I was originally going to dedicate an article on Hamelin’s Toccata, talking about the technical and musical challenges, and what is unusual or particular about the piece from a pianistic standpoint. After looking at the piece a bit, I’ve concluded that it is a fairly standard virtuosic work, relatively conservative in the context of Hamelin’s other pieces. To be fair, I have not practiced this piece, only read through it a couple of times and listened to some of the performers play it. But, there are no striking registrations, crazy fugues, strange figurations, or near-impossible runs. Just fast and exciting.
Furthermore, I don’t want these posts to really be music-theoretical, unless the topic is specifically about that. I think we would benefit more talking about stuff more piano-related, instead of things like how he uses polychords, hemiolas, augmentation, chromatic build-up over a pedal-tone – things that are very intuitive that I just end up having to make up terms for. We shall leave that for the theorists.
So, I am going to be talking about how to learn new repertoire, new in both the sense of it being something not of the common practice era, and also in the sense that it is a new piece that you may not have known previously. As always, this is from my point of view and my experiences. Other pianists might have developed other techniques or take things in a different order with different priorities. However, I hope that some of these ideas will inspire you to discover other ways to learn music efficiently and deeply. And, if you’re not a musician, I hope my suggestions can stimulate analogous ideas in other fields.
A borrowed title
No, I did not come up with the title of this article myself. In fact, there is a course on coursera.org called “Learning How to Learn” that I highly recommend (no I’m not being paid for this suggestion, I promise). All of the concepts they present on learning and test-taking are applicable to us as musicians and performers. Furthermore, all of the information is from research on how the mind works, and it is great for people of all ages. I highly recommend watching the videos, even if you think you are an efficient learner. It’s sometimes good to have those ideas told to you explicitly.
Getting it in the ear
I would argue that atonal or less-tonal modern music is harder to learn not because the non-tonality is factually harder to learn, but because it is not in our ear. The ear plays such an important role in sight-reading and learning music (at least for me). When I decide to start practicing a piece from the common-practice era, I’ve usually heard the piece at least once, if not dozens of times, and have probably read it a few times as well. Even in this Hamelin Toccata, when progressions and patterns are more similar to passages from some common-practice pieces, I find myself being able to read faster and assume more of the notes aurally.
Try reading a tonal piece that you have not heard before – like a Medtner sonata or the Scriabin 8th, or even something like the Mompou Variations on a theme by Chopin – you’ll find it surprisingly hard to sight-read because, though it is tonal, you don’t know how it goes and you need to actually read each note. Contrast that to reading a Beethoven sonata you’ve heard. You don’t actually need to read all of the notes because you can fill most of it in by assumption (and be correct when doing so).
Of course, this is assuming a general level of complexity in the piece – I’m sure you would be able to sight-read a Soler piece that you have not heard before relatively easily. If that’s not the case, get on it! You can get better only by doing it more.
So, one of the first things we as pianists have to do when learning a new piece is to get it in our ears. I would advocate for reading through the piece frequently when starting off. You may also speed up the process by listening to recordings, though then you run the risk of getting an interpretation stuck in your head if you only listen to one rendition over and over. Reading and listening not only puts the sound world into your head, but also gives you a good idea of the large-scale structure of the piece. It allows you to subconsciously prep your later practice plan: you begin to have an idea of what parts are more difficult than others, what parts fit your hand relatively well, and what parts are just plain confusing and will cause problems later when trying to memorize it.
Caveat: reading is not quite possible on the hardest of pieces, like a Ligeti etude or a Xenakis piece.
Let it grow on you
Many pianists have pieces they really don’t like. But I don’t think many of them have pieces that they know really well AND they don’t like. Personally, whenever I’ve started a piece that I disliked for whatever reason, I find myself saying, “This piece is actually not bad” after I get to know it and actually learn it. So, give it a chance. I’m not particularly fond of this Hamelin piece that has been commissioned, but I don’t know it well, and who knows? Ask me again in a few years and my opinions on it might very well have changed!
The Metronome is your friend
I’ve heard my teacher say it, you’ve heard your teacher say it, we all know we should use it, but, but, but…
Just use the metronome. I’ll talk about the metronome more thoroughly in the next article, but don’t just do slow practice, and definitely don’t just play fast. Mix it up a bit.
Survey the Land
I mentioned it briefly, but I want to cover more in-depth the concept of having a good idea of the general structure of the piece. Identifying different sections of the piece, whether that be a character change, a key change, a meter change, contour change, or just even a page-turn, can help you organize your practice. It can also help with memory. We will talk about memory more in-depth in a later article as well, but for now, know that having these goal-posts are a good technique for memorizing and dealing with memory-slips. (Hey, this sounds like building repertoire by moving outwards from the must-have pieces!)
You can even start seeing patterns in the structure – maybe there are two passages that are similar, or the same but transposed, or maybe there are passages that are easy and you don’t need to worry about them so much. An example:
Prokofiev 2nd Concerto, first movement. You know the cadenza is going to be the hardest and most problematic part. That means you would probably work on that first, so you can get a head-start on it. It doesn’t mean you won’t practice the other parts. You realize that the first section has two statements of the theme, and that the two statements share a chunk of the material. That means you don’t have to explicitly learn the two parts, but you have to make sure that you know the differences between the statements – that they end in different dynamics and go onto different versions of the “second theme,” etc.
The second section is sort of like variations (and modulations) on a new theme. You identify to yourself the characteristics of the variations: first is piano solo in A minor – nothing too bad besides maybe articulation considerations. Second variation is piano accompaniment in A minor. Those hand crossing and bass jumps seem kind of nasty; I would make a note to really know those notes and the changes in the harmony. Then there is a sort of bridge/development variations which leads to the next variation of piano solo in D minor – there are some unison runs, but all-in-all not bad. The runs continue into the last variation where the orchestra again has the theme. Those weird scales can be problematic, so I would sit down and really internalize those accidentals.
This is just an example of surveying the piece to really make practicing efficient – once it is clear in the mind, it will be clear for your body.
Back to the Basics
Sometimes, you there’s just no way around learning pieces like your teacher first taught you: hands separately, measure by measure, line by line, page by page. This method is great for thorny pieces like Carter’s Caténaires or any Ligeti etude because they’re basically impossible to read. I remember trying to read through these pieces, and even after a week, it still felt like I was reading them for the first time. Things would sound different every day – I would go, “wait was that accidental there yesterday? I also don’t remember that treble clef being there, and could have sworn that that was a fourth and not a fifth.”
This method shouldn’t be used blindly, either. Don’t just start from the beginning and do measure by measure by measure by measure. Group them. Do the first measure, then the next. Then maybe try putting the two measures together. Then do the next two measures, and then the four measures all together. Maybe try to build the whole line now. After you have two lines you can put them together, but you also need to spend some extra time on the measure before and after the line-break because you have yet to practice those measures together. Same thing with the lines before and after the page turns. Again, it is important to mix it up with large and small sections so you can both concentrate on details as well as get into the flow of it.
When I was learning Ligeti’s L’escalier du diable, I had to do this entire process twice: once to be able to play through with the score, and a second time for actually memorizing it.
Spaced Repetition
Don’t procrastinate. It is better that you start the piece earlier on (so you can get it in your ear), and read it once in a while before you really start diving into it, than it is to plunge straight into a week-long cram session. I believe this is why pieces that you learned when you were young stick better in your head than more recent pieces. Those old pieces you probably have brought back a dozen times throughout your educational and performing career, whereas those new pieces you probably played them 5 times in a span of two months, and haven’t touched since. The spaced repetition over years allows your brain to marinate the information, and every time you bring it back it is reinforced.
So, it is a good idea to read new pieces earlier on, even if you don’t have the time to dedicate to working on it in detail. Just let your ears soak it up slowly.
Convince Them
The hardest thing about new works isn’t their technical difficulty, it is how to perform them convincingly. Playing the notes well and accurately is relatively easy (most of the time), and with a lot of new music, that probably is enough to sell it to the audience. But, as musicians, we don’t let ourselves get away with the minimum – we always strive to find meaning, interesting things, expression, colors, or stories in the music we play.
Part of accomplishing this is to make sure you are practicing the musicality while you are doing your slow practice. You should never practice the notes devoid of expression, whether that expression is coming from articulation, dynamics, phrasing, or something else. If you practice robotically, you will play robotically, or end up spending a lot of time undoing that and adding musicality to it. And the worst thing you can do is play like a robot. (Well, you could play like a robot and miss all the notes. But we’re assuming a level of competence here.)
Many people have trouble with the atonality of pieces, and if you play it like it’s a dissonant piece, you’ll never get the audience on board. Rather, it is important to find musical interest in the piece – it can mean tracing how the dissonances “resolve” relative to one another. Or maybe the dissonance is a product of individual lines that can be brought out at different times to make more sense. Or perhaps the dissonance is secondary to the registration shifts. Sometimes, the rhythm is more important. I’m not saying that we must fit music into common-practice boxes that we feel familiar with, but it can provide a good basis for understanding newer music. You also have to remember that music does not exist in a vacuum; there is always something of the old in the new.
Play it Through
For your friends; for your girl/boy-friend(s); for your parents, your stuffed animals, your neighbors, your cat. The more experience you have going through the piece in an environment that is more stressful than your normal practice routine, the better. You find out how much stamina you need and where you are liable to lose focus. Sometimes memory issues or technical challenges don’t show themselves until a run-through.
I really love recording as a technique. I feel like my mental state changes the moment I press record. Not only does it force you to go through the whole piece without stopping, hopefully without making any huge mistakes, but it also results in a product that you can listen to afterwards. And there’s no better teacher than listening to yourself, realizing your habits and hearing how the piece comes across as a whole. Sometimes you’ll find yourself cringing at certain things, but then concluding that, “eh, it wasn’t as bad as I thought.” Other times you’ll say, “All the notes are there, but somehow the feeling wasn’t quite right.” It gives you direction for how to guide your future practice sessions, and informs of what you need to fix and where.
Sit down with a score and headphones and really be your own teacher. Mark it up, and you’ll even find yourself saying the exact same things your teachers say. “Why did you rush here? Don’t play these downbeats so vertically. Can you not throw away the last note of each group of sixteenths?” And, you can be as nasty or nice to yourself as you want!
No such thing
There are lots of sayings of “There’s no such thing as a bad ____, only a bad ____.” We can put “piece” and “performance” in there and get a sentiment that I mostly agree with. Though, I think it is more that we as performers can make a bad piece good by delivering it well – in the right context and with the right conviction. I think this “how do I make this work” attitude is applicable even to the most commonly played piece. After all, people are always asking musicians to perform with fresh ideas. Hey, maybe it isn’t a bad idea to treat old music like new music sometimes!