Ways To Use The Books And The DVD

My particular situation may be different from many other students: I recently decided to try to develop a decent piano technique after several decades of "doing what came naturally". I had worse than no technique (i.e. I had a lot of bad habits), and I had no teacher to guide my learning. I nearly gave up, but just in time I discovered Alan's approach on the DVD and now in the book "Honing ...". My reaction was, and remains, that it seemed so intuitive and logical that I wondered how it has taken until now for piano teachers to adopt it. After just a few months it has enabled me to discover and correct some really basic faults, and I discover something new every week. However, there are no teachers of Alan's method here in Manhattan, and I am concerned that an "old-style" teacher would confuse me, so I am continuing on my own, without a teacher. Realizing there are real dangers and many opportunities to go down wrong paths, I have adopted the approach of investigating and experimenting rather than simply trying interpret the material. I read or watch a particular lesson, try to practice what I have understood and then select a piece of music that seems to demand that particular technique, e.g. legato playing or octaves. I first play it the way I used to and then replay it using the lesson. I frequently find an immediate improvement, especially in the clarity of the notes. However sometimes I just cannot make it work, and I then have to investigate whether I have misunderstood or whether some adaptation is required. I doubt that I always arrive at the correct conclusion, but I think it gives me a deeper understanding of the idea behind the exercise.. One challenge occurred repeatedly, especially in using the book (Honing ...). After a couple of months of daily reading and practicing, I found that I was losing interest in the exercises because I could not connect them to real music. The approach above has helped address this disconnect. Instead of choosing a topic in the book, I select a piece of music that I know has caused me problems in the past and connect difficult passages with one of the pieces of remedial pianism. It gives me a motivation to work at the exercise and a sharp focus on what the exercise is achieving. It has had an interesting and beneficial side effect. I used to treat most practice sessions as a challenge - to play better today than yesterday - and I was often disappointed and frustrated. I now mentally prepare myself differently. I ask myself "what am I trying to learn today about my technique" not "what goal am I trying to reach". I can then approach the session with much less tension and an openness to explore ways to use Alan's ideas. For example, when faced with a particular passage and after reading the appropriate section of the book, I usually spend quite a few minutes just moving my fingers over the keys while changing hand, arm or wrist position, and letting my fingers and my brain figure out which position and movement is most appropriate - I don't consciously try to apply any logical understanding of the material. I treat these movements as experiments, with no commitment to getting it "right". I leave that to my unconscious brain. Sometimes this enables me to break a logjam lasting hours or days. I am an enormous fan of Alan's ideas, and I have high hopes that they will enable me to learn much faster and better than conventional methods.

I am really excited by everything you're describing. Feldenkrais described his method as "learning how to learn," and you have really hit on the essence of it. By freeing yourself from the burden of a goal, the imposition of a standard, you allow natural curiosity to find its expression. Thus your learning not only has a higher quality, it is actually of another order altogether. Feldenkrais was also known to yell, "Don't achieve, don't achieve" at his students as he taught them, another echo of this phenomenon. But in the end, with this mode of learning there does come a moment when you do again focus on your goal, and find yourself much more capable of reaching it without really knowing how you did it! Thanks for an enlightening post! AFF

A pedagogue who I highly respect argues that technique should primarily be learned pragmatically rather than logically. He argues that transmission of knowledge logically, is not nearly as effective as it is when it is transmitted pragmatically. Learning involves encountering a problem and then finding the solution to that problem. Eventually after encountering all these problems, we start noticing patterns and start organizing the material logically. Obviously this starts to become a very personal process. What may be a problem for one person may not be a problem for another. This explains why there are so many published schools of piano technique, and why they seem to contradict each other (along with the the insurmountable imprecise nature of language). I suggest you read his post (and all his others!) here: He makes an analogy between the teaching of the martial arts daito-ryu and aikido to piano technique that is quite interesting.

I like Bernard's thinking a lot... I study Aikido and love it, but I also do Tai Chi which is more oriented towards responding to whatever's coming at you. The two dovetail nicely actually. Thus I would say, yes, learn piano technique pragmatically but don't ignore the system... Use the pragmatically not dogmatically. AFF

A pedagogue who I highly respect argues that technique should primarily be learned pragmatically rather than logically. He argues that transmission of knowledge logically, is not nearly as effective as it is when it is transmitted pragmatically. Learning involves encountering a problem and then finding the solution to that problem. Eventually after encountering all these problems, we start noticing patterns and start organizing the material logically. Obviously this starts to become a very personal process. What may be a problem for one person may not be a problem for another. This explains why there are so many published schools of piano technique, and why they seem to contradict each other (along with the the insurmountable imprecise nature of language). I suggest you read his post (and all his others!) here: He makes an analogy between the teaching of the martial arts daito-ryu and aikido to piano technique that is quite interesting. While logic can never replace the "feel" (which is what must be acquired regardless of what approach you use), I really disagree quite strongly. I think the problem is when one single part of the picture is presented as the whole picture- rather than as what leads some people closer to it. Worse still, someone explains what got them to the right balance, as if everyone else will be starting from exactly the same problem. If you understand what it leads to (rather than dwell on adjustment itself) you can get something truly productive and more widely applicable as advice. The more I've been thinking about these things rationally, the clearer it's becoming why some people gain from seemingly contradictory explanations. Quite often there's no contradiction at all- it's just that different things were being done wrong before and neither method actually explained what precisely what goes into the final product (where the actual results are likely rather similar). However, if you are able to put things into a bigger context, it's a lot easier to guide the process of learning the right sensations- and to improve upon certain explanations which might sometimes have benefits but which might equally cause harm to others (especially when the explanation is simply not feasible as anything but a metaphor). In fact, I really don't think that contradictory approaches have anything to do with rational thought. Quite the opposite- I think that rational thought is exactly what can make sense of illogical aspects of explanations that stemmed from "feel". It can help make sense of what is actually meant- in terms of which parts of the explanation hold together and which parts don't. Perhaps this is largely about the definition of the term "logical"- but I don't think I'd ever use that to describe following anything you are told dogmatically. I don't think anything could be much less logical. True logical thought and practical experimentation ought to be intertwined. Seeing as the goal is practical improvement, a "logical" system that is not based on practicality is by definition NOT a logical system at all! It sounds to me like 2200 specific moves is indeed a waste of time, but maybe 8 is too few? Surely there ought to be a middle ground, where the student uses logic and pragmatic thinking to adapt a smaller number of things into a versatile range of movement?

After thinking this question over a little more deeply, I realize that my whole thrust has been to develop an approach that is both systematic, logical, and pragmatic. It's not just to learn to do something, it's to attend to the quality of the doing - we do what we do. If the Aikido student understood every aspect of he did each of the 8 fundamental techniques, he would indeed be able to defend himself in an actual fight. If I attend to I do Hanon exercises, the articulations, the sound, the evenness, the character, they can indeed be incredibly useful to developing my technique. It all hinges on whether I do something mindlessly or attending to the sensations and characteristics of the action. AFF PS I remember Peter Reises, a fellow Tai Chi student in Montreal, recounting how years ago in a Greek youth hostel he was attacked and responded with a move he had learnt in Tai Chi that instantly neutralized his attacker. It's not whether you learn 8 moves or 2000 moves, it's how you learn the moves!