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How to learn a piece of music in three steps
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IV Laws governing the quotation/citation of music
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17 posts Page 1 of 2 1, 2
How to learn a piece of music in three steps
by Carlos Bonell Sunday 24 April 2011, 18:43 pm
I hope you may find this article of interest. I first wrote it for my Blog column at my website.

1.Treat sight-reading or memorising as a fast track to learning
2.Alternate close-up detail with long-distance overview
3.Allow time for you to improve the piece and the 5 time test

Now here is some detail about each of these headings:

1.
Treat sight-reading as a fast track to learning -
If you are learning a piece from the music it will be a lot easier to do so if your sight-reading is good
enough to make sense of it by a third reading. If your sight-reading is not good enough to do this
then I suggest another approach here below.

Google...
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The good sight-reader fast track:
1st time reading: read through it slowly but rhythmically, and never mind the mistakes.
2nd time reading: read it through again, and try to keep going in slow time without hesitations, and
Page 1 of 11 Classical Guitar - - How to learn a piece of music in three steps
2011.05.24. http://www.delcamp.us/viewtopic.php?t=58833&p=643406
never mind the mistakes. Try to make sense of the music in your playing with phrasing and
dynamics. At the end revise and play even more slowly the difficult bars, the bars with mistakes, or
the bars where you couldnt keep time. Now move on to:
3rd time reading: make a special effort to incorporate the improvements which you have just been
practising, and be more demanding of yourself regarding keeping time, avoiding errors and making it
musical.

The poor sight-reader memorising fast track:
Learn the piece phrase by phrase, and dont move on to the next phrase until you have learnt and
half-memorised the first one. To memorise effectively remember the fingering patterns and frets,
repeat the rhythmic shapes until certain, and try to figure out the harmonies. Once you have half-
memorised the piece try to understand the structure and shape through the harmonies, rhythms and
melody. This will help fully memorise the piece.

2.
Alternate close-up detail with long-distance overview -
This applies to every learner, whether a poor or good reader.

Close-up detail:
The close-up moments require you to extract just a phrase or a bar or even just one difficult jump and
repeat it very slowly until you can play it smoothly, after which you can try it faster. Then you
should play the passage in question from a bar before and see whether it still works. And then again,
from another bar before that, and so on. After a few minutes of concentrated close-up detail work the
brain tires so you now move on to:

Long-distance overview:
Play through the whole piece ignoring mistakes and not stopping. The priority is to create a smooth
musical performance in spite of errors. Play through the piece several times and remember where the
errors occurred. Now go back to close-up detail work and repeat the process.
In any practise session, whether it be 30 minutes or 3 hours alternate close-up practise of difficult
passages with the long-distance approach of playing all the way through the piece. The time you
spend on close-up detail may be a few minutes or 10 minutes. Time yourself and you will see how
long 2 minutes of concentrated very slow close-up detailed work really is. Only continue for as long
as you can concentrate. Then proceed to long-distance overview work, which is more relaxed.
Close-up detail work is like breathing in, while long-distance overview work is like breathing out.
Close-up detail work is like looking through a microscope, while long-distance overview is like
looking through a telescope.

3.
Allow time for you to improve the piece and the 5 time test
Playing music so that you sound completely at ease takes time. You may have to live with the piece
for some months, and with really demanding pieces maybe for years. Pablo Casals, the first cellist in
the 20th century to revive and play the solo suites for cello by Bach, waited 8 years before playing
them in public. Dont worry, you need not take so long with the piece you are learning!
And here is an interesting thing: you may not practise the piece for weeks, and yet it may sound
better when you pick it up again. All the while the music has been bubbling away in your
subconscious.
To prove to yourself that you have mastered the piece subject it to my 5 time test. For this, take
any difficult passage and play it through five times in a row without a mistake. If you succeed
congratulations, you are on top of it. If you cant play it correctly 5 times in a row, its like snakes
and ladders, go back to number one and repeat very slowly.

This has been my rough guide as to how to learn a piece. Good luck!

Listen to:
J.S. Bach cello suites played by Pablo Casals
[mod edit: no links to commercial sites, please]

First published in my Blog in March 2011

Carlos Bonell

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Re: How to learn a piece of music in three steps
by Chris NewVillage Sunday 24 April 2011, 20:20 pm
Carlos Bonell wrote:Close-up detail:
The close-up moments require you to extract just a phrase or a bar or even just one
difficult jump and repeat it very slowly until you can play it smoothly, after which you
can try it faster. Then you should play the passage in question from a bar before and see
whether it still works. And then again, from another bar before that, and so on. After a
few minutes of concentrated close-up detail work the brain tires so you now move on to:

Play through the whole piece ignoring mistakes and not stopping.

Thank you for this post.

I assume I should play long-distance at a reasonable tempo -- regardless how bad I am at this point in
time, on any certain phrase/bar/difficult jump worked on in close-up detail, right? Mistakes and all?
Chris
--
Chris NewVillage
Student of the Online classical guitar lessons

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by Luis_Br Wednesday 27 April 2011, 02:41 am
Nice tips, thanks for sharing with us.

Chris NewVillage wrote:
Carlos Bonell wrote:Close-up detail:
The close-up moments require you to extract just a phrase or a bar or even
just one difficult jump and repeat it very slowly until you can play it
smoothly, after which you can try it faster. Then you should play the
passage in question from a bar before and see whether it still works. And
then again, from another bar before that, and so on. After a few minutes of
concentrated close-up detail work the brain tires so you now move on to:

Play through the whole piece ignoring mistakes and not stopping.

Thank you for this post.

I assume I should play long-distance at a reasonable tempo -- regardless how bad I am at
this point in time, on any certain phrase/bar/difficult jump worked on in close-up detail,
right? Mistakes and all?

A great point on the close-up and overview alternation, IMO, is the comment that the brain tires after
too many repetition. Once I've recognized this I've never let brain repeat things unconsciously. After
a few repetitions I change the exercise and then later I return to the previous one. Aleatory repetition
of exercises have a better long-term result with me.

I used to do the close-up vs overview approach in the past. But then I discovered the Fernandez
approach of simplifying things and it works much better with me. I simplify things until I can play
everything without mistakes. So I can play the whole thing without mistakes and then I gradually
add the difficulties (see Fernandez's book "Technique, Mechanism and Learning" for practical
examples of the approach).
Maybe different approaches work better according to the student. To me, Fernandez approach work
better because I force myself to break the mechanics in smaller pieces and isolate problems, so I can
learn them faster than just slowing down the tempo.

Another thing that helps me a lot is to practice in ppp (pianisimo). I've learned that from a pianist.
Michelangeli used to practice in ppp as warmup before a concert. It has a similar philosophy of the
slow down. It is much easier to play ppp, in a very relaxed and gentle way, than to play it loud. So I
start playing everything in ppp, and then I go louder and louder gradually. It also improves a lot the
dynamics control.
Luis_Br

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by Scot Tremblay Wednesday 27 April 2011, 03:49 am
Very interesting. Thank you for posting this. Over on another forum (a lute forum) we have been
discussing this very topic along with memorization. A link to your comments here will be a welcome
addition to that discussion.
Scot Tremblay, Luthier
Roseberryguitars
Scot Tremblay
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by waitswatcher Friday 29 April 2011, 12:38 pm
great read, thank you !

waitswatcher

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by amy3000 Friday 29 April 2011, 13:29 pm
Thanks for this post.
Luis, I discovered the same thing about playing ppp. I am able to relax so much more when
practicing that way. I had not heard of others doing that until your post. I thought about starting a
thread to see if other people do that.

amy3000

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by Carlos Bonell Monday 02 May 2011, 18:05 pm
Dear Chris (newvillage)
Your idea is a good idea. My guide to learning is a rough guide. You can adapt it to suit you. You
can play all the way through a piece at different speeds. It is an opportunity to keep the flow going
and disguise mistakes. Very best wishes, Carlos

Carlos Bonell

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by Chris NewVillage Monday 02 May 2011, 19:54 pm
Carlos Bonell wrote:Dear Chris (newvillage)
You can play all the way through a piece at different speeds. It is an opportunity to keep
the flow going and disguise mistakes.

Thank you, Carlos. I just needed clarification because I hear a lot of info saying that mistakes should
never be played. I just wasn't sure.

So, reviewing your original post, the purpose of Long-distance is to identify rough spots that can be
worked on in Close-up.

Got it! Thanks!
Chris
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Chris NewVillage

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by Chris NewVillage Monday 02 May 2011, 21:37 pm
Here is a related web page by Nick Cutroneo: http://nickcutroneo.wordpress.com/2009/ ... -practice/
Chris
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Chris NewVillage

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by Sean Tuesday 03 May 2011, 11:30 am
Chris NewVillage wrote:Here is a related web page by Nick Cutroneo:
http://nickcutroneo.wordpress.com/2009/ ... -practice/

That's an excellent article.
I may be wrong . . . but I doubt it. - Sir Charles Barkley

And what kind of man uses the word 'toadying', anyway?

Sean

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by Larry McDonald Wednesday 04 May 2011, 16:19 pm
Carlos,

It's good to see you on Delcamp.

Larry McDonald

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by DerekH Sunday 08 May 2011, 23:29 pm
It's an interesting article, but it seems to have something fundamental missing from it...

Take for example the Villa-Lobos Study number 1, which a competent sight-reader can possibly
bluster most of the way through, having never before seen it.

But then, in the middle of the piece there is that waterfall of ligados that has, over the years, attracted
a number of different fingerings with position shifts at different times.

This article seems to miss out the most important step of them all...

x) When there is a choice of fingering, spend time exploring ALL the possibilities in slow time,
before picking the one that *you* will incorporate from this point on.

The belief that a good sightreader comes up with the optimum solution at sight is one that I simply
don't subscribe to.

The belief that repeating that (faulty) process three times guarantees the optimum solution is clearly
demonstrably false.

I think the article is highly commendable - I am passionate about improving guitarists' poor reading,
and sightreading a piece to discover its structure and musical content is fair game. Sightreading a
piece to discover the optimum fingering is, well.... do it if you want, but you'll find that unlearning
takes longer than learning...

DerekH

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by andrefsh Monday 09 May 2011, 00:45 am
that was really interesting! I've stopped playing guitar for a few months and I'm trying to be good
again - that if I was actually good one day hehe - and that guide-article is going to be really helpful!
Thank you!
andrefsh

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by choctawchas Thursday 12 May 2011, 23:35 pm
Another thing that helps me a lot is to practice in ppp (pianisimo). I've learned that from
a pianist. Michelangeli used to practice in ppp as warmup before a concert. It has a
similar philosophy of the slow down. It is much easier to play ppp, in a very relaxed and
gentle way, than to play it loud. So I start playing everything in ppp, and then I go
louder and louder gradually. It also improves a lot the dynamics control.

I discovered this when playing during the early morning hours while the world around me was
sleeping. I noticed how much better
my playing became through imagining the result instead of playing it. but I've also have experience
playing in noisy distracting environments
where I'm forced to play loudly and forcibly. both are extremely useful strategies.

choctawchas

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by oski79 Friday 13 May 2011, 04:13 am
choctawchas wrote:
Another thing that helps me a lot is to practice in ppp (pianisimo). I've
learned that from a pianist. Michelangeli used to practice in ppp as warmup
before a concert. It has a similar philosophy of the slow down. It is much
easier to play ppp, in a very relaxed and gentle way, than to play it loud. So
I start playing everything in ppp, and then I go louder and louder gradually.
It also improves a lot the dynamics control.

I discovered this when playing during the early morning hours while the world around
me was sleeping. I noticed how much better
my playing became through imagining the result instead of playing it. but I've also have
experience playing in noisy distracting environments
where I'm forced to play loudly and forcibly. both are extremely useful strategies.

Same experience here, Choctwchas...

In my case, I go through phases when I wake up at odd hours and can't get back to sleep. My doctor
told me not to fight it-- If I can't sleep, don't lie there in bed trying to, that just makes it worse. Get
up and do something else. So I started going into the other room and practicing-- very softly, so that
even with the doors closed I wouldn't wake my wife. It was a revelation! I now feel that those brief
30-45 minute sessions are some of the most valuable time I spend practicing. I feel calm, relaxed,
and my mind is clear and uncluttered enough that I can really concentrate on working on my pieces.
"... nothing's wrong, just nothing ever goes as planned...

oski79
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