How Learning Less Can Make You a Better Pianist
1. Drowning in Notes
When I was a mere child, not only was I a much wider child than I was tall…but I also spent the vast majority of my time listening to songs and making an attempt at reproducing them on the piano. To do this, I’d roughly work out the chords and then the melody, and I would try mashing them together rather unsuccessfully.
For those that have attempted to play chords with a melody before (by yourself), you will know that it’s somewhat difficult to work out how to include the melody while also focussing on playing the chords in an interesting way. This is why I mention in many of my YouTube videos; “Play a chord pattern in the left hand and the melody in the right hand with SOME chord notes where possible”.
However, at the time I had yet to work out exactly how to do this, and I didn’t have a Matt on YouTube to watch giving me golden content each week 😏.
The reason that this was so difficult is because I hadn’t yet gone through the steps required to be able to acquire this skill without thought. Trying to play more than I was capable of meant that my brain was trying to focus on lots of different things at the same time, and dividing one singular brain cell is very difficult indeed! I couldn’t arpeggiate chords in the left hand without thinking about it - so doing that while also playing the melody and some other things in my right hand was a stretch!
The thing is: many players want the final result but don’t put the reps in on the component parts that make those final results!
2. The Component Reps
If you listen to any player that’s great at playing by ear, you will no doubt be impressed by how they are seemingly able to produce a completely unique rendition of a song after listening to the song. Yet that is not really what is happening in their head!
Behind every great improvisor and ear player, there are many hours spent playing the same patterns over and over again and playing lots of different songs in exactly the same way. After getting bored of one pattern, they then move onto a different pattern, and over time, they have many different ways of playing that can create many different effects. By the time you come to hear them play, you are hearing an accumulation of lots of different patterns that they don’t have to think about.
So how do you build that skill? You pick one pattern and you use it for absolutely everything until you don’t have to think about it. For playing by ear specifically (because that’s what I’ve waffled on about thus far), you would be best served starting with held triads in the left hand and a melody in the right hand. If you can get to any chord without thought, then add one new pattern or element! You might want to try adding chord notes into the right hand alongside the melody (for example).
The idea is that less is more! You are adding one new thing that you are trying to get so comfortable with that you don’t have to think.
3. Forget More, Play Better
Although my early experience of playing the piano was a large amount of playing by ear. This logic doesn’t just apply to playing by ear. The landmark system for learning to read notes is built on this very idea. The landmark system is a method of learning notes where you pick a handful of notes across the stave to learn, then once you know these incredibly well, you add notes to you’re known notes.
Similarly, learning just a handful of scales very well will be much more efficient than learning 20 scales on a surface level. Spending a practice session reading an entire piece of music will not be as effective as learning 4 bars very well (with dynamics, an understanding of the chords etc.).
Ultimately, no matter what you are trying to do on the piano...learning less is actually usually the best way to approach practice because you can focus on really learning a few things deeply. So if you find yourself getting overwhelmed with the amount you have to learn, stripping down your practice might be the key to unlocking your full potential!
Matthew Cawood
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