practice. It's a good one to have, IMHO. And I sure as hell have found ways to complicate my work as time goes on. Constantly doing stuff I can knock out in my sleep gets boring; challenge is fun.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  > "kid who likes to draw" to "ex-animator" There is an interesting book in there somewhere.
  - egypturnash 7y ago
    It involves this man: https://www.buzzfeed.com/arianelange/john-kricfalusi-ren-stimpy-underage-sexual-abuse?utm_term=.ffg000gw8#.liPDDDx1j https://www.buzzfeed.com/arianelange/john-kricfalusi-ren-sti...
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      That's one very unfortunate connection, I read that article before. Ugh.
epiphanitus 7y ago
This was a really interesting read, though I would interpret its message more as 'avoid flow during practice and work on the hard things, so during your performance you can focus on your vision instead of constantly thinking about avoiding mistakes.' It's an interesting counterargument to the 'train how you perform' philosophy.
beering 7y ago
I was both happy and sad to see a comment by Terry A. Davis in the linked post. For those who don't know or remember, he was the guy who created single-handedly created TempleOS which, like he says in his comment, was inspired by God. Interesting character, and a shame that he couldn't get the help he needed.
bitL 7y ago
My piano teacher from Yale recommended me to practice piece backwards and go measure by measure until it's all perfect.
- hahamrfunnyguy 7y ago
  What was the reasoning behind that? Does it help you to play the original piece?
  - cousin_it 7y ago
    I think grandparent's idea was to first play only measure N, then measures N-1 to N, then measures N-2 to N and so on. Not literally play the sheet music backwards.
    - spurgu 7y ago
      Yeah exactly. If you learn a song "traditionally" you have to play gradually longer passages until you hit the part you haven't learned yet. This will make you very proficient in playing the beginning of the song but you will usually always stumble towards the end. If you learn "backwards" then for each new measure you learn, the rest of the song will be easy, since you've already learned it.
  - bitL 7y ago
    To make sure I force myself to practice all parts of the song with the attention each measure needs and complete the piece only if all measures were mastered "perfectly" (i.e. as good as my level at that time allowed).
dizzyfingers 7y ago
I like this article for what to do in the moments of practice, but for a more complete plan this post that was nested in the OP is pretty important in describing how often and in what manner you should do this. http://www.calnewport.com/blog/2011/11/11/if-youre-busy-youre-doing-something-wrong-the-surprisingly-relaxed-lives-of-elite-achievers/ http://www.calnewport.com/blog/2011/11/11/if-youre-busy-your...
almstimplmntd 7y ago
As a (jazz) piano student myself, I am happy to see "To Master a Skill, Master Something Harder." Pianist and YouTuber Nahre Sol has a great set of exercises based on modifying passages of Chopin etudes, which serve as excellent material to study both as a template and in their own right. [1][2] She varies harmony and rhythm, and takes the exercise through all 12-keys. Much harder than just learning the passage in the original key, but that's the whole point. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xYfgJVm1Ns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xYfgJVm1Ns [2] https://flatfiv.com/products/piano-technique-intensive https://flatfiv.com/products/piano-technique-intensive
peterlk 7y ago
I have struggled to learn piano for a very long time, and I think that learning to play pieces written by other people is overemphasized in piano (and music in general, with the exception of drums, guitar, and bass) education. Music is like a language, and we owe it to ourselves and our students to learn more about the language of music rather than just reading and regurgitating notes on a page. A better approach is learning words (chords), and grammar (chord scales, chord progressions) or music. As a shameless plug, I am developing a site to help me learn piano[0]. It's still pretty early; the paywall is there so I can control initial users a bit better (feel free to pay though :P). If you're interested in such things, shoot me an email (check my profile). I'd love to learn more about how I can help the world be full of better music (i.e. helping you be a more awesome musician) [0] https://musicianship.studio https://musicianship.studio
- nippoo 7y ago
  Yes; improvisation should be taught more, but learning and deconstructing pieces by other people is an excellent way of doing it, in the same way that learning a language is often best done by listening and deconstructing what native speakers have said and written. The key difference is that we should be encouraging people to learn and /understand/ pieces written by others, rather than just blindly learn the notes.
zZorgz 7y ago
I treat playing piano as a creative outlet these days as a small hobby, not profession. Not much different than say, playing video games. I actually have very little interest in becoming better these days, mostly due to forgoing lessons / daily practice long ago. That said, I’ve created compositions that are really cool on occasional boredom, which is probably something many “accomplished pianists” don’t even do. And that is a lot cooler than performing challenging pieces, if you ask me. I also don’t think that more challenging pieces actually necessarily sound better / distinct. There are beginner level songs that are surprisingly good. My music teacher also told me that there’s good and bad practice. If you continuously do bad practice / habits, you get worse, not better.
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paul7986 7y ago
Answer is simple practice for hours, days, months, years. Have the passion in you. Personally the desire to express myself through music playing or writing songs drove me to finally get serious about learning/semi-mastering the piano/learn how to play by ear. The guitar is a much easier instrument to pick up then piano.
bjt 7y ago
Good advice for getting better at playing classical piano. The kind of practice described in the post is really good for honing precise technique. I question the extent to which it's applicable to creative work generally, as the post claims. The kind of piano playing described in the post doesn't actually leave much room for creativity. You're playing someone else's music. You have a bit of freedom to vary emphasis and tempo, but good luck winning competitions while getting creative with your own melody, harmony, etc. If we treated painting the way we treat classical music, we'd have competitions to see who's the best at paint-by-numbers. If you want to become a better writer, composer, painter, programmer, etc., technique is relevant but not the same thing as getting more creative.
- maroonblazer 7y ago
  Doesn't every creative endeavor require some technical proficiency? This advice is about how to most efficiently acquire that proficiency. Until you do that your creativity will be constrained. As Clark Terry said: "Imitate, assimilate, and innovate."
  - bjt 7y ago
    Yes, but the case is wildly overstated. You don't get to be Bukowski or Palahniuk by reciting Shakespeare over and over. EDIT: Or to put it in the article's own terms, is there any reason to believe the top piano student at the university is doing better creative work than those other students who were playing their songs start to finish? For all we know they were composition majors, and they'd already achieved the technical proficiency they needed to express themselves creatively. The kind of practice advocated in the post is very narrowly focused on very specific technical excellence that's way past the minimum you need for creative expression.
    - moron4hire 7y ago
      Hunter S. Thompson wrote of "writing Faulkner" and other authors he admired. He'd sit at his typewriter and copy entire passages from books. He felt it helped him understand the writer's thinking, their rhythm and creation process. If you want to be a great improvisational musician, you still (especially) need to be studied in music theory and common works, to know how good music is constructed, and what people expect to hear. If ever there is a great musician or other type of creator who says they are not familiar with and have not studied the works of their contemporaries and lineage, they are lying.
Mugwort 7y ago
I've played piano over 40 years. By the time I was 25 I played most of the piano repertoire, all 32 Beethoven sonatas etc. That said, let me offer my since advice on how to climb to the top of piano performance. Anyone can do it and this method works but you won't hear about it much and I'm unaware of anybody promoting this method. OK.. Here goes.... I love playing easy pieces. There is so much excellent low laying fruit which everyone should pick. Here are some examples... 1. Bartok - Mikrokosmos (all 153 pieces - play them all, you can do it!) 2. Prokofiev pieces for children. 3. Schumann 43 pieces for children. 4. Bartok 20 pieces for children. 5. Bach 15 inventions and 15 sinfonias. 6. Bach little fugues. 7. The easiest Mozart sonatas e.g. K282 etc. 8. The first 10 Haydn sonatas (partitas). 9. Well tempered clavier - Bach. etc. 10. Select pieces from the French and English suites. ... well you get it. The whole point is to start small, learn pieces quickly, but most importantly musically. Make music with them. Learn to read from the score comfortably. After a while reading things at sight isn't such a big deal. The important thing is to learn music is a way that solid skills are acquired. You certainly can focus work on a Beethoven sonata for several months like at a conservatory but I believe this method of learning vast amounts of music quickly is absolutely indispensable. There are a TON of excellent first rate compositions by the best composers, you have no excuse for not mastering them. The gap between being able to play Haydn sonatas and the Well Tempered Clavier fluently and say being able to work on the "big pieces" is much smaller than you think. Don't skip anything. Nobody needs to charge in and start playing Beethoven's sonata op. 57 The Appassionata before they've played at least 20 of the easier sonatas. The other bit of advice I have is to constantly work your memory. Again with simple pieces learned quickly. Most pieces don't need to be memorized and memorizing everything will hamper your development. You do however need to memorize easily and efficiently. It really helps in developing speed and accuracy. Chopin studies mostly need to be memorized in order to practice effectively. That said, I firmly believe you can learn MORE technique playing finales to Haydn sonatas but with a whole lot of energy and spark than slaving away on virtuoso etudes. One last thing, practicing without pedal (often but definitely not always) is very helpful. It has been for me. Oops. One more last thing. Play by ear and improvise in any style you like. You'd be surprised how many super advanced classical musicians there are who can't play Happy Birthday at a moments notice without knowing the song at all just to make a group of children happy. This is a symptom of the lop sided skills not to be able to play songs people like whether it's Carol King or Arcade Fire. You should be able to fake something. TLDR; Picking all the low laying fruit you can find is the one way to success. You get to focus on enjoying the process of actually making music than to struggle with passage work that always comes on its own anyway. Good luck.
tylercubell 7y ago
The first strategy I completely agree with. Growth happens outside of your comfort zone. The second and third strategies I don't completely relate to. If it works for you, great. The fourth I would somewhat disagree with. You need to know where you're going before you start playing but "moving towards a perfect mental image" is just silly. Is this piano player trying to be a robot? There are countless ways to play certain pieces and a lot of the time it depends how you're feeling that day. Play like a human being. This quote by Beethoven is apt, "To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable." I would say the most important thing is to play with passion and to try to stay true to the spirit of the piece you're playing. Source: my personal opinions after playing classical piano for 14 years.
RickJWagner 7y ago
Nice. I'm going to look for some ways to apply this tomorrow. I hope we see more articles like this.
ranprieur 7y ago
Missing from this post is anything about whether the piano player is enjoying the process. The subtext seems to be that we should force ourselves to do hard stuff, whether or not we like it, so that other people will admire our skill. When I'm doing something I really enjoy, I don't have to make myself do it in a way that's harder -- I already feel driven to add complexity and constraint. If I don't want a task to be harder, that probably means I don't enjoy it, and the best move is to try to get out of doing it.
deleted 7y ago
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Mizza 7y ago
Semi-related: Does anybody know any good online tools/apps for learning piano scales and chords?
- gralx 7y ago
  Although it doesn't have a web browser interface, GNU Solfege is lightweight, comprehensive ear training software. It has scales I'd never heard of, like the Hungarian scale. Actually using scales or chords is something else again, and the best approach is probably just repertoire - Bach's Goldberg Variations, Bartok's For Children cycle, transcribing Bill Evans, Liszt's concert studies, etc.
keldaris 7y ago
As a distinctly mediocre, lazy and easily bored amateur pianist, I've found that selecting the right pieces for building up technique makes all the difference. I only play for my own enjoyment, not to perform a specific repertoire to a concert standard, so I cannot bring myself to practice scales, arpeggios, Hanon/Czerny and the rest. The best suggestion I've ever found is just playing the Chopin etudes (and the Godowsky transcriptions of them, if you can). They are just the right balance of being of immense technical value while still being musically interesting, lovely to listen to and cover almost the entire range of piano technique that exists. Furthermore, each etude is targeted at a particular aspect of technique, so it is easy to pick something that suits your particular needs. For instance, I'm learning op. 10 no. 4 right now [1] in order to strengthen my left hand and improve wrist flexibility at speed (the curse of small hands), and the improvement is palpable, even with very limited practice time. The other thing I would say is that it really helps to have a goal to drive you. I quit playing piano for a decade and the only reason I came back to it, built up what little technique I had and persevered was because I really, really wanted to play a particular prelude by Rachmaninov, even though it was way out of my reach at the time. Finally learning it after a year or two of fairly hard work was very rewarding. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_eyiPKPO2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_eyiPKPO2U
exabrial 7y ago
The has sort of mirrored my experience as a guitar player. It took a large initial investment to comprehend the vocabulary and develop the finger dexterity, but now I can learn a complicated guitar solo by focusing on the hard parts with scheduled, deliberate, and focused practice.
gtani 7y ago
I've known /met a lot of serious students, some from living next door to Manhattan School of Music, and they all had different advice on practicing. Some had very structured allocations of time, recording all practices and journaling their progress, some said they put their entire being into practicing one tune at a time. I recommend reading Kenny Werner's Effortless Mastery, which is probably in your public library if you're in a big city, and also the interviews in Wernick/Trischka's Masters of 5 String Banjo, currently going fore absurd asking prices on Amazon and hard to find unless you know a banjo player.

492 points by davesque 7y ago

aji 7y ago

the author invented a definition of "flow" which is different from another common definition which roughly means "getting in the zone" and the result is dangerously clickbaity imo i do my best work when i'm in the zone and it has nothing to do with whether the work itself is challenging or not. in fact, the more challenging something is, the easier it is for me to stay focused if i feel like i'm making progress

ska 7y ago
I don't think this contradicts what the author is saying. The claim boils down to this: you will do your best work in a state of flow, but you will improve your capabilities faster outside of it. Flow is great for productivity but not for changing how you do things. At a handwavy level at least, it seems to be true in my experience. It is certainly true that not all practice is equivalent, and you can put a lot of hours into "practicing" something without making any real progress in your skills.
- Jimpulse 7y ago
  Flow requires difficulty that correctly matches skill. If it's too easy, it isn't a state of flow. Rather, it's just coasting on autopilot. Flow usually equates to deliberate practice.
  - ska 7y ago
    flow usually equates to deliberate practice. I don't believe this is true at all. If it's too easy, sure, that's not flow. But same is true if it is too hard. Deliberate practice intentionally and introspectively focuses on changing your approach. If done correctly, I think this will easily break flow. Deliberate practice is never relaxed - but flow can be. To reference the OP, there was discussion of intentionally focusing on and making the difficult parts of a piece harder as a form of practice. That doesn't bring flow, but allows the flow state later when you play the piece "for real". I think this generalizes well.
  - klodolph 7y ago
    What do you mean when you say “flow”? I think your idea of flow might be quite different to mine.
  - ralphstodomingo 7y ago
    No, the kind of state of flow you're mentioning lacks the necessary consciousness for it to be deliberate practice. The emphasis on deliberate: you can either focus on executing over a period of time (flow) or focus on being mindful about how you're executing things (deliberate practice). Sure, there's an overlap, but I think the concerns you'd have to deal with each are completely separate from each other.
bumby 7y ago
What you're describing is more aligned with the thesis of the book "Flow"...namely, that flow occurs when we are at the outer cusp of our capabilities. In other words, when the task is difficult enough to be challenging but not so difficult as to become frustrating.
Jeff_Brown 7y ago
I can't speak to the relative merits of flow vs. (what's the opposite? self-consciousness?), but I can testify that the vast majority of musicians practice dumb. They just recite, or jam; they don't target the hard part, or new ideas, although they might say they know they ought to -- and more cerebral work like ear-training or learning the combinatorics of music theory (mapping the possible chords and scales, and ways to combine them in serial or parallel) aren't even on the radar.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  My partner is a professional pianist and she very definitely repeats the hard parts - over and over and over - until they're fluent. This isn't rocket science, and it is something professionals are taught to do.
- baddox 7y ago
  I think there is considerable value in the "dumb" repetitive mode of practicing a musical instrument. In my experience, it's pretty much the only way to commit guitar scales and shapes to muscle memory. This is particularly vital to playing fast or improvising. My guitar instructor (who was a phenomenal player) talked about playing blues licks over and over again "to get them into your fingers."
  - Jeff_Brown 7y ago
    While I agree that it has its place, I'm opposed to over-reliance on muscle memory. I believe it restricts you to what you've drilled, even to the exclusion of very close neighbors. But I'm also not trying to play extremely fast. If my goal was recital rather than composition, I would use it more. My recordings[1] are mostly total improv, free jazz, with a vocals track (later deleted) that states what chord changes are coming up, and then improvise over the first instrumental track while listening to the chord announcements. https://soundcloud.com/jeffrey-benjamin-brown https://soundcloud.com/jeffrey-benjamin-brown
  - fortpoint 7y ago
    I'm nothing more than an amateur musician but I had the chance to study with Charlie Banacos and one of the things Charlie emphasized was avoiding relying on muscle memory. All the exercises I received from Charlie forced me to be consciously engaged in the act of playing- never outsourcing things to muscle memory. I think that largely this was to avoid falling into mechanically playing over changes and to be actively engaged in thinking about the music at the moment it was happening and responding to it creatively.
atoav 7y ago
As a musician myself I must say that flow isn’t important for practise, much more important are breaks Going at something for 3 times half an hour with hours in between is more effective than going for hours straight. And this kind of focused time method also works well for programming. With programming it is harder to decide where to put the break. Breaks don’t mean you have to do nothing, you just have to do something that is mentally different. When I take a programming break, making music, soldering or reading is quite a good programming break.

cortesoft 7y ago

The title is catchy, but I don't think it exactly fits the article.

dang 7y ago
Ok, let's try the subtitle.

henning 7y ago

This shows that by using cherry-picked examples, you can prove anything. Elite musicians are all super relaxed and chill? Some are, some aren't. For every story of a relaxed musician, I can find you a super successful one that would literally run from gig to gig on weekends. If you're willing to ignore all evidence to the contrary and willing to use a single study to confirm what you already believe, I guess life becomes a lot simpler. Probably helps sell more of them books, too. Working on your weaknesses can be good if that's something you've avoided doing and doing so would help you advance your skills. What a weird, confrontational way Cal Newport has of getting a reasonable idea across. It's one of the infinite number of things that are neither necessary nor sufficient to create "success" or be "elite", because those are largely in your own mind and based on how you feel about what's happened rather than what has happened.

president 7y ago
Exactly, these types of reads are inspiring to people but they mislead people into thinking there is some special "formula" to becoming successful.
Hoasi 7y ago
> This shows that with using unrepresentative, hand-picked examples, you can prove anything. True, but the pianist in the article still makes good points. > "The mistake most weak pianists make is playing, not practicing." as I understand it, means that the pianist found repeated confrontation with difficult parts was beneficial versus sessions repeating the music in full from beginning to end. What he says is about seeking mastery first. To be a great musician, first you need to have taste, that cannot be downplayed. If you have the right taste and an idea of what the music should sound like, then there are mostly technical traps you need to tackle to achieve a great performance. The pianist doesn't mean to say that once you have done the hard parts you shouldn't enjoy playing the music in full—that's would be stupid. No great performer ever stops in the mid of a piece and get along with it being great. But it is much easier to find "flow" or whatever you call it, once you have mastery. And one is not exclusive of the other, that's maybe Cal Newport's interpretation or simplification to match the goal of his article. > "Weak pianists make music a reactive task, not a creative task." and > "In performance, weak pianists try to reactively move away from mistakes, while strong pianists move towards a perfect mental image." ring particularly true and are useful tips.

0815test 7y ago

Interesting perspective. The author's basic point is that you should, to quote the article, "Avoid Flow. Do What Does Not Come Easy". This is in the context of playing piano, so it might be a pitfall there. In my experience though, "doing what does come easy" is a reasonably foolproof and enjoyable way to enter flow; but you can still maintain that state subsequently while meaningfully challenging yourself. Your mileage may vary!

tdhoot 7y ago
I think Malcolm Gladwell or maybe someone similar called this "deliberate practice". The idea is that you can't become an expert by just doing 10,000 hours of practice. The practice has to be pushing you forward for it to count.
- thanatropism 7y ago
  Goes back to Heidegger at least if you trust Hubert Dreyfus. Maybe more. Heidegger at its core is an "antiplatonism of lived experience". I really can't recommend enough reading two very different interpretations of him, namely "Tool-being" by Graham Harman and "Being-in-the-world" by Hubert Dreyfus. Books are cheap. Get these. Most Netflix shows are bad. Read these books instead for two or three weeks.

dang 7y ago

A little discussion from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14712361 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14712361

ramblerman 7y ago
Interesting, that with the original title, "Flow Is the Opiate of the Mediocre: Advice on Getting Better" the discussion centered more around people getting defensive about Flow.
- dang 7y ago
  Yes: titles are by far the most influential initial condition on a thread. It's shocking how deep that rabbit hole goes.

jrochkind1 7y ago

It's specifically about practicing/drilling. Which is definitely important to musicianship. The article doesn't even suggest musicians ought not to enter a "flow" state when performing. I'm not sure how important it is to programming. While I know some younger coders who "practice" and "drill" programming problems, this is pretty foreign to how I've learned to program (over a couple plus decades). I've just... programmed. No shade, whatever works. But as a kind of aside, I'm curious how many programmer readers of HN do "practices" or "drills" of programming (and what stage of your career you are at; even the most expert musicians have to keep practicing and drilling. I think expert programmers just... produce programs). (But I did find this article enlightening and I predict useful to my amateur musicianship! It's not a bad article at all. I'm just not sure how applicable it is to computer programming -- which it does not claim to be, but I assume is why it was posted on HN -- I think they are very different skills and practices. The muscle memory/physicality aspect of musicianship just doesn't apply to programming I think).

knicholes 7y ago
When I was a student, I'd practice writing various search/sorting algorithms by hand to remember them in my free time (even after the tests) but reality set in where I don't need to be able to actually code these on the fly, so I stopped.
QuercusMax 7y ago
The only time I've ever "practiced" or "drilled" was when I was getting ready for interviews. This was as much as anything so I could get used to writing code on a whiteboard (although I actually typically just wrote out on paper). Definitely do some serious practicing when I'm trying to learn a difficult piece of music, though.
samkater 7y ago
I think being a musician and programmer both require practice. As a musician, I would practice a lot of mechanics - producing the desired sound in a specific way every time. When practicing programming, I personally (and suspect most) would practice certain elements of mental recall. In some cases that would translate into a mechanical memory (vim and tmux key-strokes in particular for me). But I sometimes also force myself to not use IDE shortcuts (or copy-paste) when I am trying to learn a new library or other programming paradigm. For example, I thought learning how to do "Pandas Python" after being fairly proficient in normal Python (and general programming) was hard in making that mental model shift. But I would learn ("practice") by forcing myself to type things that I could have copy-pasted. I think the key is to be aware of what you personally require to become proficient at something. My programming practice methods might not work for everyone, and I know a lot of people who seem to instinctively "get" a new programming process. As you say "I think expert programmers just... produce programs" - this is the best place to be in! You are subconsciously "practicing" but it is wrapped up in your daily life that whatever worked to become an expert has become a habit and is no longer the burden of "practice."

jdreyfuss 7y ago

I assumed this was going to be about avoiding flow while doing actual work, but this is only in the context of practice and training. I can see the argument for avoiding flow and focusing on your weaknesses when your goal is self-improvement (and to take the jump from there that it's important to set aside some time to focus on self-improvement), but that doesn't apply when your goal is actual output, which is the majority of the time when it comes to most of our jobs

ska 7y ago
This is a good point where professional musicians and other performers are in a bit of an unusual position, their ratio of practice to "productive" is pretty unusual in other fields. I suppose (professional) athletes would be another example.

HiroshiSan 7y ago

For anyone who wants to get a more in depth look at how to improve at something by one of the leading researchers in the field, check out the book Peak. Anytime I read an article like this or anything on how to improve, the concepts are explained in depth in the book.

segmondy 7y ago

meh, this is called "deliberate practice" which is discussed extensively in the book "Talent is overrated" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practice_(learning_method)#Deliberate_practice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practice_(learning_method)#Del...

jefftk 7y ago

My experience is that the choice isn't "playing for fun" vs "deliberate practice" it's "playing for fun" vs "not playing". If practice is fun, I'll do a lot of it and get better. It's not especially efficient practice per hour, but since I do a lot of it it helps a lot. If practice is not fun I just don't play, and I don't get better. The advice in the article is probably right for people who want to be the very best, but probably wrong for most people who might read it.

klodolph 7y ago
I think you may be forgetting point in your history where you needed deliberate practice to get to where you are now. If you only ever choose between not playing and playing for fun, you will never get better. The transition to playing only for fun is the point where improving is now left to chance—not that you completely stop growing, but you become more entrenched in your existing practices and your skills crystallize at their current level. The saying goes “practice makes permanent”.
- pier25 7y ago
  Piano skills are specially not permanent. Some stuff remains for sure, but you lose a lot after a couple of years of not playing.
  - ngcc_hk 7y ago
    Really? Never heard of this even it makes sense. But could they come back like cycle skill?
    - pier25 7y ago
      I've heard this from a couple of concert pianists in my family, and I've dabbled a bit myself too. Basically lost my 3-4 years of playing after a while. I can still play scales and chords, more or less, but I've tried learning again and struggle even with basic pieces.
- jefftk 7y ago

catacombs 7y ago

> To Master a Skill, Master Something Harder. I like this. It can definitely be applied to programming. For me, my goal at getting much better in JavaScript and Go has taken me to mastering C.

rshudson 7y ago

Anyone apply deliberate practice to software development? I would be interested to hear applications. I can imagine data structures and algorithms and coding competitions, but I've always struggled with the concept of drills for improving skills as a software developer. Would love to hear ideas from others.

DenisM 7y ago
Whenever I code something moderately challenging, I come back and do it again, and maybe again until it’s good and proper. I love history rewrite in mercurial. The code gets better, but the business outcome remains unchanged so it may look like waste. But it’s not waste - the micro skills acquired in the exercise accumulate.
- bmj 7y ago
  The code gets better, but the business outcome remains unchanged so it may look like waste. Herein lies the issues for many of us in the corporate world. Unless I am get the rewrite done in the current testing (assuming the feature I'm working on isn't already test complete), convincing the testers to re-test is basically impossible (to say nothing of the project/product managers).
- leib 7y ago
  It's waste for the business but good for you
- sitkack 7y ago
  I do this with cooking, kinda, let me know what you think. 1. Make the thing from a book, verbatim, change nothing 2. Synthesize a new recipe from 3-5 recipes, changing stuff at will, but within the range for each ingredient 3. if excellent: goto 2; else: goto 4 4. Continue to make this dish, using this recipe, from feel until the output consistency is always delish Being good means being creative and then being able to consistently hit the required output quality. “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times.” -- Bruce Lee

JDevlieghere 7y ago

I wish more developers wrote code with a mute keyboard.

kazinator 7y ago

Some of this advice echoes that in Fundamentals of Piano Practice by Chaun C. Chang. https://fundamentals-of-piano-practice.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://fundamentals-of-piano-practice.readthedocs.io/en/lat... Chang precisely recommends the same thing: don't just practice by going through pieces from beginning to end repeatedly. Being a scientist, he quantifies that with efficiency arguments, which are along these lines: if a five minute piece contains two-bar difficult passage, then you can only practice that passage twelve times in the span of one hour. If the passage is only ten seconds long, you can practice it twelve times in just two minutes, which is 30 times more efficient. One tools is to use a metronome to find the stress passages in a piece. Without a metronome, we hide the stressful passages by slowing down subconsciously. Set the metronome at a baseline rate at which you can play everything. Then gradually crank up the speed. Then the stress points show up: passages where you fumble. Chang makes astonishingly clever observations about speed. Basically, speed has two extremes that are easy: very slow, or super fast. It's just as hard to slow down from high speed playing as it is to speed up slow playing. The initial argument he makes is that there is no faster way to play three notes than to just hit a three note chord with three fingers, which is easy, and "infinitely fast". Moreover, it is basically easy to slow down from that "infinite speed" a little bit; if we hit the chord so that the fingers are staggered slightly, we will play a fast arpeggio. A really fast run of notes is like that: hitting groups of notes in this manner, and changing the hand position in between those groups.

Pimpus 7y ago
Hah, that is an excellent book. I remember it pissed off one of my friends who claimed that slow practice is the best way to learn. Glad I didn't listen to him, I use these techniques when learning all kinds of stuff. Glenn Gould practiced by playing fast: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qB76jxBq_gQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qB76jxBq_gQ
- brooklyn_ashey 7y ago
  Glen Gould also practiced by playing slowly and very slowly and so on. He practiced by singing and not playing, and yes by playing at speed and as has been mentioned as something bad... he practiced pieces sll the way through for hours on end

ken47 7y ago

“I, and the other strong students in my department, did practice less than the weaker students,” he said. This is quite misleading. -Locally-, it might be true that weaker students practice more than strong students, to compensate for their weakness. But on average, great piano players practice much more than mediocre piano players. It's easy to find examples, but I'll name two that I found in my first two Google searches: Lang Lang (virtuoso classical pianist) - 6 hours a day Oscar Peterson (virtuoso jazz pianists) - 6 hours a day I'm --certain-- this is the norm, not the exception.

devin 7y ago
Indeed, Al DiMeola is another example. I used to do 6 hour practice sessions with some regularity. What you practice during that 6 hour session matters, however. If you "play" for 6 hours, you can't call it practice. They're quite different.
bsder 7y ago
Agreed. I simply do not believe they practiced less. I know a couple technical folks who are smoking good at their instruments, and basically said: "Look, I spent time in <strong musical program> as an undergraduate. One group "has it"--they're the elite. I'm in the second group. I'm practicing my ass off, and I'm not deaf. I'm gaining some ground on the best in the second group, but it's REALLY slow as they're practicing their ass off, too. Maybe I can reach the bottom of the elite group after 4 years. Maybe." "Or I can get a CS degree. And still play my instrument. And get amazing gigs simply because I am more than good enough and am always available when a cool gig comes up since I don't have to worry about money."
- brooklyn_ashey 7y ago
  Maurizio Pollini still practices like crazy- lots of hours. More than I do! (he is way better than I)
rukuu001 7y ago
6 hours a day is plenty for a professional working musician, since they’re going to be performing, dealing with students etc. Serious students will do up to 10 hours a day tho.

egypturnash 7y ago

I don't know if I would say "avoid flow" but "working on what does not come easy" is definitely a thing I found important in my journey from "kid who likes to draw" to "ex-animator". Whenever someone asks for advice on breaking art block one of my suggestions is to go draw something they hate to draw. This attitude became ingrained enough that when I was taking pole dance class later in life, my instructor noticed that, unlike most beginners faced with a new move they were having difficulty with, I'd make myself spend time experimenting with it instead of falling back to refining earlier basics I was more than good enough for at that stage of my practice. It's a good one to have, IMHO. And I sure as hell have found ways to complicate my work as time goes on. Constantly doing stuff I can knock out in my sleep gets boring; challenge is fun.

jacquesm 7y ago
> "kid who likes to draw" to "ex-animator" There is an interesting book in there somewhere.
- egypturnash 7y ago
  It involves this man: https://www.buzzfeed.com/arianelange/john-kricfalusi-ren-stimpy-underage-sexual-abuse?utm_term=.ffg000gw8#.liPDDDx1j https://www.buzzfeed.com/arianelange/john-kricfalusi-ren-sti...
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    That's one very unfortunate connection, I read that article before. Ugh.

epiphanitus 7y ago

This was a really interesting read, though I would interpret its message more as 'avoid flow during practice and work on the hard things, so during your performance you can focus on your vision instead of constantly thinking about avoiding mistakes.' It's an interesting counterargument to the 'train how you perform' philosophy.

beering 7y ago

I was both happy and sad to see a comment by Terry A. Davis in the linked post. For those who don't know or remember, he was the guy who created single-handedly created TempleOS which, like he says in his comment, was inspired by God. Interesting character, and a shame that he couldn't get the help he needed.

bitL 7y ago

My piano teacher from Yale recommended me to practice piece backwards and go measure by measure until it's all perfect.

hahamrfunnyguy 7y ago
What was the reasoning behind that? Does it help you to play the original piece?
- cousin_it 7y ago
  I think grandparent's idea was to first play only measure N, then measures N-1 to N, then measures N-2 to N and so on. Not literally play the sheet music backwards.
  - spurgu 7y ago
    Yeah exactly. If you learn a song "traditionally" you have to play gradually longer passages until you hit the part you haven't learned yet. This will make you very proficient in playing the beginning of the song but you will usually always stumble towards the end. If you learn "backwards" then for each new measure you learn, the rest of the song will be easy, since you've already learned it.
- bitL 7y ago
  To make sure I force myself to practice all parts of the song with the attention each measure needs and complete the piece only if all measures were mastered "perfectly" (i.e. as good as my level at that time allowed).

dizzyfingers 7y ago

I like this article for what to do in the moments of practice, but for a more complete plan this post that was nested in the OP is pretty important in describing how often and in what manner you should do this. http://www.calnewport.com/blog/2011/11/11/if-youre-busy-youre-doing-something-wrong-the-surprisingly-relaxed-lives-of-elite-achievers/ http://www.calnewport.com/blog/2011/11/11/if-youre-busy-your...

almstimplmntd 7y ago

As a (jazz) piano student myself, I am happy to see "To Master a Skill, Master Something Harder." Pianist and YouTuber Nahre Sol has a great set of exercises based on modifying passages of Chopin etudes, which serve as excellent material to study both as a template and in their own right. [1][2] She varies harmony and rhythm, and takes the exercise through all 12-keys. Much harder than just learning the passage in the original key, but that's the whole point. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xYfgJVm1Ns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xYfgJVm1Ns [2] https://flatfiv.com/products/piano-technique-intensive https://flatfiv.com/products/piano-technique-intensive

peterlk 7y ago

I have struggled to learn piano for a very long time, and I think that learning to play pieces written by other people is overemphasized in piano (and music in general, with the exception of drums, guitar, and bass) education. Music is like a language, and we owe it to ourselves and our students to learn more about the language of music rather than just reading and regurgitating notes on a page. A better approach is learning words (chords), and grammar (chord scales, chord progressions) or music. As a shameless plug, I am developing a site to help me learn piano[0]. It's still pretty early; the paywall is there so I can control initial users a bit better (feel free to pay though :P). If you're interested in such things, shoot me an email (check my profile). I'd love to learn more about how I can help the world be full of better music (i.e. helping you be a more awesome musician) [0] https://musicianship.studio https://musicianship.studio

nippoo 7y ago
Yes; improvisation should be taught more, but learning and deconstructing pieces by other people is an excellent way of doing it, in the same way that learning a language is often best done by listening and deconstructing what native speakers have said and written. The key difference is that we should be encouraging people to learn and /understand/ pieces written by others, rather than just blindly learn the notes.

zZorgz 7y ago

I treat playing piano as a creative outlet these days as a small hobby, not profession. Not much different than say, playing video games. I actually have very little interest in becoming better these days, mostly due to forgoing lessons / daily practice long ago. That said, I’ve created compositions that are really cool on occasional boredom, which is probably something many “accomplished pianists” don’t even do. And that is a lot cooler than performing challenging pieces, if you ask me. I also don’t think that more challenging pieces actually necessarily sound better / distinct. There are beginner level songs that are surprisingly good. My music teacher also told me that there’s good and bad practice. If you continuously do bad practice / habits, you get worse, not better.

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paul7986 7y ago

Answer is simple practice for hours, days, months, years. Have the passion in you. Personally the desire to express myself through music playing or writing songs drove me to finally get serious about learning/semi-mastering the piano/learn how to play by ear. The guitar is a much easier instrument to pick up then piano.

bjt 7y ago

Good advice for getting better at playing classical piano. The kind of practice described in the post is really good for honing precise technique. I question the extent to which it's applicable to creative work generally, as the post claims. The kind of piano playing described in the post doesn't actually leave much room for creativity. You're playing someone else's music. You have a bit of freedom to vary emphasis and tempo, but good luck winning competitions while getting creative with your own melody, harmony, etc. If we treated painting the way we treat classical music, we'd have competitions to see who's the best at paint-by-numbers. If you want to become a better writer, composer, painter, programmer, etc., technique is relevant but not the same thing as getting more creative.

maroonblazer 7y ago
Doesn't every creative endeavor require some technical proficiency? This advice is about how to most efficiently acquire that proficiency. Until you do that your creativity will be constrained. As Clark Terry said: "Imitate, assimilate, and innovate."
- bjt 7y ago
  Yes, but the case is wildly overstated. You don't get to be Bukowski or Palahniuk by reciting Shakespeare over and over. EDIT: Or to put it in the article's own terms, is there any reason to believe the top piano student at the university is doing better creative work than those other students who were playing their songs start to finish? For all we know they were composition majors, and they'd already achieved the technical proficiency they needed to express themselves creatively. The kind of practice advocated in the post is very narrowly focused on very specific technical excellence that's way past the minimum you need for creative expression.
  - moron4hire 7y ago
    Hunter S. Thompson wrote of "writing Faulkner" and other authors he admired. He'd sit at his typewriter and copy entire passages from books. He felt it helped him understand the writer's thinking, their rhythm and creation process. If you want to be a great improvisational musician, you still (especially) need to be studied in music theory and common works, to know how good music is constructed, and what people expect to hear. If ever there is a great musician or other type of creator who says they are not familiar with and have not studied the works of their contemporaries and lineage, they are lying.

Mugwort 7y ago

I've played piano over 40 years. By the time I was 25 I played most of the piano repertoire, all 32 Beethoven sonatas etc. That said, let me offer my since advice on how to climb to the top of piano performance. Anyone can do it and this method works but you won't hear about it much and I'm unaware of anybody promoting this method. OK.. Here goes.... I love playing easy pieces. There is so much excellent low laying fruit which everyone should pick. Here are some examples... 1. Bartok - Mikrokosmos (all 153 pieces - play them all, you can do it!) 2. Prokofiev pieces for children. 3. Schumann 43 pieces for children. 4. Bartok 20 pieces for children. 5. Bach 15 inventions and 15 sinfonias. 6. Bach little fugues. 7. The easiest Mozart sonatas e.g. K282 etc. 8. The first 10 Haydn sonatas (partitas). 9. Well tempered clavier - Bach. etc. 10. Select pieces from the French and English suites. ... well you get it. The whole point is to start small, learn pieces quickly, but most importantly musically. Make music with them. Learn to read from the score comfortably. After a while reading things at sight isn't such a big deal. The important thing is to learn music is a way that solid skills are acquired. You certainly can focus work on a Beethoven sonata for several months like at a conservatory but I believe this method of learning vast amounts of music quickly is absolutely indispensable. There are a TON of excellent first rate compositions by the best composers, you have no excuse for not mastering them. The gap between being able to play Haydn sonatas and the Well Tempered Clavier fluently and say being able to work on the "big pieces" is much smaller than you think. Don't skip anything. Nobody needs to charge in and start playing Beethoven's sonata op. 57 The Appassionata before they've played at least 20 of the easier sonatas. The other bit of advice I have is to constantly work your memory. Again with simple pieces learned quickly. Most pieces don't need to be memorized and memorizing everything will hamper your development. You do however need to memorize easily and efficiently. It really helps in developing speed and accuracy. Chopin studies mostly need to be memorized in order to practice effectively. That said, I firmly believe you can learn MORE technique playing finales to Haydn sonatas but with a whole lot of energy and spark than slaving away on virtuoso etudes. One last thing, practicing without pedal (often but definitely not always) is very helpful. It has been for me. Oops. One more last thing. Play by ear and improvise in any style you like. You'd be surprised how many super advanced classical musicians there are who can't play Happy Birthday at a moments notice without knowing the song at all just to make a group of children happy. This is a symptom of the lop sided skills not to be able to play songs people like whether it's Carol King or Arcade Fire. You should be able to fake something. TLDR; Picking all the low laying fruit you can find is the one way to success. You get to focus on enjoying the process of actually making music than to struggle with passage work that always comes on its own anyway. Good luck.

tylercubell 7y ago

The first strategy I completely agree with. Growth happens outside of your comfort zone. The second and third strategies I don't completely relate to. If it works for you, great. The fourth I would somewhat disagree with. You need to know where you're going before you start playing but "moving towards a perfect mental image" is just silly. Is this piano player trying to be a robot? There are countless ways to play certain pieces and a lot of the time it depends how you're feeling that day. Play like a human being. This quote by Beethoven is apt, "To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable." I would say the most important thing is to play with passion and to try to stay true to the spirit of the piece you're playing. Source: my personal opinions after playing classical piano for 14 years.

RickJWagner 7y ago

Nice. I'm going to look for some ways to apply this tomorrow. I hope we see more articles like this.

ranprieur 7y ago

Missing from this post is anything about whether the piano player is enjoying the process. The subtext seems to be that we should force ourselves to do hard stuff, whether or not we like it, so that other people will admire our skill. When I'm doing something I really enjoy, I don't have to make myself do it in a way that's harder -- I already feel driven to add complexity and constraint. If I don't want a task to be harder, that probably means I don't enjoy it, and the best move is to try to get out of doing it.

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Mizza 7y ago

Semi-related: Does anybody know any good online tools/apps for learning piano scales and chords?

gralx 7y ago
Although it doesn't have a web browser interface, GNU Solfege is lightweight, comprehensive ear training software. It has scales I'd never heard of, like the Hungarian scale. Actually using scales or chords is something else again, and the best approach is probably just repertoire - Bach's Goldberg Variations, Bartok's For Children cycle, transcribing Bill Evans, Liszt's concert studies, etc.

keldaris 7y ago

As a distinctly mediocre, lazy and easily bored amateur pianist, I've found that selecting the right pieces for building up technique makes all the difference. I only play for my own enjoyment, not to perform a specific repertoire to a concert standard, so I cannot bring myself to practice scales, arpeggios, Hanon/Czerny and the rest. The best suggestion I've ever found is just playing the Chopin etudes (and the Godowsky transcriptions of them, if you can). They are just the right balance of being of immense technical value while still being musically interesting, lovely to listen to and cover almost the entire range of piano technique that exists. Furthermore, each etude is targeted at a particular aspect of technique, so it is easy to pick something that suits your particular needs. For instance, I'm learning op. 10 no. 4 right now [1] in order to strengthen my left hand and improve wrist flexibility at speed (the curse of small hands), and the improvement is palpable, even with very limited practice time. The other thing I would say is that it really helps to have a goal to drive you. I quit playing piano for a decade and the only reason I came back to it, built up what little technique I had and persevered was because I really, really wanted to play a particular prelude by Rachmaninov, even though it was way out of my reach at the time. Finally learning it after a year or two of fairly hard work was very rewarding. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_eyiPKPO2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_eyiPKPO2U

exabrial 7y ago

The has sort of mirrored my experience as a guitar player. It took a large initial investment to comprehend the vocabulary and develop the finger dexterity, but now I can learn a complicated guitar solo by focusing on the hard parts with scheduled, deliberate, and focused practice.

gtani 7y ago

I've known /met a lot of serious students, some from living next door to Manhattan School of Music, and they all had different advice on practicing. Some had very structured allocations of time, recording all practices and journaling their progress, some said they put their entire being into practicing one tune at a time. I recommend reading Kenny Werner's Effortless Mastery, which is probably in your public library if you're in a big city, and also the interviews in Wernick/Trischka's Masters of 5 String Banjo, currently going fore absurd asking prices on Amazon and hard to find unless you know a banjo player.