- Have you ever worked on a piece or a section of a piece
and never get anywhere with it?
You're frustrated and you're thinking if I only just worked
on this for another three hours I'm going to make it.
But after three hours you realize you're still nowhere close
to what you think it should sound like.
Hi, I'm Jazer, I'm a pianist.
And in this video,
I want to share with you why practicing can be a bad thing.
Before we get into the discussion
and the three practice strategies remember to like,
and subscribe to this channel so you get more
piano tutorials just like this one.
I want to also give you three practice strategies at the end
of the video that will actually give you
some productive results when you're practicing.
As pianists practicing is what we do.
If you think about it,
we actually spend much more time on practicing as opposed to
performing for our friends or onstage.
A four minute piece may take you anywhere from four
to 40 hours to master.
Since we spend so much time on practicing,
it's vital that we consider carefully about what happens
during our practice.
Being busy is not the same as being productive.
I feel like that's so important I should say that again.
Being busy is not the same as being productive.
Let's look at why more practice can be a bad thing.
I'm going to use a personal example in this video.
At the point of recording this video
I'm working on a Chopin piece and it's still in progress.
I'm nowhere near mastering it.
And I have some struggle points in this piece that I want to
share with you today.
(upbeat piano music)
Now the specific part I'm struggling with in this piece
is in bar 22.
So I'm just going to play from bar 21.
(upbeat piano music)
Okay.
Now this is one of those, one of the harder parts
of the piece because in that bit where it comes down
there is a really large gap between your index
and your thumb.
So massive gap, and suddenly you go into a small gap again
and a big gap, small gap, big gap.
And that's there.
See that's, I wasn't playing that really clearly,
but you can see that's actually really, really difficult.
(upbeat piano music)
Really hard to get it correctly
and at this lightning fast speed.
Now for a long time whenever I was practicing this piece,
I just kept stuffing up that part.
I never played it correctly.
It's so funny that every time I make a mistake there,
I always somehow in my head think I'll maybe next time,
maybe the next time I play it
I'm going to get that part correctly.
And after struggling with this for a few weeks
I had a realization.
I imagined sort of coming outside of myself
and looking at myself from outside.
So let's say Jazer has just practiced that
in a span of three days, let's say 90 times.
And in the 90 times he has played it correctly one time
and he has played it incorrectly 89 times.
Now what are the chances of him playing the next time
that part correctly?
If he has stuffed it up 89 times
and he's played correctly one time,
well likely he's not going to play correctly
on his 91st time, right?
Because he has practiced it wrongly for 89 times.
And then I realized that if I actually wanted to improve on
that part I had to do something different.
I had to use some different strategies
and I had to isolate just this part out.
(upbeat piano music)
I had to isolate just that part out.
And I worked on that for something like 30 minutes, one day,
nothing else, just that bar.
And I am starting to get some results from it.
It's not perfect, but I am starting to improve in it.
Think about it this way, guys,
every time you practice something,
you are making whatever you're practicing stronger.
If you're practicing correct things, you're improving.
If you're practicing wrong things,
unfortunately you are making those wrong things stronger
and more likely to happen
the next time you play the piece again.
Something important at play here is called muscle memory.
Each time you do something, you are reinforcing it,
giving it more juice and giving it more likelihood
of happening again the next time you try to do it again.
So for example.
(gentle piano music)
(chuckling)
Well, that really hurts my brain.
So let's say a student is learning that, okay,
let's say you're learning that.
And you, you're playing,
you're playing that wrong note there.
Instead of the F you're playing that E there.
(gentle piano music)
Now, if you were to do that 10 times,
you are actually helping it to get better.
It's almost like your hand is downloading that information.
And the more times you do it
the harder it is to change it later.
So it's really important.
(gentle piano music)
Really important to spot the mistake
and then to change it right there and then.
(gentle piano music)
So that your brain starts to learn the correct things
and it's able to move forward with the correct method.
At this point in the video
I hope you can start to see why practicing can in fact be
a bad thing if you do it wrongly.
And that's because you're feeding the mistakes,
you're helping the mistakes to get better.
Sometimes you as the student,
you might not be aware of these mistakes.
So it's really important that your teacher spots out these
mistakes and communicates them to you
at a really early stage.
Just before we get to our practice strategies
I just want to encourage you to think about
a deeper concept.
And this deeper concept is honesty.
When we're working on a piece,
are we able to forego the pleasures of playing it
and get to the hard work?
Actually, when we make a mistake or we make errors
that we're not supposed to, are we able to go,
okay let's stop playing through the piece.
Can I now sit there for 20 minutes
and actually work this problem out?
I know it's not going to sound good.
I know it's going to be hard and arduous,
but can I right now suffer in the short term
so that I can enjoy the longterm greatness
of being able to play that part?
So this idea of sacrificing short term pain
for a long-term gain.
Once we simply just work out this part for 30 minutes
or a whole hour,
the next time we are able to play it successfully
and you're going to feel so good about it
once you've solved that problem.
Okay, now getting into our three practice strategies
that are actually going to help you to get some results.
Now the first practice strategy is to practice at a speed
where you are making no mistakes,
even if it means slowing down at the difficult parts.
Okay, so for example, in this piece here,
I was having a lot of trouble in that bit.
So in the parts leading up it.
(upbeat piano music)
This part, so just slow it down.
Okay just, just helping my brain to try to understand
and get the right movements, okay.
And just as I was talking about previously in this video,
this idea of playing correctly once versus 89 times,
I want to try and increase the number of times
that I'm playing it correctly
so that I'm actually building the right muscle memory
for that particular section.
And give this a try so that this idea of
you're sort of playing game with yourself,
you're playing a piece from start to finish,
and you're not allowed to make any mistakes,
but you are allowed to slow down,
slow down so you actually play the right notes.
A second practice strategy I have for you
is to use a metronome.
If you don't have a metronome you don't need to buy one.
You can literally go to Google and search up metronome,
and they have an inbuilt metronome in their web browser.
Now this practice strategy is pretty different to the
previous one in that now you must play everything
at the same speed.
You can't slow a part down even if that part is difficult.
This is a great way to test the security of those parts.
With that metronome in the background
then that means you need to be able to play everything
at speed without any slowing down.
This method tests the security of your parts, right?
To have that metronome happening in the background
and for you to be able to play.
(upbeat piano music)
It really is a big honest assessment of if you can play
your parts according to the beat.
Now if the metronome beat is too fast,
you can always slow it down.
And I always recommend to students play at a speed where
you can actually play the right notes in a clean way.
It's much better to play.
(upbeat piano music)
Compared to.
(upbeat piano music)
Right, we don't want to do that.
We want to actually place things cleanly.
(upbeat piano music)
Slow it down and play things cleanly.
And the last practice strategy I have for you is to record
yourself just like what I'm doing right now.
I love recording myself and then assessing myself,
listening to my playing after I record.
Just to spot if there are anything that is a bit unpolished,
because when I'm practicing my piece,
my brain is really consumed with a lot of stuff.
So I love recording myself to later view when my brain
is completely freed up to just listen to the music
and to see what's good and what's bad about it.
Alright guys, so this concludes the video
why more practice can be bad for you.
Let me know in the comments
what you thought about the ideas that were discussed
in this video.
That's all for today, catch you in the next video.
(gentle piano music)