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This episode is brought to you by the New York Piano Group,

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whose support helps make this show possible.

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The other thing I didn't talk about that is important

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is the control of the sound on the repeated chords.

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["Piano Tune"]

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To get that sound working, you need to stay inside your key.

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You need to actually be at the bottom of the key.

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Don't release the keys all the way up to the top.

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["Piano Tune"]

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If these are too noisy,

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["Piano Tune"]

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that's gonna drown out your top.

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So the objective there would be to keep these

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actually quite light.

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["Piano Tune"]

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So in terms of tonal hierarchy,

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we've got the melody line,

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which has the lion's share of the sound.

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The next level would be the bass note.

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["Bass Tune"]

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Substantial, not loud, but firm.

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Firm enough to support the sound above.

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And then finally, these chords.

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["Chord Tune"]

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As light as you can get them.

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So I think those ingredients will help you

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to get that line singing

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above the quite substantial background.

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Welcome back to another episode of The Pianopod, everyone.

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Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Graham Fitch,

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a pianist, educator, writer,

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and one of the most influential voices

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in piano pedagogy today.

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His work has transformed how pianists approach practice,

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technique, and musical expression,

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offering a structured yet flexible method

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that empowers musicians to play

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with both technical ease and artistic depth.

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As someone who has dedicated decades to teaching piano,

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I know firsthand the challenges

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and rewards of mentoring students.

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My journey as a pianist and educator began over 20 years ago,

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working with students of all levels,

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from young beginners to pre-conservatory prodigies

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and lifelong enthusiasts.

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I've had a privilege of guiding students

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from all walks of life,

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from those who have gone on to win competitions

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and pursue professional careers,

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to those who simply find joy and fulfillment

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in playing for their own enrichment.

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Whether teaching in higher education or running

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a thriving piano studio in the heart of New York City,

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I've constantly sought to refine my approach,

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balancing technical rigor with musical expression,

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structure with creativity.

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During this journey, I discovered Graham's videos on YouTube

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created in collaboration with Pianist Magazine.

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His instructions were a game changer in my teaching,

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especially as I began working with more gifted students

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who required a higher level of technical

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and artistic refinement.

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His approach to practice is revolutionary,

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not because it introduces an entirely new method,

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but because it refines and clarifies the principles

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that truly make a difference.

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Graham understands that effective practice

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is about more than just repetition.

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It's about precision, problem solving,

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and mindful exploration.

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His guidance reinforced my belief

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that practice should be an active, thoughtful process

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rather than a mindless routine.

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What makes his work truly groundbreaking

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is his ability to blend historic piano pedagogy

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with cutting edge research in neuroscience,

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offering pianists practical and innovative tools

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for learning and improvement.

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His teachings don't just make students play better,

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they transform the way they think about music,

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technique, and interpretation.

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Graham has built an international reputation

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through his highly regarded master classes,

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his contributions to Pianist Magazine,

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and groundbreaking educational platform,

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the Practicing the Piano Online Academy.

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Based in Southwest London,

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he works with professional musicians, educators,

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and dedicated pianists worldwide,

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helping them unlock their full potential

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through structured yet adaptable teaching.

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His approach integrates principles of psychology,

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biomechanics, and injury prevention,

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making his insights essential for anyone looking

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to improve their playing while maintaining long-term physical

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and mental wellbeing.

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In today's conversation,

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we will explore the art of effective practice,

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holistic piano technique, the role of mental practice,

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fostering creativity and individuality in teaching,

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and his pioneering work in online education.

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This episode is packed with practical strategies,

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thought-provoking insights, and inspiring ideas

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that will benefit pianists, educators,

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and music lovers alike.

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Whether you are a performer striving

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for deeper artistic expression,

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a teacher looking for new ways to inspire students,

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or someone passionate about the piano,

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Graham's perspective will give you a fresh

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and effective approach to practicing and performing.

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Before we begin, I have some exciting news.

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The Pianopod is now on Substack.

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This platform allows us to share exclusive content,

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behind-the-scenes stories, and early access to episodes.

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Your support on Substack helps us continue bringing

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meaningful conversations with guests like Graham Fitch,

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exploring the many dimensions of piano playing and pedagogy.

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So please join us, our growing community,

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at the pianopod.substack.com.

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Now, without further ado,

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let's welcome Graham Fitch to the Pianopod.

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Please enjoy the show.

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["Pianopod"]

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You are listening to the Pianopod,

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where we talk to the brightest minds in the industry

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about how they are bringing the piano into the future

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and thriving in a complex, ever-evolving world.

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Welcome to the Pianopod, Graham.

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Thank you, David.

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Thank you.

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It's such a pleasure and honor to have you on the show.

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So where are you joining us from today?

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I'm coming to you from London,

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from Wimbledon in southwest London.

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Rather rainy day today, but I'm sitting in the warm here

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and enjoying our chat.

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Great, and I like your background.

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There are so many music scores.

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Yes, this is just one room, one wall.

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Upstairs, I've got things like chamber music,

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and then in the other room, I've got textbooks,

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but this is like day-to-day scores that I need

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for my piano teaching, my own playing and practice.

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Piano's over there, out of sight, but not out of mind.

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Okay, looks beautiful.

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So I am genuinely so excited to speak with you today.

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Over the years, I've watched countless video clips

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you've created in collaboration with Pianist Magazine,

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and your videos are widely celebrated

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for their clarity, depth, and practical application,

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and I completely agree with the praise.

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Combining these three elements into one video is not easy,

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but what truly stands out is your ability

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to demystify complex, not just techniques,

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but also techniques combined with interpretations.

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That's really, yeah, breaking them down in a way

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that's accessible for pianists of all levels.

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That's quite impressive.

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Thank you very much.

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I'm not aware that I'm doing that.

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I just do my thing, you know,

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and hope that people get something from the videos,

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and yeah, thank you for that.

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Yeah, and then so for instance, for example,

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your masterclass on organizing practice time

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is full of practical advice

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that's both insightful and actionable.

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So typically there are countless videos

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focusing on techniques and how to play,

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so mind you, I said play, not practice.

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So those type of videos are out there,

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but a video dedicated to the how of practicing

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felt truly groundbreaking to me.

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And of course, your insightful lessons on piano techniques

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are equally remarkable,

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and your approach to scales and arpeggios

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transforms what can often feel like routine drills

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into imaginative and engaging sessions.

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So it's clear that your work

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not only fosters technical mastery,

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but also nurtures a deeper understanding

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and appreciation of the art of piano practice.

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So before we dive into the main conversation,

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I'd love to get your thoughts on this, Graham.

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As one of the most respected and sought after figures

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in piano pedagogy and piano world today,

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you've witnessed the evolution of teaching

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from the traditions of historical pedagogy

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to modern cutting edge approaches

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with so much information and technique now available online,

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everywhere.

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What do you think defines effective piano teaching

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in today's world?

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And where do you see the future of pedagogy heading?

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That's a huge question there, Yukimi.

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I think the first thing that's changed,

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one of the things that's changed

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is the student centered approach to teaching.

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In the old days,

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I think the student was just sitting there

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on the piano stool and the teacher told them what to do,

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and there was never any real engagement with the student.

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And certainly very little respect for the student.

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I think that's the, you know,

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the student is the equal in terms of adult to adult

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communication, even if they're children.

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There's the adult part of me, the adult part of them.

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I mean, I teach very few children,

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but that's number one, I think.

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The student centered approach to the learning,

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respect for the student.

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Also, there's a move away from the conservatory model,

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which is this idea of, you know,

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developing technique through polishing a certain number

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of pieces and spending all day doing etudes,

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which, you know, science has now shown,

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probably don't do quite as much good

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as we had originally thought.

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You know, back, if you look back to the evolution

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of the etude, the Czerny-Clementi model.

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So, you know, you were supposed to sit there

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for hours a day.

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You could read a book if you wanted, you know,

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and develop double thirds from dry exercises.

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And then you were supposed to be able to just attach that

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to a piece of music.

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Well, we now know that that's not quite as simple as that.

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So, you know, the conservatory model versus the,

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I call it the Baroque model,

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which is the rounded musician,

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the way that pianists or musicians,

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not pianists because the piano hadn't been invented then,

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but back in the day, you know,

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when Bach was around, he would be teaching keyboard technique.

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He'd be teaching musicianship.

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He'd be teaching composition.

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He'd be teaching theory.

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All these subjects that are so, have been so neglected.

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So there's a kind of swing away from that conservatory model

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where everybody has to fit into that

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toward the option of, you know,

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maybe producing a more, a structure for a student

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that's a little bit more broad-based

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where they learn more than just pianistic skills.

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These are a few of the things.

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So I could, I'd spend all day

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just answering that first question.

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I think the other thing I'm finding,

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certainly with my own work,

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is that the student should be a part of the process,

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the creative process.

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So rather than the teacher saying,

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make a crescendo there and play that note detached,

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and then take a little time here

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and the student blindly doing it

269
00:12:50,460 --> 00:12:53,980
without any reason why they're just doing it

270
00:12:53,980 --> 00:12:55,700
to obey the teacher.

271
00:12:55,700 --> 00:12:57,740
I think I would rather, and do,

272
00:12:57,740 --> 00:13:00,940
rather teach by experimentation.

273
00:13:00,940 --> 00:13:03,420
What would it feel like if this note

274
00:13:03,420 --> 00:13:05,500
were a little firmer than the others in that phrase?

275
00:13:05,500 --> 00:13:07,640
Try that and see how they try it.

276
00:13:07,640 --> 00:13:08,660
What do you think?

277
00:13:08,660 --> 00:13:10,940
In other words, I'm asking for their feedback.

278
00:13:10,940 --> 00:13:14,180
I'm asking them to tell me whether they liked that

279
00:13:14,180 --> 00:13:16,080
or whether they appreciated that.

280
00:13:16,080 --> 00:13:19,600
I've got one particularly bright young man,

281
00:13:19,600 --> 00:13:22,100
well, he's 13, who I'm teaching at the moment,

282
00:13:22,100 --> 00:13:24,460
who doesn't tell me very much verbally,

283
00:13:24,460 --> 00:13:26,580
but he tells me a lot in other ways.

284
00:13:27,860 --> 00:13:30,660
I was suggesting at one point that he could,

285
00:13:30,660 --> 00:13:33,880
at a cadence point, let's take a little time at the cadence.

286
00:13:33,880 --> 00:13:36,380
And I could see his reaction was,

287
00:13:36,380 --> 00:13:37,820
no, I don't want to take time there.

288
00:13:37,820 --> 00:13:38,900
I don't feel that.

289
00:13:38,900 --> 00:13:40,240
And I could see that.

290
00:13:40,240 --> 00:13:43,180
And I said to him, okay, try it your way

291
00:13:43,180 --> 00:13:45,740
and see if I buy it.

292
00:13:45,740 --> 00:13:47,220
So he tried it his way.

293
00:13:47,220 --> 00:13:50,300
And I said, I can see where you're coming from,

294
00:13:50,300 --> 00:13:52,980
but it just feels like we need a little space there.

295
00:13:52,980 --> 00:13:56,780
Can you find another way of doing it that makes you happy?

296
00:13:56,780 --> 00:13:58,340
So he found another way.

297
00:13:58,340 --> 00:13:59,820
And then I said, I'll buy that.

298
00:13:59,820 --> 00:14:01,660
That works for me too.

299
00:14:01,660 --> 00:14:06,660
So he had led me to lead him to a solution

300
00:14:07,740 --> 00:14:09,800
that was authentic to him.

301
00:14:09,800 --> 00:14:12,860
It wasn't just something that I told him to do.

302
00:14:12,860 --> 00:14:17,860
Yeah, and also getting them to evaluate themselves

303
00:14:18,260 --> 00:14:22,100
rather than my telling them at the end of a performance

304
00:14:22,100 --> 00:14:25,100
of something, what I thought of it.

305
00:14:25,100 --> 00:14:27,740
I might say, how did you feel about it?

306
00:14:27,740 --> 00:14:30,100
What did you enjoy about your performance there?

307
00:14:30,100 --> 00:14:32,340
What do you think you did really well?

308
00:14:32,340 --> 00:14:34,140
Start off with the positives.

309
00:14:34,140 --> 00:14:36,900
And they'll usually say, well, yes,

310
00:14:36,900 --> 00:14:40,180
I think I'm beginning to learn how to project the melody

311
00:14:40,180 --> 00:14:43,060
above the left hand or whatever it may be.

312
00:14:43,060 --> 00:14:46,340
And then I'll invite them to say,

313
00:14:46,340 --> 00:14:49,220
are there any areas or any spots that you feel

314
00:14:49,220 --> 00:14:51,580
could use a little bit of improvement

315
00:14:51,580 --> 00:14:54,060
or where you need a little bit of the help?

316
00:14:54,060 --> 00:14:56,540
And they say, this bit over there,

317
00:14:56,540 --> 00:14:57,900
that didn't work very well.

318
00:14:57,900 --> 00:15:01,100
So they'll point to someplace on the score.

319
00:15:01,100 --> 00:15:04,700
And then I'll say, well, whereabouts exactly was it

320
00:15:04,700 --> 00:15:05,540
that you weren't happy?

321
00:15:05,540 --> 00:15:08,820
And I'll get them to, they think for a moment it was there.

322
00:15:08,820 --> 00:15:12,900
And I get them to diagnose what it is.

323
00:15:12,900 --> 00:15:15,180
And maybe I'll then ask them,

324
00:15:15,180 --> 00:15:17,620
so how do you think you could solve that problem?

325
00:15:17,620 --> 00:15:20,860
What do you do in your practice that will help you

326
00:15:20,860 --> 00:15:23,140
to get more comfortable with that moment?

327
00:15:23,140 --> 00:15:24,980
And they'll usually stop and think.

328
00:15:24,980 --> 00:15:26,980
And when they've been with me for a while,

329
00:15:26,980 --> 00:15:29,740
they have a repertoire of practice tools

330
00:15:29,740 --> 00:15:33,700
that they know about and that they can apply.

331
00:15:33,700 --> 00:15:37,500
So that's a hell of a long answer to a question,

332
00:15:37,500 --> 00:15:39,100
but it's a big question.

333
00:15:39,100 --> 00:15:40,060
Sure, sure.

334
00:15:40,060 --> 00:15:41,740
Thank you so much for explaining.

335
00:15:41,740 --> 00:15:46,380
Now, student-centered approach is, yeah, I agree with you,

336
00:15:46,380 --> 00:15:50,420
is not just in music, but I think that's the trend

337
00:15:50,420 --> 00:15:55,420
that I feel in many different fields of academics too.

338
00:15:55,900 --> 00:15:58,020
So it's more interactive.

339
00:15:58,020 --> 00:16:00,700
It's not this one teacher's standing in front

340
00:16:00,700 --> 00:16:02,420
of the classroom and telling them what to do.

341
00:16:02,420 --> 00:16:06,060
But that's how my generation, that's how I learn things.

342
00:16:06,060 --> 00:16:07,820
I know, I know.

343
00:16:07,820 --> 00:16:10,940
See, the thing is, you've only got to listen to, say,

344
00:16:10,940 --> 00:16:13,780
10 different recordings of a particular piece

345
00:16:13,780 --> 00:16:18,220
to hear 10 different tempi, 10 different approaches

346
00:16:18,220 --> 00:16:23,220
to the articulation, the pedaling, the musical message.

347
00:16:24,580 --> 00:16:29,580
So how can it, just the one that the teacher wants to espouse,

348
00:16:30,300 --> 00:16:31,500
how can that be true?

349
00:16:31,500 --> 00:16:32,580
It's not true.

350
00:16:32,580 --> 00:16:36,340
It's the teacher's opinion.

351
00:16:36,340 --> 00:16:38,300
So I think I'm trying to get away from that.

352
00:16:38,300 --> 00:16:42,260
I think the teacher guides the student toward something

353
00:16:42,260 --> 00:16:45,780
that's authentic to them, that's expressing something

354
00:16:45,780 --> 00:16:49,860
from within them, not pasted on, copied and pasted

355
00:16:49,860 --> 00:16:50,900
from a teacher.

356
00:16:50,900 --> 00:16:52,060
Right, right.

357
00:16:52,060 --> 00:16:54,220
But that's how I learned.

358
00:16:54,220 --> 00:16:56,940
So when I started teaching, it was confusing.

359
00:16:56,940 --> 00:16:59,580
It was like, oh my goodness, actually

360
00:16:59,580 --> 00:17:03,660
teaching in this modern age, modern students,

361
00:17:03,660 --> 00:17:06,660
is completely different from how I was taught.

362
00:17:06,660 --> 00:17:10,900
So it was like a whole relearning process for me too.

363
00:17:10,900 --> 00:17:11,860
You know what I mean?

364
00:17:11,860 --> 00:17:12,700
Yeah.

365
00:17:12,700 --> 00:17:14,020
So I think it's challenging.

366
00:17:14,020 --> 00:17:15,500
It's challenging.

367
00:17:15,500 --> 00:17:17,780
Bikimi, can I tell you a little anecdote?

368
00:17:17,780 --> 00:17:18,940
I've just remembered it now.

369
00:17:18,940 --> 00:17:21,740
It was years back I was teaching at the Purcell School,

370
00:17:21,740 --> 00:17:23,300
which is a specialist music school

371
00:17:23,300 --> 00:17:25,500
for very talented youngsters.

372
00:17:25,500 --> 00:17:28,220
And I had this girl who had come,

373
00:17:28,220 --> 00:17:31,140
I think she'd come from, come somewhere from Asia.

374
00:17:31,140 --> 00:17:32,660
I forget exactly what country it was,

375
00:17:32,660 --> 00:17:36,340
but she had had that exact same tradition.

376
00:17:36,340 --> 00:17:39,420
And one lesson, and I was getting a little bit tired

377
00:17:39,420 --> 00:17:42,020
of her bringing in just the notes.

378
00:17:42,020 --> 00:17:43,900
And she wanted me to tell her exactly

379
00:17:43,900 --> 00:17:45,260
what to do with the notes.

380
00:17:46,580 --> 00:17:48,500
So I can remember one lesson.

381
00:17:48,500 --> 00:17:50,940
She brought in the exposition of a sonata

382
00:17:50,940 --> 00:17:53,380
or the first movement of a sonata.

383
00:17:53,380 --> 00:17:55,340
Don't remember which sonata it was.

384
00:17:55,340 --> 00:17:57,340
And I said, let's try a little experiment.

385
00:17:57,340 --> 00:17:59,220
So we divide, she had two lessons a week.

386
00:17:59,220 --> 00:18:02,860
So I said, let's spend the first half of this lesson

387
00:18:02,860 --> 00:18:05,980
doing one thing, and then we'll break at that half point,

388
00:18:05,980 --> 00:18:08,540
and then we'll do something a bit different.

389
00:18:08,540 --> 00:18:10,940
So I guided her through an interpretation

390
00:18:10,940 --> 00:18:13,900
that made sense within itself.

391
00:18:13,900 --> 00:18:15,860
In other words, it was logical.

392
00:18:15,860 --> 00:18:19,580
If you do this here, then it leads to this here.

393
00:18:19,580 --> 00:18:23,180
And then she tried it and her eyes were lighting up.

394
00:18:23,180 --> 00:18:24,900
Oh, she liked that there, nice.

395
00:18:24,900 --> 00:18:26,260
And then at the half hour point,

396
00:18:26,260 --> 00:18:29,100
I stopped and took it right back to the beginning again

397
00:18:29,100 --> 00:18:31,700
and started again with a different approach,

398
00:18:31,700 --> 00:18:33,780
like a different interpretation.

399
00:18:33,780 --> 00:18:35,060
And so at the end of the lesson,

400
00:18:35,060 --> 00:18:37,500
she was left with option A, option B.

401
00:18:37,500 --> 00:18:40,420
And she said, so which one of those do I do?

402
00:18:40,420 --> 00:18:42,620
And I said, I don't know.

403
00:18:42,620 --> 00:18:44,660
Meaning, go away and think about it.

404
00:18:44,660 --> 00:18:47,940
Go away and try this, see where that leads you.

405
00:18:47,940 --> 00:18:50,300
Go away and try this, see where that leads you.

406
00:18:50,300 --> 00:18:52,340
So in that moment, she was confused,

407
00:18:52,340 --> 00:18:54,980
but I wanted her to be confused because, you know,

408
00:18:54,980 --> 00:18:57,020
there was nothing that was coming from within.

409
00:18:57,020 --> 00:18:58,580
It was all external.

410
00:18:59,500 --> 00:19:01,340
Right, right, yes, yeah.

411
00:19:01,340 --> 00:19:04,460
So it was a big adjustment,

412
00:19:04,460 --> 00:19:08,460
but your videos really helped me,

413
00:19:08,460 --> 00:19:13,220
especially on when you talk about how to practice.

414
00:19:13,220 --> 00:19:15,500
It's not the what to practice, but how.

415
00:19:15,500 --> 00:19:19,580
That really makes everybody, anyone think, right?

416
00:19:19,580 --> 00:19:22,340
So coming from where you are,

417
00:19:22,340 --> 00:19:27,340
and I like to start with the practical,

418
00:19:28,100 --> 00:19:29,860
piano practice method.

419
00:19:29,860 --> 00:19:30,700
Yeah.

420
00:19:30,700 --> 00:19:35,180
So many pianists struggle with how to structure

421
00:19:35,180 --> 00:19:36,940
their practice time effectively,

422
00:19:38,300 --> 00:19:42,540
because we're living in such a busy, busy world.

423
00:19:42,540 --> 00:19:47,540
And, but piano literature is expansive, massive.

424
00:19:47,700 --> 00:19:52,020
I mean, there's no way we can learn the entire,

425
00:19:52,020 --> 00:19:54,940
you know, piano literature out there in one life.

426
00:19:54,940 --> 00:19:58,260
But that's the reality.

427
00:19:58,260 --> 00:20:01,100
But what do you believe are the essential components

428
00:20:01,100 --> 00:20:04,220
of a productive practice session,

429
00:20:04,220 --> 00:20:09,220
and how should students prioritize their time?

430
00:20:09,420 --> 00:20:10,540
Let's start with that.

431
00:20:10,540 --> 00:20:12,860
That's such a vast question, Yukimi, yes.

432
00:20:12,860 --> 00:20:14,860
I would, goodness.

433
00:20:14,860 --> 00:20:16,860
So I'm a great believer, first of all,

434
00:20:16,860 --> 00:20:18,660
in the 20-minute practice session.

435
00:20:19,700 --> 00:20:21,380
I wrote a blog on that topic,

436
00:20:21,380 --> 00:20:22,700
the 20-minute practice session,

437
00:20:22,700 --> 00:20:26,500
which is a short task-specific session,

438
00:20:26,500 --> 00:20:29,060
where before you even go to the instrument

439
00:20:29,060 --> 00:20:31,380
to sit down and twiddle fingers,

440
00:20:31,380 --> 00:20:34,020
you've got a plan for what you're going to do.

441
00:20:34,020 --> 00:20:36,900
So it could be, I'm going to work without the pedal

442
00:20:36,900 --> 00:20:41,900
on the first section of this piece at a slower tempo,

443
00:20:42,540 --> 00:20:45,100
or I'm going to play with,

444
00:20:45,100 --> 00:20:48,700
I'm going to practice pianissimo, whatever it may be,

445
00:20:48,700 --> 00:20:51,780
or I'm going to do, I'm going to work in tiny

446
00:20:51,780 --> 00:20:53,620
one-measure sections,

447
00:20:53,620 --> 00:20:55,820
and I'm not going to go on to measure two

448
00:20:55,820 --> 00:20:59,540
until I've absorbed everything from measure one.

449
00:20:59,540 --> 00:21:01,700
Whatever it may be, there's a plan.

450
00:21:01,700 --> 00:21:04,700
And at the end of that 20-minute session,

451
00:21:04,700 --> 00:21:05,940
because that's about the length

452
00:21:05,940 --> 00:21:10,380
that the human mind can focus on one thing,

453
00:21:10,380 --> 00:21:12,380
there's a break.

454
00:21:12,380 --> 00:21:14,460
Oh, I wish I'd brought my little cube.

455
00:21:14,460 --> 00:21:16,980
Oh, I'd have to go out of shot to get it.

456
00:21:16,980 --> 00:21:18,740
But I've got a little, I don't remember,

457
00:21:18,740 --> 00:21:21,900
it's like a dogedecahedron where it's got several sides

458
00:21:21,900 --> 00:21:25,020
and you turn it up and you can spend 20 minutes

459
00:21:25,020 --> 00:21:27,820
on this thing and then a little alarm goes,

460
00:21:27,820 --> 00:21:29,620
and then you flip it back the other way,

461
00:21:29,620 --> 00:21:32,140
and then you can take a little break for a moment.

462
00:21:32,140 --> 00:21:35,100
I think that's really important to take a break

463
00:21:35,100 --> 00:21:36,420
at the end of the 20 minutes,

464
00:21:36,420 --> 00:21:39,460
even if it's just to do a little bit of stretching

465
00:21:39,460 --> 00:21:42,780
and move the body, or not so much of a break,

466
00:21:42,780 --> 00:21:45,500
just to go on to another activity,

467
00:21:45,500 --> 00:21:48,340
so that you've scheduled the activity ahead.

468
00:21:48,340 --> 00:21:51,500
Because I do find that a lot of people go to the piano

469
00:21:51,500 --> 00:21:53,380
with their music sort of sitting there

470
00:21:53,380 --> 00:21:56,460
and they haven't any idea what they're gonna do or why,

471
00:21:56,460 --> 00:21:59,540
or how that fits into the bigger picture

472
00:21:59,540 --> 00:22:02,940
for what they wanna do for the week,

473
00:22:02,940 --> 00:22:05,580
or between today and tomorrow,

474
00:22:05,580 --> 00:22:09,820
bigger pictures with the practising.

475
00:22:09,820 --> 00:22:11,420
There's so much to say about this

476
00:22:11,420 --> 00:22:15,260
because I have found that a lot of people seem to think

477
00:22:15,260 --> 00:22:19,180
that practising is, the results of the practising

478
00:22:19,180 --> 00:22:22,020
should happen at the end of the practise session.

479
00:22:23,100 --> 00:22:25,180
And they're very surprised when I tell them,

480
00:22:25,180 --> 00:22:27,340
no, it can't happen that way.

481
00:22:27,340 --> 00:22:29,220
You've got to allow, first of all,

482
00:22:29,220 --> 00:22:32,780
there needs to be a good night's sleep, or a night's sleep,

483
00:22:32,780 --> 00:22:34,900
because the information, I'm no scientist,

484
00:22:34,900 --> 00:22:37,100
but I'm interested in neuroscience,

485
00:22:37,100 --> 00:22:41,180
and I'm very lucky to be working with Professor Adina Mornell,

486
00:22:41,180 --> 00:22:44,140
who is an expert in this very, very subject.

487
00:22:44,140 --> 00:22:47,020
We're collaborating on a couple of projects,

488
00:22:47,020 --> 00:22:49,740
and she's told me what happens in the brain.

489
00:22:49,740 --> 00:22:52,020
The information goes to a certain part of the brain

490
00:22:52,020 --> 00:22:54,660
and it sits there until we sleep,

491
00:22:54,660 --> 00:22:57,260
and when we sleep, it goes up somewhere else,

492
00:22:57,260 --> 00:23:01,540
and then goes into the long-term memory.

493
00:23:01,540 --> 00:23:04,100
So, you know, those people that are sitting there,

494
00:23:04,100 --> 00:23:06,060
maybe they'll do a little bit of slow practise,

495
00:23:06,060 --> 00:23:09,220
or they'll do some practise with accents and rhythms,

496
00:23:09,220 --> 00:23:10,780
or whatever it may be,

497
00:23:10,780 --> 00:23:13,540
and then they will try it out again,

498
00:23:13,540 --> 00:23:15,780
and they'll be most disappointed it hasn't worked,

499
00:23:15,780 --> 00:23:18,060
and then they say, oh, this doesn't work,

500
00:23:18,060 --> 00:23:20,060
so they go back to their playthroughs,

501
00:23:20,060 --> 00:23:23,620
because students love to just play through, you know.

502
00:23:23,620 --> 00:23:26,700
It sounds like there's a, you know, those platform games

503
00:23:26,700 --> 00:23:29,020
where you've got monsters and you have to,

504
00:23:29,020 --> 00:23:30,740
and you have to blitz them, you have to,

505
00:23:30,740 --> 00:23:32,380
so what I've noticed students do,

506
00:23:32,380 --> 00:23:35,500
including Juilliard students, do this.

507
00:23:35,500 --> 00:23:37,300
They're playing, playing, playing, playing,

508
00:23:37,300 --> 00:23:39,420
they come across a spot that doesn't work,

509
00:23:39,420 --> 00:23:42,900
so they hammer at it, you know, until it yields somewhat,

510
00:23:42,900 --> 00:23:44,060
and then they go on.

511
00:23:45,260 --> 00:23:48,180
So what they've practised is getting it wrong 10 times

512
00:23:48,180 --> 00:23:50,900
and right on the 11th attempt,

513
00:23:50,900 --> 00:23:53,220
and they think that that's enough.

514
00:23:53,220 --> 00:23:55,580
But I often say to my students,

515
00:23:55,580 --> 00:23:57,180
and I have to remind myself,

516
00:23:57,180 --> 00:24:00,140
that I do a little bit of practise, a stint of practise,

517
00:24:00,140 --> 00:24:02,980
and then I leave it, I leave that to assimilate,

518
00:24:02,980 --> 00:24:05,780
I leave it to move from this part of my brain

519
00:24:05,780 --> 00:24:07,180
to the other part of the brain,

520
00:24:07,180 --> 00:24:08,460
whichever part that is,

521
00:24:08,460 --> 00:24:10,460
I've forgotten the labels for these bits.

522
00:24:10,460 --> 00:24:13,540
So the process there is, first of all,

523
00:24:13,540 --> 00:24:16,060
knowing what to do, and then trusting the process,

524
00:24:16,060 --> 00:24:18,700
trusting that it's going to take time.

525
00:24:18,700 --> 00:24:22,220
You're going to need to repeat those steps probably again,

526
00:24:22,220 --> 00:24:26,260
and probably again, before you can expect any kind of,

527
00:24:26,260 --> 00:24:28,180
you know, tangible result.

528
00:24:28,180 --> 00:24:30,140
My last teacher, Nina Sveglaneva,

529
00:24:30,140 --> 00:24:33,540
who sadly passed away last year,

530
00:24:33,540 --> 00:24:37,300
very important teacher to many people, including to me,

531
00:24:37,300 --> 00:24:41,460
she would often say, without the benefit of neuroscience,

532
00:24:41,460 --> 00:24:44,260
but with the huge benefit of her great tradition,

533
00:24:44,260 --> 00:24:47,260
the best of the Russian tradition,

534
00:24:47,260 --> 00:24:50,820
she would say, what you do now shows up in your practise,

535
00:24:50,820 --> 00:24:52,580
shows up two weeks later.

536
00:24:52,580 --> 00:24:55,500
And that's now been proven scientifically.

537
00:24:55,500 --> 00:24:56,980
It's fascinating, isn't it?

538
00:24:56,980 --> 00:24:59,940
So she would never change anything

539
00:24:59,940 --> 00:25:02,100
two or three weeks before a performance.

540
00:25:02,100 --> 00:25:05,700
If we went for a lesson and she knew we were playing the piece

541
00:25:05,700 --> 00:25:09,780
in two or three weeks, she wouldn't do anything much.

542
00:25:09,780 --> 00:25:11,380
It certainly wouldn't change anything.

543
00:25:11,380 --> 00:25:16,860
No fingerings changes or no big sort of interpretative shifts

544
00:25:16,860 --> 00:25:18,500
or tempo shifts.

545
00:25:18,500 --> 00:25:21,780
She would just go very gently with what we'd got then,

546
00:25:21,780 --> 00:25:23,780
which was so sensible, you know?

547
00:25:24,940 --> 00:25:28,740
Practice is often associated with repetition.

548
00:25:28,740 --> 00:25:31,580
So you mentioned about 20-minute practising.

549
00:25:31,580 --> 00:25:35,940
So we have this thought, more and more you practise,

550
00:25:35,940 --> 00:25:39,980
the better, so all the pianists, they would lock themselves

551
00:25:39,980 --> 00:25:43,580
in the practise rooms for hours and hours.

552
00:25:43,580 --> 00:25:48,980
That's the sort of tradition that I was taught.

553
00:25:48,980 --> 00:25:53,180
Yeah, so there's so much there that's important to understand,

554
00:25:53,180 --> 00:25:56,380
I think, with repetition, because what happens is,

555
00:25:56,380 --> 00:26:00,380
if we repeat something in the same way more than once or twice,

556
00:26:00,380 --> 00:26:05,380
the brain habituates to that and there's no stimuli that get in.

557
00:26:05,380 --> 00:26:07,780
So the brain says, been there, done that.

558
00:26:07,780 --> 00:26:10,380
So there's several things to say about this.

559
00:26:10,380 --> 00:26:14,780
One is, I think, that we need to, when we repeat,

560
00:26:14,780 --> 00:26:17,780
don't do it too many times the same way before you start

561
00:26:17,780 --> 00:26:19,780
changing things around a little bit.

562
00:26:19,780 --> 00:26:24,780
So let's say you're repeating a passage, change the tempo,

563
00:26:24,780 --> 00:26:28,780
change the dynamic, change the touch, the articulation,

564
00:26:28,780 --> 00:26:33,780
change the meaning, you know, all sorts of different things.

565
00:26:33,780 --> 00:26:35,780
Play one hand stronger than the other,

566
00:26:35,780 --> 00:26:39,780
play on the surface of the keys, or one repetition,

567
00:26:39,780 --> 00:26:42,780
could that not be done in the head, visualising?

568
00:26:42,780 --> 00:26:45,780
That's one thing to say.

569
00:26:45,780 --> 00:26:49,780
So I mean, I'm often asking students how they're practising

570
00:26:49,780 --> 00:26:51,780
and I'm asking them to demonstrate,

571
00:26:51,780 --> 00:26:54,780
and I will model what my teachers did to me.

572
00:26:54,780 --> 00:26:56,780
So they'll do one thing, I'll say, yes, great,

573
00:26:56,780 --> 00:27:00,780
and, you know, and what else?

574
00:27:00,780 --> 00:27:03,780
So we've got a list of about ten things.

575
00:27:03,780 --> 00:27:07,780
But I think, going back to what you were saying about repetition,

576
00:27:07,780 --> 00:27:14,780
to me, there are two main necessities in each practice session.

577
00:27:14,780 --> 00:27:19,780
One is the presence of an inner quality control inspector.

578
00:27:19,780 --> 00:27:23,780
Now, a quality control inspector is the sort of person

579
00:27:23,780 --> 00:27:25,780
that inhabits the end of a production line.

580
00:27:25,780 --> 00:27:30,780
So maybe you could imagine a cookie factory somewhere where,

581
00:27:30,780 --> 00:27:32,780
I'm trying to remember, US cookies,

582
00:27:32,780 --> 00:27:35,780
Entenmann's or Pepperidge Farm or whatever it may be.

583
00:27:35,780 --> 00:27:37,780
So at the end of the production line,

584
00:27:37,780 --> 00:27:40,780
there's a hair-netted creature who's looking over the cookies

585
00:27:40,780 --> 00:27:44,780
that are coming up and spotting any that are defective,

586
00:27:44,780 --> 00:27:47,780
or maybe this one's got a crack in it

587
00:27:47,780 --> 00:27:50,780
or this one's got a raisin missing from it

588
00:27:50,780 --> 00:27:53,780
or a chocolate chip has removed itself.

589
00:27:53,780 --> 00:27:56,780
So the quality control inspector

590
00:27:56,780 --> 00:27:59,780
promptly removes those from the conveyor belt,

591
00:27:59,780 --> 00:28:02,780
stuffs them in her handbag for later use,

592
00:28:02,780 --> 00:28:06,780
and then, you know, the product that gets packaged up and sold on

593
00:28:06,780 --> 00:28:09,780
has a certain level of quality.

594
00:28:09,780 --> 00:28:13,780
Now, I firmly believe that that quality control inspector

595
00:28:13,780 --> 00:28:20,780
can be fostered and developed within even the youngest student

596
00:28:20,780 --> 00:28:24,780
by simply asking them, what mark would you give for yourself

597
00:28:24,780 --> 00:28:26,780
out of 10 for what you just did there?

598
00:28:26,780 --> 00:28:28,780
And it's completely non-judgmental.

599
00:28:28,780 --> 00:28:30,780
I'm not giving them a mark.

600
00:28:30,780 --> 00:28:32,780
And they may say, seven.

601
00:28:32,780 --> 00:28:37,780
And I would say, oh, I would give you a 7.2 or maybe a 7.25.

602
00:28:37,780 --> 00:28:39,780
I mean, we make a little joke about it.

603
00:28:39,780 --> 00:28:44,780
And I say, well, where did the missing three marks go?

604
00:28:44,780 --> 00:28:46,780
You know, why didn't you give yourself a 10?

605
00:28:46,780 --> 00:28:48,780
And they stop and think about it for a minute,

606
00:28:48,780 --> 00:28:52,780
and then they, with a little bit of prodding and cajoling,

607
00:28:52,780 --> 00:28:55,780
they will often come up with exactly what it was

608
00:28:55,780 --> 00:29:00,780
that stopped it from being a 10, because there's me asking them.

609
00:29:00,780 --> 00:29:04,780
So after a while, what happens is that they embody that

610
00:29:04,780 --> 00:29:06,780
in their quality control inspector

611
00:29:06,780 --> 00:29:09,780
and use it for themselves in their own practice,

612
00:29:09,780 --> 00:29:12,780
so that they don't, if I've asked them to, say,

613
00:29:12,780 --> 00:29:15,780
practice the left hand by itself without the pedal,

614
00:29:15,780 --> 00:29:17,780
they won't just do a sloppy job with it.

615
00:29:17,780 --> 00:29:20,780
They'll do a really good job with it.

616
00:29:20,780 --> 00:29:21,780
That's one thing.

617
00:29:21,780 --> 00:29:23,780
I wish I had a whiteboard or something,

618
00:29:23,780 --> 00:29:28,780
but I can illustrate this using little graphics in the air.

619
00:29:28,780 --> 00:29:32,780
So I'd like for your listeners, viewers,

620
00:29:32,780 --> 00:29:38,780
to imagine there's three separate bubbles, let's say,

621
00:29:38,780 --> 00:29:40,780
horizontal bubbles.

622
00:29:40,780 --> 00:29:44,780
You've got stage A, you've got stage B, and you've got stage C.

623
00:29:44,780 --> 00:29:48,780
Now, stage A is where you plan what it is you're going to do.

624
00:29:48,780 --> 00:29:50,780
So I'm going to play the left hand of bar six,

625
00:29:50,780 --> 00:29:54,780
and I'm going to make sure I play a C sharp on the fourth beat.

626
00:29:54,780 --> 00:29:58,780
And then you execute that plan, you play that thing.

627
00:29:58,780 --> 00:30:01,780
And then stage C, which is where people don't go,

628
00:30:01,780 --> 00:30:05,780
is you evaluate, you judge, you appraise.

629
00:30:05,780 --> 00:30:10,780
Is what I did in stage B what I intended to do in stage A?

630
00:30:10,780 --> 00:30:11,780
Or not.

631
00:30:11,780 --> 00:30:15,780
And if it is, then you give a little check mark in the C stage,

632
00:30:15,780 --> 00:30:17,780
the C, the evaluation stage.

633
00:30:17,780 --> 00:30:21,780
If it's not, you put a little X in there

634
00:30:21,780 --> 00:30:25,780
and feed back the information to a new stage A.

635
00:30:25,780 --> 00:30:30,780
So I'm now going to play this bar, paying attention to that C sharp.

636
00:30:30,780 --> 00:30:34,780
And the focus of the mind is on that one thing,

637
00:30:34,780 --> 00:30:38,780
so that when you repeat, you've got a good chance of actually

638
00:30:38,780 --> 00:30:40,780
achieving the thing that you're focused on.

639
00:30:40,780 --> 00:30:45,780
But without the focus, it's chimps dancing on the keyboard.

640
00:30:45,780 --> 00:30:48,780
You know, what's that book, The Chimp Paradox?

641
00:30:48,780 --> 00:30:50,780
So I reckon here we've got chimps.

642
00:30:50,780 --> 00:30:52,780
We need to train these chimps.

643
00:30:52,780 --> 00:30:54,780
I've got two here, two feet.

644
00:30:54,780 --> 00:30:59,780
These need to be trained to do what the mind wants them to do,

645
00:30:59,780 --> 00:31:03,780
and the mind has to be attuned to what the composer wants them to do,

646
00:31:03,780 --> 00:31:05,780
or the teacher, or whatever.

647
00:31:05,780 --> 00:31:09,780
So I think a lot of practice ends up being mindless, mindless repetition.

648
00:31:09,780 --> 00:31:13,780
Of the playthrough type, just bang a bang a bang away

649
00:31:13,780 --> 00:31:19,780
until you bludgeon this thing into some sort of shape.

650
00:31:19,780 --> 00:31:21,780
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

651
00:31:21,780 --> 00:31:25,780
So that's a pitfall of practicing, right?

652
00:31:25,780 --> 00:31:33,780
So what you're suggesting is by creating variations to one practice,

653
00:31:33,780 --> 00:31:36,780
one passage, for example, do staccato,

654
00:31:36,780 --> 00:31:40,780
or do left and only change the key, for example.

655
00:31:40,780 --> 00:31:44,780
By doing that, you are more aware of progress.

656
00:31:44,780 --> 00:31:46,780
You're more aware of what you're doing

657
00:31:46,780 --> 00:31:49,780
rather than just mindless practice for hours.

658
00:31:49,780 --> 00:31:54,780
Yes, and you're bringing a sense of playfulness into the process,

659
00:31:54,780 --> 00:31:56,780
which is educational, because if you think about it,

660
00:31:56,780 --> 00:31:59,780
we play music, we play the piano.

661
00:31:59,780 --> 00:32:01,780
Why is practice so often drudgery?

662
00:32:01,780 --> 00:32:03,780
There's no sense of fun in it.

663
00:32:03,780 --> 00:32:06,780
But if you give a student a challenge,

664
00:32:06,780 --> 00:32:08,780
like I've sometimes said something like this,

665
00:32:08,780 --> 00:32:11,780
let's say there's a chord stream, and I'll say,

666
00:32:11,780 --> 00:32:14,780
can you play your right hand, but only play the second fingers?

667
00:32:14,780 --> 00:32:16,780
Just play the notes that the second finger plays,

668
00:32:16,780 --> 00:32:18,780
don't play any other fingers.

669
00:32:18,780 --> 00:32:20,780
That really makes them think.

670
00:32:20,780 --> 00:32:26,780
Or can you play just the thumb notes in this, whatever it may be,

671
00:32:26,780 --> 00:32:31,780
and that's educational, because it forces us to concentrate on the material.

672
00:32:31,780 --> 00:32:36,780
And it's only when we're concentrating, burning glucose in the,

673
00:32:36,780 --> 00:32:41,780
wherever it happens, that we make the connections and we learn.

674
00:32:41,780 --> 00:32:45,780
Otherwise, it's mindless, and we may as well be doing something else.

675
00:32:45,780 --> 00:32:49,780
I think a lot of times people may as well get up away from the piano

676
00:32:49,780 --> 00:32:51,780
and do something more profitable.

677
00:32:51,780 --> 00:32:55,780
If they're not concentrating on what they're doing, they're not learning.

678
00:32:55,780 --> 00:33:00,780
Yeah, and then, you know, even like preparing for performance or something

679
00:33:00,780 --> 00:33:03,780
and being able to play through this piece.

680
00:33:03,780 --> 00:33:09,780
And if I am not practicing with my mind, then I start thinking about something else.

681
00:33:09,780 --> 00:33:12,780
Like this happens to especially young students,

682
00:33:12,780 --> 00:33:15,780
and then while they're playing the piece in front of me,

683
00:33:15,780 --> 00:33:20,780
they're thinking something else, or they're like, I don't know, smiling or something.

684
00:33:20,780 --> 00:33:22,780
I asked my student, what were you thinking?

685
00:33:22,780 --> 00:33:27,780
And how I was thinking about what happened at school today was so funny.

686
00:33:27,780 --> 00:33:30,780
Right?

687
00:33:30,780 --> 00:33:36,780
Yeah, so I think what's important for me is that we need to be thinking in the practice,

688
00:33:36,780 --> 00:33:40,780
but not thinking in the performance.

689
00:33:40,780 --> 00:33:42,780
We need to be concentrating when we're performing.

690
00:33:42,780 --> 00:33:48,780
But the difference is we need to let ourselves go and let the music emerge as a communication,

691
00:33:48,780 --> 00:33:53,780
not worrying about what the wrist is doing or not doing at this point,

692
00:33:53,780 --> 00:33:55,780
or worrying about our pedaling.

693
00:33:55,780 --> 00:34:01,780
So we're intent on communicating the message of the music to the listener.

694
00:34:01,780 --> 00:34:05,780
So what you've just said there brings up two kind of elements,

695
00:34:05,780 --> 00:34:09,780
the practicing mind and the performing mind.

696
00:34:09,780 --> 00:34:16,780
Funnily enough, I've just finished an article for Pianist magazine where I quote Yasha Heifetz,

697
00:34:16,780 --> 00:34:20,780
you know, the great violinist who is such an inspiration to me.

698
00:34:20,780 --> 00:34:22,780
I just love listening to Yasha Heifetz's violin playing.

699
00:34:22,780 --> 00:34:25,780
It makes it sound like a voice.

700
00:34:25,780 --> 00:34:29,780
He said, practice like it means everything in the world to you.

701
00:34:29,780 --> 00:34:33,780
Perform like you couldn't give a damn.

702
00:34:33,780 --> 00:34:34,780
Yeah.

703
00:34:34,780 --> 00:34:39,780
So when we're performing, we're not worrying about whether we play a wrong note

704
00:34:39,780 --> 00:34:44,780
or, you know, whether we remember to do what teachers said about our forearm here.

705
00:34:44,780 --> 00:34:48,780
We're just going with the communication of the music.

706
00:34:48,780 --> 00:34:51,780
We're in a different state of mind.

707
00:34:51,780 --> 00:34:53,780
Wow, that's interesting.

708
00:34:53,780 --> 00:34:55,780
So speaking of, you know, performance,

709
00:34:55,780 --> 00:35:00,780
so prepping for a live performance is a completely different thing.

710
00:35:00,780 --> 00:35:07,780
Or maybe is it, does it should be like, should it be part of the practice process?

711
00:35:07,780 --> 00:35:08,780
Yeah.

712
00:35:08,780 --> 00:35:11,780
Not completely, entirely separate.

713
00:35:11,780 --> 00:35:19,780
See, while I think the danger is, when people are learning a piece that they're going to eventually perform

714
00:35:19,780 --> 00:35:22,780
and they use the repeated read through method,

715
00:35:22,780 --> 00:35:27,780
which is a practice session whereby you start at the beginning and you play to the end

716
00:35:27,780 --> 00:35:29,780
and you say, oh, that was terrible.

717
00:35:29,780 --> 00:35:30,780
Let me do it again.

718
00:35:30,780 --> 00:35:34,780
And they go back to the beginning and they play through to the end.

719
00:35:34,780 --> 00:35:37,780
And it was probably just a tiny bit better.

720
00:35:37,780 --> 00:35:40,780
And they spend an hour doing that.

721
00:35:40,780 --> 00:35:46,780
They get to a point by the end of the practice session where they feel like they've made progress with the piece.

722
00:35:46,780 --> 00:35:48,780
Fact is they haven't.

723
00:35:48,780 --> 00:35:58,780
What they've done is busking through it 20 times and making something that approaches maybe the music on the 21st attempt.

724
00:35:58,780 --> 00:36:02,780
Whereas in performance, we've got to get it the very first time.

725
00:36:02,780 --> 00:36:13,780
So I'm very much stressing avoid that repeated read through method when you're first learning a piece that you're going to perform.

726
00:36:13,780 --> 00:36:15,780
Do some deep learning.

727
00:36:15,780 --> 00:36:18,780
I've got this story of the three little pigs.

728
00:36:18,780 --> 00:36:20,780
You know, it's not my story.

729
00:36:20,780 --> 00:36:23,780
I don't know. Do you know the story of the three little pigs?

730
00:36:23,780 --> 00:36:25,780
Yeah. So everybody knows it, which is why it's good.

731
00:36:25,780 --> 00:36:40,780
It's only the third little pig that bothers to dig the foundations and then build his house with bricks and proper materials that are going to last that can ward off the big bad wolf.

732
00:36:40,780 --> 00:36:57,780
So no amount of huffing and puffing from the big bad wolf is going to blow that third little pigs house down because he or she has invested the time in digging down, digging deep and not just erecting some structure that will get blown away by the first gust of wind.

733
00:36:57,780 --> 00:37:13,780
Which, which I think there's a parallel with that and how we learn a piece that we're going to eventually perform, which is to to engage in deep learning techniques, variable practice, as much different types of practice as possible.

734
00:37:13,780 --> 00:37:18,780
And I'm reminded of the wonderful pianist Egon Petri.

735
00:37:18,780 --> 00:37:28,780
Don't know if you know that name Egon Petri, Petri, maybe P E T R I, a pianist from yesteryear, who was asked by an admiring student.

736
00:37:28,780 --> 00:37:40,780
How come your performances are so impeccable and, you know, you said, well, I wouldn't dream of performing a piece until I've run out of ways to practice it.

737
00:37:40,780 --> 00:37:51,780
Creative practice, you know, variable practice. And so that's one thing. But then the other side of that coin is when we get closer to a performance.

738
00:37:51,780 --> 00:38:01,780
We're absolutely going to need to play the piece through for ourselves. And actually, I have a wonderful memory of my last teacher Nina.

739
00:38:01,780 --> 00:38:12,780
She used to teach often till quite late at night. And in the later years, she wasn't performing because she was so busy teaching. How could you expect somebody who's busy teaching to have time to practice?

740
00:38:12,780 --> 00:38:17,780
But there was a time in her career when she was performing.

741
00:38:17,780 --> 00:38:22,780
So I think my lesson was something like 10 at night. I think it was pretty late.

742
00:38:22,780 --> 00:38:28,780
And then I said to her after after the lesson, it was always pretty strictly an hour.

743
00:38:28,780 --> 00:38:35,780
Now you can now you can relax, you know, put your feet up. I think I even suggested that she might have a vodka or something.

744
00:38:35,780 --> 00:38:43,780
He said, but my dear, everything was my dear. No, I have now to sit and play my whole program through.

745
00:38:43,780 --> 00:38:56,780
So after a day of teaching, she would go to the piano and religiously play from the beginning of her program right up to the end, whether she wanted to do it or not.

746
00:38:56,780 --> 00:39:01,780
No matter how good the playing was or not, she was going into training.

747
00:39:01,780 --> 00:39:10,780
She often used that expression, going into training for what she would have to do on the day, which is to start on the first note of the program and finish on the last note of the program.

748
00:39:10,780 --> 00:39:20,780
So if we haven't practiced doing that regularly, how can we expect the performance to to emerge from the practice room?

749
00:39:20,780 --> 00:39:26,780
We need a final stage, which is something I call practicing a performance.

750
00:39:26,780 --> 00:39:41,780
Well, practicing a performance is where if you imagine those three stages, ABC, so a in the planning stage, I've decided now I'm going to play through my whole performance from the beginning to the end for the first time for myself.

751
00:39:41,780 --> 00:39:51,780
And then I execute that I do my my my program from the beginning to the end. And hopefully the first time I do it, I'll record it.

752
00:39:51,780 --> 00:40:02,780
And then when I go through my judgment, the evaluation, it's not very pleasant, actually, because it's a little bit like looking at yourself in one of those makeup mirrors, you know, mirrors that exaggerate.

753
00:40:02,780 --> 00:40:06,780
First of all, you're going to only going to see the blemishes.

754
00:40:06,780 --> 00:40:14,780
We've got negativity bias as human beings. We only see what we don't like. So very important that we go away from the piano.

755
00:40:14,780 --> 00:40:19,780
We have a little notebook or a clipboard. I quite like my clipboard for this.

756
00:40:19,780 --> 00:40:26,780
And I make bullet points. I first of all make bullet points as I as I'm listening back about things that I liked.

757
00:40:26,780 --> 00:40:30,780
Yes, that the phrasing, they're beautiful. I like my pedaling there.

758
00:40:30,780 --> 00:40:40,780
I liked my characterization here. But when it gets to bar eleven, my left hand is unclear. So I put a little bullet point by eleven left hand clear.

759
00:40:40,780 --> 00:40:43,780
And then it may go on a little bit more.

760
00:40:43,780 --> 00:40:48,780
Sixteen and then the measure. So we say measure in the UK measure sixteen.

761
00:40:48,780 --> 00:40:51,780
We say bar in the UK. You say measure in the US.

762
00:40:51,780 --> 00:41:02,780
So whatever. I'm sure we all know what we mean. Measure sixteen. My sixteenth notes in the right hand were uneven or whatever it could be.

763
00:41:02,780 --> 00:41:15,780
So at the end of the reflection stage or the appraisal stage, we're left with a piece of paper, a sheet of paper with bullet points of things that we need to attend to.

764
00:41:15,780 --> 00:41:19,780
Those things that didn't quite stack up in a performance.

765
00:41:19,780 --> 00:41:27,780
Those bullet points inform the content of the next practice session, which Nina always used to call spot practice.

766
00:41:27,780 --> 00:41:40,780
So the process was practice the performance reflection spot practice and the spot practice could be done over the course of several days or could be done.

767
00:41:40,780 --> 00:41:47,780
Let's say you did your run through in the morning. You reflect a little bit in the noon time and then in the afternoon you do spot practice.

768
00:41:47,780 --> 00:41:53,780
You know, you can tweak this for how you want, but she would do that daily for about a week.

769
00:41:53,780 --> 00:41:59,780
This process practice the performance reflection spots.

770
00:41:59,780 --> 00:42:06,780
And then after the week, I mean, I experienced it. I'll tell you in a moment how I experienced that.

771
00:42:06,780 --> 00:42:15,780
Then she would go back to more kind of normal maintenance practice, polishing, finesse, because I think we pianists never stop working on refining,

772
00:42:15,780 --> 00:42:21,780
finessing, polishing, you know, bolstering up the memory, all those things.

773
00:42:21,780 --> 00:42:29,780
So she would do the practice performances in tranches of several days and then go back to other things.

774
00:42:29,780 --> 00:42:35,780
And I did that when I was studying the Liszt Sonata with her.

775
00:42:35,780 --> 00:42:41,780
So I got it to the point where I was playing it, but it was very unseasoned.

776
00:42:41,780 --> 00:42:47,780
And she showed me this process and I did it daily one summer.

777
00:42:47,780 --> 00:42:51,780
I think it was 1983. I'll never forget. The neighbors didn't like it.

778
00:42:51,780 --> 00:43:01,780
I was living in an apartment and the neighbors didn't like hearing the Liszt Sonata every morning, so I'd get broomsticks on the door on the wall.

779
00:43:01,780 --> 00:43:04,780
I do feel sorry for neighbors who have to listen to pianists practice.

780
00:43:04,780 --> 00:43:14,780
But anyway, you know, after the first couple of days, I didn't notice any improvement at all. But I trusted this, she told me, by day five, day six.

781
00:43:14,780 --> 00:43:20,780
Wow, this piece is getting shorter. This piece is getting easier. I can hold this piece in the palm of my hand.

782
00:43:20,780 --> 00:43:28,780
And after about a week of doing it, she told me the next stage, which was to play it through twice in a row in one sitting.

783
00:43:28,780 --> 00:43:38,780
And she told me about the Richter story. The Richter story was because she was a classmate or certainly they studied with the same teacher, Neuhaus.

784
00:43:38,780 --> 00:43:43,780
Richter would play through his piece or his program ten times in a row without stopping.

785
00:43:43,780 --> 00:43:51,780
Now, I don't recommend that because we're living in an age where we've got injuries, problems, and, you know, that's not good for the body to do that.

786
00:43:51,780 --> 00:44:01,780
But I think what he would probably do would be to play it through fully once and then mark, just mark it through the second time, like a singer would do, you know, under the breath.

787
00:44:01,780 --> 00:44:12,780
Yeah. And so what you've got then is something, a product at the end of that, which has been fully seasoned, stamina like you wouldn't believe.

788
00:44:12,780 --> 00:44:23,780
And with obviously everything has a shadow side. So the shadow side of that would be overplaying, overuse. And unless you were free of injury or free of tension, that could cause problems.

789
00:44:23,780 --> 00:44:28,780
I never had any such problems touch wood. Knock on wood, sorry.

790
00:44:28,780 --> 00:44:37,780
So, but this was the rigor of the practicing a performance, getting ready for a performance, which I learned from her.

791
00:44:37,780 --> 00:44:46,780
So you mentioned so back to back. So you just do the whole program from the beginning up to the end and then do it all over again.

792
00:44:46,780 --> 00:44:52,780
Yes. Now I never managed to do it more than two or three times, but Richter apparently ten times in a row.

793
00:44:52,780 --> 00:44:58,780
So let's say after if you were to text about half an hour to play no bathroom breaks or anything.

794
00:44:58,780 --> 00:45:03,780
So if you're doing it ten times, you're sitting there for five hours. Not very healthy, actually.

795
00:45:03,780 --> 00:45:12,780
Right. Yeah. Not recommend. Oh, no. So you don't recommend? No, I don't actually.

796
00:45:12,780 --> 00:45:20,780
I'm just using it as an illustration of the rigor that some pianists of that generation would go through.

797
00:45:20,780 --> 00:45:30,780
See, when a master pianist comes out onto the stage to perform, everything looks so effortless and so easy because it is.

798
00:45:30,780 --> 00:45:36,780
But what they don't what the average audience member doesn't appreciate is what's gone into that.

799
00:45:36,780 --> 00:45:46,780
There's a wonderful meme of iceberg where the tip of the iceberg is showing through the top of the waves and then the underneath.

800
00:45:46,780 --> 00:45:53,780
Oh, I see. I've let off all sorts of balloons as I did that. The part of the iceberg is under the sea.

801
00:45:53,780 --> 00:46:02,780
So this represents what the audience sees the tip of the iceberg and this represents what the work that's gone into it along the route.

802
00:46:02,780 --> 00:46:06,780
That's why it looks it's not effortless, of course. Yeah, makes sense.

803
00:46:06,780 --> 00:46:15,780
You know, I've been fortunately I'm teaching gifted students quite a bit before the last several years.

804
00:46:15,780 --> 00:46:23,780
And that's I actually started watching your videos more and learned about different ways of practicing.

805
00:46:23,780 --> 00:46:28,780
And that's why I really wanted to invite you to talk about all these things.

806
00:46:28,780 --> 00:46:36,780
And then but when it comes to teaching them how to practice for the performance, we do so many different ways.

807
00:46:36,780 --> 00:46:42,780
And, you know, play for this person, play for your friends and creative ways.

808
00:46:42,780 --> 00:46:48,780
And we do that. But you're just the story that you shared.

809
00:46:48,780 --> 00:46:54,780
Although I'm not going to make my students do to performance. Once is enough.

810
00:46:54,780 --> 00:47:02,780
But it really helps. I understand they have to go through the program like one week of doing that every day.

811
00:47:02,780 --> 00:47:09,780
Even that really helps. And then taking notes afterwards and then do the spot cleaning you mentioned.

812
00:47:09,780 --> 00:47:17,780
Yes. Yeah. Yes. I had a student a little while back who was a very serious player, very serious and studious.

813
00:47:17,780 --> 00:47:23,780
And she was preparing for her grade eight. I don't know if you know about the ABRSM exam system.

814
00:47:23,780 --> 00:47:29,780
Yes, I'm familiar. Yes. OK. So she was preparing for her grade eight and she'd learned all the pieces very thoroughly.

815
00:47:29,780 --> 00:47:35,780
And she came for a lesson and I said, right, let's have all three pieces just like you're going to have to do in the exam.

816
00:47:35,780 --> 00:47:40,780
And I think it was the first time that she played through all pieces back to back.

817
00:47:40,780 --> 00:47:45,780
So afterwards she was very disappointed and I could see why she was disappointed.

818
00:47:45,780 --> 00:47:48,780
First of all, I could see that she was disappointed and I could see why.

819
00:47:48,780 --> 00:47:52,780
And I said, Anna, I've got a little secret here for you now. What you're going to do is.

820
00:47:52,780 --> 00:47:57,780
And I explained the day by day playing through the whole thing day by day.

821
00:47:57,780 --> 00:48:02,780
And I said, you won't notice any improvement in the first couple of days, but trust me.

822
00:48:02,780 --> 00:48:06,780
And so, OK, she went away. She was highly intelligent. She knew what she had to do.

823
00:48:06,780 --> 00:48:11,780
She came back the next week. And as I opened the door to her, she was beaming.

824
00:48:11,780 --> 00:48:14,780
She was absolutely glowing with delight.

825
00:48:14,780 --> 00:48:20,780
And I could sense from that glowing smile that what I had shown her had worked for her.

826
00:48:20,780 --> 00:48:29,780
And she was playing the three pieces absolutely wonderfully at the end of the week of doing that training.

827
00:48:29,780 --> 00:48:37,780
But the other thing that Nina used to get us to do and funnily enough, a voice teacher who I used to play for in New York when I was a student did the same thing.

828
00:48:37,780 --> 00:48:50,780
So just before a performance, he would, Nina and the voice teacher would make the student have three practice run throughs in front of a small audience, preferably on bad pianos.

829
00:48:50,780 --> 00:48:56,780
Because we get so spoiled by having always beautiful timeways to perform on.

830
00:48:56,780 --> 00:49:04,780
So you can get an upright, the pedal has to work, but it doesn't matter if it's not a particularly distinguished instrument.

831
00:49:04,780 --> 00:49:10,780
And just being able to negotiate an instrument that's not perhaps optimal.

832
00:49:10,780 --> 00:49:18,780
And you're dealing with the anxiety of being in a different place and having people listen to you.

833
00:49:18,780 --> 00:49:24,780
And that, again, is part of the procedure for performance preparation.

834
00:49:24,780 --> 00:49:28,780
You can't just take it out of the practice room and stick it on the road.

835
00:49:28,780 --> 00:49:32,780
It's got to go through a seasoning process in the way.

836
00:49:32,780 --> 00:49:39,780
Sure. And then I'm trying to do in the creative ways to really teach them that too.

837
00:49:39,780 --> 00:49:47,780
You've got to get out of your comfortable practice room and then experience the real life-like performance.

838
00:49:47,780 --> 00:49:51,780
Yeah, absolutely. And I've got this little thing I developed a while back.

839
00:49:51,780 --> 00:49:54,780
Do you have, you probably have your own equivalent.

840
00:49:54,780 --> 00:49:57,780
Here we've got something called Britain's Got Talent. Do you know that?

841
00:49:57,780 --> 00:50:00,780
Oh, yeah, yeah. Talent show. Maybe it's America.

842
00:50:00,780 --> 00:50:03,780
We have the American version. America's Got Talent, yes.

843
00:50:03,780 --> 00:50:12,780
OK, so you've got three people who are judges and the person comes out and they do their act and then the judges give their feedback.

844
00:50:12,780 --> 00:50:19,780
So what I did for the kids, at that point I was teaching more kids, was I made a little version of that.

845
00:50:19,780 --> 00:50:24,780
Whereby the student came up with their own judges.

846
00:50:24,780 --> 00:50:29,780
So I said, you've got a judge, a judge, B judge, C. Who do you want for judge A?

847
00:50:29,780 --> 00:50:33,780
And they usually say, I want granny. So because granny is always kind to them.

848
00:50:33,780 --> 00:50:37,780
You know, granny gives them money and granny gives them sweeties and things.

849
00:50:37,780 --> 00:50:42,780
So granny is judge A and then often they'll choose some authority figure from school.

850
00:50:42,780 --> 00:50:48,780
Maybe their their form teacher at school goes in as A and then somebody else's seat.

851
00:50:48,780 --> 00:50:55,780
So then they do their play through and from their own perspective, they speak through each judge.

852
00:50:55,780 --> 00:50:58,780
So they write a few little comments, what judge A would say.

853
00:50:58,780 --> 00:51:02,780
Granny says it's really very good and it'll be fantastic on the day.

854
00:51:02,780 --> 00:51:05,780
Maybe I just need to do a little bit more practice at the end.

855
00:51:05,780 --> 00:51:10,780
And then judge B, who's the school teacher, said, yes, it's coming nicely,

856
00:51:10,780 --> 00:51:15,780
but it needs a little bit of work just to make it even more tidy, whatever it whatever it is.

857
00:51:15,780 --> 00:51:18,780
And these are not my words.

858
00:51:18,780 --> 00:51:24,780
These are the students words as seen through these three judges of their own making.

859
00:51:24,780 --> 00:51:29,780
So there's no way that the teacher is actually influencing that.

860
00:51:29,780 --> 00:51:33,780
It's coming from within. And I found that they love doing that.

861
00:51:33,780 --> 00:51:40,780
And they often find that that helps them a lot as you know, to progress for themselves.

862
00:51:40,780 --> 00:51:43,780
Yeah, people telling them what to do. Right.

863
00:51:43,780 --> 00:51:48,780
But that approach, once again, going back to student centered approach is so important

864
00:51:48,780 --> 00:51:57,780
because the integration of what they are learning, you know, in the practical ways is so important.

865
00:51:57,780 --> 00:52:03,780
But thank you for sharing all these stories and also practical tools.

866
00:52:03,780 --> 00:52:07,780
They're really helpful for me.

867
00:52:07,780 --> 00:52:13,780
And as well as I'm sure for those who are listening, who have been teaching for quite some time

868
00:52:13,780 --> 00:52:19,780
and then really trying to find the ways to, you know, make improvements in their teaching as well.

869
00:52:19,780 --> 00:52:27,780
So now I want to even go further into this practicality, which is piano technique, which is so important now.

870
00:52:27,780 --> 00:52:30,780
Yes, it's a big subject. I know. I know.

871
00:52:30,780 --> 00:52:31,780
Huge.

872
00:52:31,780 --> 00:52:40,780
Huge. So instead of maybe getting into the nitty gritty of practical things, maybe philosophy would be great.

873
00:52:40,780 --> 00:52:45,780
So, I mean, there are so many piano technique school of techniques out there.

874
00:52:45,780 --> 00:52:53,780
Yeah, I'm very, very interested to know, because when I watch your videos,

875
00:52:53,780 --> 00:53:02,780
they are really, really high quality production. And I truly, truly appreciate.

876
00:53:02,780 --> 00:53:13,780
Now, you don't just go with one school of piano technique or, you know, taking a technical book.

877
00:53:13,780 --> 00:53:18,780
You just have you have such an extensive knowledge of piano technique out there.

878
00:53:18,780 --> 00:53:24,780
You've studied each one of them. So plus your neuroscientific insights,

879
00:53:24,780 --> 00:53:30,780
which you mentioned that you're interested in and you're working with a neuroscientist and which is amazing.

880
00:53:30,780 --> 00:53:34,780
So, yeah, I don't know. I want to know what's going on.

881
00:53:34,780 --> 00:53:41,780
So how do you define piano technique and what do you see as ultimate purpose in serving both the music and the performer?

882
00:53:41,780 --> 00:53:45,780
Wow. OK, let me see if I can dig into that a bit.

883
00:53:45,780 --> 00:53:54,780
Yeah, piano techniques plural, because the you know, I don't believe in a one size fits all approach to piano technique.

884
00:53:54,780 --> 00:54:01,780
You only have to look at the great pianists who are playing to see that the masters,

885
00:54:01,780 --> 00:54:07,780
a mastery of the piano can come from any number of different national schools of playing.

886
00:54:07,780 --> 00:54:15,780
So you've got the French school, which is certainly in the old days had a kind of more of a fixation on finger technique.

887
00:54:15,780 --> 00:54:22,780
And then you've got the Russian school, which he was obsessed with sound and usually big sound.

888
00:54:22,780 --> 00:54:29,780
So lots of arm. And then you've got various other more modern techniques, which are all fantastic in themselves.

889
00:54:29,780 --> 00:54:35,780
And, you know, there are certain precepts, I think, that come out of it.

890
00:54:35,780 --> 00:54:41,780
To understand these, we've got to go back a little bit into the history of piano teaching.

891
00:54:41,780 --> 00:54:51,780
When you think about the earliest piano teachers with Clementi, they were they were teaching on the new piano,

892
00:54:51,780 --> 00:54:54,780
the new piano, which was just coming out of the harpsichord.

893
00:54:54,780 --> 00:55:00,780
So they taught using a harpsichord technique, which is now you will get some people who will disagree with this.

894
00:55:00,780 --> 00:55:07,780
But basically, you can't use any arm weight or any movement into the key from the arm or wrist on the harpsichord.

895
00:55:07,780 --> 00:55:15,780
It looks like it's mostly fingers, although you could argue that there would be micro movements of, you know,

896
00:55:15,780 --> 00:55:19,780
rotational movements or whatever else would be involved in that.

897
00:55:19,780 --> 00:55:23,780
But basically, the technique is much more from the finger.

898
00:55:23,780 --> 00:55:26,780
So what do Czerny and Clementi do?

899
00:55:26,780 --> 00:55:35,780
They formulate a system of playing the keyboards that they had, which made sense to the keyboard that they had, you know.

900
00:55:35,780 --> 00:55:37,780
The elbows were in by the side.

901
00:55:37,780 --> 00:55:44,780
Well, you could do that because if you you could reach the edges of the you can't see me, but you could reach usually F to F.

902
00:55:44,780 --> 00:55:47,780
You can reach that with your elbows in by your side.

903
00:55:47,780 --> 00:55:50,780
You could do most stuff with the fingers.

904
00:55:50,780 --> 00:55:52,780
And that's how they were trained.

905
00:55:52,780 --> 00:55:58,780
And then as the pianos began to get a little heavier, the action was getting a little heavier.

906
00:55:58,780 --> 00:56:00,780
The keyboard was getting a little longer.

907
00:56:00,780 --> 00:56:09,780
I'm not sure if this was Czerny possibly, but he invented it could have been Clementi invented a technique called little hammers,

908
00:56:09,780 --> 00:56:13,780
which was the actions getting a bit heavier.

909
00:56:13,780 --> 00:56:16,780
We need to strengthen the fingers. Well, they didn't know anything about neuroscience.

910
00:56:16,780 --> 00:56:19,780
They didn't know anything about anatomy.

911
00:56:19,780 --> 00:56:21,780
This book hadn't yet come out.

912
00:56:21,780 --> 00:56:22,780
I'm going to flash this on the screen.

913
00:56:22,780 --> 00:56:24,780
Do you know the Thomas Mark?

914
00:56:24,780 --> 00:56:27,780
What every pianist needs to know about the body?

915
00:56:27,780 --> 00:56:30,780
Well, I highly recommend that book.

916
00:56:30,780 --> 00:56:40,780
So what happened was that they they thought sensible, you know, well, let's lift the finger high and lift each finger high.

917
00:56:40,780 --> 00:56:46,780
And then, you know, will there but there will strengthen the fingers that maybe that worked for a little bit for a while.

918
00:56:46,780 --> 00:56:55,780
But trouble was that that idea went far beyond its expiration date and is still being taught now.

919
00:56:55,780 --> 00:56:56,780
That's the problem with it.

920
00:56:56,780 --> 00:57:02,780
It's still being taught as the way to play, which is to lift the fingers high and with precision.

921
00:57:02,780 --> 00:57:04,780
Now, why is it still being taught now?

922
00:57:04,780 --> 00:57:12,780
Partly because somebody's some Mr. X's teacher taught that because their teacher taught them that.

923
00:57:12,780 --> 00:57:18,780
And so you trace it back to, you know, Adam and Eve or Clemente and Cheney.

924
00:57:18,780 --> 00:57:22,780
It's out of respect for one's elders, out of respect for tradition.

925
00:57:22,780 --> 00:57:25,780
So it's difficult to break with tradition.

926
00:57:25,780 --> 00:57:33,780
Not only that, but also if you go to any music shop now, any music store and you let's say you ask the assistant, I've got weak fingers.

927
00:57:33,780 --> 00:57:35,780
I play the piano, got weak fingers.

928
00:57:35,780 --> 00:57:36,780
What would you recommend?

929
00:57:36,780 --> 00:57:40,780
Chances are they'll throw you a book of Hannon.

930
00:57:40,780 --> 00:57:54,780
Right. So you open the Hannon and you see the instructions that you see there are to do with old school lifting fingers, which died out or should have died out a century ago more.

931
00:57:54,780 --> 00:57:59,780
And yet there it is in black and white, a brand new book that tells them to lift the fingers high and with precision.

932
00:57:59,780 --> 00:58:01,780
So what do they do?

933
00:58:01,780 --> 00:58:06,780
They sit there and they lift their fingers up like this and they feel virtuous doing so.

934
00:58:06,780 --> 00:58:12,780
But they they don't realize that unless they're doing that, those Hannon exercises in particular ways.

935
00:58:12,780 --> 00:58:18,780
Now there are ways of doing them that can be, I don't use them, but they can be helpful.

936
00:58:18,780 --> 00:58:20,780
Let's say you take exercise number one.

937
00:58:20,780 --> 00:58:23,780
I'll do it on the back of my hand and you do it the wrong way.

938
00:58:23,780 --> 00:58:24,780
That's going to do you harm.

939
00:58:24,780 --> 00:58:28,780
But if you do it with a little bit of lateral adjustment, it can do you good.

940
00:58:28,780 --> 00:58:31,780
If you do it with a wrist circle like this, perfectly fine.

941
00:58:31,780 --> 00:58:33,780
It's just a pattern of notes.

942
00:58:33,780 --> 00:58:43,780
It's an innocuous pattern of notes that moves from one position to the other and actually can be very useful in teaching, provided you don't do what it says on the tin.

943
00:58:43,780 --> 00:58:49,780
So, you know, I've now matted on for so long I've forgotten the first part of your question.

944
00:58:49,780 --> 00:58:53,780
But I think what a lot of people are doing is teaching old school technique.

945
00:58:53,780 --> 00:58:55,780
Oh, yeah, I know. I'm now back on track.

946
00:58:55,780 --> 00:59:03,780
So what we've learned, what we've learned, I think, is the buzzword alignment.

947
00:59:03,780 --> 00:59:09,780
But even before that, nothing in the finger without the arm, the involvement of the arm and nothing in the arm without the finger.

948
00:59:09,780 --> 00:59:16,780
So it's like a combination of fingers and arm together, this together.

949
00:59:16,780 --> 00:59:20,780
This, some people say, no, it's only up to the elbow.

950
00:59:20,780 --> 00:59:26,780
Others, oh, it's the shoulder, it's the back, and then you'll get people screaming and shouting each other in disagreement.

951
00:59:26,780 --> 00:59:32,780
So, you know, you're never going to get, you know, everybody agreeing on this thing.

952
00:59:32,780 --> 00:59:39,780
But the basic principles, I think, are involvement of the arm.

953
00:59:39,780 --> 00:59:49,780
Be that through lateral adjustments of the wrist so that if I'm playing my, let's say I'm playing a five finger position, I and I play in thumb alignment like this.

954
00:59:49,780 --> 00:59:55,780
It's great for fingers one, two, three, but it fingers four and five feel weak.

955
00:59:55,780 --> 01:00:00,780
Actually had an example of somebody bringing in something recently.

956
01:00:00,780 --> 01:00:07,780
Beta, the note was 14, number one, E major development section where the left hand has, can you place it?

957
01:00:07,780 --> 01:00:18,780
The left hand has some common chords that are broken up, sort of Albert, not Alberti style, but, you know, from the lowest note to the highest note and repeating, repeating.

958
01:00:18,780 --> 01:00:26,780
And before she even started, she said, I'm going to need you to show me some exercises to improve the strength of my fourth and fifth fingers, which are very weak.

959
01:00:26,780 --> 01:00:34,780
And I smiled inwardly and asked her to play the spot and she played it and she was fixed in thumb alignment.

960
01:00:34,780 --> 01:00:37,780
And of course, five and four are going to feel weak.

961
01:00:37,780 --> 01:00:39,780
So I said, let's just see if we can free this up a little bit.

962
01:00:39,780 --> 01:00:45,780
And I just got her to move laterally and it was like, wow, I asked her, does your fourth finger feel weak now?

963
01:00:45,780 --> 01:00:50,780
No, no, because she was the arm was behind that finger as she was playing it.

964
01:00:50,780 --> 01:00:52,780
Then we explored wrist circles.

965
01:00:52,780 --> 01:00:55,780
Then we explored some rotational movements.

966
01:00:55,780 --> 01:01:06,780
And then we I asked her to sort of go back and noodle with those ideas and see if her body would come up with a way of assimilating all of that that made made sense for her.

967
01:01:06,780 --> 01:01:13,780
You know, like a pinch of this, a little bit of that level teaspoon of this and her body then coordinated.

968
01:01:13,780 --> 01:01:17,780
So by the time she came back next week, it was flowing beautifully.

969
01:01:17,780 --> 01:01:19,780
It was no problem with weakness in the finger.

970
01:01:19,780 --> 01:01:24,780
But if I hadn't challenged that, I would have looked at her and said, yes, your fourth finger is weak.

971
01:01:24,780 --> 01:01:33,780
Let's do Hannon, which would have been completely the wrong thing to have told her to do and wouldn't have helped her at all.

972
01:01:33,780 --> 01:01:38,780
So, you know, the idea of alignment and what other things are bad?

973
01:01:38,780 --> 01:01:45,780
Well, unhelpful stretching out, you know, when people do this, they, you know, you've seen this, I'm sure.

974
01:01:45,780 --> 01:01:49,780
So move, move the forearm to the place.

975
01:01:49,780 --> 01:01:52,780
And certainly we're not lifting fingers up like this.

976
01:01:52,780 --> 01:01:54,780
What else?

977
01:01:54,780 --> 01:02:02,780
You know, and just this this this idea that we have to do whole loads of dry and boring exercises, which we don't.

978
01:02:02,780 --> 01:02:11,780
I mean, I grew up Hannon and Cheney and none of them really.

979
01:02:11,780 --> 01:02:13,780
I don't know. Did it work? I'm not sure.

980
01:02:13,780 --> 01:02:27,780
But I had to do it. And then there's like a whole hierarchy of, you know, start with Hannon and then do Cheney this opus and that, you know, you have to get to this Cheney number 60, like volume of 60.

981
01:02:27,780 --> 01:02:32,780
That's the highest. And after that, finally, you're going to be able to play Chopin etude.

982
01:02:32,780 --> 01:02:42,780
But by the time you're like old, older, that, you know, you could have done Chopin etude much earlier, you know, and then learn from the masterpiece.

983
01:02:42,780 --> 01:02:44,780
Right. Exactly.

984
01:02:44,780 --> 01:02:55,780
And you see, it's a fallacy to assume that or to believe that let's say you're doing whole loads of octave exercises, you know, this type of octave, that type of octave.

985
01:02:55,780 --> 01:03:00,780
And then you come to, let's say, the Chopin octave etude.

986
01:03:00,780 --> 01:03:07,780
Marta Argrich even said the same thing. She never did any exercises. And you may say, well, she's a special case. She certainly is.

987
01:03:07,780 --> 01:03:19,780
She's an extraordinarily special case. But she did say that, you know, you could do all the octave exercises in the world when you come to this particular octave passage in this piece, you have to organize it from scratch.

988
01:03:19,780 --> 01:03:25,780
You can't transfer those skills. You can't assume that you can transfer those skills across.

989
01:03:25,780 --> 01:03:33,780
You know who I would, what I would recommend is a wonderful book that I've just finished reading by Walter Ponce, P-O-N-C-E.

990
01:03:33,780 --> 01:03:41,780
I apologize to him for mispronouncing his name, but it's called The Tyranny of Tradition in Piano Teaching.

991
01:03:41,780 --> 01:03:47,780
You must get him on here, you hear me? Get him on your podcast.

992
01:03:47,780 --> 01:03:54,780
He's very much on the other end of, you know, don't, don't, you don't need to do these things.

993
01:03:54,780 --> 01:04:06,780
Or you could take a more of a middle path. You could say, as I have done, I do, maybe a little bit by way of studies and exercises for a particular reason.

994
01:04:06,780 --> 01:04:14,780
And find good ones. I prefer Moskovsky actually than Czerny. Czerny can be very dry, boring.

995
01:04:14,780 --> 01:04:21,780
And the trouble is the material, if the material is not engaging, who's going to want to practice it?

996
01:04:21,780 --> 01:04:23,780
You know?

997
01:04:23,780 --> 01:04:29,780
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't do Czerny anymore. But yeah, so, there's so much to talk about.

998
01:04:29,780 --> 01:04:40,780
So I learned this technique as a young adult. It's just basically using arm weight to play the piano, which helped me tremendously.

999
01:04:40,780 --> 01:04:47,780
Because, you know, after going through Hannon and everything, that was a groundbreaking thing.

1000
01:04:47,780 --> 01:04:58,780
Now, but what happened was, this technique, I believe, is made for someone petite, particularly.

1001
01:04:58,780 --> 01:05:10,780
Yeah, so I am 170 centimeter tall, 172 centimeter tall, which is 5'8 in the United States. So I'm tall.

1002
01:05:10,780 --> 01:05:19,780
And then, so, but I was told to sit a little higher. So the elbow has to come a little higher than the keys.

1003
01:05:19,780 --> 01:05:28,780
So basically, almost like it looks like Rubinstein would play, like he would play like so. But it just didn't work for me.

1004
01:05:28,780 --> 01:05:40,780
And it was a journey of really discovery. And then I had a privilege of learning from Eduard Salim, who is the last student of Horowitz.

1005
01:05:40,780 --> 01:05:51,780
And he really was much later in my life, but taught me about certain ways to play. And then it really clicked me. I'm not saying I'm this genius and I understand everything.

1006
01:05:51,780 --> 01:06:00,780
No, that's not what I mean. But physique wise, I'm tall, I have long fingers. So it made sense the way he showed me.

1007
01:06:00,780 --> 01:06:11,780
But body weight obviously helped. And I did a tremendous amount of spending using body weight and, you know, circular motion, in and out motion.

1008
01:06:11,780 --> 01:06:23,780
Yes. And using entire upper body, especially the arm to play the piano. But just using arm to learning arm motion actually doesn't work either. Right.

1009
01:06:23,780 --> 01:06:32,780
No, no. So if you go back to the history of piano teaching, so the finger school was what we call the finger school, the Czerny-Klementy,

1010
01:06:32,780 --> 01:06:43,780
then they realized that didn't work with the, it was the Stuttgart Piano School, I think somewhere around the 1850s, Leibert and Stark, were very earnest people.

1011
01:06:43,780 --> 01:06:54,780
But they took the finger idea to its illogical conclusion, all these contraptions that you were supposed to use to strengthen the fingers, you know.

1012
01:06:54,780 --> 01:07:04,780
Mechanical devices, the handrail, which was totally misguided. And of course, everybody was reporting injuries and it was a total disaster.

1013
01:07:04,780 --> 01:07:13,780
And then that fizzled out. And then you get the arm weight school where people sort of flopped around the keyboard with no fingers at all.

1014
01:07:13,780 --> 01:07:21,780
That didn't work either. And then you get you start to get schools of piano teaching, piano pedagogy, where things got started to get combined.

1015
01:07:21,780 --> 01:07:32,780
So fingers and arm, of course, but not just that, the imagination, the central nervous system, all of these elements that had been sort of separated off.

1016
01:07:32,780 --> 01:07:42,780
And now starting to be incorporated. And I think modern piano technique is very much geared toward the modern instrument.

1017
01:07:42,780 --> 01:07:53,780
Finally, it's caught up. I'd love to, can I read you a tiny little thing from, because can I read you from the, is this allowed on copyright?

1018
01:07:53,780 --> 01:07:55,780
The Thomas Mark?

1019
01:07:55,780 --> 01:07:57,780
I think so. Go for it.

1020
01:07:57,780 --> 01:08:07,780
Yeah. And so it's a paragraph. I'll read it. So saying that we play the piano with our fingers is like saying that we run with our feet.

1021
01:08:07,780 --> 01:08:12,780
The fingers move when we play the piano and they are the only parts of the upper body that touch the piano.

1022
01:08:12,780 --> 01:08:17,780
Similarly, our feet move when we run and are the only parts that touch the ground.

1023
01:08:17,780 --> 01:08:25,780
But a runner who tried to improve his running by keeping his legs motionless and doing foot exercises would be ridiculous.

1024
01:08:25,780 --> 01:08:31,780
He is similar to a pianist who keeps his arms motionless and exercises his fingers.

1025
01:08:31,780 --> 01:08:35,780
Although what the pianist does has the sanction of tradition.

1026
01:08:35,780 --> 01:08:41,780
We play the piano just as we run by complex coordinated movements of our whole bodies.

1027
01:08:41,780 --> 01:08:44,780
I love that. I think that just sums it up beautifully.

1028
01:08:44,780 --> 01:08:48,780
Can you tell us again, show us again the book?

1029
01:08:48,780 --> 01:08:56,780
Yes. So it's by Thomas Mark and it's called What Every Pianist Needs to Know About the Body. You can get it in the next.

1030
01:08:56,780 --> 01:09:02,780
If you go on Amazon, you can get it by tomorrow morning. It's published by GIA Publications, Inc.

1031
01:09:02,780 --> 01:09:06,780
And it looks like that. Yeah.

1032
01:09:06,780 --> 01:09:08,780
Right. Great.

1033
01:09:08,780 --> 01:09:18,780
So, yeah. So that's a book I highly recommend people look at because it's also got a section on there for organists.

1034
01:09:18,780 --> 01:09:29,780
Because we're still getting, I'm sure you're getting the same, people coming through the door with fingers that just operate from like little pistons from the end.

1035
01:09:29,780 --> 01:09:33,780
You mentioned in and out movements. I mean, that for me is so vital.

1036
01:09:33,780 --> 01:09:36,780
You know, we've got long fingers and short fingers.

1037
01:09:36,780 --> 01:09:44,780
I had a colleague who is a very famous celebrated concert pianist. I won't mention his name, who was injured for most of his career.

1038
01:09:44,780 --> 01:09:50,780
And he would play with the big conductors. We're talking about, you know, a couple of generations back.

1039
01:09:50,780 --> 01:09:56,780
And he would be in the green room with towels wrapped around him and poor soul, you know.

1040
01:09:56,780 --> 01:10:03,780
And then he would, the call would come, he'd take the towels off, go and play his concerto magnificently, I gather.

1041
01:10:03,780 --> 01:10:14,780
And then, you know, put his towels back on. And then he told me one day, he said, I had a sudden realization about the piano keyboard and that I hadn't ever seen before.

1042
01:10:14,780 --> 01:10:21,780
And I thought, what could it be, you know, somebody at the pinnacle of the career suddenly having a realization about the piano keyboard?

1043
01:10:21,780 --> 01:10:27,780
And I couldn't wait to hear what it was. I was thinking it was going to be something amazingly, you know, arcane.

1044
01:10:27,780 --> 01:10:33,780
But he said, I suddenly realized that the black keys were higher up and further away.

1045
01:10:33,780 --> 01:10:44,780
I mean, from there he was able to change his whole technique because he was rooting for the black keys, causing tension rather than moving up.

1046
01:10:44,780 --> 01:10:53,780
You know, very simple, really. But if your training has told you otherwise, you'd be going against your training to move up and in, you know.

1047
01:10:53,780 --> 01:11:00,780
I have so much thought on that. So I've learned all that, you know, to adjust your position, right?

1048
01:11:00,780 --> 01:11:07,780
So instead of stretching your fingers to reach for, you know, black keys or right in, twist your wrist.

1049
01:11:07,780 --> 01:11:17,780
Although Chopin, sometimes, you know, he, Eduardo's taught me his way of playing is like you kind of have to twist your wrist to do it.

1050
01:11:17,780 --> 01:11:25,780
But it's not really. Yeah, because especially like Etude Opus 10, number two, A minor, derriere.

1051
01:11:25,780 --> 01:11:31,780
Annoying. Yeah. You kind of have to twist a little bit. It's so annoying that Etude. Anyway.

1052
01:11:31,780 --> 01:11:41,780
Well, so there's a difference between something where let's say there's a little adjustment that lasts for a nanosecond and then it comes back into alignment.

1053
01:11:41,780 --> 01:11:51,780
That's fine. It's a little bit like the wrist. Now, I know there are some schools of piano teaching that forbid this, but the Russian school and there's no slouches in the Russian school.

1054
01:11:51,780 --> 01:11:57,780
Go through the wrist like this. So at that moment, the wrist is like I can't even do it at that moment.

1055
01:11:57,780 --> 01:12:02,780
The wrist may be lower, but it comes immediately back up so that it's not fixed in a position.

1056
01:12:02,780 --> 01:12:06,780
I think that's the danger is when you fix in a position.

1057
01:12:06,780 --> 01:12:11,780
So there's bound to be moments when there's a little bit of, you know, yeah, I would.

1058
01:12:11,780 --> 01:12:18,780
Now, then in this new school, so we have done research, you know, so many of us have done research.

1059
01:12:18,780 --> 01:12:30,780
So the blend of, you know, not limited to finger movements, but our movement, but not just doing this arm balance, arm movement, arm weight thing.

1060
01:12:30,780 --> 01:12:39,780
But now, so in the modern time, blending all these, what would be the great exercises to do?

1061
01:12:39,780 --> 01:12:45,780
Or should we just do the technical things from the literature, directly from the literature?

1062
01:12:45,780 --> 01:12:59,780
Wow. Yeah, you see, I'm not a great believer in whole loads of exercises and studies, unless there are artists, art studies,

1063
01:12:59,780 --> 01:13:05,780
like the shop on the list or something like the Moskovsky, which, you know, I forgot the Opus number.

1064
01:13:05,780 --> 01:13:07,780
I could probably reach for them.

1065
01:13:07,780 --> 01:13:10,780
Opus 70 something or 90.

1066
01:13:10,780 --> 01:13:13,780
Yeah. I wonder if I can reach for them.

1067
01:13:13,780 --> 01:13:16,780
Yes, I well, I don't want to go.

1068
01:13:16,780 --> 01:13:21,780
Please take your time. Please take your time to reach for them.

1069
01:13:21,780 --> 01:13:31,780
Or S, these are all alphabetized here. No, I think I'd have to stand up. What's that? That's still Mozart. My arms aren't quite long enough to reach Moskovsky.

1070
01:13:31,780 --> 01:13:35,780
I think you know the ones I mean, there's two, two steps.

1071
01:13:35,780 --> 01:13:37,780
Is it the shorter ones?

1072
01:13:37,780 --> 01:13:39,780
Yes, the shorter ones.

1073
01:13:39,780 --> 01:13:51,780
But the shorter ones would make a very good substitute for the sort of more advanced, cheney ones or not even more advanced, intermediate and up.

1074
01:13:51,780 --> 01:14:00,780
I've got in front of me something that I like to do, which is, I don't know if this is visible here, Rudolf Gans.

1075
01:14:00,780 --> 01:14:07,780
Now, OK, you have to be terribly careful with these. You can only get them on IMSLP, a Petrucci Library.

1076
01:14:07,780 --> 01:14:12,780
You can't buy them, but you can, you know, scan them. And I got these printed off.

1077
01:14:12,780 --> 01:14:22,780
There's one particular one that comes from Blanchet, Ami Blanchet, 36, that I have been doing for a while.

1078
01:14:22,780 --> 01:14:29,780
And to warm up, just to warm up in the first thing in the morning, you know, when I want to practice, there's several things I would do to warm up this.

1079
01:14:29,780 --> 01:14:34,780
I can show you a little bit. It's if you should find this PDF and you can, you can get it.

1080
01:14:34,780 --> 01:14:42,780
It's on page 36. And I saw, interestingly, I saw Marc-André Hamelin use this and discuss this and talk about it.

1081
01:14:42,780 --> 01:14:48,780
So you could probably search for him on YouTube. And he likes to do this. It's this.

1082
01:14:48,780 --> 01:14:56,780
So it's it's very non-stretchy, but it's got it involves each hand in two parts.

1083
01:14:56,780 --> 01:15:05,780
So you've got five, four, three, five, four, three, five, four, three, and you've got one, two, one, two underneath it in note values that are half.

1084
01:15:05,780 --> 01:15:10,780
So eights on the top, quarters underneath. And you have to think.

1085
01:15:10,780 --> 01:15:14,780
And but there's no stretching involved. There's no lifting of the fingers involved.

1086
01:15:14,780 --> 01:15:21,780
But it really is fantastic for setting the hand up if you just go out of bed and you want to warm up a bit.

1087
01:15:21,780 --> 01:15:26,780
So I believe in things like doing some chords. I love doing chords.

1088
01:15:26,780 --> 01:15:31,780
Nina used to get us to do this. Just go through the common chords in all their inversions.

1089
01:15:31,780 --> 01:15:37,780
And she was very insistent that the chords be fingers were engaged in the chords.

1090
01:15:37,780 --> 01:15:45,780
So there's a imagine I've got a chord under my hand here. I pluck the chord and then physically there's no tension at all.

1091
01:15:45,780 --> 01:15:53,780
So I release the tension and the effort rather immediately and then go through and then I can go very fast like this actually.

1092
01:15:53,780 --> 01:15:59,780
And then up two octaves, down two octaves major, up two octaves, down two octaves minor.

1093
01:15:59,780 --> 01:16:04,780
You can change the color of the sound. You can change the lengths.

1094
01:16:04,780 --> 01:16:08,780
So that I find incredibly wonderful for warming up.

1095
01:16:08,780 --> 01:16:18,780
I think they're doing huge amounts of finger exercises. I would never do finger exercises, although I do like my double thirds.

1096
01:16:18,780 --> 01:16:24,780
I do very much like my double thirds, but I issue a health warning with them.

1097
01:16:24,780 --> 01:16:35,780
Here's what this is interesting, because I remember observing one of Claudio Arau's students talking about something they call the wrist vibration of the wrist,

1098
01:16:35,780 --> 01:16:43,780
which is a very fast you probably can't even see it. So with the double thirds, what you'd first do would be to drop.

1099
01:16:43,780 --> 01:16:49,780
Notice that when I drop, I'm not dropping my wrist lower than level, so I'm starting a little higher.

1100
01:16:49,780 --> 01:16:54,780
So in each pair of thirds, not only am I dropping through my wrist, but I'm aligning through the wrist.

1101
01:16:54,780 --> 01:16:58,780
So there's a tiny little adjustment that goes through the wrist.

1102
01:16:58,780 --> 01:17:06,780
And then as I get faster, the movements get, I can't do it here, the movements get smaller and smaller until I feel like I'm vibrating.

1103
01:17:06,780 --> 01:17:16,780
And that way there's no effort at all. There's no finger effort at all, because again, nothing by arm without finger, nothing by finger without arm.

1104
01:17:16,780 --> 01:17:24,780
The arm, in this case, the rubberized wrist, is pulsating very, very quickly through to the fingers.

1105
01:17:24,780 --> 01:17:31,780
And I get this exhilarating feeling of being able to play fast and loud if I wanted to, double thirds.

1106
01:17:31,780 --> 01:17:38,780
Yes, and that is again something that I like to use as a warm up, because double thirds are great, aren't they?

1107
01:17:38,780 --> 01:17:44,780
You know, it's wonderful for coordinating the fingers within the hand.

1108
01:17:44,780 --> 01:17:51,780
So this, going back to this Blanchet exercise that you find in the Rudolf Gans set, does just that.

1109
01:17:51,780 --> 01:17:58,780
It's two things, two elements going on in the hand at the same time. I think that's more useful.

1110
01:17:58,780 --> 01:18:09,780
Yeah, I need to check. I'm asking all these questions because I truly, truly respect your expertise and the wide range of knowledge and your research.

1111
01:18:09,780 --> 01:18:17,780
So it's just endless. Anyway, then, you know, now I want to talk about piano technique and neuroscience, right?

1112
01:18:17,780 --> 01:18:27,780
So, okay, here we go. Now, when I was, I believe a couple months ago, we talked on the phone, discussing the content of this show, and I totally enjoyed it.

1113
01:18:27,780 --> 01:18:35,780
Even like that phone conversation in and of itself could become another episode.

1114
01:18:35,780 --> 01:18:40,780
Anyway, well, I didn't record it. So, oh well.

1115
01:18:40,780 --> 01:18:48,780
But you mentioned that the, oh, you know, you can be, so where does this, you think the physical tension come from?

1116
01:18:48,780 --> 01:18:57,780
I'm like, I don't know. Just, we just practice too much and then we get tight. But you said it's actually more mental?

1117
01:18:57,780 --> 01:19:10,780
Ah, I think there are two things to say about that. Tension can be physical and it manifests itself physically by tightened muscles or, you know, locked positions kind of thing.

1118
01:19:10,780 --> 01:19:21,780
But often it comes from the mind. The mind is fearful. I can give you a very good example of this, actually. Very good example. My own experience.

1119
01:19:21,780 --> 01:19:31,780
So, many years ago, I was, when I was a student at the Royal College of Music, my professor had assigned Lille Joyeuse of Debussy for me to learn.

1120
01:19:31,780 --> 01:19:36,780
And he said, let's hear that. And he gave me a date whenever it was that he wanted to hear it.

1121
01:19:36,780 --> 01:19:48,780
So, I diligently learned it. I was very, very diligent as a student. I like to think I still am, but, you know, I was very, very diligent in my practice and I wanted to please him.

1122
01:19:48,780 --> 01:20:00,780
I wanted to show him how, you know, what a good job we've done. So, anyway, I was playing it fine at home, you know, this whole thing about, but I can play it perfectly well at home.

1123
01:20:00,780 --> 01:20:11,780
Right. So, I go in for my lesson and give him the score and play and I'm so disappointed, you know. I'm so, it's nowhere near where it was the day before at home.

1124
01:20:11,780 --> 01:20:19,780
And I'm thinking, oh, there's something fundamentally wrong with my technique or there's something fundamentally wrong with me.

1125
01:20:19,780 --> 01:20:27,780
And he is very wise and a very kind teacher. You know, not every teacher is kind. He was very kind.

1126
01:20:27,780 --> 01:20:34,780
Now, he said to me, okay, Graham, I'd like you to play it again now. And I'd like you to try and make as many mistakes as you possibly can.

1127
01:20:34,780 --> 01:20:42,780
Try and, you know, fill it with wrong notes and splashes and slops and everything else. I was, oh, okay.

1128
01:20:42,780 --> 01:20:49,780
So then I played it again immediately with no practice or anything. All he had done was to flip a switch in my brain.

1129
01:20:49,780 --> 01:20:57,780
And I wouldn't say it was flawless. I wouldn't say it was recorded, you know, recording quality performance, but it was chalk and cheese.

1130
01:20:57,780 --> 01:21:04,780
I don't know if you have that expression in the US. Total contrast. One was physically tight and locked.

1131
01:21:04,780 --> 01:21:09,780
And a piano teacher was looking at me would say, oh, but you're not moving here or you're not doing this.

1132
01:21:09,780 --> 01:21:18,780
But the second version was free and enjoyable and effortless. And it was how I practiced. What was different?

1133
01:21:18,780 --> 01:21:27,780
Mindset. So with a fearful mindset, what happens is that the body is flooded with various chemicals.

1134
01:21:27,780 --> 01:21:39,780
I think it's adrenaline being one of them. Various other things that literally do take the blood supply away from the small muscles and give it to the legs and to that heart.

1135
01:21:39,780 --> 01:21:46,780
Because we need to run away from the tiger that we're afraid of. We're endowed with superhuman strength.

1136
01:21:46,780 --> 01:21:51,780
But not when it comes to playing the piano. It rather gets in the way of playing the piano.

1137
01:21:51,780 --> 01:22:00,780
So I experienced tightness in my muscles and stiffness, but it was because of the chemical that my brain had pumped out into my body.

1138
01:22:00,780 --> 01:22:16,780
So, you know, I will find that positive self-talk and positive talk from the teacher, both those can go a long way to alleviating some of the negative stuff.

1139
01:22:16,780 --> 01:22:21,780
You know, often teachers are just very unkind.

1140
01:22:21,780 --> 01:22:30,780
You know, I thought I told you before that that should be the you should do this fingering or whatever or no, no, no, no, the kind of thing.

1141
01:22:30,780 --> 01:22:38,780
Rather say to the student, I see you're still having a little problem with that. See if I can help you loosen that up or something.

1142
01:22:38,780 --> 01:22:50,780
In other words, the attitude of let's roll up our sleeves together and, you know, collaborate on sorting out this thing rather than acting from it from an egotistical place,

1143
01:22:50,780 --> 01:22:55,780
which a lot of teachers do. And I think it's because they've they've received that themselves.

1144
01:22:55,780 --> 01:23:05,780
They've received a kind of baggage from their teacher, who's it's probably unresolved psychological stuff from the from the teachers didn't get resolved properly.

1145
01:23:05,780 --> 01:23:10,780
So then it gets thrown out. I can't handle it. You know, it's all unconscious anyway.

1146
01:23:10,780 --> 01:23:19,780
So the student has to deal with it and the student and if they're smart, will sort it out before they pass it on to their students.

1147
01:23:19,780 --> 01:23:25,780
And it often doesn't happen that way. So, yes, tension. I think tension can come from all those things that we looked at.

1148
01:23:25,780 --> 01:23:32,780
Keybedding, in other words, pushing into the keyboard, physical tension, I mean, lifting the fingers in isolation from each other.

1149
01:23:32,780 --> 01:23:36,780
That's horrible. And yet it's part of our tradition.

1150
01:23:36,780 --> 01:23:47,780
Stretching between the fingers, you know, that twisting all those things that are just physiologically bad for us will cause physical tension.

1151
01:23:47,780 --> 01:23:55,780
But it's I don't think physical tension is exclusively physical. I think a lot of the time it comes from our mind.

1152
01:23:55,780 --> 01:24:05,780
Well, that is interesting. I mean, we can go further into this topic, but, you know, I still want to learn more about different aspects of teaching.

1153
01:24:05,780 --> 01:24:12,780
So we have to keep going. But before we going into the next segment, I want to do a quick round of rapid fire.

1154
01:24:12,780 --> 01:24:18,780
Usually that usually this comes at the end of our conversation, but I'm curious to know.

1155
01:24:18,780 --> 01:24:26,780
I want you to answer them either yay or nay. I will just dump all the traditional to new school of technique.

1156
01:24:26,780 --> 01:24:33,780
And I want you to say yay or nay. It's your yes. Can I qualify it with a little something at the end or not?

1157
01:24:33,780 --> 01:24:40,780
Sure. You can. You can do that. Yes. OK. OK. So first one, Hannah, yay or nay.

1158
01:24:40,780 --> 01:24:45,780
It depends on how you do it. OK. Yes, I understand that. Pishna.

1159
01:24:45,780 --> 01:24:50,780
I don't really have never used Pishna, so I wouldn't. Charny. Charny.

1160
01:24:50,780 --> 01:24:57,780
Again, some of it. Some of it's good. And do it in moderation. Don't binge on it. Kramer's etude.

1161
01:24:57,780 --> 01:25:03,780
Yeah, the more useful ones again, maybe half of maybe the first four bars of chunks of them.

1162
01:25:03,780 --> 01:25:11,780
Don't any. Some of them. Some of them are right. Some of them avoid the stretchy ones.

1163
01:25:11,780 --> 01:25:17,780
Oscar Beringer or Beringer. Again, it's the same sort of thing. They're all much the same.

1164
01:25:17,780 --> 01:25:23,780
When used sensibly, they can be good. When they're done well, they can be of use.

1165
01:25:23,780 --> 01:25:30,780
Great. OK. Now here are maybe is this myth or we should do it. Scales and arpeggios.

1166
01:25:30,780 --> 01:25:34,780
Oh, yeah, we definitely need to know our scales and arpeggios for sure.

1167
01:25:34,780 --> 01:25:38,780
Yeah, thank you. I'm going to I'm going to show this to my students.

1168
01:25:38,780 --> 01:25:44,780
All right. Next one. Bartok's microcosmos.

1169
01:25:44,780 --> 01:25:49,780
Oh, it's fantastic. Yes. If it's again, if it's presented imaginatively, it's amazing.

1170
01:25:49,780 --> 01:25:55,780
The little structures there. Beautiful. List technical exercises.

1171
01:25:55,780 --> 01:26:01,780
I don't think he really believed in them, actually. I don't think he did. He threw them together toward the end.

1172
01:26:01,780 --> 01:26:05,780
I mean, he thought, oh, everybody else is writing technical exercises. Let me write them.

1173
01:26:05,780 --> 01:26:10,780
They're sort of a recycling of what everybody else has done. I don't think many people do them today.

1174
01:26:10,780 --> 01:26:17,780
No, but I have this really thick book of his exercises. They're quite challenging.

1175
01:26:17,780 --> 01:26:26,780
Probably useful for doorstop. Corteau, rational principles of piano forte technique.

1176
01:26:26,780 --> 01:26:32,780
I have a soft spot for some of Corteau. The rational principles, maybe not,

1177
01:26:32,780 --> 01:26:39,780
but certainly his study editions of Chopin, if done very, very cautiously, some of it can be wonderful.

1178
01:26:39,780 --> 01:26:46,780
Now, the art of piano playing by Heinrich. I've been calling his last name Newhouse, but.

1179
01:26:46,780 --> 01:26:52,780
Well, Neuhaus, or if you're Russian, it's Negals. Now, that was my teacher's teacher.

1180
01:26:52,780 --> 01:26:57,780
I'd love to be able to tell you something about this. Maybe at the end of the rapid fire, I can tell you something more about that book.

1181
01:26:57,780 --> 01:27:04,780
But that book, absolutely. Yes, yes. OK. Two thumbs up. More thumbs if I had them. Great.

1182
01:27:04,780 --> 01:27:12,780
So now two more. Alberto Hona's Master School of Piano Playing and Virtuosity.

1183
01:27:12,780 --> 01:27:17,780
It's astonishing what he's got there. There's some really marvelous things in there.

1184
01:27:17,780 --> 01:27:25,780
But again, it's but it's there's so much gymnastic stuff there that I'm wondering if life might be a bit too short.

1185
01:27:25,780 --> 01:27:29,780
Moderate. Yes, it's quite expensive. It's extensive. Yes, I know.

1186
01:27:29,780 --> 01:27:35,780
Now, last one, Gramthage, practicing the piano dot com. Oh, it should be on every pianist's shelves.

1187
01:27:35,780 --> 01:27:44,780
Yes, definitely. Yes, it's the best. OK, so tell tell us more about that Neuhaus, Heinrich Neumann.

1188
01:27:44,780 --> 01:27:49,780
Heinrich Neuhaus. Now, OK, so go back to I'm now going back to when I was a kid.

1189
01:27:49,780 --> 01:27:55,780
I didn't start till I was quite late, so it's quite old. But I had a fascination for piano and piano playing.

1190
01:27:55,780 --> 01:28:03,780
We didn't have a piano at home, but I used to go down to my local library, which was in a very rural part of, you know,

1191
01:28:03,780 --> 01:28:10,780
the suburb of London, put it that way. And there was this book on on the shelf, Neuhaus, the Art of Piano Playing.

1192
01:28:10,780 --> 01:28:17,780
I was constantly taking this book out and renewing it, putting it either to take it back and then put it back on the shelf.

1193
01:28:17,780 --> 01:28:22,780
And then I don't I've lost count on how many how many times I took that book out and read it.

1194
01:28:22,780 --> 01:28:26,780
And I was absolutely fascinated by it. I love it.

1195
01:28:26,780 --> 01:28:33,780
And then little did I realize that years later I was going to end up studying with one of his students, which I did.

1196
01:28:33,780 --> 01:28:37,780
Nina Svetlanova was a longtime student of the great Neuhaus.

1197
01:28:37,780 --> 01:28:44,780
And so I have a real kind of soft spot for Neuhaus. But you'd mentioned something else in the list.

1198
01:28:44,780 --> 01:28:49,780
You've got down here the Walter Gieseking Piano Technique. Oh, yes, yes, yes. I skipped it by accident.

1199
01:28:49,780 --> 01:28:55,780
You skipped it. OK. So this goes back to what we were talking about at the toward the beginning.

1200
01:28:55,780 --> 01:29:05,780
You know, the thing is, this book's called Piano, Walter Gieseking and Carl Leimer, his teacher, Gieseking's teacher, L-E-I-M-E-R.

1201
01:29:05,780 --> 01:29:11,780
It's an old book. You can get it, I think, for nothing on IMSLP.

1202
01:29:11,780 --> 01:29:17,780
OK, it's called Piano Technique. Show me where it talks about physical movements.

1203
01:29:17,780 --> 01:29:22,780
It doesn't really talk about physical movements at the piano, the bits that I'm thinking of anyway.

1204
01:29:22,780 --> 01:29:26,780
It talks about mental practice.

1205
01:29:26,780 --> 01:29:34,780
He's got an analysis of the C major two part invention of Bach where he is quite dry.

1206
01:29:34,780 --> 01:29:37,780
You have to be in the mood for it. You've really got to be.

1207
01:29:37,780 --> 01:29:41,780
You've got to get your kick somewhere else that day because it's a very, very dry approach.

1208
01:29:41,780 --> 01:29:46,780
But it's it's led me to recommend it to students.

1209
01:29:46,780 --> 01:29:54,780
And then the students will come back and say, I was able to memorize great swathes of my Beethoven sonata thanks to this approach.

1210
01:29:54,780 --> 01:29:59,780
What it does is it's basically an analysis of the patterns that one sees in the school.

1211
01:29:59,780 --> 01:30:05,780
So I'm sure most of your listeners, viewers will know the two part invention of Bach.

1212
01:30:05,780 --> 01:30:13,780
So we're starting on the keynote C and then Bach goes up four steps from the C to the F.

1213
01:30:13,780 --> 01:30:18,780
And then he dips down by skip one note. Then he goes up another step.

1214
01:30:18,780 --> 01:30:21,780
And otherwise, he's describing verbally.

1215
01:30:21,780 --> 01:30:33,780
OK, so can I shift this into another gear and just go into a little anecdote about a Leon Fleischer class that I was privileged to be in.

1216
01:30:33,780 --> 01:30:37,780
I was in Fleischer's class for a year at Peabody, his class for piano majors.

1217
01:30:37,780 --> 01:30:46,780
There was one I would call it a miraculous class where somebody was playing the Appassionata Sonata of Beethoven.

1218
01:30:46,780 --> 01:30:58,780
And Leon Fleischer went around the room, crowded out with pianists, and he asked everybody to state a fact from what they saw on the score, just the first eight measures, I think it was.

1219
01:30:58,780 --> 01:31:02,780
So one person said both hands are in unison.

1220
01:31:02,780 --> 01:31:10,780
The next person said and two octaves apart, the next person would say until measure two when there's a chord.

1221
01:31:10,780 --> 01:31:14,780
And then the next person would say, oh, and that chord is the dominant in its first inversion.

1222
01:31:14,780 --> 01:31:27,780
And then it would go around the room until everybody had said something and then you'd go around the room again until we'd exhausted all the possibilities of analysis for that opening.

1223
01:31:27,780 --> 01:31:35,780
And it was wonderful. And I did this myself at a piano teacher's course. I was doing a workshop on memorization.

1224
01:31:35,780 --> 01:31:42,780
And I had the score up on the board, you know, the white board, and we did the same thing.

1225
01:31:42,780 --> 01:31:49,780
Everybody said something and I was packing my stuff away to go to leave the room and I was chatting with somebody over here.

1226
01:31:49,780 --> 01:31:52,780
And then one of the students went up to the piano.

1227
01:31:52,780 --> 01:32:04,780
There was no score there and he didn't have the score and he found himself able with never having touched the score, never having touched that sonata of playing after a couple of fumbling starts.

1228
01:32:04,780 --> 01:32:12,780
He was able to play the first eight measures of that sonata and was dumbfounded. His mouth, his jaw was dropped.

1229
01:32:12,780 --> 01:32:19,780
He could not believe that he could do all of that by brain rather than muscle.

1230
01:32:19,780 --> 01:32:33,780
Right. So, you know, this, this book talks about mental practice because I have found that a lot of piano students seem to think what they've got to do is to drill stuff into their muscles.

1231
01:32:33,780 --> 01:32:41,780
We've got muscle memory. We've got oral memory. We've got brain memory and the brain memory is the one that gets neglected.

1232
01:32:41,780 --> 01:32:48,780
So I've come up with my own terminology for that. I call it PPR personalized pattern recognition.

1233
01:32:48,780 --> 01:32:56,780
Because what I notice today is different from what I might notice tomorrow and it's different from what the next person might notice.

1234
01:32:56,780 --> 01:33:04,780
You know, so what I try and tell my students is muscles last. Can you hear it first? Play it with the wrong hand if you want.

1235
01:33:04,780 --> 01:33:10,780
Hear it first. Analyze it in whatever way is meaningful. It can be a quick and dirty analysis.

1236
01:33:10,780 --> 01:33:21,780
Then attach the muscles of the fingering arm and work on muscle memory so that you know, rather than relying on muscle memory, which is so easy come easy go, isn't it?

1237
01:33:21,780 --> 01:33:24,780
We've all experienced that, but I can play it perfectly well at home.

1238
01:33:24,780 --> 01:33:35,780
And then you play it in front of, you know, play a memorized performance and you forget because it's not bedded in here or here. Just bedded in here enough.

1239
01:33:35,780 --> 01:33:41,780
Wow, that's fascinating. I definitely need to explore this further. Thank you for sparking my curiosity.

1240
01:33:41,780 --> 01:33:48,780
Now let's talk about your extensive research practicing the piano online academy.

1241
01:33:48,780 --> 01:33:56,780
It's an amazing online resource that anyone can go to and then start searching for something.

1242
01:33:56,780 --> 01:34:10,780
Your, you know, online academy has become an invaluable resource for pianists worldwide. And what inspired you to create this platform and what gap in the piano teaching industry were you hoping to address?

1243
01:34:10,780 --> 01:34:18,780
Right. So, okay. So there was a point in my life when I wanted to just start doing a blog. I thought I was not not many people.

1244
01:34:18,780 --> 01:34:28,780
Well, there were some people that were doing piano blogs back in, what was it, 15 years ago there were, but they mostly seem to focus on technique.

1245
01:34:28,780 --> 01:34:33,780
And I thought, okay, so for me practicing is the technique of learning.

1246
01:34:33,780 --> 01:34:46,780
Let me write a blog called practicing the piano so I got the domain name and started writing and then I realized, ah, so we English spell it practicing with an S, the Americans spell it practicing with a C.

1247
01:34:46,780 --> 01:34:53,780
So I would start to get emails from people to say, don't you know how to spell practicing with a C.

1248
01:34:53,780 --> 01:35:04,780
So anyway, we then found the domain name that was practicing with a C as well so you could search for it either way. You'll still come up with the same site practicingthepiano.com.

1249
01:35:04,780 --> 01:35:22,780
I would write weekly blog posts and seem to get quite a lot of traction. People were very interested in it. And then after a while, I started to collaborate with a former student actually who came on board with it and encouraged me to write ebooks.

1250
01:35:22,780 --> 01:35:48,780
So there are four volumes called practicing the piano in ebook form, which you can get by either you can just get them by themselves as standalones or as part of a membership subscription rather to the online academy, which if you go toward, go to practicingthepiano.com, in there there will be a tab directing you to the online academy.

1251
01:35:48,780 --> 01:35:53,780
Now that has grown exponentially since we started it.

1252
01:35:53,780 --> 01:36:07,780
I'm trying to even remember what we did at the start, but it's basically video based there's not huge amount of text to wade through. So, for example, the latest ABRSM graded syllabus that they're over there.

1253
01:36:07,780 --> 01:36:23,780
I went through and did video walkthroughs of most of the syllabus and they some of these videos are quite long. They could be 30 40 minutes and they're divided up into various chapters, if you will.

1254
01:36:23,780 --> 01:36:42,780
So I look at not just the technical side but also how we can practice how we might practice these these pieces, the structure the musical structure I like to introduce a little bit of harmony here and there a little bit of theory, not too much, just enough to add interest

1255
01:36:42,780 --> 01:37:01,780
to engagement, and we will talk about narrative musical narrative what's the piece about what's it describing or what could it be describing so there's a whole kind of package there in the video walkthroughs we've also got technical video walkthroughs some of them are in the form of courses,

1256
01:37:01,780 --> 01:37:13,780
where you look at little tiny videos minimal text videos. And then you can move on from that to the next video when you've mastered the particular thing that we're looking at.

1257
01:37:13,780 --> 01:37:32,780
So we've got on board we've got people like William Westney we've got a Dina Mornell who I'm working with, and Fred Carpoff, various contributors who contribute their own material and it's all under one umbrella it's all under one, you know, one site.

1258
01:37:32,780 --> 01:37:50,780
Yeah, there's all sorts of different stuff that is technique the style the psychology, there is theory. We've got Lona Kozik on board with theory she does that in such a way that people are absolutely in love with her because she makes theory relevant and interesting and, you know,

1259
01:37:50,780 --> 01:38:05,780
want to learn more about theory and I found myself saying at a recent summer school. Wow. Cut a lot of tutoring I found myself saying, the more theory you understand the easier it is to play the piano, which I believe to be true.

1260
01:38:05,780 --> 01:38:20,780
But not dry theory, theory as it as it's applied to music. So we do also do online workshops were on zoom, and the recordings get sent out afterwards to the participants.

1261
01:38:20,780 --> 01:38:37,780
In house, you know, events in the past but we probably will again at some point but quite a lot of workshops, talking about particular subjects, the next ones I'm doing are coming up fairly soon, and they'll be on the practice tools, applying the practice tools.

1262
01:38:37,780 --> 01:38:58,780
So there will be me demonstrating a particular practice tool. And then there will be a breakout session where the participants go to their instruments and I kind of eavesdrop and listen in and give them a few pointers if they need it and we come together at the end and discuss

1263
01:38:58,780 --> 01:39:15,780
discoveries challenges whatever. And then the next practice tool. Little demonstration from me, they go off and try it. And that sort of thing and people have really loved those because they're structured but you know they they get to try things out in the privacy of their

1264
01:39:15,780 --> 01:39:19,780
own studios, because it's zoom.

1265
01:39:19,780 --> 01:39:34,780
Sure. Now, so if I have any. So, let's say things. Maybe my student is working on the Debussy Prelude or something like that. For example, or, you know, about Sherbert impromptu for example.

1266
01:39:34,780 --> 01:39:46,780
And then as a teacher, even when I practice Oh, I have a question about this interpretation, or maybe had the way to practice then. Can I just type in search bar.

1267
01:39:46,780 --> 01:39:47,780
Yeah.

1268
01:39:47,780 --> 01:40:07,780
Yeah, we don't. We don't have all the piano repertoire yet. Give us another 10 years we've got enough, and we've got quite a lot. But for example you mentioned the Sherbert impromptu so I just did a video walkthrough of the G flat impromptu, where I, I think probably if you look at the whole thing

1269
01:40:07,780 --> 01:40:23,780
it would be certainly over an hour it's in three videos, probably way over an hour, where you know you can get information on the structure of the piece some the harmonies the chords some of the beautiful things that Schubert does harmonically, the texture

1270
01:40:23,780 --> 01:40:38,780
the peddling the fingering, and the practicing, and, and I'm hope I hope that it's inspiring to people it's that what they get from it is inspiration, as well as information.

1271
01:40:38,780 --> 01:40:57,780
Yeah, so we've got tons of tons of things like that video walkthrough is just video it's.

1272
01:40:57,780 --> 01:41:04,780
You know other things as well. Yeah, I'm just curious to know the difference between practicing the piano.com and inform us.

1273
01:41:04,780 --> 01:41:13,780
It's like the parent site if you will the business side of it that runs. I'm not even sure what that is either.

1274
01:41:13,780 --> 01:41:24,780
But it's, yeah, it's the umbrella, the business account and then, if you go to practicing the piano.com everything will be, you can get to.

1275
01:41:24,780 --> 01:41:39,780
Yes. Okay. Yeah, for example if I'm maybe if you tap one link that list leads to course or something then that maybe directs to inform us.biz.

1276
01:41:39,780 --> 01:41:46,780
Maybe yes, it is right. Yeah. Yeah. What's the difference between like a subscription like if I subscribe a month.

1277
01:41:46,780 --> 01:41:53,780
Then you get this, like a certain amount of videos per month. So what happened. No, you get full access.

1278
01:41:53,780 --> 01:42:05,780
I'm interestingly enough I don't deal with the business side of it but if you would go on the site you can see the various subscription offers we've got you know you can if you subscribe for longer is cheaper.

1279
01:42:05,780 --> 01:42:20,780
So we've got many people who subscribe for a lot of people will may start off taking a monthly or three monthly subscription and then realize that there's tons of stuff on there they're never going to get through, not even a fraction of it at a time.

1280
01:42:20,780 --> 01:42:30,780
So then they realize, oh, it's actually really good value to take out an annual subscription, and most of these are renewed most people renew them.

1281
01:42:30,780 --> 01:42:38,780
And I've had many people say to me with particularly piano teachers have said are this really one of the best resources we've got.

1282
01:42:38,780 --> 01:42:54,780
And they, they, they're very grateful for it, but also pianists who want to know repertoire and they want to learn how to approach a piece, how to practice how to solve problems technical problems there's lots of things there that we do.

1283
01:42:54,780 --> 01:42:58,780
And again it's multiple multiple contributors.

1284
01:42:58,780 --> 01:43:01,780
Wow, not just not just me droning on.

1285
01:43:01,780 --> 01:43:14,780
That's exactly what we need as pianists because we are, we practice by ourselves and sometimes we need a community or encouragement or some sort of guidelines or, you know, guide us.

1286
01:43:14,780 --> 01:43:18,780
Yeah, to practice. Yeah, that's great. Yeah.

1287
01:43:18,780 --> 01:43:23,780
Yeah, and I know you mentioned your for discount code.

1288
01:43:23,780 --> 01:43:37,780
Yes, so I think what we'll do is if we could, I don't have that to hand but if we could put that in the description below, wherever you put it on your piano blog on YouTube it can go on the description.

1289
01:43:37,780 --> 01:43:38,780
Yes.

1290
01:43:38,780 --> 01:43:49,780
Yeah, I think you'll get like a 30 pounds British pounds off an annual subscription. I have that code and I have the link as well so I will put that in the description.

1291
01:43:49,780 --> 01:43:54,780
Wow, this is great. So, then also you have like a teacher training.

1292
01:43:54,780 --> 01:44:05,780
Yes, one thing, one thing that we, I'm a part of is, it's called the piano teachers course UK. Again you can find that out just by googling it piano teachers course UK.

1293
01:44:05,780 --> 01:44:19,780
I'm now a guest presenter guest lecturer I was at one point, you know, a full tutor on that course but what happens is we sort of rotate every few years and new tutors come on.

1294
01:44:19,780 --> 01:44:36,780
And it's just astonishing piano teachers course I can think of it's a part time, and we get people coming on, who are maybe just graduates from the conservatories and they need more than the conservatories give them in terms of teaching piano resources,

1295
01:44:36,780 --> 01:44:52,780
we get people maybe who are doing career changes, they get to retirement and they want to do want to learn how to be piano teachers, or, you know, people who want to supplement their regular work as musicians with teaching and they want to do it properly.

1296
01:44:52,780 --> 01:45:07,780
So, we because we've got many different tutors each, each has their own area of specialization so we've got the Lucinda Macliff young who's wonderful with the improvisation playing by ear, psychology side.

1297
01:45:07,780 --> 01:45:22,780
We've got. I don't want to list, each of them but everybody's got their own particular skills. And it's, there are almost more tutors and there are two T's we don't call them students.

1298
01:45:22,780 --> 01:45:39,780
There's probably one tutor for every five to T so there's a lot of individual attention. And you'll see that there's some residential course, but we since coded we've we've done quite a lot of hybrid so people from overseas are doing it as well we've got people

1299
01:45:39,780 --> 01:45:52,780
from Hong Kong, who take the course and rave about it and people who from the US some some are doing it and then. So you can go to the residential. If you're in the UK, or you can do it online.

1300
01:45:52,780 --> 01:46:03,780
And then there are some areas of the course some components of the course with it just online, so you do that from from a zoom platform. So it's a hybrid course now.

1301
01:46:03,780 --> 01:46:20,780
So, speaking of hybrid course so you, you know you have this extensive private practice teaching, and then you also teach online lessons, connect, you know, yes, I love to be.

1302
01:46:20,780 --> 01:46:36,780
Yeah, tell us more. Yeah, well I love I love doing online teaching because I've made friends with students that I've got to know only through through the internet and it's amazing how you can form relationships, just the same through the internet

1303
01:46:36,780 --> 01:46:51,780
so I've got students that I see in Australia in Switzerland in America various parts of the US, all over the place to see me for lessons Malaysia. And what we do is we do this on the zoom platform.

1304
01:46:51,780 --> 01:47:01,780
You don't need fancy equipment, you just need, I've got a little bit more fancy equipment but you just need a good external microphone I like the Blue Yeti.

1305
01:47:01,780 --> 01:47:16,780
You just, you can use your laptop you don't even need an external camera. It's helpful to have a wired internet connection but it's again not mandatory, provided you've got a good microphone, I can hear through the Blue Yeti every little detail of peddling

1306
01:47:16,780 --> 01:47:18,780
I can hear what you're doing.

1307
01:47:18,780 --> 01:47:28,780
People are surprised how did you hear that. Well, the microphone is good now, nowadays and I think if it hadn't been for lockdown we wouldn't have got the technology that we have.

1308
01:47:28,780 --> 01:47:43,780
So I'm working with pianists they can be professional pianists that a lot of piano teachers, and a lot of amateur pianists that come to me, and I don't distinguish between them I don't have any sort of tier system that, oh that's only an amateur I love the amateurs

1309
01:47:43,780 --> 01:47:59,780
the passion that an amateur pianist would have for playing the piano is to me just as valuable and just as valid as the training that a, you know, a piano teacher would need or a advanced student or even not an advanced student.

1310
01:47:59,780 --> 01:48:08,780
So I'm working with the whole range of levels of ability, ages, and give everybody exactly the same attention.

1311
01:48:08,780 --> 01:48:17,780
Yeah. Yeah, so if you're interested in contacting me for that reason you can do that also via the link in the description.

1312
01:48:17,780 --> 01:48:20,780
The online account, practicing the piano.

1313
01:48:20,780 --> 01:48:30,780
Yeah, great. Now, so, as we are closing up this episode, I want to just ask one or two more.

1314
01:48:30,780 --> 01:48:47,780
Yes, go ahead. Your career spans decades of performing, you know, we didn't get to talk about performance so much but you're, you're on concert pianist and also you're obviously teaching, you are such a great writer, leaving an incredible mark on the piano world

1315
01:48:47,780 --> 01:48:56,780
and then you're still young, but when you reflect on everything you've accomplished. What do you hope your legacy will be.

1316
01:48:56,780 --> 01:49:10,780
Wow, okay. Right, well, going back to some of what you said there, I'm doing less and less playing now out of choice than I at one point did when my stomach was stronger for that sort of thing.

1317
01:49:10,780 --> 01:49:20,780
You know when you're teaching a lot and writing a lot and your mind is on other things. I haven't got the time to be sitting there practicing all day, as I used to do.

1318
01:49:20,780 --> 01:49:35,780
So, so my, my legacy would be more in, I think, empowering people to play the piano freely, whether that means, you know, physically at the instrument, definitely psychologically.

1319
01:49:35,780 --> 01:49:53,780
I'm very concerned that I treat everybody kind like to think that I treat everybody with, with kindness and respect. And I'm very non judgmental in my teaching I don't judge anybody so they people soon get used to that idea that he's not actually judging me he's helping me.

1320
01:49:53,780 --> 01:50:09,780
So, assisting and facilitating and just notice that helping people to realize that there's no such thing as the one interpretation of this piece that we have to follow that there are many different ways to play the piano there are many different interpretations

1321
01:50:09,780 --> 01:50:26,780
of any given piece of music. And I'd like to think that my legacy. Big part of my legacy was showing people what to do when they practice, so that they've, they've actually got some tangible skills tools that they can use when they they sit and practice.

1322
01:50:26,780 --> 01:50:29,780
That's the biggest thing probably isn't it.

1323
01:50:29,780 --> 01:50:53,780
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yes. Wonderful. You're a wonderful great teacher. And as I am speaking with you I'm learning a lot, and then maybe one of these days, we'll see each other in person and I know you lived in the United States, quite like number of years as I did, I did.

1324
01:50:53,780 --> 01:51:11,780
I would like to just give a big shout out to one of my teachers there who I didn't study with in an official institutional capacity but Julian Martin, who has been on the faculty of Julia for many years, Julian if you're watching and listening, just to say that you are one of the

1325
01:51:11,780 --> 01:51:32,780
most influential influences on my piano journey, hugely amazing musician pianist, who gave me a tremendous amount so you know, Nina Svetlanova, of course, and Shine who I was studying with for a short time there and Leon Fleischer whose influence has been immeasurable

1326
01:51:32,780 --> 01:51:46,780
and I'm sure on his influence every day almost and he's helped me, you know, rewind myself. I would say, and so yeah I was a New Yorker for seven years and Peabody for a year before that.

1327
01:51:46,780 --> 01:52:01,780
And had an amazing time in New York, but I'm now happily living in London, and very happy to be here. Wonderful. Yeah, one of these is I'll visit London and then I'll stop by your piano studio.

1328
01:52:01,780 --> 01:52:07,780
I'll come over for a curry. Yeah, sounds great. Yeah.

1329
01:52:07,780 --> 01:52:28,780
Great. So, before we go for our listeners, please, please visit practicingthepiano.com to learn more about Graham's incredible contributions to piano pedagogy. It's quite resourceful and as he mentioned, there's video there's course there's ebooks there's

1330
01:52:28,780 --> 01:52:45,780
blog everything there's to know about piano and piano technique and how to practice and so on. And also, as I mentioned, with your annual membership, there is a special discount code available for our listeners so please go scroll down to the description

1331
01:52:45,780 --> 01:53:07,780
section of this episode to find more. And also you are quite active on YouTube and Instagram and so on so Instagram handle is informants music and a YouTube at informants you, I mean, you guys need to check out his videos they're impeccable and then also details

1332
01:53:07,780 --> 01:53:26,780
about technique and interpretation. I really love watching those videos. So I also recommend for my audience to do the same. Is there anything else before we go to the rapid fire questions you'd like to say or just if somebody wants to come on one of my piano

1333
01:53:26,780 --> 01:53:45,780
courses. I do tutor regular courses at Finchcocks, which is a manor house in Kent in England, the most magnificent place 300 year old building. We do piano courses there I also tutor courses in Blonet, Switzerland, twice a year.

1334
01:53:45,780 --> 01:53:59,780
And that's for amateurs, the Blonet. And yes, that's what I'd like to add. Oh great now how so I can just list the links in the description then they can access.

1335
01:53:59,780 --> 01:54:06,780
Yes, I've sent them to you. Yes, yes, I have received. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

1336
01:54:06,780 --> 01:54:17,780
So, this has been a fun and inspiring conversation Graham and but before I let you go we have one more thing to do which is the rapid fire questions the real rapid fire questions so let's start.

1337
01:54:17,780 --> 01:54:23,780
There are silly questions but I just want you to answer them as short brief as possible.

1338
01:54:23,780 --> 01:54:26,780
Alright so question number one.

1339
01:54:26,780 --> 01:54:29,780
What is your comfort food.

1340
01:54:29,780 --> 01:54:36,780
My comfort food, a chili. I have chili with everything I eat. Oh, sounds great.

1341
01:54:36,780 --> 01:54:38,780
How do you like your coffee in the morning.

1342
01:54:38,780 --> 01:54:42,780
I like it strong with a little bit of milk.

1343
01:54:42,780 --> 01:54:44,780
Cats or dogs.

1344
01:54:44,780 --> 01:54:48,780
Dogs for sure. Okay. Do you have, do you have one.

1345
01:54:48,780 --> 01:54:52,780
No, unfortunately my lifestyle won't permit.

1346
01:54:52,780 --> 01:54:54,780
Sunrise or sunset.

1347
01:54:54,780 --> 01:54:57,780
Sunrise summer or winter.

1348
01:54:57,780 --> 01:54:59,780
Summer.

1349
01:54:59,780 --> 01:55:01,780
Level two.

1350
01:55:01,780 --> 01:55:06,780
What skill have you always wanted to learn but haven't had a chance to.

1351
01:55:06,780 --> 01:55:12,780
Oh, jazz piano. Oh yeah that's great. That's a great one.

1352
01:55:12,780 --> 01:55:16,780
What is your word or words to live by.

1353
01:55:16,780 --> 01:55:18,780
My words to live by.

1354
01:55:18,780 --> 01:55:22,780
Be kind, be fun.

1355
01:55:22,780 --> 01:55:27,780
What is the most important quality you look for in other people.

1356
01:55:27,780 --> 01:55:29,780
Respect.

1357
01:55:29,780 --> 01:55:31,780
Now, next one is a little difficult.

1358
01:55:31,780 --> 01:55:36,780
Name three people who inspire you, living or dead.

1359
01:55:36,780 --> 01:55:40,780
Oh, okay so I have to go through my teachers don't I.

1360
01:55:40,780 --> 01:55:45,780
Leon Fleischer, Nina Svetlanova, Julian Martin.

1361
01:55:45,780 --> 01:55:48,780
There we go. Great. That was easy.

1362
01:55:48,780 --> 01:55:54,780
So level three, name one piece in your current playlist.

1363
01:55:54,780 --> 01:55:59,780
One piece in my current playlist. Oh there's so many.

1364
01:55:59,780 --> 01:56:03,780
Okay, well I'm looking at the Mussorgsky pictures at the moment.

1365
01:56:03,780 --> 01:56:06,780
Oh, great. Now, last one.

1366
01:56:06,780 --> 01:56:09,780
Fill in the blank. Music is blank.

1367
01:56:09,780 --> 01:56:11,780
Is everything.

1368
01:56:11,780 --> 01:56:14,780
Ah, beautiful.

1369
01:56:14,780 --> 01:56:17,780
I wasn't expecting any of those.

1370
01:56:17,780 --> 01:56:19,780
It was very, very good.

1371
01:56:19,780 --> 01:56:21,780
All right, thank you so much for answering all the questions.

1372
01:56:21,780 --> 01:56:25,780
So that wraps up this episode of the Piano Part.

1373
01:56:25,780 --> 01:56:36,780
A heartfelt thanks to you, Graham, for joining us today and sharing your incredible stories, insights and expertise with such joyful and authentic manner.

1374
01:56:36,780 --> 01:56:37,780
Thank you.

1375
01:56:37,780 --> 01:56:43,780
Yukimi, you've been wonderful. You've been such a great host and thank you so much for the opportunity to talk.

1376
01:56:43,780 --> 01:57:00,780
Thank you. So to our wonderful audience, you can learn more about Graham and his work by visiting his websites at practicingthepiano.com and follow him on Facebook at informants and Instagram at informants music and YouTube at informants.

1377
01:57:00,780 --> 01:57:04,780
And of course, thank you to our faithful listeners to tuning in today.

1378
01:57:04,780 --> 01:57:10,780
If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the Piano Part on YouTube.

1379
01:57:10,780 --> 01:57:15,780
Don't forget to share and review this episode on your social media and tag the Piano Part.

1380
01:57:15,780 --> 01:57:19,780
It's one of the best ways to help us grow and we'd love to hear your feedback.

1381
01:57:19,780 --> 01:57:24,780
For the latest piano news and updates, be sure to follow the Piano Part on social media.

1382
01:57:24,780 --> 01:57:27,780
I will see you for the next episode of the Piano Part. Bye everyone.

1383
01:57:27,780 --> 01:57:29,780
Thank you, Graham.

1384
01:57:29,780 --> 01:57:31,780
Thank you so much.

1385
01:57:31,780 --> 01:57:50,780
Bye.