The True Confessions of a [Justified] Self-Deprecater

I have always struggled with overly-harsh self-criticism.

I feel that one of the reasons I become so depressed when I perform or record is that I teach myself to ignore certain mistakes when learning the notes to begin with; those rose-colored glasses are then stripped off once I am aware that people are listening critically to me.  Then I run back to the shelter of my practice room and try to play the piece; I am shocked; I hold the fragments of a shattered masterpiece; the optimism is gone; I wonder what happened; all enjoyment found in playing the piece is lost.  I try in vain to correct one problem - if I could only play that one measure right!  But my patience is too short-lived and I leave the practice room to go for a walk.

I have two options at this point to overcome this temporary aural trauma and move on.  First, I can remove or lower my self-determined standards, turn off my ears when I go before an audience or a microphone, and simply play without allowing myself to feel disappointment or disgust at the result: it is what it is.  This option sickens me - it seems contrary to the fundamental principles of art.  The second option is to open my ears still wider in the practice room and expose myself to the painful realities of all my technical and musical shortcomings from the very beginning.  I am not perfect, but I do not allow myself to be content with imperfection; I assess where I am, and I set attainable goals for that day's practice session.

This negative experience happens less and less frequently these days, thankfully.  Partly I'm developing the instincts to predict what will fall apart in performance and how to prevent it, but mostly I'm just focusing on smaller segments of music and playing them precisely from the get-go.  I'm learning that there is a feeling of total control and comfort that fills up the hands when you really get a piece under your fingers; you feel that everything you do is intentional; silly mistakes, fobbles, and wrong notes don't scare you, because you're still in control.  Having gotten a glimpse of what that feels like, I now strive to attain that within the first weeks rather than two years down the line with a piece.

Today is an excellent example.  It was a remarkably productive practice session, despite some rather uncomfortable interruptions.  I spent a little over an hour on the A section of variation 1 of the Goldbergs, just looping it a little under tempo.  It's about a 45 second section.  I find more and more that it doesn't matter how I practice, but rather that I am focused.  I can control the piece well enough that if I fumbled a little or played a wrong not, I kept going and when I got around to the section again, I corrected it.  Each time I played through the section I set a different goal and gradually worked the entire piece up by degrees. About 40 minutes in I experienced the major crash in finger coordination, dreams about which happening on stage wake you up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat!  So I stopped, slowed significantly down, and worked out the finger movements again from about 40 beats per minute all the way back up to about 90.  And now, with minimal upkeep, I can keep that section from ever going haywire again.

After the incident I took up looping that section again until playing it gave me that feeling of total control I desire.  Of course, I only achieved 95% of the feeling I was looking for, but the last 5% will take another few months to settle in. Sadly, that's the way it works.  Now that I know what that feels like, however, I will not perform unless I experience that total relaxation and freedom when I play my program.  It's dangerous to do otherwise; why would I go into the lion's cage not having mastered the whip I'm wielding against the beast?

This seems unrelated, but it's the first step to becoming more confident and overcoming the shock of hearing yourself perform or record in a positive way.

"Let me try this out on you..."

Tonight, on our way to Denny's, I dropped by my practice room to drop off some unnecessaries.  The two young ladies with me, having just learned that I play the piano, wanted me to try something.  Well, the only thing I've been working on seriously solo-wise lately is Scarbo....  why not?  It sounds great when I play it for myself.  So, I set out into it.

As any of us could have predicted, it was a trainwreck.

I've thought more and more lately about why we as humans can play something so well when it's just us around and totally blow it the moment others show up.  It's not always the case, and in fact (I'm only speaking for myself on this one) I observe that the trainwreck is worst on the first run and aligns to what I do alone in the practice room more and more as I play the piece more.

This is all very obvious, still.  Let's get down to some deeper thought here.  Identify the problem and the answer will resolve itself 9 times out of 10.  What exactly happens?

• First, those repeated notes at the beginning were starting to sound like something out of a Dusapin etude... impossibly erratic, never more than 3 out of every 4 notes sounding, as many different dynamics and tone qualities as there were notes.
• It was at least 20% faster than I have practiced it.  Some parts were probably even faster than I intend to ever perform them in concert.
• There were innumerable wrong notes, particularly when the hands are crossed or on top of one another (which is, to my great frustration, more than half of this piece).
• I got lost twice, had to backtrack a measure or two, and keep going.

Much of this was to expected in any case.  You don't perform Scarbo after working half-heartedly on it for a month.  Also, the repeated notes were obviously not together because I hadn't warmed up.

Tempo is a different issue, and its cause is different in different people.  The two main reasons I observe, for example, when my students will bring a piece to their lesson and play it way faster than they have obviously been practicing, are nervousness and pride.  The nervousness comes in both from a feeling of shyness and the "this piece is really hard...gracious sakes I hope I can get through it..." attitude.  If a piece is hard, it gets over faster if you play it faster; also, at least with me, I find that if I don't know a piece of music, it's not going to sound good at any tempo.  So I might as well play it fast.  The pride is not a bad kind of pride; instead, it is that you have worked hard on the piece for a good while and you want to show to your first audience how much progress you've made so far.  This combines with the understanding that it's just a casual run-through, creating the perfect storm.  Sloppiness takes over. Tempo flies off the charts as you try to give your new audience a sense of the piece, and you yourself are incapable of taking it at that tempo... yet. But hey, they all say that if you can play a piece slow you can play it fast as well, right?  Wrong (well, to an extent).

I feel perfectly comfortable playing for myself when it's just me in the room, and sometimes when there are only other pianists there too.  When non-pianist friends drop by to hear my poundings, I somehow lose my mind and end up playing the music the way I played everything four years ago.  Old habits die hard, though.  Especially when the piece is as through-and-through-awesome as Scarbo.

Steps to preventing a repeat offence?  I can't say there's a magical series of cures.  Speaking for myself, I can make some comments.  In my playing, when it's just me who's present, I strive for absolute correctness, clarity of tone and touch, and intelligent structure to the section I'm practicing, regardless of tempo and to a degree regardless of dynamic and other, more polished expression.  There are plenty of times when that alone is my focus - those aspects of music are just as valid as the black dots on the page - it's just that I don't have the mental capacity to critically focus on every aspect of playing at once. So I limit myself somewhat, when I am in the practice room, mostly to just playing the notes well.  Once another person shows up, however, my extreme social nature urges me to focus on communicating.  Well, the mind is like a small plate at a Thanksgiving feast, and so in order to communicate with these fellow human beings, things get pushed off the plate: note accuracy and control/moderation of tempo, first of all.

The important thing this early in the game is to become accustomed to playing well in front of other human beings.  I can communicate naturally, in most circumstances, and I have also learned how to practice that alone.  Maybe I'll post on that someday.  The point is, I need to tell myself that since accuracy and control/moderation of tempo are my greatest difficulties in my art, that these must be my primary focus when I have the opportunity to "try out" a piece on someone early on in the process of learning something.

The ladies left, chuckling to themselves and pointing out how interesting and cool the piece is; they avoided commenting on the execution altogether.

The Doldrums

I have learned enough pieces at a university level (whatever that means) by now that I can recognize a pattern I go through every time I start a big new project like Gaspard, the Goldberg Variations (posts coming soon), or a larger sonata like Waldstein, Rachmaninoff Op. 36, a Schumann sonata, etc.  It always begins with the initial excitement; I pull the piece out of my bag for the first time, open it up to measure 1, set it on the piano.... the thrill!  I start to sightread it, and gradually I'll get the notes under my fingers.  (I may post something later on about learning notes, since that seems to be the single biggest frustration a lot of young pianists face, including myself, up until two or three years ago.)

I learn the notes, and if I'm smart about it (and patient, which isn't frequent), I'll work through the piece at a slower pace but focus not only on the notes but also on developing a good structure, developing a rich sound  that is appropriate to the piece, and resolving technical problems right when I first meet with them.

In a piece like Gaspard, however, the problems I face require me to develop new technique in addition to implementing the skills I have already acquired.  This means I cannot resolve the technical problems in the piece as quickly as I can learn the notes.  And as I am forging through entire oceans full of physical challenges, that is exactly when the engines give out, my excitement at learning the piece leaves me, and I find myself in all-too-familiar doldrums: able to sloppily plow through the majority of a movement at half-tempo with no motivation to do what it takes to play better.

I hit this point with "Scarbo" about a week and a half ago.  I would run through the piece twice and then call it quits, moving on to something new and exciting or something I can already play smoothly.  Last night it came to a head as I resolved to select a couple of specific spots in the 400+ measures I have already learned  and "woodshed" them, as Rombach says.  The first was the fast repeated notes at the beginning of the movement, and the second was the return of one of the themes in mm. 256-312.  I had the time to spend two or three hours on them, at the end of which I felt productive, rewarded, and satisfied.

To be clear about my practice methods, I do not condone pure repetition as a means of acquiring technique and certainly not as a means of learning a piece of music.  Every time I run through a section, when there is no way to learn it except by repetition, no matter if it is five notes or five hundred measures, I intentionally focus on something different each time; it must be interesting.  I also find that sometimes it is helpful to clarify to myself exactly what I am trying to accomplish rather than just telling myself, "it's not right yet. It's not right yet."  So I will write down my goals or simply say them out loud.  It forces the brain to recognize completely what it is I am working out.

The arpeggio

A new installment of the Gaspard de la Nuit Saga.
Having very successfully performed Ondine Tuesday evening having picked it up less than three weeks beforehand after several months' hiatus, I undertook Scarbo Wednesday morning. I've never even sightread through it before, so this has been a challenge. So far, since I haven't had anything major going on Wednesday through today (except Thanksgiving, when I didn't play the piano at all, thank God), I've moved relatively quickly through it. I have the first 435 measures of the 627 measure piece more or less learned. Today, I thought I would devote a post to a specific passage that is troubling me.

Every time I listen to this piece, the moment that overwhelms me is the arpeggio in mm. 228-234 (pictured) and its sequence transposed down a fourth in mm. 249-255. A perfectly-executed diminuendo as it flies up literally the entire span of the keyboard sends chills down my spine again and again. Needless to say, I have a sense of responsibility to pass that impression on to my audience. When I first arrived at that moment in learning the piece, Wednesday (day 1), I worked at it two hours at a stretch. It's Saturday and I am only slightly less dissatisfied.

The principal issue is that the arpeggio is simply awkward to play. It fits too well into the hand in some places, and once it comes time to shift up to the next octave, there is nothing natural about the movement. Furthermore, Ravel has both hands shifting up together, landing in the new position on each beat. This makes it easy to have a pulsing effect rather than a gentle "whoosh" up to the pianississimo A7.

A second main issue is that the forte D#1 at the bottom of the arpeggio doesn't decay quickly enough for the arpeggio to be heard in the last two octaves. This means that this already-awkward arpeggio must be playable completely smoothly with no pedal at all. Then I can clear the pedal after, say, C#5 and have the control over the sound I need to finish effectively.

Ondine's Return

I was working hard at Ondine from Gaspard de la Nuit through the end of the summer, but I had to set the piece aside, both to maintain my own sanity and to prepare for a small handful of competitions.  I ended up only applying for the two, both of which accepted me - the International Keyboard Odyssiad and MTNA.  Now that MTNA is finally behind me and, through a silly trick of luck, an unusually mediocre pianist is representing New Mexico at the Regional Level (I received Honorable Mention), I am free to learn new pieces.  Of course my first project was to run right back to Ondine.  I discovered to my delight that I had done a very good job learning the notes before; the piece came right back into my fingers and after a week and a day was completely memorized.

My junior recital is fast approaching.  I'll be giving it sometime next fall, preferably as early in the semester as possible.  I have some ideas for a program:

• Rachmaninoff, Variations on a Theme of Corelli.  I performed the majority of this work in 2007 or 2008.  I did a horrible job, and I am grateful that no one remembers my performance anymore.  Nowadays, however, I am much better-equipped to tackle such a piece and perform confidently, comfortably, safely, and musically.
• Beethoven, God Save the King Variations.  A really fun little piece of music.  Like everything Beethoven wrote, it's brilliant and fits the piano.  Unlike most of what Beethoven wrote, it's short enough to be played as an encore, weighing in at about 4 1/2 minutes without repeats.
• Bach, Art of Fugue.  Not the whole thing, probably, but certainly a large chunk thereof.  I never cease to be amazed by what Bach is capable of.
• Beethoven, Piano Sonata in A, Op. 101

I will also start work on the fourth piano concerto of Beethoven as soon as this studio recital is past.  I love learning new pieces!  I am really looking forward to this.

Living Music?

I've spent the majority of the last two months of silence reflecting on how to make my performances still deeper.  I want to deal with the same life issues that the composer dealt with while and by writing the music.  I listened to a friend of mine playing a piece of Mozart awhile back, and all I recall thinking at that performance was that everything was very beautifully played, but it had no life.  Instead, I saw lots of visual expression.  He moved a lot.  Once I closed my eyes, the life seemed to flee.

What puts life into the music?  My piano teacher tells me about crescendi and diminuendi and pedaling and creating a good sound, but I feel like these aspects of performance, while important, only serve to be successively thicker layers of sophistication heaped upon the piece, further disguising the basic lifelessness of the pianist.

My friend felt the music very deeply, but that feeling was not transferred into the music.  I would even say he understood the music deeply, but he failed to convey that understanding to me.

What I consider to be great composers are the ones who deal with serious issues of life with their music (of course, there is still a prerequisite level of skill to be attained): take Beethoven, for example.  The last five piano sonatas are perhaps his most profound response to the difficulties of life, and one can certainly not convey that meaning in the music without first dealing with the same issues (real or imagined) and, as they say in the theatre world, becoming Beethoven.

I can't speak for how well my friend did this with his Mozart sonata.  I don't know if "being" is all there is to it, but it seems to be a major part of imbuing life into the music.

I'm going to stop there, let it soak into my own soul for a few more years, and then maybe I'll have an idea of the next step to take.

The Dilemma of Balance

The competition was very educational.  I got my clock cleaned; it was good for me.  I saw kids years younger than me playing at a level of pianism I hadn’t even thought about striving for.  It’s easy to dismiss the kids as geniuses and move on when you aren’t there competing with them.  At this point, I need to make some changes in my strategy and decide once for all what I intend to do for the rest of my career.

The issue that gives me the most pause as an aspiring pianist is how much music to learn.  It seems like the last thing that should be on my mind; but every time a major series of performances is over, such as the end of every summer, I feel a little overwhelmed at having to decide what I should learn in the coming fall.   At the moment there are several options before me.

        1.  Learn a lot of music this semester. The repertoire I have posted on the repertoire page as the “rep in progress” section is as follows: Beethoven Sonata Op. 101, Berio Erdeklavier, Chopin Etude Op. 10 no. 1 and Ballade no. 2, Prokofiev Piano Concerto no. 2, Ravel Gaspard de la Nuit, and Schumann Waldszenen. It’s a recital program plus a concerto.

        2.  Continue with the Chopin Ballade and pick up something older like the Waldstein Sonata and some other pieces I have already learned and try to perfect them.

        3.  Continue with the Chopin Ballade and pick two other pieces to learn from the list of repertoire in progress that I have posted.

The kids I competed against had been playing their pieces for years. I who only picked up that Chopin Ballade last semester didn’t stand a chance.  I have never had the kind of teachers who expect their students to practice the same three pieces for years, never allowing them to be satisfied and move on, and I have never been one to persevere on the same piece for years on end when I don’t have to.

This chart I have created to demonstrate the way I see things.  What we have is a triangle, to show that as your quality of playing increases, the size of repertoire decreases. Likewise, the one who plays a lot of music cannot increase the quality of his playing without hitting the border of the triangle, at which point if he would play better he must limit the amount of music he plays.  One look at my repertoire page will show that I have already acquired a very large repertoire and learn lots of music every semester, playing it at some level approximately where I put my dot.  The gold medalist at the competition in Colorado plays extremely well, but on talking with him I learned that he has a repertoire of only 50 minutes of music.  I assume his strategy is to increase his level of playing and then level out and learn new repertoire.  The other extreme from pianists like me is Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, who only played a few hours of music his entire life, but played it all extremely well.  He is certainly one of the finest pianists ever to live because of his obsessive perfectionism. It also appears that for whatever reason, there are these superhuman pianists like Claudio Arrau who played on a level that I can only dream of attaining, but with a massive repertoire.  That is the section enclosed by the dashed line outside of the triangle.

Of course my diagram is not at all definitive, but it gives an idea of how I see the situation panning out.  I think I will proceed vertically and slightly to the left from now on. What I mean by this is not that I will never learn new pieces, but that I will focus entirely on increasing the quality of my playing and willingly slow down the pace at which I learn music to accomplish that.  I am getting older, but I hope that the technique that I still lack to play everything with ease is still acquirable to an extent.