Rainy Daze Alpaca

Problems with Piano

The ability to play a piece of music properly on the piano seem so far away with some of these problems stuck with me since I’ve begin to play the piano.

Hand Size : Even though I‘ve a long, slim fingers but as the structure of my bone is rather not so stretchable and that cause the problem of unable to play wide gaps of notes like stretching for more than an octave and some chord passages. Which kinda affect the accuracy of my playing.

Accuracy : This is a long time problem that never go away since the start and I just let it be as so many years have past this annoying habit is even drilled hard into my memory. Which too lead to affect my ability to play a music smoothly throughout the whole thing without frequent break down or stops.

Perfecting A Piece : As the bad habits of playing badly with pathetic accuracy and mistakes that these are reason that keep apart from getting good at a piece, or even perfect it for a performance or repertoire. 

Memory : If I‘d to sit in front of a piano and play without a music score, I’d rather tell someone that I don’t even know how to play. That’s the shameful part of me being a pianist that can’t play without a piece of paper placed before me. As being able to memorize a whole piece, it’d either be too simple or something unusual with the music that make me somehow remembered it without effort. Beside that, it’d really seem to take forever to memorize a piece.

Pitch : I do believe I’ve improved my listening skill like identifying the changes of notes, a little bit of pitch accuracy or etc. But at my current sensibility toward pitches are considered incompetent, areas such as to be able express musically better like dynamics and improvisation.

Pianist : Seriously, can I still be considered as a pianist? This doesn’t even just a problem with piano but it manifest into different area like singing, playing the guitar and percussion. Bearing with these flaws, I considered myself as a musician that is out of the way of being fundamentally good at music.

But looking at the bright side, I’ve been trying to get my butt off to work harder to improve myself at playing the piano. One great reason of me still staying at my current skill is procrastination, somehow finding reason to convince myself that I’ll not getting any better. Some advice found on the internet such as YouTube videos that talk about techniques and other ways to improve at certain area of my playing, it do have inspired me to try approaching my playing differently and it’s really helpful. I really thankful to those who make the videos. Finger technique exercises such as the Hanon Piano Virtuoso do help me build a better strength and dexterity of my fingers and wrist. For improving my accuracy I tried something called tactile sense (the feel of the keys and key relationships) and the kinesthetic sense (your sense of motion and of distances that the hands travel in relation to each other and your body), to have a better sense of keyboard awareness, but I’m struggling with those exercises as it required so much concentration and patient to do it right. Occasionally I’d keep trying to stretch my fingers apart, mimic what my other hand do better, and making the llama hand gesture. Listening to details and learn from recording of those song to be more expressive and project it more through my body movement. Focus and self-regulation are both I think is crucial to get out of my current situation, little by little, taking baby steps to alternate habits and develop better musically, perseverance and believe.

ON Perfectionism

Perfectionism to Growthiness.

Jeffrey Brenzel: The Essential Value of a Classic Education

The Paradox of Learning :

“You don’t necessarily know what you looking for until you find it, and is the effort of finding it that actually turn you into a different person than the one that set out the journey to begin with.”

Reading Skills by Ramón Campayo

Basic Reading Techniques

• Read an average of two to three words at a time, while making quick jumps (fixation) between those words.
  
• Read each group of words for about 0.5 seconds and move on.
  
• Using a visual aid such as a pen to guide(or act as a pointer) your eye.

Getting Better

• As you getting comfortable reading a group of words with fixation, resolved to reading each line with 2 jumps.
• Without using a visual aid, make 3 eye movements, horizontally, vertically, and diagonally, but always downward. Mix them together and try to capture the largest groups of words possible. This is meant to develop your vertical peripheral vision and gain precision and independence of your eyes. Try capture words from different lines and working your way up, preferably starting with two.
  
• Develop speed by reading as fast as you can without worrying about comprehension. Do three sets of reading, one minute per set and rest for 30 seconds in between. Words like “of”, “a”, “to” and others linking words, commas, or periods can be ignored.
• With a visual aid, read as fast as you can with full comprehension. By any means, you should not stop at any time. But go faster or slower, depend on your understanding of the contexts, changes your speed when you feel necessary. Practice with three sets of reading same as the previous exercise.

Side Notes:

Daily practice is great for developing faster reading speed and better comprehension, for as short as 5 minutes.

For starters, read materials that it’s easy to comprehend and with little pure facts such as date, numbers, etc.    

Learn how to calculate the reading speed of words per minutes (wpm) here. You can make a table to record the progress of your reading speed too.