Posts from — December 2009

 Well, here we are, another incredible year coming to a close, and only a few "shopping" days left before Christmas.

If you enjoy visiting my pianotreasure.com site for piano lovers, there’s probably at least one piano player in you life for whom you’d love to find an appropriate musical or piano-based gift. It could be you! Or any of your piano-playing friends.

If I were Santa, with unlimited cash-flow, I’d come down the chimney in every piano players home in the world, and plop a big hand-made, high-quality grand piano in each living room. Now there’s an amazing visual – to have every family wake up to find a new top-name grand dominating their parlor! Actually, in spite of loving pianos & piano music, many of these families would be quite ticked with me! Not the kids, probably, but the adults would be like, "Now where in the heck are we gonna put THIS!" Times are tight and living spaces have grown smaller.

But alas, I’m not Santa, and grand pianos don’t fit down chimneys. Some of you, who have not been totally crushed by our economic downturn, might actually be getting a new or used piano this Christmas. The piano dealers are hurting, too, and so they’re dealin’ hard. And you can often find great pianos online. For those who already have their dream piano, or simply cannot justify that much largess this winter of ‘09, there’s a slew of fabulous gift ideas for the piano players in your life.

- Every piano and piano player needs accessories:

• Get them a shiny new lamp to sit on, or clamp to, their music desk, so they can read their music more easily

• In our earlier posts on sight-reading we mentioned the need for a metronome. Get them a cool electronic modern beeper or an old-style wooden triangle with the rocking pendulum.

• Many grand pianos could be kept looking newer, with less dust and furniture scratches, if they had a nice cover. There are custom made canvas covers that fit over the whole grand like a glove, or if your a crocheter or quilter, you can make a heartfelt throw to keep their piano top safe.

• How about some player rolls for those piano owners on your list with old-style paper-roll player pianos? There are people unloading these by the box-full, at a fraction of their cost, on the online auctions, and of course the largest player-roll maker, QRS, is still in business, so you can even get brand spanking new rolls.

• For the piano student who has many music books to carry back-&-forth to the teacher’s studio, get them a great carrying bag or case.

- One of the best gifts is music itself:

• Find out who their favorite piano players are and get them some CDs (or an iTunes gift-card) of great recordings. For the Classical pianist, anything by Polini will amaze them, and if they haven’t already heard Van Cliburn’s 1958 interpretation of Rachmaninoff’s Concerto #2 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, get it, it will rock their world!

• Good piano players love sheet music and songbooks. Go to your local sheet music dealer and get a $50 gift card, then let them pick out just what they’d love to play. Better still, for adult players, hunt down some rare, old and sometimes beautifully tattered song sheets from the early 20th century.

People give stacks of these away, and sometimes, there’s some amazing gems tucked in the pile. I once found an original 1930s version of Jerome Kern’s "All The Things You Are" that I still treasure.

As the gift giver, a nice touch is to pull out one of the old pieces and frame it for the wall of their music room. Old sheet music can be readily found at local garage sales and, better yet, on online auctions. A wonderful gift!

• And don’t forget beautiful piano music boxes as featured in out earlier post The Art Of Piano Music Boxes

- And of course, my heavily-biased favorite gift:

• Give them a gift certificate to have their piano tuned & serviced by an expert technician. Of all the gifts you can give a piano player, to have a top technician come in and go through their piano top to bottom, leaving it playing and sounding at peak performance, at no cost to them, is a perfect gift! Imagine their delight, next time they sit down to play, and their formerly squeaky, tinny, hard-to-play instrument now sounds rich and responds beautifully to their touch. Goose bumps and long fond memories for sure, of the person who did this for them!

(In Spite Of Years Of Lessons!)

Maybe you’ve found that you’ve hit a wall in your piano playing ability, beyond which you just can’t seem to get. Everybody hits this wall, even the eventual great players.The following are some helpful tips for taking your piano playing to next level.

* Learn song pattern recognition as we discussed in the post on playing by ear. Every song ever written follows a pattern, a structure of sections and chord progressions. You need only listen to a handful of songs by The Beatles to hear what we mean. To expand your repertoire and build versatility in your ability to pick up nearly any song you hear quickly and easily, learn the patterns with which all songs are composed.

* In that same "Playing By Ear" post, we started looking at the number system for chord-cuilding; that is, in any key, the chord built on that key’s first note is the 1 chord, on the next note is the 2, chord, and so on. Every song is written in a particular key – one of but 12, to be precise – and every key has it’s scales, series’ of notes in specific intervals, any of which will sound natural and pleasing to the ear when played in it’s respective key. Every scale in every key has its 1-chord, its 2-chord, etc. Instead of straining yourself to memorize how to play various piano chords by rote, learn instead the keys that chords are played in and the scales they’re built upon. Then you can quickly and easily figure out how to play any chord in any key on the spot, whether you’ve memorized that specific chord or not.

* The secret to learning to play by ear is simple – just learn the aforementioned 12 musical keys. By doing so, you can easily transpose any song you hear into any key you like. Learning to transpose, then, will take you to the next level of playing piano, which is knowing how to improvise. Many piano players can read and follow piano sheet music, but far fewer can sit down and start playing along spontaneously with any song they hear – and have it sound pleasing to the ear. Of course, if you don’t yet know how to read piano sheet music, then you may also want to begin studying that skill as well. But not at the expense of learning the fundamentals of music, which is not in writing but in listening. In musical terms, this is called "ear-training". Learn to recognize the sounds of harmonic and melodic intervals and you’re more than halfway to playing them.

* Expose yourself: Spend time surrounded by musicians of exceptional quality, professionals and amateurs alike in whose presence you can hear what it sounds like to play how you want to play. The body’s muscles have memory far superior to than our brain’s conscious recall ability. By simply immersing yourself in an environment where your ear is exposed to the sort of piano playing you aspire to, your body has a far easier time reproducing those sounds on the piano yourself.

Most importantly in your piano playing adventure is to remember to give it a little attention every day. You don’t have to practice for hours and hours a day to get good at the piano. You need only devote a small amount of time daily to keep the skills you’re learning present in your mind and body. Even just 15 minutes a day keeps your piano playing ability in tune.

Here’s some words of wisdom about how to move past mental blocks to succeed as a piano player, from the great teacher Ed Mascari

"Would you like to feel more motivated to practice the piano?
Are you struggling to make practicing the piano a priority?
Have you lost your desire to "go for the gold"?

Recently, the mother of a young student told me that she was concerned about her daughter’s lack of motivation to practice the piano.

When I questioned Katy about this issue, she told me that she needed inspiration… and that it was my job as her teacher to inspire her.

You may feel the same way.
But what happens when your goal to improve your piano playing needs daily inspiration?
How will you get it?

Maurice Ravel said that inspiration comes as a result of daily work (practice).
Business guru Michael Gerber, in his book E-Myth Mastery, sheds more light on this subject:
"Organization… is the fountainhead for inspiration….people have a container within which to be their most creative."

But how can you get inspiration and use it to succeed?

Three Building Blocks for Successful Piano Playing:

1. Organization: look at each of the parts of your musical program

• Your Music: Are the books and/or the sheet music for the pieces you want to learn all together in one place as well as clear and easy to read with any necessary place marks in the books? See my article about organizing your music. Your Practice Spot: Do you have good lighting, a comfortable seat or bench, an area free from noise and distractions? How is your energy level? Will you be able to concentrate? Here are some ideas to help you use your practice spot to succeed.

• Your Schedule: Have you set aside times during the week when you plan to practice? This could be at different times on certain days, but you need to have blocks of time (even 15 minute spots) scheduled for each day.

• Your Goals & Priorities: Have you selected the songs you really want to play? Are you practicing difficult sections several times so that you can master them? Do you have a target date for learning each of your pieces? Take a look at these tips for success.

2. Inspiration: Once you have put each of the elements of organization into your practicing routine, you will have a plan to follow. As soon as you start using this success building structure on a regular basis, you will notice an increase of inspiration.

You will start noticing that you are more focused, more confident and more energized.

3 Motivation: When you start seeing results and hearing improvement, you’ll become much more enthusiastic. Organization plus inspiration will give you the motivation to practice more often, more effectively and more successfully. You will amaze yourself which how much better you can play, and as a result you’ll want to practice.

Action Exercises:

Here are three things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, create your success structure by putting the organization of your music, your practice spot, your schedule and your goals & priorities into place.

Second, start following your plan and commit to making this new way of practicing a success habit. The longer you maintain this discipline, the more enthusiastic you will become. Inspiration will increase and energize your daily work.

Third, remember that the way to keep the motivation to persevere on your journey to successful piano playing is to create and apply organization to your practicing routine. The more consistent you become with this, the more you will experience inspiration.

If you want to get great results from all of your piano lessons and really succeed, combine the Three Building Blocks: Organization + Inspiration + Motivation.

You’ll be amazed at how quickly your piano playing will sound super! Before you know it, you’ll have plenty of motivation to succeed because you started with organization which gave you inspiration!"

Copyright © 2007 by Ed Mascari ed@edmascari.com

Once again, our friend and great teacher, Ed Mascari offers a super perspective on having continual success in your piano studies, simply by remembering to ask yourself "Why am I studying piano?"

"Are you wondering when you’ll be able to play the piano with ease?
Do you wish you could improve your piano playing more quickly?
Are you struggling to stay motivated to practice each day?

Is so, read on…..

There’s a lot of talk these days about setting goals.
Unfortunately, even if you do set a goal, you may not achieve it.

Perhaps it’s because your reason for accomplishing the goal isn’t important enough to you.

Have you ever prepared to perform at your spring piano recital and put everything else aside during the few days before? Perhaps this is because you wanted to play well. Or you may simply have been motivated by the fear of embarrassment.

In his famous book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill said "The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat."

Think about the day before you go on vacation. Won’t you work like crazy to accomplish all of your tasks so that you can pack your suitcase, change into your casual clothes and get going?

If you want to stay motivated, improve your piano playing more rapidly and get to the point where you can play the piano with ease, you will need to discover your deepest reasons for accomplishing these goals. In other words, you will need a very strong desire to achieve your piano playing success.

Desire is the powerful fuel in your goal setting process.

But how can you access desire and use it to succeed?
You need to keep asking yourself WHY?

"Why?": The Key Question to Ask and Answer for Your Keyboard Success

1. Ask yourself WHY you chose to play the piano in the first place.

• Were you inspired after watching Horowitz performing on television?
• Do you remember hearing your grandmother tinkling the ivories?
• Did you become energized after experiencing the excitement of a Billy Joel concert?
• Is it because you inherited a piano, and it’s now sitting in your living room?
• Were you forced to take piano lessons as a child? (Hardly your choice)

2.  Ask yourself WHY you now want to play the piano-this is your long term goal.

 Do you want to play for relaxation? o

• Do you want to be able to entertain friends at parties?
• Do you want to play in a band?
• Do you want to play piano on cruise ship or in a piano bar?
• Do you want to compose and record your own music?

3. Ask yourself WHY you are making your piano playing a priority at this time of your life- this is your medium term goal.

• Are you anxious to finally focus on playing the piano now that your children have grown up and moved out?
• Do you really want to be able to play the Moonlight Sonata or memorize five Gershwin tunes?
• Are you eager to learn to improvise or play the blues?
• Do you want to open a fake book and play any song you choose?
• Are you anxious to develop your technique, sight-reading skills or knowledge of music theory?

4. Ask yourself WHY you want to practice the piano today-this is your short term goal.

• Do want to have a good lesson on Thursday?
• Have you had a stressful day today and need to unwind?
• Do you want to feel the satisfaction of playing 4 measures of Misty from memory?
• Are you excited about jamming with your Band-in-a-Box computer music program?
• Do you wish you could master the last 8 measures of Chopin’s Nocturne in Eb?

Action Exercises

Here are three things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, ask yourself WHY you really want to play the piano, WHY you want to reach a certain musical level, WHY you want to achieve your specific goals and WHY you want to practice today.

Second, answer each of your WHY questions and write these responses on index cards, in your notebook or in a computer program. The act of writing will reinforce your reasons for staying motivated and focused.

Third, remember that the way to keep fueling your desire to persevere on your keyboard success journey is to continue to ask WHY and then regularly answer your specific questions. The more consistent you become with this process, the more motivated you will feel.

If you want to get great results from all of your piano playing and really achieve your keyboard success, keep asking the key question: WHY?

You’ll be amazed at how quickly your piano playing will sound super!

Before you know it, you’ll have fueled your desire to succeed because you asked and answered the Key Question for Your Keyboard Success: WHY?"

© 2007 by Ed Mascari All Rights Reserved. ed@edmascari.com