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Writer's pictureJack Mitchell Smith

Finding the ‘Sweet Spot’ in Piano Playing - Reading Music vs. Looking vs. Instinct

A few weeks ago I wrote about the importance of listening critically to yourself and the music that you are producing whilst you are performing. For many people starting out on their musical adventure (and, frankly, for many who are already quite a way into it) this can be a challenge as it is effectively a form of multi-tasking for which you need to concentrate fully on both playing piano and listening.


The logical extension to this is to really develop the ‘sweet spot’ between what you are playing, reading and hearing.



piano playing instinct


For many beginners, reading music is like a script that dare not be deviated from. This leads to an intense focus and concentration on the score in front of them at the expense of translating these to the correct notes. This isn’t because they don’t know where the notes should be - moreover it is because they aren’t putting the same amount of focus into what or where their hands are playing.


For others, it can be true that they will focus almost entirely on what the hands are doing to the point that they ignore important things in the score. This is seldom the notes themselves, but things like phrasing, dynamic and tempo markings, 8va / 8vb markings, pedal marks and even repeat marks can get lost or forgotten entirely.


What we need to try to develop most in order to progress both of these areas to our fullest potential is our piano playing instinct. This can take many forms:



  • Knowing where our hands are without looking.

  • Knowing how a piece of music should sound.

  • Playing without the music.

  • Using piano playing instinct to 'fill in the gaps'.



Let’s explore these in a little more detail.



Knowing Where Our Hands Are Without Looking



Many workbooks that take both children and adult learners alike from the absolute basics of piano playing do so through a very gradual incorporation of additional notes into their repertoire. For children, many books favour the ‘Middle C’ method - they learn middle C and once they are familiar with this note and have done some rhythmic exercises to progress it they will add one note at a time - usually D is second! For adults, it is often found that 3 - 5 notes are begun with - usually (middle) C, D and E gradually moving onto F and G. The reason that the notes are brought in gradually is to introduce the learner to different hand positions and get them comfortable with how they feel.


Note keyword: ‘feel’.


Feeling doesn’t just refer to finger familiarity either. Surprisingly it refers to arm familiarity. If you rest your hand ready to play a C major scale vs. a D major scale (only one tone higher) the arm will be in a slightly different position.


Close your eyes and see if you can get your hands into position to play a C major scale from middle C in the right hand and one octave lower in the left hand. Try them both separately and together - you may find it is easier to do it together because, again, instinct is that familiarity of distance between the two hands mixed with which angle the arm sits at.


With your eyes closed, try moving up one (white) note at a time ready to play the respective scale: D major, E major. If you are doing the scales properly, you should be able to feel the new black notes with their respective fingers without playing them. For example, if you can use finger 3 of either hand to find the F# when locating the D major scale, it should act as an anchor enough that your other fingers will naturally fall onto their respective notes.


Of course, when it comes to bigger jumps around the keyboard you will need to be looking at your hands to make sure you hit the notes as accurately as possible. However, the purpose of the exercise overall is to minimise the need to look at your hands as you play. Despite the fact that there is a lot happening in your mind behind the scenes to allow this instinct to kick in, it does in fact allow you to concentrate more on the score that you are reading and the music that you are creating.



Knowing How A Piece Of Music Should Sound



No matter how well known a piece of music is, it’s amazing how it can go out of the window when you are taking full control for creating it on an instrument. Something as ubiquitous as ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ can, if met with a slightly wrong note, be met with a look for validation from the teacher despite the pupil having sung it for years.


This isn’t because they don’t know how the music goes, but it’s more to do with not putting that full concentration towards listening, again favouring getting the hands in the right places or reading the score properly etc. - This is the segment on which I wrote a whole blog about, but in terms of developing instinct one thing that we can do whilst practising is singing the melody lines (or even bass / accompaniment lines if they are the bits that are confusing us) to ourselves either before or during practice. It doesn’t have to be pitch perfect, of course - we’re learning piano, not singing! But it will create a whole new connection with the music that you didn’t have before. Needless to say, listening to any existing performances of pieces of music also helps with this. Luckily, in these days of YouTube and Spotify, even the rarest of piece is findable somewhere!


What you need to be familiarising yourself with alongside and during your practice of listening to how a piece of music goes is the direction of it as this will strengthen your instinct. Does it go up? Does it go down? Does it stay on the same note? And refresh your knowledge of intervals as often as possible. Some people like to find intervals in pieces of music they already know and try to thing how they sound. For example, ‘Happy Birthday’ begins with a major second (‘HaPPY - BIRTHday) which is quite close, where as the ‘Oh When’ on ‘Oh When the Saints’ is still the same direction of moving up, but a slightly bigger jump - a major third.


As I have said before, this is why ‘Ode To Joy’ is a great beginner piece and a great piece for testing instinct. Start on E and play the first four bars and - using only white notes - when it moves up, move up one, when it moves down move down one and, needless to say, when it stays the same just stay on the same note!



Playing Without The Music



I concluded in a blog post earlier this year regarding playing from score vs. memory that it didn’t matter whether you played with or without, but that’s not the purpose of this. This is an exercise.


I wouldn’t expect you to be able to play the full extent of a piece of music straight away without the score there, so don’t expect to just be able to throw it to one side one day and play it note perfect, but certainly isolate any problem areas and take the score away and give it a go.


Will it go well? Not necessarily, but what it will do is entirely shift your area of focus onto something else that needs it because if you’ve spent your entire time practising with the score then you will have developed a dependency on it.


And what are we trying to improve?


Instinct!


Does it sound right? Can you play the piece whilst looking at your hands (surprisingly off-putting if you’re used to using the score the whole time!)


If that’s a no and a no, don’t worry. Refresh your memory with the score and then put it to one side again and try again!



Using Piano Playing Instinct To Fill In The Gaps



When we play a piece of music, we need to be mindful of several things:





Our last bit of instinct should be called upon only when things go wrong in a performance environment (as if this were a practice environment, you’d just go back and work on it!).


By using all the information about a piece of music that we have collected, we can - in times of crisis - put our mind to work in the heat of the moment and keep the music flowing as we need to.


Theoretically, if you have practiced and do regularly practice all of the above you will be a solid all round player and your performance will be a lot stronger than if you just sight read on a whim and / or you rely on muscle memory. However, in the event that you forget how a piece of music goes, you forget where your hands should be and you don’t have the score (or, indeed, you lose your place which is arguably worse!) - don’t panic!


Time Signature: keep the music flowing somewhat - even if you just vamp with your left hand a little whilst you try to remember, don’t let that flow down.


Key Signature: whether you are vamping or you embellish a little, key signature is useful here as it will give you a good understanding of not only what notes go well, but what chords will go well too, which will allow for a good harmonic bridge between you “stopping” (inverted commas as we’re ensuring nobody will notice!) and “resuming”. Therefore, if your left hand is vamping it can vamp chords, or - if deemed more appropriate to do so - it can create scale-based walking basslines. The right hand can take the opportunity to do some light improvisation based around the notes according to the scale.


Dynamics: One of the fundamental errors of somebody making a mistake is that - due to panic - they start to play louder! If you are playing forte this may be by the by, but just always be aware of where you have come from.


Mood: Similarly, keep the mood similar. Even if you keep your dynamic consistent, it’s no good jumping from a dreamy, pedal-heavy piano lullaby into a plinky-plonky ‘scherzo’ type piece!


Tempo: An extension of dynamics - as well as playing louder, people often play faster when they panic. Keep a nice steady tempo until you are ready to resume.


If you have worked well on your instinct, you will be able to fill in these gaps without giving them too much thought and put all your focus here onto where you need to be in the actual music, thus buying you some time to work it out in your mind and then to get back to performing the piece.



 

Jack Mitchell Smith is a piano teacher based in Macclesfield, Cheshire. Click here to find out more.


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