"Fluency" - What it is and how to get it

Ahhhh, fluency ! To pick up a new piece of sheet music, sit down at the piano and simply play it as written, with maybe one or two small errors - at full tempo with a steady beat so it moves along as expected. THAT'S the most common goal of any adult pianist, whether that sheet music is a showtune, some blues, or a bit of ragtime.

"Fluency" is the ability to play your favorite music with little effort.

It's much like fluency in reading. For example, you pick up the latest John Grisham novel, sit down with a sandwich and simply start reading. Every so often there's a word you are unfamiliar with but context gives you some idea of the word's meaning. Even if it doesn't you don't sweat it and the word's unfamiliarity takes nothing much away from your enjoyment. In fact, as you read, you can see "in your mind's eye" the action, and even get an idea of how the characters look. That's fluency, and most adults have had lots of experience with it (except those poor folks who somehow never became literate.)

Of course, there are books that most folks are NOT fluent with - such as medical textbooks, detailed descriptions of the tax code, or the owner's manuals of musical instruments ! Those remain a huge challenge and require actual study to get throught. It's WORK and few folks read these things for pleasure. Fluency IS pleasure, no doubt about it, and we'd love to know any possible shortcuts to achieving this level - right?

Keep reading !

The first thing you need to know is that every pianist is fluent - at some level. I want you to think of this fluency thing as an elevator in a very, very tall building. Absolute beginners get on in the lobby and begin to move up to various floors, each floor representing some level of ability at playing the piano. If you play at all you have a level (a floor) at which you are challenged and a lower floor at which you are fluent. Now I don't want to stretch this comparison out too far, but I can still say that your "fluency floor" is always lower than your "challenge floor" and that by going higher in the building (raising your challenge floor) you automatically raise your fluency floor.

Enough of this building thing! You get the idea, so let's talk piano. There are pieces that require great effort for you to master and pieces that you can play just fine RIGHT NOW. Don't believe me? Pick up a kid's book and try some of those pieces. You'll be able to do them easily. The problem is that they won't satisfy your adult level of musical sophistication. This gives you the mistaken impression that there is no music you can play fluently. The accurate statement, the real truth is that you cannot yet play the music you love fluently and you so very much want to.

Now that we have stated the problem accurately, I can offer you two solutions:

1. Continue raising your challenge level. Do more and harder pieces and master them well. Some day (and no one can say for sure when) you WILL be able to play the music you now find challenging fluently. Of course, you will still have a challenge point, it will just "be on a higher floor."

2. Learn to "sightread" the music you most want to play. This is a job in itself, and requires much more explanation. As a matter of fact, this would be a very good reason to buy and apply my ebook How to WIN at Piano Lessons, since I cover this topic extensively in Chapter Six. If fluency is indeed your goal, it will cost you both the price of the book AND the effort needed to follow its directions. Unlike some piano "teachers" I will not tell you that any miracle cure exists. It does not. But learning to do the RIGHT effort sure beats wasting time with things that will not work.

You can find the ordering instructions for my ebook here:
http://danstarr.com/pages/ebooks.html

Why Piano Lessons are your Best Value in a Troubled Economy

Well, here we are, in another recession. I think this is the fourth or fifth since I began teaching. We always pull out of them and come back stronger than ever. History, recent history, proves this. Anyone recall the down days when unemployment was in the double digits AND so was inflation? I do. So don't take this "worst economy ever" yammering to heart. I have a couple of students old enough to have endured The Great Depression. They laugh at all the recent hair-pulling.

Now don't get me wrong - things are NOT hearts and flowers financially. It's definitely time to curb excess spending and not buy things that are merely nice, things that are frivolous. May I take some of your time and explain why I think piano lessons should NOT be on your chopping block?

The reason is simple, and easily explained by a termed I borrowed from the financial world: ROI. That's "Return on Investment" folks, and piano lessons provide a tremendous ROI to each student. Here's how, using a kinda "balance sheet" to illustrate:

Cost of Piano Lessons:

Charges per lesson or month of lessons.
Cost of gas to drive to teacher's studio.
Cost of music books.

(I'm going to assume you already own an instrument. If you do not, however, please read next week's blog post which will cover what's out there, pros and cons. The bottom line (pun intended) is that you are much better off with cheaper instruments and better lessons. No, you do NOT have to buy a huge, multi-thousand dollar piano to gain the benefits of lessons, despite what piano store salespeople tell you. And hey, if you simply must ask me something about buying an instrument, then email me immediately and let's have a conversation.)

Return from Piano Lessons:

Personal satisfaction for something well done.
Free distraction from troubles at work or with money, all without drugs of any sort.
The deep down good feeling of doing something you've always wanted to do.
Free entertainment for your family.
Free entertainment for yourself.
Savings on going out to a movie, a show, to eat, mini-golf, whatever expenses you USED to use as family and/or personal entertainment. All those expenses - GONE !
Endless improvement.

Boy, how else and where else can you get all that good stuff for the cost of a restaurant meal a week? That food is soon gone but piano improvement lives on and on and on.

See what I mean?

More on "I Play so Much Better at Home"

Ani, a reader, asked some great questions as a comment to my last post. Here's what she said:

"Nice article. I experience the same nervousness when playing for my teacher. Similarly, I am nervous when I film or record myself playing. I indeed tend to focus on not making note mistakes, rather than expressing all the dynamics and phrasing.

I even found out that playing my exam pieces three-in-a-row affects how I play. If I made a mistake in the first piece, I could still be thinking about it during the second piece (amazing how the brain can multi-task, albeit inefficiently), and lose focus, hence making mistakes in the second piece as well. Often, my mind drifts and my fingers suddenly forget what comes next. Then comes the puzzled look on my face,"What fingering did I use at home? I have forgotten now. I have practiced it for the past few months without errors, and now I can't remember."

I wonder what I should be thinking or focusing about when I play. If I focus on the sheet music too much, my fingers occasionally mess up. If I think ahead, with the music in my inner ear, I get a better chance of playing well, but at the same time risk playing in a hurried manner when nervous. What do you think about when playing?"

I started to write out a detailed response and realized that the answers should be shared as widely as possible and that they contained this week's new essay. So here it is, and I recommend anyone who ever performs for anybody read it and use it.

*******************************************

Ani, I, and every other pianist, knows what you are going through. Here are some answers:

The key is "muscle memory" which means your muscles' ability to recall the exact sequence of actions which will, in effect, play your music for you. You use muscle memory each time you drive or even walk. However, those skills, like playing a piece of music, require full mental concentration until the point they became "grooved in" to the muscles.

Thus the sequence in learning a new piece goes: Full mental concentration to command the hands and fingers in the exact sequence of actions necessary (this would be what we pianists call "the fingering" of the piece) followed by a diminishing need to concentrate, even though the hands are still making the right motions. At some point, there is literally no need to do more than command the hands to "start moving" for them to play the piece.

At this point, the pianist might still have the sheet music in front of her, but the symbols are not being processed in the same way as they were when the piece was new and no muscle memory was present. Instead, those symbols are serving as "cues" for the muscle memory. The eyes track the line of cues but the mind has no real need to focus, just let the symbols serve to cue the muscles to handle the playing of the piece. You are not really "reading the music" but rather just keeping your place as you play. (This, too, is a skill that must be learned.) In other words, the music has now been "memorized" by the muscle memory. It's the muscle memory that handles the details of fingering. The mind has done its work and isn't needed for this particular aspect of the task.

So what does the mind do, if it's not needed to command the hands and fingers in present time? It focuses on the overall, that is, the music that is sounding. It's in the context that the music lies, and this is what you think of and focus on. Another way to put this is that the instructions on the page of sheet music can be roughly divided into two types: MAIN POINTS: which keys to hit with which fingers and for how long (in other words, note identity, fingering, and timing) and FINE POINTS: how fast and how loud and with what phrasing, etc (in other words, tempo, dynamics, touch, etc.) Muscle memory can be depended on to handle the main points so your mind can focus on the fine points.

This understanding leads to an understanding of our problems and what to do about them. Here's what goes wrong.

We start a piece and, via our practice, get it thoroughly learned in the muscle memory. This means the muscles are responding to the training we have carefully given them in the past. We no longer need to command them in the present for them to work and work properly. This state of affairs usually occurs at home when we are calm and can allow this natural process to take place. Then we get to the lesson or the performance and, rather than allow the training we have carefully done to move the hands appropriately, we decide to try to take command consciously. It's like a vote of "no confidence" in the muscle memory.

Now the muscle have two commands working: one from their past training and one from our present conscious control. And these commands mess with each other and lead to mistakes. The pianist then thinks, "Ah ha, I made a mistake, and the best way to ensure I make no more is to increase my conscious, present time control of my hands."

wrong, Wrong, WRONG !!!!

The only thing that will save the pianist now is to get out of the way mentally and allow the hands to take control, just the way we did at home. But that seldom occurs. And the more nervous we get, the less we allow the hands to do their work. Nerves leads to conscious attempts to control which results in mistakes which results in more nerves...well, you get the picture. You could call it a "negative feedback loop."

The real difference between the amateur and professional pianist is that the professional pianist has learned to use the proper "system" to do the work: the muscle memory to handle the minute details of playing the music, and the mind to handle the fine points of the overall so those details fit together correctly and make very fine music.

When you "play so much better at home" it is because you are allowing the muscle memory to work for you. When you cease to do this, it all goes wrong. (Naturally, allowing the muscle memory to work when it not yet trained isn't sensible, so this presupposes that you have already practiced the music adequately to get the muscle to do the memorizing.)

Please feel free to continue this line of discussion, since we all have experienced this problem and solving it will help a whole lot of other pianists !

WHY You "Play so much better at home!"

As my readers know, adult piano student "nervousness" remains a constant focus and problem. This week, I thought I'd share with you the exact psychology the underlies these cases, in the hopes that some of you will find a new tool to help you enjoy your lessons more. I know it frustrates you - my students tell me about it several times a week, often using the exact phrase from today's title. I'll then give you some methods to improve the situation.

Before I explain, let me tell you that I, as your instructor, personally don't care that you are nervous and "play so much better at home." That's because I use your nervousness as a diagnostic tool to discover where I should help you. All I need to know is what you are nervous about - that's the thing that is weak in your ability set, the thing that has been troubling you so much. It's human nature to worry about something that has previously gone wrong and is still not fixed. That's exactly what your piano teacher needs to know about ! By observing "the object of your afflictions" the instructor can make up for the fact that almost all piano training takes place when the instructor is not around.

However, "lesson nerves" bother most adults and make their lessons something less than happy, so I keep looking for solutions. If I find such a "universal remedy" I'll use it and find another way to discover where my efforts need to be applied.

Okay, here as promised is the underlying psychology of lesson nervousness.

A person goes through life with intentions. You want something to happen, you want other things to NOT happen. Your mind, your experience, your education, your training, all of this is the way you try to make your intentions into reality. Often, very often, these intentions DO become reality. When that happens, the cycle, so to speak, is completed. The natural result is that you move on to other matters and forget all about that previous intention and its subsequent effort.

Ah, but what happens when your intention does NOT become reality? For instance, when you really wanted to hit the correct note and did NOT? With students, the natural impulse is to stop, go backwards in the music, and correct that note, thus completing the cycle. Now your attention can be placed on other things, like the rest of the music.

This impulse to correct then gets you into a mental conflict, because you know that good playing does NOT allow for this stop/start sort of activity. After a lifetime of hearing music performed, you know that a competent performance means getting started and going straight on through to the end with no back ups and corrections made. So your internal conflict is between A. the desire to correct and make things work out according to your intentions, and B. the desire to go straight through the piece.

Most of the time you give in to desire A. at least for a second, causing a glitch in the performance. The distraction this causes often results in one or more errors soon enough and these really add to your worry and finally it's time to start all over again.

So what's the solution? You have the ability to mentally make a decision that a mistake is nothing to dwell on. I often compare it to not making it through a traffic light when driving. You wanted to, tried to, but the light changed and you had to stop. Do you dwell on that? No. And the reason you don't is you realize that being stopped by a traffic light is going to occur over and over and over and it's really no big deal.

I'm here to tell you that incorrect notes are going to occur over and over and over and they really are no big deal. Folks, I've been a pro pianist for many decades. I make lots of mistakes when I play. I just don't make a big deal of them. They don't mean anything other than I'm a human being and not perfect. You think that really good performers don't make mistakes? Please. Get real, folks. They ALL do and the honest ones will admit it. Pros know, however, that it is the flow of music that is the important intention and make sure that this intention is fulfilled despite mistakes.

Which leads to my exact recommendation. Divide your time at the piano into three activities:

1. Practice
2. Performance, and
3. Playing for pleasure.

Decide when you sit down which you intent to do and then do that activity so that it produces its desired result:

1. During Practice you stop at mistakes and play them correctly MANY, MANY times in hopes that this mistake will become corrected for the long haul,
2. During Performance you never, ever stop at mistakes - you just continue forward keeping a steady pace (this is a skill that takes time to master, believe me, but is the key skill of the professional pianist), and
3. During Playing for Pleasure do whatever you want to do, stopping to make a correction a SINGLE time and then move on.

Students get into trouble when they do not realize the differences in these three activities. Sometimes they think that any time spent at the piano is practice. It isn't. Naturally, since they are not really correcting the mistakes for the long haul as practice demands, those mistakes do not disappear and the student wonders why their "practice" isn't helping them improve.

Each of these activities is fine, so long as you don't mistakenly believe that they are the same. Each has different goals, different methods of handling mistakes, and thus different results.

So why do you "play so much better at home?" Simple. You don't obsess about mistakes. Many times you either practice or play for pleasure. But when you get to lesson you have to perform. It works differently. A more accurate statement would be "I don't perform well."

How to fix. Practice performing. After regular practice, sit down, resolve to not stop at mistakes, and "practice" going through the song without stopping to correct. This WILL be very hard at first. Perhaps you can only do a little of this at a time. That's fine, work your way up to a full tune. And never use the thing you are working on for your next lesson as your piece for performance. That piece should be practiced in the normal manner.

I've said a lot in this essay. Hope it was clear.