4 Step by Step A guide to) Healthy practicing

Good practicing, of any musical instrument or genre, is a creative process. It needn’t be predictable, repetitious, or tedious. Practicing takes us on the sort of lifelong odyssey that rewards each discovery with a new set of intriguing questions. The longer we experience this odyssey, the more open to new understandings we become, and there’s always something new to discover.

While the principles of healthy practicing are simple, there is real intensity too—the intensity of sustained focus. One decision after another has to be made: what to do next, in what way, and with what specific intentions. When we make decisions astutely, the payoff is solid and satisfying, the result feels right, and practicing becomes its own sweet reward, not dependent on anyone else’s approval. And when breakthroughs happen, they can be surprising and exciting.

There are no universal recipes to follow, because only in each moment does a good pathway emerge, based on immediate perceptions. You try something and get a specific result, and only then do you know what to do next—go back and repeat, go forward, focus on a smaller or larger segment, or try a new strategy altogether. This flowing, nonjudgmental openness to events, this acceptance of how things really are (regardless of prior intentions), is called by Gestalt psychologists the “continuum of awareness.” It’s quite a refreshing and peaceful state for humans to be in, and it leads to maximum productivity as well. Finding that observant state on a daily basis may not always be easy, but it’s certainly worth the effort.

My dog, for example, is supremely in touch with the moment, effortlessly living just such a continuum. Frederick Perls would say she thus demonstrates the “healthy Gestalt principle” in which “the most important unfinished situation will always emerge and can be dealt with.”1 She might be focused on eating her supper right now and on scaring off the mailman five minutes from now; in any event her momentary priorities are compellingly clear and she acts on them without hesitation. We complicated humans, however, aren’t always fully awake to the moment we’re in, and our focus is easily distracted and muddled. When that happens, according to Perls, “We function badly and we carry hundreds and thousands of unfinished situations with us, that always demand completion.” The implication for music practice is obvious: even when the most pressing issue emerges, we may simply not be paying attention to it.

Much of the time we go along just fine, though, with good attention—until a particular event jostles us out of the continuum of awareness. This is usually something unpleasant, in most cases a mistake. Then our overactive brains start thinking, interpreting, rationalizing, avoiding, despairing, anything but holding on to our simple awareness of the here-and-now, just as it is. We take events too personally and are too anxious to justify ourselves. We go off on a tangent, thinking, “What’s wrong with me? I know that note! It’s easy! It wasn’t a problem yesterday. I need to pay better attention.” Such thoughts are a waste of time and mental energy. While we are chattering away internally, we are ignoring all the helpful, objective evidence. In Perls’s apt description, “We flee into the past, expectations, good intentions, or free associations—jumping like a grasshopper from experience to experience, and none of these experiences are ever experienced, but just a kind of flash, which leaves all the available material unassimilated and unused.” By charting our own practicing course every day, we keep a healthy focus on reality.

Practicing also cannot have an all-purpose recipe because each musical piece is unique and presents unique performing challenges. People are also unique in their personalities and learning strategies or preferences; some love methodical routines, some thrive on novelty and intuition, and some want rational explanations for everything. What works wonderfully for one may not be so good for another; thus there are countless effective “right” ways to practice anything, and it’s not very helpful to offer doctrinaire advice.

Finally, many concepts about playing music can only be communicated physically, by demonstrating, experimenting, mimicking, feeling for signs of tension, assessing how things look. Sentences in a book can only go so far in conveying such concepts, since their essence lies in the realm of bodily experience.

Still the question arises: is it possible to produce a helpful step-by-step guide to practicing? I hope so, because I’ve heard many requests for an outline of what to do, a practical and detailed sequence to follow. This chapter is as close to a step-by-step guide as I can imagine.

Fundamentally, though, I offer these steps in the spirit of suggestions, open to infinite variation and adaptation. Perhaps the sequence I describe will be most useful not as a recipe but as an example of what one might do when practicing with freedom, honesty and focus.

Specific musical examples will be found in chapter 5. Although some descriptions refer to specific types of instruments such as strings or the piano, the principles apply equally well to any instrument—including the voice—with little need for translation.

What is healthy practicing?

Let’s define it as simply as possible. Practicing is healthy when it’s:

FREE OF STRAIN, physical discomfort, tension, or fatigue
FREE OF CONFLICTS between body and mind
PRODUCTIVE—getting good results in a short time
FUN mentally and physically.

These four characteristics are crucial, since they make each moment more pleasurable and contribute to long-term achievement and satisfaction.

The approach presented here is not exotic in any way. It is not a complex system of specific new steps that need to be memorized. Rather, healthy practicing is a natural, straightforward process based on logic and simple common sense.

The components of the process are outlined in the facing table, with explanations on subsequent pages. When implementing steps that proceed in a sequence, never go through them hastily or mechanically; always wait for a sense of satisfaction with one before proceeding to the next. The time spent on each step will vary from day to day according to how you feel.

Bring the mind-body system to a practice-ready state

Don’t skip this part. It’s impossible to overstate the importance of this transition—the transition from our hectic round of daily activities to the calm, responsive mindfulness of practice-readiness. What we seek is an agreeable state of being that blends alertness with serenity.

Most of us find ourselves dashing around much of the time, coping with countless immediate situations, planning ahead, multitasking, never wasting a minute. But if, for example, you had made plans to meditate for half an hour during the day, you would certainly make sure to schedule several extra minutes to relax, clear your mind, and invite a special receptive mental state to take over before starting your meditation. Otherwise there would be no point in trying to meditate at all. Practicing is much the same: it could easily be thought of as a form of working meditation.

Therefore, devote five minutes or so to making a mental transition. Do this even if you’re pressed for time; the first five minutes are the most important of all. Invite your mind to become calmer, less scattered, more ready to focus. The best way I know to do this is to breathe deeply and become absorbed in the sensations of a simple physical warm-up, such as the routine I will describe later in this section. It doesn’t really matter what the warm-up is, as long as it’s extremely basic and is done in an engrossed, unhurried way.

Healthy Practicing: The Process
Bring the mind-body system to a practice- ready state.	1. WARM UP in a leisurely way; awaken to your body.
	2. REMIND YOURSELF what the instrument feels like.
	3. REMIND YOURSELF of your general intentions for practicing.
Address the music at hand.	4. CHOOSE a section to focus on—decide exactly where you will begin and end.
	5. IMAGINE in energetic detail how you want the specific passage to feel.
	6. PLUNGE IN with gusto—no caution!
	7. OBSERVE results closely.
	8. RELAX and take a moment to digest.
	9. DECIDE, on the basis of the evidence, whether to repeat the same steps, consolidate your gains, or move on to another focus.
Take a break.	10. CLEAR YOUR HEAD every twenty minutes or so by getting up and walking around for a couple of minutes. This is a highly concentrated activity, and breaks keep you refreshed in body and mind.

To practice well, we must—somehow—ease the grip of our take-charge egos. This means relinquishing control (or more accurately the illusion of control) because that’s the only way to get at the truth of how things really are. Otherwise our perceptions are tainted with self-deception and we can never tell whether we actually know something or only half-know it; we can’t tell what unfinished business needs our attention. And if we don’t find out the truth in practice, when will we? There’s only one answer: during a performance.

If we don’t find out
the truth in practice,
when will we?

Luckily, the practice room is a workshop, not a concert hall. We’re not there to make a good impression (on whom?), but to learn the piece at hand so thoroughly that it becomes genuinely secure and comfortable. In fact, there are times when good basic practicing doesn’t resemble performing at all. It’s an exploratory process which is frequently rambunctious, inaccurate, fragmentary, and far from pretty. Thus it’s especially important to have a place to work where you can shut the door and be alone—the same way a carpenter needs a separate workshop. Practicing may be fun for us, but it’s not intended to be fun for listeners.

1. WARM UP in a leisurely way; awaken to your body.

To make good music, vocally or instrumentally involves the whole body. Limber up for a few minutes and get your blood circulating—stretch vigorously, do large arm circles, shake out your hands and arms, run in place a bit, flex your spine, and let your head dangle in different directions to loosen up the all-important neck, jaw, and shoulder regions. You want to end up feeling like an alert, energized rag-doll. As you do the physical warm-up, don’t just go through your routine mechanically while thinking of other things; notice fully how every part feels to you; think in terms of questions (Do I need to loosen up my neck a bit more?). Don’t forget that you are also warming up your mind by helping it become a detached, focused observer of precise bodily sensations.

2. REMIND YOURSELF what the instrument feels like.

The first notes I play every day are simple, abstract, improvised warm-ups, not industrious routines full of structure and repetition. What’s important is how things feel, not whether I dutifully slog through my daily dozen. Scales and arpeggios, played at a good clip, are not warm-ups at all, but feel much more like preliminary performances. Just as athletes warm up their bodies before an event, musicians need a good leisurely getting-reacquainted-with-the-instrument warm-up before attempting any sort of measurable result, such as a scale, arpeggio, or specific exercise.

For example, with a string instrument, play some extremely long, firm tones in random patterns, savoring in a leisurely way the strength of each finger in turn on the fingerboard, the resistance of each string, the flow of the bow arm, the integration of breathing into the act of playing. Wind players can similarly use improvisatory long tones to warm up the embouchure slowly and rediscover satisfying sensations of inhaling, exhaling, and sustaining notes throughout the range. Singers can isolate different components of their singing—good posture, basic breathing, chest and head registers, various vowel formations, as well as nonmusical vocal gymnastics like growls or sighs or whistle-tones—all with a sense of curiosity and discovery, and relishing every sensation.

What we’re doing is establishing something helpful: a physical point of reference. We’re defining concretely how we want everything to feel (vividly comfortable), and this will inspire the rest of our practicing because it will give us something abundantly healthy and specific to aim for in every situation. The idea is to connect this luxuriant physical freedom with the exacting details of performance.

For pianists, who as a rule may be less likely than other musicians to indulge in relaxed, abstract warm-ups, here are some more detailed suggestions. Hold one arm about a foot above the keyboard, select one finger to land on, and drop the full weight of your arm on any white key at random. Allow yourself to miss! It doesn’t matter if you do. As you hold whichever note(s) you landed on, keep the finger strong; don’t let the joints cave in as the arm-weight follows through. Enjoy that firm, thorough contact with the key-bed and the big resonant tone your arm has produced. Think of wallowing in the note as you hold it down—releasing wrist and elbow and letting them wiggle around rag-doll style to fully establish their looseness. While you’re at it, roll your head around slowly too and limber up your shoulders and spine.

When you’re satisfied with that, do the same with other fingers. Then the other arm. Then mix, alternate, whatever. Try it on black keys. Take your time—be deliberately lazy about it. Keep going until you feel completely warmed up, no matter how long it takes. In fact, though, five minutes of this will probably be more than enough; relaxing and focusing make each moment amazingly productive.

For pianists, black keys are an adventure; they keep us humble on a daily basis. (Oddly, the advice books on piano technique rarely mention this basic truth). Black keys are in fact a narrow landing strip (if we dare to land on them courageously), with sloping sides that are easy to slip off of. They are, quite simply, easy to miss. Good! That’s just the sort of naked truth we’re interested in. When you miss one, do so with gusto, and laugh. You’ll find the key sooner or later! Probably sooner, if your ego doesn’t interfere. The warm-up is our opportunity to reestablish a solid physical feel for the black keys, every day.

The great cellist Pablo Casals used to say, even when he was well into his eighties, that he needed to “find” the note E-natural every morning, and then he would feel more connected to the cello and ready to play. This wonderful example of humility, self-honesty, and focus exemplifies the basic mind-set of productive practicing: assume you know nothing, and let the body be your constant source of information.

3. REMIND YOURSELF of your general intentions for practicing.

Here are some thoughts to get your mind ready for work. Be sure to maintain a cheerful curiosity toward the whole experiment.

I’m a detective: what new evidence will there be today?
All bets are off!
I assume I know nothing and have retained nothing from yesterday.
I’m not going to be clever in a superficial way; I’ve done that before and I know it usually backfires.
I gladly relinquish control, and the practice room gives me a golden opportunity to do so.
I willingly give up the tension of manipulating or supervising everything I do.
Accuracy, control, refinement: these will be the destination, not the starting place of my practicing.
I know that unexpected events—like mistakes—are full of priceless information that I can’t get any other way. So I hope to flush out some juicy, honest mistakes.
When I overdo things and take chances, I learn faster.
By the time I leave this instrument (even if it’s only ten minutes from now), I’ll know that I did some honest work and made a tangible improvement in at least one identified challenge. And that will be a satisfying feeling that no one can take away from me.

Address the music at hand

This section offers a way to penetrate the surface of a piece, get right to the bone, to the unadorned truth of what needs to be learned and improved that day. Having warmed up into a limber and energized state of mind and body, we’re ready now to roll up our sleeves and dissect things uncompromisingly, just like mechanics dismantling a machine in order to help it run more smoothly when it’s put back together. This daily technical taking-apart serves two essential functions: background practice, a way of learning the music well in the first place, and then maintenance practice, a way of keeping it in robust shape as long as it’s in our active repertoire.

Of course, we’re not forgetting the ultimate purpose of it all: the beauty of musical expression. Now and then, maybe every fourth day or so, put the “machine” back together for a brief test-run. Relax and make music from the heart. If you’re not ready to perform the whole piece, do a section or two. Trust the work you’ve done, and you will be pleasantly surprised at how effortless and responsive your technique is. And because the mechanics have become easy and “part of you,” you’ll find it natural to express the music in fresh, spontaneous ways. After this pleasant checking-in with the music, go right back to the constructive work of dismantling and focusing on specifics.

4. CHOOSE a section to focus on—decide exactly where you will begin and end.

Divide and Conquer is a general strategy that always works. No subsection of a piece is too humble to merit our curiosity and serious attention. It may be literally one note (Did I feel relaxed and confident landing on it?) or two notes (Have I truly experienced the space between them?). We build mastery by integrating all these small units.

If you’re not sure where to start, select one phrase. If you’re at the piano, you might start with only one hand—always a productive way to dissect the music even if you don’t think you really need to.

Once you’ve decided you’ll start here and stop here, stick to your plan, whether or not it goes well. With this clear focus and physical commitment, you will fortify your mastery if things go well and expose honest mistakes if they don’t, so you win either way.

How long a passage should you choose? It’s difficult to prescribe this, but if you have taken on too much, you’ll know right away because the detailed physical questions won’t be clearly defined and several repetitions won’t yield any new understandings. When in doubt, work small—in short units. If those begin to feel too easy, you’ll know right away that it’s time to take on more. (But always remember to come back and work small now and then, for the purpose of maintenance.)

Another way to go about it is to start from the beginning—boldly and freely—ready to stop and work things out whenever you fumble. Let’s say you miss a note in the fourth measure. Fine. That note now becomes the last note of a practice segment. Go back a few notes, enough to create some context, and repeat enough times for your hand to teach itself the distances involved. Let your body figure it out in its own way, and that may take several repetitions to happen. Even if you get it right the first time, stick to the plan to repeat the segment . The mistake you made was honest, and the correction may need a bit of time to sink in. There’s always that temptation to fix things on the first try, using a little extra willpower to do so; have the wisdom to resist!

The idea is
to let it happen,
not make it happen.

The idea is to let it happen, not make it happen. This distinction is crucial, but it may be elusive at first. We are more accustomed to supervising the outcome, measure by measure, just as we’ve often been told to do. Learning to trust oneself is a fascinating challenge in any field of endeavor. The amazing ease one can find is a central point in Denise McCluggage’s The Centered Skier:

That’s one thing wrong with letting it happen—it is ease-y, effortless, and we do not trust the effortless way. We seem to have absorbed through our very pores the notion that there is some unnamed merit in the hard way. We credit as “real” only that which we do on purpose, that which takes teeth-gritting effort. We belittle or ignore that which we do without deliberate intention, that which seems to happen. If we cannot take credit for the doing, we discredit it.2

5. IMAGINE in energetic detail how you want the specific passage to feel.

Imagining an action in detail is practically the same neurological experience as performing the action, according to research in the field. If you sit still and think intently about kicking a ball, specific nerves and muscles in the leg will energize even though the leg does not move. Somewhere I came across an interesting term for such imagining: feelmage. Not an image of how an action will look, but a feelmage of what the body’s neuromuscular experience will be.

Giving positive imagined shape to our actions before we try them out is a more powerful tool than vaguely thinking, Let’s just start in and see what happens. Such pre-imagining is a wonderful habit to get into, as it focuses the body and mind, dramatically affecting the quality of the phrases we actually play. It also reinforces the main focus of healthy practicing: We no longer ask only, “Was that result correct?” but far more importantly, “Did that feel really good?” These are not the same questions at all, and there can be quite a gap between the two answers we receive. Closing that gap is the goal.

For now, let your feelmage (of staccatos, jumps, articulations, legato melodies) be large, generous, emphatic—regardless of dynamics or other subtleties in the score. Enlarging every gesture helps your physical self to understand more quickly how everything fits together. The subtleties can easily be dealt with later; refining our actions is never a problem, once they make sense to the body. A good strategy for pianists is to close the lid over the keyboard and pantomime a passage exuberantly on the flat wooden surface of the lid. Focus on the kinetic aspect of the music—a lively rhythmic choreography for your hands and arms.

Refining our actions is never
a problem, once they make sense
to the body.

Every piece of music—even the most gentle or slow one—is technical in some way. Every sequence of notes needs to become palpable under our fingers or in our voices, because only when we’ve attained technical assurance can we even attempt subtle effects like “extremely even” or pianissimo. Did you ever notice that inexperienced performers falter most often in the “easy” parts, not in the “hard” parts they’ve practiced so thoroughly? Most likely those easy parts were never totally learned, in a physical sense; that important step was never completed. Thus it’s always good to know, “What’s technical about this section?” so that we’ll know how to practice each part more pragmatically.

Practicing “easy parts” works best when we put ourselves under a bit of pressure—deliberately—in order to bring the physical technique to the forefront. If you have a series of slow, quiet chords, speed them up and play them loudly with an almost reckless sort of freedom, and then you’ll instantly know exactly where the potential weaknesses are. (And what you discover will be valid.) Practice most things ad lib, out of tempo; this also helps you focus purely on the physical, as it allows you to speed up or slow down for the sole purpose of technical self-assessment.

Thus, when you imagine the musical segment you’re about to practice, you needn’t picture all the aesthetic refinement of a finished performance—yet. Your image (or feelmage) at this point should be big, exaggerated, free.

6. PLUNGE IN with gusto—no caution!

If there is a centerpiece to my practice philosophy, it is this point. Many music students approach the music they are learning with too much deference—caution and physical timidity—as if they were afraid to mess it up, or as if they somehow felt a bit guilty in advance. They don’t dare bring any real energy to it until they know better how to control and refine everything. Sadly, this attitude guarantees that they will fall short of their dreams of confident mastery.

Here again, think of tennis or basketball; we could never master those skills if we approached practice sessions in an apologetic, under-energized way. Why should music be any different?

Professional musicians infuse everything they do with a whole-body commitment of energy. Picture Ella Fitzgerald, Yo-Yo Ma, Artur Rubinstein, Bobby McFerrin, or any great performer you admire. Amateurs and students can have energy like theirs too, once they focus their intentions. Anyone can resolve to bring full energy to a piece on the very first day of practicing it, and the results will inevitably reward that courage.

Practicing should take on an athletic sort of rhythm:

Relax—Imagine—Go for it—Assess the result;
Relax—Imagine—Go for it—Assess the result.

Relaxing fully after each practice phrase gives us the chance to gather ourselves and integrate vital energy into the next phrase. And when music is played with vital energy, everything registers: our bodies understand and remember what is learned. Nothing feels vague. If the passage involves an obvious risk—like a big jump at the piano or a quick shift on a string instrument—land as proudly and firmly on the wrong note as you would on the right note. Never recoil from a mistake. (But do notice each one and make sure to process it patiently.)

Right or wrong, the results will be clear, and when the passage does begin to go consistently well, we will have earned our success honestly and the learning will stick. By contrast, to practice with low energy is to stay forever in a misty twilight of sort-of knowing the piece, an inconsistent, frustrating state familiar to many a music student.

7. OBSERVE results closely.

Be detached—in the best sense. Avoid the ego-driven emotional roller-coaster of “Yippee—I was great!” alternating with “Aarrggh—I messed up!” Don’t take the outcomes personally. This isn’t about our egos, it’s about gathering objective evidence.

Observe in detail, not in general terms. There’s no useful information in announcing to yourself, “I messed up that time.” But there is solid information in a more specific observation: “I undershot that leap to the B-flat.”

Never attribute mishaps to a lapse in concentration. That’s the ego again, fantasizing that it’s always in control. If you missed the note, you don’t know it. On some level. Period! That you played it perfectly yesterday is irrelevant. Find out what the mistake is telling you today, and let every mistake be a juicy, revealing one.

8. RELAX and take a moment to digest.

Relax means let go completely. Let every part you’ve activated go back to neutral. If you’re holding an instrument, put it down. At the piano, drop your hands to your lap for a moment (at least five seconds). Breathe and release. Let there be some silence and repose in your practicing.

Two important things are thus given a chance to happen:

The playing mechanism—muscles and nerves throughout the body—releases any slight tension or fatigue that may have set in. It then organizes itself for the next action, rather like the reset function does on a computer.
The physical self automatically imagines replaying the action just performed. Like a sophisticated computer, the unconscious mind sifts through the replay for information about what to do the same or differently next time. It has the marvelous innate ability to digest and process events in order to learn. Your conscious mind can’t do this and isn’t needed anyway.

If you allow a bit of time for this invisible process to complete itself, your next attempt is likely to be dramatically more successful. Try it and see.

9. DECIDE. on the basis of the evidence, whether to repeat the same steps, consolidate your gains, or move on to another focus.

Ask yourself, “Did that feel automatic, solid, and comfortable?” If the answer is yes, repeat the passage a couple more times so your body can “groove” the right action—and as you do so, continue to permit honest mistakes. Don’t forget: if your body has experienced playing a passage six times wrong and once right, the problem is probably not quite corrected yet (even though you might like to think it is). The right way needs to become your dominant physical habit, which is why we need a few reinforcing repetitions.

But there’s no need to overdo the repetitions. When a passage becomes a “part of you,” you’ll sense this and know that it’s time to move on to a new learning horizon. Try a longer passage, or put two or three units together, or combine the two hands, or try a section with full musicality to see if you can trust the technique you’ve developed. Thanks to the thoroughness of your work to this point. you may be far more ready for a leap forward than you would have suspected.

The learning horizon is what some might call the teachable moment. In terms of risk, it means treating a given passage not too conservatively and not too wildly, but just at the edge of control (or perhaps a bit past the edge). If you have tamed that risk after a few minutes’ work, you’ve gauged the horizon well. You might even wonder fleetingly, Why did I ever think that passage was difficult? That is a sign of excellent progress and excellent self-management.

Take a break

10. CLEAR YOUR HEAD every twenty minutes or so by getting up and walking around for a couple of minutes. This is a highly concentrated activity, and breaks keep you refreshed in body and mind.

Following all the steps outlined here would make it virtually impossible to develop symptoms of tension or a playing-related injury. Returning to “neutral” after each phrase, with full relaxation, means returning to a condition of zero tension. Simple mathematics dictates that adding zero to zero over and over will still result in a total of zero. In case any slight strain has accumulated for whatever reason, however, a general break every twenty minutes will allow it to dissipate. Most of us aren’t used to focusing as intently, and making as many decisions one after the other, as we do when practicing well. So our minds also need—and enjoy—a total break.

To sum up

In the world of practicing, every choice we make has some effect. If we play through a piece rather idly, with nothing particular in mind, the effect is not neutral. In fact, practicing in this way can be detrimental: we lose a bit of technical security when we play things through too frequently, although this may not be obvious at the time.

In other words, if we’re not actively making things better, chances are we’re making them worse. Athletic coaches often tell their teams the very same thing. There’s no neutral ground. That may seem harsh, but it’s accurate. This explains why people so often seem to “peak” right after they’ve been working hard at technical mastery of a piece. As they complacently play through what they now assume they know, technical components start to deteriorate little by little from lack of the sort of maintenance we have been describing.

There’s no
neutral ground.

Think of technical achievement as a sort of bank account. Each performance spends some money out of the account, and constructive maintenance work puts deposits back in. The steps outlined in this chapter are not preliminary; they shouldn’t be jettisoned, like the booster stage of a rocket ship, once their job is done. They comprise ongoing maintenance practice, which does a beautiful job of keeping us honest and in touch with reality on a daily basis.

Keep taking the piece apart in the humble, inquisitive spirit I’ve described, as long as it’s in your active repertoire. It will simply get better and better, in many ways. For example, tone quality—on any instrument—will naturally blossom, simply as a by-product of mind-body comfort, removal of conflict, and the unimpeded flow of energy. This is of great importance too; producing a relaxed, full, and human tone quality opens vistas of richer musical meaning for both performer and listener.

Perhaps the best reward is the most practical: much less practice time is needed. Honest work that penetrates directly to the issue at hand, while preserving physical enjoyment, is amazingly effective. The process I’ve described may seem long and painstaking, but that’s only because explaining it takes a long time! Once a person is used to a detached mind-set, the approach proves to be fast and streamlined because it wastes no time. Just as in any field of learning, whenever we manage to frame the right question—clearly and honestly—we leap ahead in learning. That’s when it takes five minutes to grasp what might have eluded us for five months.

This speediness is a wonderful boon to the practicer. An irony of more timid, humdrum practicing is that by the time students finally feel some mastery of the material, they’ve spent so many unnecessary weeks with the piece that they’ve begun to lose interest in it. In many cases they’ve also gotten bored with striving daily for a particular interpretation dictated by a teacher; any interpretation can be become stale when it is overrehearsed. But by mastering the mechanics quicker, by developing a solid basic technique that can be put to flexible use, and by keeping interpretive questions open longer, students get to spread their wings as individual, creative, spontaneous musicians. And that was the whole point of background practice in the first place.

FAQ: frequently asked questions about practicing

Are you saying that slow, careful practice is useless?
Not at all. It’s helpful up to a point, but usually it’s not adventurous or focused enough to be strongly effective.
The so-called traditional approach has worked fine for me. Comments?
1. Great! Don’t change a thing.
2. But were you really challenged by the material?
My teacher plays virtuosic music with ease and assurance, and believes in a perfectionistic sort of practicing. How can this be?
Certain people are innately attuned to their bodies, and always permit their bodies to learn and problem-solve, in their own way. They may not be totally conscious of this gift because the process is so natural to them. But sometimes these same people, when in the teacher role, will still recite the conventional philosophy, which denies that same bodily wisdom. It’s possible to do one thing and preach another, for any number of reasons.
Is it a good idea to use a metronome?
Only for short periods, as a check of tempo consistency. If we use it too much we become passive slaves to it, and our inner rhythm stays dormant.
If I practice a lot out of tempo, won’t that encourage rhythmic inaccuracies?
Not if you understand the correct rhythm fundamentally, in your body.
If I stop to thoroughly “process” each mistake or weakness, won’t it take an incredibly long time to learn a piece?
No, because you’re getting right to the heart of the matter and you won’t have to repeat the procedure over and over.
How can I become more aware of how my playing actually “feels”? Sometimes it seems awfully nebulous when a teacher asks me, “How did that feel?”
Warm up more thoroughly, so you have a good sense of how you want your body to feel during playing. To focus more on the physical, take away the distraction of actual notes and sounds. Try pantomime. Close the piano lid and play on that.
Is it worthwhile to isolate the fingers sometimes, and just work on good old-fashioned finger-independence and strength?
Absolutely.
What’s wrong with reaching a point where you say, “Good—now I have the notes down”? Isn’t that a nice positive reinforcement?
It’s too categorical. It denies the changeability of life. It means that if you mess something up after you’ve declared the notes “down,” you will feel more guilt than before. Keep things open and honest. Pieces do reach a point where their accuracy has become naturally consistent; the margin of error becomes so small that it’s hardly noticeable.
Can your approach be simply stated as, “Just don’t fret about wrong notes; after all nobody’s perfect”?
No. This isn’t a feel-good philosophy; it’s a pragmatic problem-solving plan along the road to artistry. Control, accuracy, and refinement are still the goals.