By Mickie Willis

I’ve been thinking about piano playing a lot these days, because I’ve been playing a lot — practicing that is, learning pieces, sight reading, playing for my own pleasure — and practicing without giving some analytical thought to the process, of how to most effectively achieve the goal, is time not maximized if not wasted or actually counterproductive. And since I’m not getting any younger I have to make the most of every minute of playing I can manage to squeeze into each day. I bring this up because I imagine most composers play piano or keyboard of some kind and many, like me, would like to be much better at it. Since I’m no longer a student, at least not formally studying at any institution, the only teachers I have are the ones I remember from past years. And I was fortunate to have had some exceptional ones: Castro Carazo, Milton Hallman, and Madeline Trible. They were and are exceptional musicians, pianists, and teachers, and they did their very best with me during the times I studied with them. But, regrettably, I was a poor piano student. And after completing the undergraduate degree, and piano was no longer a requirement of the curriculum, I first neglected, then finally abandoned playing the usual repertoire in favor of jazz improvisation. At least, I reasoned, I could make some money to help support myself and my family while financially struggling through graduate school, punctuated by many periods of various other kinds of employment, which also disrupted systematic practice.

[For those readers who may becoming bored with this personal indulgence and are wondering what the point of this article is, feel comfortable skipping to the "list" at the end of this article; consider this a preface that so often readers ignore, and proceed directly to the text. I’ve always felt that teaching that focuses on the professor is poor teaching; the focus should be on the subject matter. But to the extent that sharing personal experiences can illustrate — good and bad things — it can be useful. So bear with me a bit, maybe some of this will sound familiar and perhaps the things I’ve recently discovered and rediscovered can be, if not new, at least reaffirming.]

In my own defense, I began playing piano just before starting college, and being a beginning piano student at the start of one’s college career as a music student is a "hard row to hoe" and progress is typically slow. I’d been a trumpet player since the age of eleven and had played in high school band, rhythm & blues bands in nightclubs, but an injury at the age of eighteen made it impossible to continue to play any instrument with a mouthpiece. So piano it was. And since then it has been a struggle, a kind of love—hate relationship, a source of endless frustration. At first I hated the instrument and only wanted to gain some ability solely as a practical matter because it’s so useful for a composer. I found the inability to smoothly blend notes, subtly bend pitches, crescendo on sustained tones… all the mellifluous features of a wind instrument, serious weaknesses of the clunky mechanical beast of a piano. You couldn’t even HOLD the instrument but had to sit away from it and reach out to it! This awkwardness combined with the difficulty of reading so many notes and melodic lines at the same time, after having learned to read in an entirely linear way so much earlier in life, combined to make practice a dreaded thing. And the results showed it. I cringe to remember what my poor teachers must have thought. How difficult a way to earn a living it must have been for them to have to sit through my lessons. But not only did they sit through them, they worked and tried; encouraged and offered their best advice — and taught! This is what gifted, committed teachers do. But here’s the interesting thing, the real point of this embarrassing little tale. They did help — not so much then — but now! Now that I’ve been playing a lot, I remember what seems like every single thing each of them told me those many years ago and now apply it. I find that rather miraculous. And equally strangely, I really ENJOY practicing and playing now, and have discovered a few tips, tricks, approaches ­ whatever you’d like to call them ­ on my own. Now, doubtless most experienced pianists and teachers already know these and surely many more, I don’t profess to be any great piano pedagogue. But having been a beginning pianist as an adult may help one have somewhat greater understanding of certain difficulties and recognize what approaches are most effective in overcoming them. Most really accomplished pianists began their study as small children, and by the time they became self—aware and analytical enough to evaluate different approaches, so much of the heavy lifting of beginning study is behind them and beyond their recall. This is somewhat analogous to learning to speak a language ­ only much harder. Children are not in any way aware of how they came to learn their native tongues. All they can remember is having the basic ability. I suspect the same is true of many very accomplished pianists. Although they may see now, as teachers, what works and what doesn’t, some insights are best gained from the "inside—out," so to speak. For knowing something and accepting it are two different things. And it’s getting the student to accept and apply the principle that may be the toughest part of teaching.

Since I’m fond of concise lists (it seems we live in an age of lists, "talking points," executive summaries, etc.) I thought I’d delineate these observations in that fashion. But despite the compactness and usefulness of lists, they can seem a little cold and impersonal, which is why I prefaced the following items with perspective commentary.

Suggestions for Playing the Piano

(In no particular order of importance and with apologies to those for whom this is old news, but I expect even they will agree that many of these comments bear repeating, and may be especially meaningful coming from someone who had to learn and appreciate them the hard way.)

• When starting to play or practice, warm up. If warm-up is not possible, at least use the trick of soaking the hands and forearms in warm water for a while before playing. It’s not as good as a playing warm-up, but better than nothing. And start with a comparatively easy piece, or one that is the most secure. Don’t expect to be playing your best at first and be intimidated by a bad start. Just keep going. Stay calm and it will get better.

• If you get off to a bad start and it’s a practice session not a performance, and after ten or fifteen minutes things have not improved, stop, do something else, try to discover what the mental distraction is and remedy or at least confront it, then go back. Of course in a performance you don’t have this luxury, so discipline has to be developed to continue no matter what. But practice is precious and bad practice sessions are harmful.

• Don’t be afraid of wrong notes. Certainly strive for perfection, but don’t be thrown off and have the concentration and musical flow interrupted by them. And certainly don’t be so tense and anxious about not playing perfectly that you can’t relax.

• Expect that some practice sessions will be better than others, and, like wrong notes, don’t let bad playing of a piece be discouraging and negatively affect the entire time at the piano or, even worse, discourage you from practicing altogether.

• Don’t be discouraged if there is little or no evident improvement immediately after working through a difficult passage. This is somewhat like athletic activity or bodybuilding. Improvement often shows up the next time you work out. Although piano playing is as much (or more) mental as physical, a period of rest between hard work is still sometimes needed for the full benefit to show up.

• KNOW the music. Memorization is perhaps the best way, but even if not memorizing the piece, really know what every note, phrase, dynamic, tempo, articulation indication is. It’s surprising (and revealing) to test yourself by trying to recall, if not the actual notes, other elements of the composition. It’s amazing how often one can play through a piece many times, not having it really soak in what the actual notes — every one of them — are in a particular passage. And most mistakes are mistakes of the mind rather than of the hand: The finger didn’t hit the right note because the mind didn’t immediately KNOW the right note. In a paradoxical way, paying attention to all the other musical markings does not distract from recognizing the notes; it helps one to remember.

• Stay in contact with the instrument. This is hardest to do with the piano because it requires some lifting of the hands off the keys and because we’re not connected to it in the way the player is with most instruments. So it requires more overt attention to feeling the keys. It’s also indispensable since looking at the hands while reading can be deadly. Rely on the sense of touch. (In a personal aside, sometimes when I’m having problems concentrating and approaching the playing in a truly tactile way, if I rest the knee of my right leg firmly under the edge of the action base and feel the vibration of the strings, amazingly the playing improves. This is constricting to pedaling, so it’s not a good general position, but momentarily is has the effect — for me, anyway — of helping refocus on the physical connection with the instrument.)

• The same is true of contact with the keys: Play to the bottom of the key. Don’t hit the surface of the key hard from far above, relying on momentum to accelerate the key far enough to throw the hammer. Keep the fingers on or very close to the keys and press them all the way to the bottoms. There are obvious exceptions to this, some rapid staccato, for example. But to the extent that it can be done, the result will be improvement in tone, phrasing, and a greater feeling of connection with and control of the instrument.

• Listen, really listen, constantly — not just for right notes but to the kind of tone produced, the phrasing, balance between the hands, uniformity of volume between fingers, precision of attack on chords, and listen to the effect of the pedal (listening is the ONLY way to develop refined pedaling skill). Analyze the playing after finishing the piece to shape your work on it.

• If you have time to play but a piano isn’t handy, study the music. It will help when you do get to play. It is particularly important when sight-reading to go over the music first, noting any particular aspects that might catch one unprepared: clef changes, ottava passages, key or meter changes, hand crossings, etc., and try to realize the piece mentally before touching the keys. Noting unique patterns and relationships, such as melodic imitation, sequence, repeated chords or notes, stretches where the hand doesn’t have to shift position and so forth, will help guide one through the piece in a general way. Think of the process of sight reading as somewhat like driving: One doesn’t take off across town without knowing where they’re going, and not usually without a firm sense of the streets they’ll take, turns, stops to make and so forth. Sight-reading by starting to play the piece without having looked carefully through it is sight-reading the hardest possible way.

• When playing pieces for the first time as sight-reading, play the notes with whatever fingers work — and don’t stop. But if the piece is to be prepared for performance, carefully determine fingerings and stick to them (unless it becomes necessary to change; some fingerings that work fine at slow tempos won’t be best at the final tempo required, but try to pick ones that will serve at the ultimate tempo). In connection with fingerings, even if the first time through the intuitive fingerings work well and you decide to keep them, if they differ from the editorial suggestions — mark them in the score! You may play the piece many times with no trouble, then one day, perhaps after not having played it for a few days or more, suddenly notice the editorial fingerings and instantaneously forget which one you used, and wonder for a nanosecond (enough time to cause a mistake) whether that’s the one you used or not. In other words, if you’re going to use the printed music at all, be sure what’s on the page is the same as you’ve been practicing. No sense making things harder than they are already.

• Confront problems head-on; they will not go away or get better by themselves, and only become worse and more difficult to correct later. This is inescapable. There is absolutely no point in practicing a piece from beginning to end only to stumble through a difficult spot, hoping that in time, somehow, magically it will get better. It’s possible to do that forever and never have the problem corrected.

• Of course take difficult passages out, isolate them, and apply whatever degree of attention is required to get them on par with the rest of the piece, but get in and out of the passage at different points occasionally. If the same starting and stopping points are used each time, psychological boundaries may develop causing those "seams" to become unsure. Further, it’s good music reading practice to start in mid-phrase, on weak beats, or other seemingly illogical places to begin.

• Slow, sure practice is essential. Without accuracy, the music is lost. At some point, however, pieces do have to get up to the desired tempos, so this will necessitate pushing the limit occasionally, even at the cost of sacrificing some small degree of precision. How much of this can be done without losing ground in accuracy varies with individuals; some people can make progress, it seems, with less slow deliberate practice than others. This has to be a judgement call based on personal experience and the wisdom of the teacher.

• Always stay connected to the MUSIC. Don’t let the piece become just a matter of playing pitches. I find whenever I’m having trouble with the notes, it usually seems to be at times when I’m feeling the music the least. Even when practicing at a tempo very much slower than indicated, it is still possible — essential — to play musically. If you can’t maintain the musicality, phrasing, dynamics, articulation, slowly, then you can’t do it at the faster tempos either. If one really has control of a piece, it can be played musically at a variety of tempos (perhaps not as effectively, but in terms of control and maintaining of the musical fabric).

Of course many readers will know of items I’ve left out; good ideas on better playing and practice are far more numerous than these, and many may disagree with some of those I’ve listed. But they have helped me. At this point I’m no longer sure which of them I’ve discovered independently and which were taught, forgotten, then rediscovered, but I suppose it doesn’t matter. The main thing is that one benefit from them. I wish it hadn’t me taken so long to recognize their value and apply them.

Mickie Willis, composer and jazz pianist, received his D.M.A. in Music Composition from Louisiana State University, studying with Kenneth Klaus, James Drew, Don Freund, and Dinos Constantinides. He composes for live concert performance and has created music for films and videos using MIDI instruments. His concert works include an oratorio, three symphonies, five works for chamber orchestra, four string quartets, two sets of piano variations, one oboe sonata, compositions for various other chamber ensembles, songs, and jazz compositions. His commercial works include a one-hour suite for synthesizer, music for ten films and videos, and television commercials. His recordings include a commercial compact disc and two cassette tape releases. He has completed four commissioned works for the Louisiana Sinfonietta, and was the 1999 Louisiana recipient of the MTNA commission for composition. He is also a writer with many published articles on music and other subjects, and one book in print. He is the Director of Music and Education Programs for the Louisiana Division of the Arts.

For more information and to hear samples of his music, visit the website: http://www.e-universe.com/lmfhome/mwillis.htm

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