Practice Length

The following post is from my blog for students and their parents.

One of the most common questions I'm asked is advice on how long a student should practice at home. There are a number of factors that to into determining the answer including age, skill level, and learning style, but the the issue of quality over quantity is always part of my answer.


The most important concept to solidify with your child is the difference between a "run-through" and "practice".

A run-through can be defined simply as "starting at the beginning and playing through to the end without stopping." The most common pitfall in the practice session is to focus only on run-throughs. Run-throughs are mainly useful as an evaluative tool, to see which areas need work. For larger works, a run-through can also mean working on one large section, for example, the trio of a waltz, or the development of a Sonata.

"Practice" means focusing on small, isolated areas that need work. A good limit to set is no more than 8 measures for more advanced students, and no more than 4 measures for beginners. Sometimes, this bar needs to be set even lower for particularly tricky or slow pieces. Setting this limit before practicing will help immensely and will eventually become standard procedure when sitting down at the piano for the day.

I recommend the following procedure for practicing a particular piece:

1. Evaluative run-through: do a preliminary run-through to decide what needs work.
2. Focus on an area: Pick out one of the areas that needs work and practice it until it's learned. Repeat just this area and no more until you feel comfortable or until you get frustrated enough to let it rest for a bit. It's crucial that students resist the urge to keep playing through to the end from their starting point.
3. Repeat step 2 for all pertinent spots
4. Another evaluative run-through: This can also mean practicing connection the areas that the student worked on before.

I realize that step #2 is somewhat wide open, and I'll address that area in another blog post. Use this as a starting point.

As far as actual time goes, students may find it easy to drill a small area for a good amount of time. I have found this procedure to be very freeing, because I can get very in-depth with small area rather than getting frustrated with big pictures all of the time. The amount of time that is spent at the piano should be flexible depending on the concentration level of the student. Distracted time spent practicing is not actually practicing at all. I recommend practicing in small chunks with breaks.

 For younger students this could mean two practice sessions every day, each at 10-15 minutes.
Middle-school students should spend 30 minutes at the piano with a five minute break.
High-school students (depending on skill level) can expect an hour at the piano with a 5-10 minute break halfway through.
Very advanced students will spend 2-3 hours at the piano with breaks when they need them. In college and graduate school I found a very good system of 45 minute sessions with 15 minute breaks. Using this I was able to have good practice for 4-5 hours every day.

Nothing is more frustrating in music than trying to hack your way through a piece over and over again with little to no improvement. By separating the practice from the run-through, it gives the student more structure and allows them to bite off smaller chunks of music.

Stay tuned for more posts about practicing!

Crystals in the Deep

Many people already know this but I've been making music with a new band lately. I've taken a break from the synthesizers and dance beats and decided to work on some live-instrument arrangements. It's been really fun and I love the music we're writing. I've embedded a few songs below and more will show up over time on the Bandcamp page for all of my bands: flyingsaints.bandcamp.com

Enjoy!

Ring Out Ye Crystal Spheres - The Ringtone

I've been rocking this ringtone for about a year now and decided to finally give it out to the people. So, here it is, a ringtone with part of Ralph Vaughan Williams' "Ring Out, Ye Crystal Spheres". Hopefully it will touch your senses so. Let the bass of heaven's deep organ blow suckas!!

For a download, right click and save 

"My cat shall be named "Oozy Channel"

Oh, and for those who don't know what all the fuss is about, be prepared to have your ear-holes obliterated and hastily raptured to the musical great-beyond.

Composers A-Z: Emma Lou Diemer

It's been a long time since I wrote one of these Composers A-Z things. And that's largely because I reached the letter E, which doesn't offer a lot for pianists. Probably the most notable composer whose last names begins with E is Edward Elgar, whose output for piano is pretty small and not well known. Instead I decided to break my own rule and feature a composer whose first name starts with E: Emma Lou Diemer. Better known among organists than pianists, Diemer's style is catchy, accessible and constantly changing in a way that can appeal to modern audiences.

I'm not going to write a ton about Diemer, because I frankly don't know her output all that well. I know her teaching pieces best, which are nearly always highly effective and well received by students. What I love about Diemer's didactic pieces is that they have the length and depth of a piece for an advanced student, yet have difficultly levels that can suit the intermediate student. Here's one such piece, "Another Moonlight Serenade" performed by the pedagogy professor from University of Iowa, Dr. Alan Huckleberry. I also have a student preparing this piece for a spring recital.



The piece allows for great freedom in dynamics, malleability in tempo, and exploration of the piano as a tool for color creation. Many of her pieces allow for this kind of exploration that is not always found in educational literature. Also, there's a ton of pieces.

Her advanced pieces are also extremely appealing. She's written several sonatas, my favorite of which is the third. This large work (it's about 40 minutes long) is a traditional four movement sonata with a Tango in the place of the third movement scherzo. Her themes never go on very long (think of her as the antithesis of Schubert sonatas) which I think reflect the modern audience very well. We tend to like pieces that are constantly changing, however subtly, and Diemer's writing caters to this well. Themes are constantly introduced, altered, or abandoned for new ones, all over a shifting tableau of keys and time signatures.

Diemer's most popular concert piece is probably the Toccata. Likely this is because the piece is very accessible to audiences and performers alike, while still using conemporary extended techniques. Many pianists avoid contemporary music, but by the time they get to graduate school feel the need to learn one token 20th century piece, and this has become one of them (other pieces include Lowell Lieberman's Gargoyles, Adams' China Gates, and Prokofiev Sonata #2...even if that's not really contemporary). That is not to deride the piece though. It's very engaging, and the extended techniques are an excellent fit. I actually have plans of my own to tackle the work. Here's an excellent student performance of the Toccata.



That's all I'll say about Diemer. She's a fairly new composer to me (introduced through her educational pieces) but everything I listen to or play makes me fall more in love. She's still living too, teaching at UC Santa Barbara. Check her out.

Honorable Mentions:
The letter E doesn't have much going for it...but here are some

• Edward Elgar: Brits didn't love writing for solo piano so there's not much going here.
• Maurice Emmanuel: Frenchman who wrote some lighter pieces over the turn of the 20th century.
• Georges Enesco: Romanian composer known more for his violin pieces.

Next up is F, I'm thinking more educational composers, Ross Lee Finney, is it your turn next?

When I'm Tired

Sometimes, when I'm tired, I just hear dozens of high-school kids saying "Mr. Kraack" in different ways.