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Piano study generates an ongoing stream of "homework," which is charactized as "practicing." The term too easily suggests "playing over and over until you have learned it and it's finally right, for Pete's sake."

This usually amounts to: "play it enough times and somehow you will be blessed."   And from that emerges a sort of mantra: "Over, and Over, and Over, and Over..."   The eyes glaze and pointlessness reigns. Beyond that are the killing-fields of boredom and--for many--a sense of their own reduced worth.   For this reason, "practicing-equals-repetition" has the ring of a spoon against a tin can. It quickly feels tedious, and seems like a sentence at hard labour.

There is a more useful point of view: Practicing can be seen as training one's nervous system through the exploration of devices that produce sound. Through exploratory practicing one acquires a peculiar gestural language which, applied to the instrument, manifests as music. How unfortunate, that "Over&Over&Over" can bring us gesturing and emotional critters to the point where we are dying or dead.

The main challenge in practicing is to maintain the concepts of "exploration" and "training" and "perfecting" and "challenging oneself," as well as "evaluating what one produces." The similarity to acquiring other skills is undeniable. The would-be surgeon can't simply be told to "go home and take out at least one hundred appendixes." Nor can the figure skater simply "do twenty double axels every day." What is missing from these admonitions is:

           (a) the importance of a coach/mentor/teacher, and

            (b) the importance of the student's striving to learn how to be
                 his or her own coach/mentor/teacher.

There are all sorts of students, and therefore a lot of possible approaches to practicing. But many students just get onto a sort of "slow boat to China." This can happen to almost anyone, whether a student is:

             -- A real go-getter, but who just blindly plunges ahead;

             -- A more thoughtful and "testing" sort of person,
                who might tend to experiment more;

             -- A person who doesn't feel particularly interested in
                "plunging ahead" or "experimenting," and might not
                even care if he or she gets anywhere, anyway.

Therefore, it almost always is critical that there be a Coach who can keep hustle in the air, while keeping the game plan going and the development constant.   How to practice is the question. And the answer is "avoid mindless repetition and always practice purposefully."

        Not incidentally, the musician who practices purposefully is fully
        engaged with the musical gestures he's turning into sound:
        those purposeful gestures each have forward-searching energy.

        When it comes to performing--whether for oneself or for others--
        that deep engagement with forward motion is compelling. After all,
        whether we recognize it or not, we go to concerts and listen to
        recordings because we hope that the music will fully engage our
        attention. We do indeed sag when we, as listening critters, sense
        that we are dead or dying.

              It's rare, but once-in-awhile the individual members of the
              audience in a concert hall will become so much one with
              the music that they seem to be interconnected; the whole
              room seems not even to breathe. At such times the
              collective attention has become one with the attention of
              the performer, the music has come fully to life, and its
              gestures live in the same way in all who are present.

When a person is in any sort of tutorial situation, whether it involves an academic subject, sports, art, music, religion, or whatever, it is important that his or her efforts be validated. Just like the child who has to train in order to make the team, the person who is trying to make week-to-week advancement in something like piano study has to be free to think of himself as a hero-because-I'm-training. This is distinct from a victim because I'm having to practice.   It also helps for the student to think of the music teacher as a Coach or Trainer, because then all the efforts won't differ in fundamental ways from the efforts of people pusuing other fields of interest (some of them, perhaps more socially recognizable as "heroic.").

Whatever the subject, a necessary pathway to learning is repetition that results in memorizing or remembering. In the first stage, such repetition is best focused on small bundles of information that fit well into the 8-second-or-so short-term memory. By repeating such "bundles" several times, one most effectively ensures that the short-term memory carries a reasonably vivid stream of information that can pass on to the medium-term memory.

Small-bundle repetition can be most useful if the bundle is examined somewhat differently each time--that is, controlled slightly differently, given different points of emphasis, played with different rhythmic patterns, different speeds, and so forth. In short, repetition that is examined and manipulated and evaluated is as different from mindless repetition as night is from day.

       "Mindless" just doesn't feel like "purposeful," and taints almost
       everything--especially the student's sense of himself.

              Sense of self grows and diminishes with sense of purpose and
              clarity of attention.   Therefore one can say that coaching and
              self-coaching that results in effective modes of perception and
              attention might be amongst the most useful ways to enable that
              "self esteem" which so many people trouble themselves about.

                     Self-esteem is not "Wow, look at me." It is
                         "I know myself
                                and the way I work
                                     and the way I control and respond to things."

              It is worth considering the degree to which much that
              currently occupies young people is distracting and
              conflicting and beguiling.   In such contexts, self-esteem is
              likely to be at some distance from its potential.

Regular and daily training sessions are the most effective way to get information bundles to settle downward, into the longer-term memory. After "bundles" have made their way to the mid-term memory by means of some clever, thoughtful, and examined repetition, they have to be encouraged to hang in there, by being repeated after a period of sleep--which is to say, the next day. At that point one is on the threshold of long-term memory. There is even a slight advantage if the next reinforcement of those "bundles" can occur at about the same time of day when they were first introduced. Main point: regular and usually daily practice, and purposeful frame of mind, are essential for progress. It goes without saying: adequate sleep is very important. In fact, if you can consider yourself "in training," you can even include the effective sleep patterns in you daily routine.

Learning to play the piano is pursuing a skill. Mindless fiddling around, while good for warming up and getting into the mood, doesn't accomplish much. There is a parallel with learning to read: although comic books are entertaining, and go a long way toward helping a young reader "get in the groove," they don't require and develop the good reader's breadth of apprehension. It helps if one grasps that learning to play the piano is learning to play one's own nervous system.

To become able to do, one must learn how to do and when to do. That is, one must learn to do the appropriate thing at the right time. There has to be strength and co-ordination building, endurance training, and so forth. This is to say, glib and confident performance requires the same things, no matter whether it occurs on the soccer field or the swimming pool, or whether it occurs while climbing the tree, painting the house, or working over the piano. And the joy and satisfaction that can be experienced is the confirming sense of self that feels at least a bit heroic--primarily for having tried at all, and also for having done one's best.

The elementary level is the best time to get considerations, such as the above, into the mix. If such techniques for efficient learning are not well ingrained before the intermediate years (10 or 11 to around 14) the rate of development is often sluggish and there is much disaffection and dropping-out--especially amongst the males.

The early levels of piano instruction are much like early skating, when you learn how to stay on your feet, scoot forward and backward, then dash and weave, and (gulp) do quick changes of direction, and stay on one blade.
       The more advanced levels of piano instruction (and self-coaching) are much like dealing with the jumps in figure skating. It can give one some perspective to muse on the following, which has been copied from a page in an "Ask the Experts" website.

You can find it at
            (http//)   experts.about.com/q/Figure-Skating-1600/axel-jump.htm

Expert: Jeffrey M. Hill
Date: 3/22/2004
Subject: axel jump
Question
My daughter has struggled for 2 years trying to land the double axel. In the last three months she has successfully landed it about 20 times, but never consistently. She has been focused on driving her free leg up and around to provide height and rotation. In a recent series of lessons with a new coach she and I learned that the power for the jump needs to come from the take-off leg... not from driving up the free leg. Also, the take-off edge should be turned outward (toward the center of the axis of rotation) to initiate take-off. Finally, we learned that initiating rotation with the free leg makes for slower, looser (arms and legs out)rotation and will not support triple rotation axel jumps.
Do you have any tips to help understand how to generate power and rotation in the axel? Is there published information available that we could get to answer technical questions? We would appreciate your input.
Answer
Paul,
Thank you for you question, I'll give you my thoughts on the double axel and what has worked for me.
There are many places where the skater needs to get power in order to complete this jump. Obviously the bend in the skating leg has to be deeper then with the single axel. In connection with the skating leg, the arms need to assist with the take-off, they should be brought behind and down then lifted up on take-off, think of a bird and how they use their wings to create lift. The free-leg does need to kick through straight (not around the jump) in order to hit the apex of the jump--where the change of axis occurs and the beginning of the loop jump happens. Using my example above, I do not agree that power for this jump only originates with the free-leg. Think about it: with the free-leg held back (as well as the arms) you are creating potential energy that when released causes that energy to explode off the ice into the desired position.
I am not clear on what you mean when you say that the take off edge needs to be turned outward--do you mean jumping off the circle? Any jump needs to take off square--that is the shoulders need to be square to the hips, and pre-rotation of the shoulders will lead to a slower jump, a scraped print on the ice, and not a good clean run-out of the exit edge.
Now once the rotation has hit the apex and has turned into the loop jump (all weight is now over the skating side--the right side of a ccw jumper) the elbows have to be in and pointed down, the arms crossed the chest, and the ankles need to be crossed and the toes pointed down--this is just plain physics. The head has to be turned in the direction of flight--you can not "whip" the head, it will slow down the jump.
There are many good books out there describing technical elements of skating. The best book by far that I have run across is: "Figure Skating--Championship Techniques," by John Misha Petkevich.
There are many on-line sites too, one of the best is Don Korte's web site--just type in Don Korte and it will bring you to his web site--great amount of information on technical elements as well as skating in general.
Also, I conduct off-ice jump classes for my students. I have found that this speeds up the learning process--cuts down on the cost of ice, and also decreases the chance of injuries.
I hope I have answered your question, if you need further information, please feel free to contact me.
Happy Skating,
Jeff

This sort of thinking, planning, training, and "purposeful practicing," is right up there with what is required for any number of significantly challenging sections in major piano works.   "Revolutionary Etude," anyone?