Saturday, October 13, 2007

Good Habit Vs Bad Habit



Bad Habit :

Most bad habits are caused by stress from practicing pieces HT, that are too difficult.

Drill down to practise smaller segment if mistake repeat.

Bang away at the piano without regard to musicality.
Weak fingers : Weak fingers is caused by not releasing your arms and letting gravity take over.
If you make a mistake, always play through it; don't stop to correct it. ~ Correct it next round.

Playing so fast that you start to feel stress and make mistakes will not improve technique because you are just practicing mistakes and acquiring bad habits.

If you know how to play fast, it is safe to play slowly, but if you don't know how to play fast, you must be careful not to learn the wrong slow playing habits or to end up wasting tremendous amounts of time.

Students who do not practice HS will always have a stronger RH than LH.

All technique must be acquired HS; don't try to acquire technique HT that you can acquire HS.


Good Habits :

Practice the Most Difficult Sections First

When practicing one segment, always include the beginning of the following segment.

A generalization of the continuity rule is that any passage may be broken up into short segments for practice, but these segments must overlap.

To break speed wall : Chord Attack Example : play -> do-so-mi-so, do-so-mi-so, dosomi(Together, drags 4 beats for relax), do-so-mi-so, do-so-mi-so, dosomi(Together, drags 4 beats for relax)

It is important to practice the slow bounce because that is when you can work on the accuracy and relaxation. Accuracy improves faster at the slower speeds.
Always end a practice session by playing slowly at least once.

An important skill to practice when playing slowly is to think ahead of the music.

Technique improves most rapidly when playing at a speed at which you can play accurately. The gravity drop is a method for practicing relaxation. Once this relaxed state is achieved, it must become a permanent, integral part of your piano playing.
Relaxation is energy conservation. There are at least 2 ways to conserve:

(1) don't use unnecessary muscles - especially the opposing muscles and

(2) turn off the working muscles as soon as their jobs are done.

Demonstrate these with the one-finger gravity drop.

(1) is the easiest; simply allow gravity to completely control the drop, while the entire body is resting comfortably on the bench. A tense person will contract both opposing muscles: those for raising and for lowering the hand.
For (2) you will need to learn a new habit if you don't already have it (few do, initially). That is the habit of relaxing all muscles as soon as you reach the bottom of the key drop.



Mars

No comments: