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Practice Piano with Your Brain

To practice piano effectively, it is a good idea to learn more how our intellectual and analytical understanding of the music, and how our body movements are coordinated by our brain.

Use your brain!

Though I am absolutely no expert on the brain, I do know that our piano practice will yield much better results if we understand more about how two of the most important parts of piano practice; our intellectual and analytical understanding of the music and our body movements when playing it, are "cooperating". Practice piano with your brain!

And learning how to apply that knowledge and use it to our advantage when practicing.

The interesting part is what could be called the “analytical” part of the brain versus the “motor” or “reptilian” part of the brain.

I will use a simplistic explanation, useful when studying an instrument such as the piano that involves constant collaboration between what we see, hear, emotionally feel and understand and what we actually can do with our fingers/hands/arms and body.

The analytical/intellectual part of our brain analyzes the “problem” of the composition, develops ideas and theories on how to solve it, and understand how to do it (or not). It “reads” the notes and “understands” the rhythm, dynamic, tempo etc.

This analytical/intellectual part of our brain “gets it”, way quicker than the part that controls the movement of your arms, hands and fingers.

That part is called the “reptilian” brain, and is actually located in another area of our brain. It controls “fight or flight” instinct but also easily memorizes hand/arm/finger (motor skills) movements.

Give clear instructions to yourself:

See it like this; when you see or listen to a piano piece you may quickly understand it. But your fingers, hands and arm don’t "get it" yet. They need to be taught, even programmed; slowly and patiently by doing.

This is particularly frustrating when you already know the music and maybe even can feel in your body how it would feel like to play it…

Though this is all good, and will come to use at a later stage in your piano study; the tedious task of giving instructions boringly slow and steady to your arms, hands, fingers (and rest of your body) can not be learned by analyzing- or “getting it” alone.

The plus side of this is that your muscle or motor memory kicks in really quickly. Doing a movement right even the first time will internalize it immediately! This is why avoiding playing any mistakes at all when you start learning the piece is so important.

Let’s take an example I have experienced in my studio many times:

You know how it is to make a mistake; thinking “OK, I know what that was supposed to be, lets start all over again.” (“Analytical” brain).

Then when replaying you make the exact same mistake again! (“Motor” brain). (Darn!)- then you tell yourself:” That note right there is WRONG! I must NOT play it! (Hammer it a few times for extra effect; wrong note, bad note!).

Play again- and exactly the same mistake again! (Slamming the lid down in frustration!)

Since you “get it” why can’t you play it right? How to Practice Piano
The part of your brain that controls movement, and what your hands and fingers do, does not understand NOT. Neither “Don’t” nor “Shouldn’t”.

In its’ happy little world it only understands DO! When you say “Do NOT play that note” it translates it as “DO play that note!”

So always show your hands/fingers/arms/body what to do, correctly and slowly.

It takes much longer to UN-learn a mistake than to LEARN it right from the start! (Heard that before?)

Obviously our brain is much more complex than this. But I have found it helps when you practice piano to visualize the two parts; the analytical part of our brain- the “intelligent” part, and the “reptilian” part that is like the machine- it can’t do anything without proper instructions, but once learned can keep doing it forever.

How to practice piano effectively:

When you sit down to practice piano and learn a new piece, always play the right notes. You may have sight read the piece, or skimmed it through once for an overview but do not make the mistake to continue with skimming through once you start working for real- if you want to really learn the piece.
Divide the piece in manageable sections, no more than 2-4 measures each. Or work phrase by phrase, but divide longer phrases.
Play hands separately before combining them.
In polyphonic compositions, play each melodic line separately as well.
Simplify. Play broken chords as blocked chords first. Analyze the chords (Get some help from the “Professor” in your brain!). Learn to see the patterns of the scales and the intervals as well as repeated parts.
Play S-L-O-W-L-Y at first. “Absorb” each pattern into your muscle memory.
Always use correct fingering. Write it when needed and stick to it! Again- this is for your “motor” or muscular memory. It learns by doing.

Summary:

Use your intellect to analyze the piece and work out a plan. Then give clear, positive, simple instructions to your hands/arms/fingers- treat them as the great, hard-working, faithful coworkers that they are; but they won’t do it right until shown exactly what and how to do it! Here is a free Pdf: The Piano Practice Paradox

Related Pages:

And my reply to some relevant questions:

Other Resources:

Here is a great book with fun and inspiring ideas for how to practice piano- that work:

The Practice Revolution: Getting great results from the six days between lessons

Piano Playing Questions and Comments

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