Graceful piano practice

My Yamaha digital piano

During our last piano lesson my teacher Alison showed me how she sits down to learn a new piece of music. Her technique was so much simpler and more graceful than mine; I sat and watched with growing respect and optimism that perhaps I could learn to do the same.

What I've tended to do up to now is apply brute force and repetition to my learning. I figure that if I practice the left hand enough times, then practice the right hand enough times, then practice hands together enough times, eventually a piece of music will appear, worn into my brain and hands by repetition, like water carving a channel through stone. And it does work, pieces do get into my head but the process isn't graceful nor does it make me feel like a much of musician.

Alison also practices hands separately, musical phrase by phrase. She finds the fingering for a left hand phrase, listens as she produces the notes and adjusts her hand position, timing and dynamics to shape the sound. Then she does the same with the right hand part, concentrating on the sound of the phrase. After a small number of repetitions and necessary adjustments, she's able to begin playing both hands together. The process appears simple, graceful and musical compared to my grinding repetitive alternative.

I'm going to try learning new pieces and revising my current pieces just as Alison showed me and see if it adds some much-needed gracefulness to my playing. Learning to play the piano is a slow process but one full of interest and challenges.

Bridleways and mountain bikes

Looking down into Scugdale

Last month I replaced my old mountain bike, which hadn't been used for years. I bought a modern trail bike, a Whyte 905, and have started exploring trails around the North York Moors. Bikes aren't legally allowed on footpaths so I'm trying to keep off the paths which criss-cross the moors. They are allowed on bridleways, which are basically paths for horse-riders, and since these are clearly marked on OS maps it should be easy enough, in theory, to plot routes across the open countryside using minor roads and bridle paths.





On Friday I climbed Carlton Bank and tried to find a route over the moors to Scugdale and Swainby. The 1:25,000 OS map for the North York Moors shows a bridleway heading south from the summit of Carlton Bank. On the ground it's a broad track running across the moor, easy to follow and easy to ride, at least as far as Brian's Pond, where a signpost indicates the bridleway heading right towards Barker's Crags. I turned off the track and soon found myself ploughing through a muddy heathery mess; more of a sheep track through bog than a bridleway and basically unrideable. I backtracked to the main route and followed it south until it reached a locked gate; on the map the footpath ends at a farm track. I'm not sure why such a clear track across the moors would end at a locked gate but no doubt the landowner has a reason. Retracing my route back to the bridleway, I found a gate opening onto a path heading steeply down the hillside towards Scugdale Hall. I doubt this steep, rocky and muddy route is often taken by horses and it certainly wasn't rideable on a mountain bike. Even on a dry day, which this wasn't, I wouldn't have stayed on the bike for long. So I walked down to the road at the bottom of the hill and followed it down the valley, picking up a lovely section of bridleway through the fields and woods above Swainby.

Not all bridleways are rideable.

Hands together?

Yesterday my piano teacher suggested, not for the first time, that I spend more time practising the left and right hand parts of musical pieces separately. When learning a new piece I'll often work out the notes and fingering with separate hands but try to play hands together as soon as I can. Melody, harmonies and dynamics make more sense when both hands play together, especially if the tune moves between the left and right hands.

I'm learning pieces for Grade 5 and last night practised separate hands for a couple of sections where I've been making mistakes. Playing with just one hand allowed me to pay more attention to each part and helped me to clear up a couple of small fingering errors. I was almost converted to the doctrine of separate hands until I came across this interesting blog entry Hands together? by Tara Gaertner, a piano-playing neurophysiologist. She's identified a small number of studies looking at how the brain manages control of right and left sided movement and listed two factors which impact on bilateral body control; one is the limited bandwidth of attention, the other is cross-cortical inhibition.

A complex movement can be broken down into a series of small chunks, each chunk can be slowly repeated, practising and refining the movement until it is embedded in memory. I almost wrote 'muscle memory' but there's no such thing. Motor memory is a consequence of re-inforcing the neuronal loops which encode the movement, thickening the myelin sheath of nerves which are activated during the movement and improving the accuracy and speed with which the action can be repeated. Attention has a small and finite limit and it's clearly easier to learn a new motor skill if all one's attention can be focused on movements of a single hand.

Cross-cortical inhibition occurs because humans have a natural tendency for mirror movements:  when one hand moves, the other hand tends to mirror its movements. This is seen in infants and young children, but as we develop motor control, we learn to stop these mirror movement. The motor cortex of each side of the brain gives off axons that travel through the corpus callosum (the thick fiber band that connects the two sides of our brains) to inhibit the motor cortex of the other side.  This cross-cortical inhibition is particularly pronounced when we’re only using one hand. When we play with our left hand, our right motor cortex is active, and it not only sends motor commands to our left hand, but it also sends commands to the left motor cortex, telling it not to move the right hand.  And vice versa when we play with our right hand. So, if we’re practicing only the right hand part of a piano piece, we’re probably learning to inhibit the left hand. Is it any wonder then, that when we go to play the song hands-together, it’s really difficult?  Perhaps hands-separate practice is a little bit counterproductive.

A New Music

"Each generation needs a new music"  Francis Crick

I'm reading 'The Gene: an Intimate History" by Siddhartha Mukherjee, a fascinating book about the history and biology of genetics. Each chapter is headed by a couple of quotes and this one from Francis Crick seemed particularly apt. Having spent an hour or so this morning practising piano, I'm becoming aware that my musical taste is turning away from the songs of my early years towards something more melodic and repetitive. I'm moved by some classical melodies and by some examples of jazz - 'Kind of Blue' by Miles Davis springs to mind - but I can't define what exactly I'm looking for. Perhaps I'll know it when I find it. So I'm exploring iTunes, trying to find albums and songs which express my musical ideals. Of course my taste changes with my mood but a bit of gentle melancholia seems to be my preferred style.

One New Thing

Most days I learn something new. I come across it in a book, notice it on a bike ride, hear it on the TV or in conversation with friends. Most of these scraps of information grab my attention briefly then fade away. 'That's interesting' I think. 'Maybe I could do something with that'. Then the thought fades away and something else grabs my attention or I drift away into a daydream.

This blog is my attempt to remedy the situation, to sift the torrent of information that rushes past and bring one new thing to my attention every day. It might be a new piece of music, a bright image or a killer fact. Writing a short piece about it will focus my attention and hold it in my memory. If nothing else happens my writing technique will improve with regular practice.

So for the rest of June I'm going to practice keeping a blog and paying attention. If it works out I'll make it a regular feature of my life, like meditation, practising the piano or riding a bike. I'll even spend some time designing the blog but for now a bar template will suffice.

So here we go; first entry.