4 ms·

> If you've ever been to a kid's recital and all the pieces sound awful, it's not because they can't play their instruments, it's because their teachers taught

> If you've ever been to a kid's recital and all the pieces sound awful, it's not because they can't play their instruments, it's because their teachers taught them the mental habit of stopping when they made a mistake Professionally I’m a collaborative pianist. My job is accompanying pre-college instrumental students in auditions, recitals, master classes. Trust me, there’s a near infinite variety of ways to sound awful, only some of which relate to the mode of practice you describe. (Stopping on mistakes is not an inherently bad thing, but it does require that you consciously reintegrate it, which most students do not do.) I do agree with the observation that some of these problems relate to playing in isolation. This is true of the vast majority of piano students, most of whom will never in the course of their training play in chamber music settings, or even accompany others. This is a very neglected area of piano pedagogy. It also relates to the great difficulty of most chamber works for piano. There’s practically nothing out there for piano trio (piano, vln, cello), quartet, quintet, etc that’s not a RCM grade 10++ difficulty. By the time students reach this level, the rhythmic/collaborative horse is out of the barn.

quacked 4y ago
> This is a very neglected area of piano pedagogy. It also relates to the great difficulty of most chamber works for piano. You are SO right. I really wish that modern composers would come up with a bunch of chamber stuff that actually sounds good (i.e. like real baroque/classical/romantic music) but isn't incredibly difficult. I have never once played in a chamber ensemble as a pianist, and I was up to about the level of the easier Beethoven sonatas by the time I "quit" and started focusing on guitar. All of my favorite chamber piano pieces (Mendelssohn piano trios, Schubert Trout Quintet, Brandenburgs, etc.) would require 2-5 years of intense daily practice to even play a movement at speed with mistakes. > Trust me, there’s a near infinite variety of ways to sound awful Yeah, yeah, okay, fair enough. But I'd bet that the biggest improvement most of them could make right off the bat would be keeping time properly. (Maybe not if you're on a wind instrument and can only honk.)
- aiwv 4y ago
  Yeah, I was astounded by how quickly my singing improved when I started practicing with a metronome. Keeping time seems to me the easiest thing to improve if you focus on it (but that's just my subjective opinion). Once you can keep good time, the rhythm of the song imposes restrictions on you that actually help you figure out how to physically perform the movements demanded by the music and then subsequently groove them so that you can focus on all the other elements of making music.

quacked 4y ago

> This is a very neglected area of piano pedagogy. It also relates to the great difficulty of most chamber works for piano. You are SO right. I really wish that modern composers would come up with a bunch of chamber stuff that actually sounds good (i.e. like real baroque/classical/romantic music) but isn't incredibly difficult. I have never once played in a chamber ensemble as a pianist, and I was up to about the level of the easier Beethoven sonatas by the time I "quit" and started focusing on guitar. All of my favorite chamber piano pieces (Mendelssohn piano trios, Schubert Trout Quintet, Brandenburgs, etc.) would require 2-5 years of intense daily practice to even play a movement at speed with mistakes. > Trust me, there’s a near infinite variety of ways to sound awful Yeah, yeah, okay, fair enough. But I'd bet that the biggest improvement most of them could make right off the bat would be keeping time properly. (Maybe not if you're on a wind instrument and can only honk.)

aiwv 4y ago
Yeah, I was astounded by how quickly my singing improved when I started practicing with a metronome. Keeping time seems to me the easiest thing to improve if you focus on it (but that's just my subjective opinion). Once you can keep good time, the rhythm of the song imposes restrictions on you that actually help you figure out how to physically perform the movements demanded by the music and then subsequently groove them so that you can focus on all the other elements of making music.