Music in Your Head E Book

Music in your head Mental practice, how to memorize piano music

by François L. Richard

Born in New York City, François Richard was raised in Paris, France, where he started studying the piano at a young age. He now lives in the United States, where he works as an airline pilot. Prior to working for the airline, he worked as an instructor pilot and, due to his passion of transmitting complicated information in the simplest way and the success of his students, was awarded the “Gold Seal” by the Federal Aviation Administration. Helped by the most famous pedagogues and artists, he conducted fifteen years of extensive research on piano memorization and mental practice. Because of the lack of formal training, generally given on this very important subject, he wants to share this precious knowledge with us in a fun and simple way.

Music in your head is published by FLR Music Resources, Fort Worth, Texas 76147 Book concept, title and text content Copyright © 2009, 2010, 2011 by FLR Music Resources. Third Edition: May 2011, Second Edition: February 2011 First printing: June 2009 All editions of musical pieces contained herein are Copyright © 2011 FLR Music Resources. Any duplication or reproduction of any part of this book in any form, by any means is strictly forbidden without the prior written consent of the Publisher. ISBN 978-1-61584-093-9 www.musicmemorization.com

On French television, the amazing French virtuoso Hélène Grimaud was interviewed—nothing abnormal so far, but suddenly, something striking happened. The anchor declared that only recently had the worldrenowned pianist purchased a piano! The virtuoso explained that she had a little upright piano before, which she almost never used, because she always favored mental practice. “When you have a clear image of what you want to do with a piece, you almost don’t need instrumental slavery! And above all the convenient aspect of it, like practicing in airplanes or hotel rooms where international artists spend a lot of time, it is good to have a clear mental picture of what we want to do with the work, because every artistic creation starts first in the imaginary.” In another interview—this one on the radio—a famous pianist declared he likes to rehearse Mozart’s concertos while riding his bicycle in Switzerland! It started in France in the nineteen century. A famous virtuoso by the name of Marie Jaell—a very good friend of Franz Liszt—started to discover the virtues of mental practice in piano performance. She also recommended working only two hours a day, whereas the bulk of her colleagues were spending their days “teaching the pieces to the piano,” yet her virtuosity was well beyond every pianist at the time, according to Camille Saint Saens. As Hélène Grimaud so exactly expressed, every artistic creation first starts in the imagination. Too many pianists today want to make a career, but they just play without having a clear concept of what they want to do with the piece. There is no conductor in that orchestra, no architect for that building; we get what their fingers will give, not what will be given by their creative mind. With mental practice, you are going to hear your ideal interpretation in your head—practicing it until you make the piece yours. Many pianists are in every piano competition, but you need to stand out. The jury and the public are waiting for something more than the simple execution of the score. As Gustav Malher once said, “the printed score is everything you need to know about the music, except the essential.” Not only interpretation, but also technique starts in the mind. If you have a technical difficulty, it is often because you didn’t think it through in the proper way. Reviewing the difficulty very slowly, with eyes closed and visualizing your fingers and hand movements on the keys, you will improve your technique tremendously. Sometimes you will discover that something as small as a little slant of your hand is the solution! Paganini, the famous violinist whose virtuosity was so great, was rumored to be associated with the Devil. On concert days, he was observed to stay for hours, laying on his bed, keeping his eyes open, mentally representing all the movements to make during the performance. I experienced it myself with Chopin études and treadmills! My name is François Richard. I’m an airline pilot and I started studying piano in Paris, France. My aviation career requires me to go on four- or five-day trips without a piano, so I practice piano music mentally. When I come home, I play the new piece on the piano, while the score is still in my luggage! Completing my piano training in Paris, I’ve also done fifteen years of extensive research, with the help of the most famous virtuosos and pedagogues on the subject of piano memorization and mental practice. I have the luck to live in “Piano City” America—Fort Worth Texas, which stages the famous international Van Cliburn competition every couple of years. I would like to thank Tamás Ungár, who hosts Piano Texas at Texas Christian University (TCU) every year. Piano Texas enables me to enter the concert pianist world by watching all those master classes, attending conferences, and discussing piano with all those international artists. Most of them are passionate, very accessible and friendly and more than happy to share with us the “secrets of the trade.” Pianists can access four piano memories: visual, tactile, analytical, and aural. The mental practice that we are going to learn here uses all four memories. Therefore, when following the steps it is infallible. It also produces a lot of pleasure and exuberance to be able to rehearse music in your head, almost anywhere, and, you will understand by the way you conceive your playing that you have achieved something in common with the famous masters. Foreword: Music in Your Head

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In this book you are going to be introduced to the method with “Jardins sous la pluie” by Claude Debussy. We will then discover the “secret of memorizing piano music,” followed by a very important aspect of piano memorization: the vocal approach and relative pitch. You will attend a little master class, followed by a study of a four-voice fugue by J.S. Bach. I want to show you that this method works even with the most complicated music. Then, we are going to talk about chords and their progressions; for a better understanding of music, followed by a little Chopin waltz. I would suggest that, if you are quite a beginner, to read and learn the entire method, but start by playing the Chopin. Finally, we will finish with some general considerations. All information in bold letters like this is general and often important information and rules that apply not only to the specific piece, but for all piano memorization and mental practice. They are “key words”!

4

Foreword: Music in Your Head

Contents 3

Foreword

7

Jardins Sous La Pluie by Claude Debussy

14

Secret of Memorizing Piano Music

15

The Silent Keyboard Practice

15

Do I Really Know It?

16

The Vocal Approach and Relative Pitch

21

Master Class

21

I Used To Play It!

22

Fugue in C Major by J.S. Bach

25

Chord Progressions with The Circle of Fifths

28

Checklist Or Working Like A Famous Pianist

29

Minute Waltz by Frédéric Chopin

32

General Considerations

Music in your head: Table of Contents

5

chapter

1

Jardins Sous La Pluie by Claude Debussy

We are going to start with the first two measures, because they constitute the first melody. In this piece, the melody will be played by the left hand. We start by memorizing the left hand. ALWAYS MEMORIZE EACH HAND SEPARATELY. At the end, you must be able to play the entire piece—left hand alone and then right hand alone—by memory. This is one of the best methods to prevent memory lapses. You want to know the piece in details, not an impression of it. It is more work, but the rewards more than justify this technique. To fix it in our conscious memory, we are going to analyze and make an aural description of the passage we are working on. Why an “aural” description? This seems ridiculous! First let’s review the definition in the dictionary of the adjective conscious: “knowing or noticing, aware.” How many times have you studied a passage on the piano, even playing it by memory, to discover once you left the piano that you have no clue what the left or even the right hand was playing! Completing a precise aural description is one of the best ways to give you that awareness of the score, which is indispensable for our conscious memory. Afterwards, we are going to repeat that description every time we rehearse the piece, which is the “meaningful repetition” part of the learning process. In addition, in order to help us understand and memorize more easily, we will do a little “detective work” and go for the search of patterns, associations, or anything that “makes sense” for us. It will be something like this: we are in E minor, and the tonic is repeated twice. It then goes up and down in consecutive scale tones, ending with a jump on the dominant V before going back to I. It is also good to know that, starting on F is the car il dormira bientôt of the little French children’s song “Do-do L’Enfant do.” The more we investigate a piece, via the internet, books, or concert programs, and the more we know about music and theory, the better. It is also, very important to respect the dynamics. Your music should be expressive even on the first day. You want to establish the same musical sensations. Here Debussy wants PP. We now play the left hand slowly on the piano after writing down the most convenient fingering. We count the beat aloud: 1&, 2&. Now we close our eyes and try to play it silently by memory on our lap. While doing this, we should visualize the keyboard and our fingers on each key; we should also hear the pitch of every note we are playing. (It is very important to hear the notes. Our media is sound; most memorization problems come from notes that were incorrectly heard. We will come back to the subject of relative pitch later.) It is important to do this very slowly. If we get stuck, it’s okay to check the score, but don’t play it yet on the piano! We do this until we can play it on our lap without hesitations. Take your time; visualize every key. Do you hear every note? Now, it is time to play it on the piano. You see, you have already memorized half of it! Chapter 1: Jardins Sous La Pluie by Claude Debussy

7

Now, it’s time to learn the right hand. We do our little detective work by investigating a little bit the score. But first I would like us to review the definition in the dictionary of the word pattern (I promise, we will not look in the dictionary anymore!): “A design of regular shapes and lines,... It is also a repeated set of events, characteristics or features”; also the elements of a pattern “repeat in a predictable manner.” We see that the right hand also starts on the tonic, exactly one octave above the left hand, and is repeated until the last beat of the second measure. It then goes down as an arpeggio and ends on the same note as the left hand! In addition, we notice that, for the entire eight beats, the middle note is a third above the bottom note of the right hand. This constitutes a very nice pattern. We slowly play the right hand alone on the piano. We see that the tonic repeats itself seven times; each beat ends on the same note as the left hand, and the middle note is a third above... Now we close our eyes and try to play it silently from memory on our lap. We visualize our fingers playing every key and hear every pitch. If we are not sure, we verify with the score, but don’t play it yet on the piano! Repeat this process, with your eyes closed, until you can surely play that part on your knee— visualize every key and hear every note. We want it to be secured in our mind’s eyes and ears. Ready? Now it is time to play it on the piano. You see, you already know the right hand!

Here comes the big feat: hands together! Don’t be scared, “it’s all good...” Close your eyes and play both hands very slowly on your lap. We must see each key and hear each tone. If we can’t, we check the music. We do this until it is secure in our memory. Now it is time to play it on the piano. You see, you memorized both hands! Now you can rest, go to bed, and play it in your head all night long—just kidding! But because we do it with our eyes closed, we can also repeat it with our eyes open by visualizing in our mind our fingers on each key and hearing each pitch. Although it is better to do so eyes closed, you will see that you are increasingly going to rehearse your music in the most unexpected places: on bicycles, on treadmills, on the back of an elephant, at churches, at school, in meetings, in airplanes—but please don’t do it when your loved ones are talking to you. The great Walter Gieseking had a stormy relationship with his wife because he was constantly rehearsing in his head. Women are smart, they notice that foot beat or that finger playing... but you are still allowed—in fact strongly recommended —to rehearse on a chair before going to bed or in bed before your sleep. I’ve memorized entire scores this way! One of the most important concepts in memorizing music is working with little chunks at a time. The father of the great cellist Yo-Yo Ma started at a very early age, to make his son learn two measures of J.S. Bach every day, and we all know the results! We climb a mountain one step at a time. If you are a good student, you know that—in a typical work session—most of your time is reserved for the review of material you’ve already learned, for the essential meaningful repetition part of the learning process and a smaller part to learn new material. So for now, we are going to close the book and I will see you back tomorrow!

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Chapter 1: Jardins Sous La Pluie by Claude Debussy

Second day, back at the piano! I hope you got a good night of sleep, because sleeping eight hours is essential for a good memory. I live near a medical school, therefore have a lot of med-students for neighbors. I can tell very fast who is going to succeed or flunk their first year. The ones who study all night long, using rote memory without giving themselves enough sleep, are generally those who don’t make it (they are zombies during the day, their brains are not alert enough, and they can’t easily retain information). Those who become doctors use like us, conscious and analytical memory. One doctor told me the secret: for her, something understood was automatically memorized. Maybe this is the reason why there are so many doctors, surgeons, and dentists at amateur piano competitions! A little daily physical activity is also strongly recommended to help promote blood circulation and alertness in the brain! First, we are going to review what we learned yesterday. Maybe some of you have already rehearsed the music a couple of times in your heads, like real concert pianists. But now we are going to sit in front of the score and review all the little details again because, as we say, practice (good practice) makes perfect. This procedure should be repeated every day. As usual, we study phrase by phrase, or units of two or four measures. We always divide our work into small units. 1. We sit in front of the piano, we close our eyes, and we play the left hand by memory on our lap. If we get stuck, which is likely if reviewing something just learned yesterday, we check the score and try again on our lap; we visualize each key, and hear each tone. If you don’t remember the melody, it is okay to play it once on the piano, but it is very important to avoid repetitions of a passage on the piano until we can first play it easily, eyes closed, on our knees. Memory is first a mind process. You don’t want to rely mainly on your tactile memory because tactile memory is going to let you down. And, like the pretty girl figure skating, when you fall on the ice, you’re going to hate it! In some ways, during this stage, the less you play it on the piano, the better. 2. We verify with the score and repeat our little analysis orally. It starts in E minor, on the tonic, goes up and down stepwise, jumps to V, and then goes to I. 3. We play it by memory on the piano. We repeat the same procedure for the right hand. First, the little playing—eyes closed, on your knee, verify with the score, and repeat the analysis, then play it by memory on the piano. Then, hands together—first on our knees, eyes closed and then on the piano. When we play on our knees, it is very important to hear it how you want it to be played. You should think about your ideal version and practice transferring the music in your head to the piano. We almost need a “physical” feeling for the dynamics. Music is a constant flow of accentuations, crescendos and diminuendos, tension and release. On stage, great artists often have a sort of moaning coming from inside. They physically feel with their inner voice that flow of the music coming out of their souls. But first we need to hear our music in our heads. As we saw in the preface, every artistic creation starts first in the imagination. Nevertheless, it is very important to always keep practicing your piece or the passage you’re working on at least once a day, very slowly, eyes closed on your knees in order to enable the conscious mind to easily rehearse all the information you know about the piece. Even when working on the dynamics and expression, we do a better job working slowly. You can really—even practicing slowly—hear in your mind’s ears an accentuation, a crescendo, or a diminuendo—try it! Slow practice guaranties fast results, not only for memory and technique!

Chapter 1: Jardins Sous La Pluie by Claude Debussy

9

Now we are going to learn the next three measures. Why the next three measures? Because they form a good unit that is easy to memorize and, after a quick look, we see some patterns, we see relationships in the motifs: 1. The G on the right hand is repeated every beat. 2. Th  e left hand motif creates a mirror or inversion: In the third measure, a second descendant E-D is followed in measures 4 and 5 by a second ascendant C-D. We start by memorizing measure 3, using the same process as usual. A little detective work shows that every beat ends on the note it started and, on the right hand, B-G is repeated every beat. A little piano work as usual—playing the left hand alone on the piano—close your eyes, play the left hand on your knee, see each key, hear each pitch, and play it from memory on the piano. Repeat the same process with the right hand, then both hands on your knees, eyes closed, until perfect. Then both hands on the piano by memory. Measure 4 and 5, as we see, are the same. After a little detective work, the left hand position E-C is two seconds “wider” on both sides then the F-B that follows in measure 6. The right hand motif also “shrinks” from the first to the second half of the measure from B-C to Bb-D. Even if we memorize a couple of measures a day, we memorize measure by measure. Now we play the left hand slowly on the piano. We notice that “wide” position E-C in comparison of F-B in measure 6, and also the two quarter notes with the accent on the D. Using the same process, we play it on our knee, eyes closed, until we are sure. We see our fingers on each key and hear the accent on the D. Now, we play it by memory on the piano. We do the same for the right hand. We see that the repeating G is like a pivot surrounded by B-C, “shrinking” into Bb-D. We play it slowly on the piano. Then we close our eyes and play it on our knee until we’re sure. We then play it on the piano. We close our eyes again and play both hands from memory on our laps. When we can do this with no hesitations—seeing each key, hearing each pitch—we play it on the piano. You see, we almost memorized the entire score! J.K. (just kidding), but, you will see that—if you repeat this process, a couple of measures a day—you will soon easily master the 10 pages!

10

Chapter 1: Jardins Sous La Pluie by Claude Debussy

Now that you know the process, I’m going to let you continue the good work on your own. But we are nevertheless going to look at some “special” passages. The four measures starting at 16:

They are easier to understand when looking at the relationship between both hands. The best way to memorize is to understand the pattern! It is an upward movement starting with A on the left hand, followed by an A on the right hand, going down an octave with the third F played below the upper note of the octave, it goes down and up. Notice that the Eb of the left hand is a ninth below the F of the right hand. Still following me? For the second half of the measure, the left hand then goes to C, which is a minor third below the Eb while the right hand plays the D, a ninth above the C. The right hand this time plays a seventh going down and up with a third below the upper note in the middle Bb, and the left hand plays D, a note one step below the lower note of the right hand. It seems complicated, but I advise you to look at the colors on the score above to see the relationships. In the next measure, the left hand goes down half a tone, and the pattern repeats itself over and over for the next four measures! Here we see the importance of the “vertical” relationship for helping us understand and memorize. This is also very important for rhythmic reasons as we will see with our four-voice fugue by J.S. Bach in chapter six. Music is mostly like a Swiss clock: there are always some patterns, things that repeat. You have to put your Sherlock Holmes hat on and grab your magnifying glass and go for the hunt! Once you find some patterns, always think about them, while you play. You can also use a pencil to mark them down on the score to help you remember them. I start my detective work like I would a crossword or Sudoku puzzle, with a sharp pencil and an eraser, going for the hunt!

Chapter 1: Jardins Sous La Pluie by Claude Debussy

11

Below is another example of the importance of looking for the “vertical” relationship; in search of a pattern.

The right hand is easy to get; it’s going up, starting with a chromatic movement F - F# - G and jumps a major third to B. The next two measures–same thing: chromatic movement F# - G - Ab and jumps a major third to C, which you have memorized in a split second. But the left hand by itself—other than an ascending chromatic progression: E, G, B, Db becoming F, Ab, C, D—doesn’t make a lot of sense at first glance. It’s Debussy’s chromatic world. It is much easier to look at the “vertical” relationship: the base notes are the second notes of the right hand—except the first beats of the second measures of those upward movements, which are the same notes! This pattern is much easier to remember when we play.

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Chapter 1: Jardins Sous La Pluie by Claude Debussy

The “cluster notes” We start with the left hand and we see that the major second Gb-Ab stretches itself and shrinks back by a chromatic step each time. This regular, here symmetrical, shape is a nice pattern. We play the first measure slowly on the piano with the correct fingering because there is nothing that can better sabotage a performance than a changed or unsecure fingering. We count the beat out loud: 1&, 2&… We then play it, very slowly, on our knee; with our eyes closed, we see each key starting at the bottom, going upward—Gb-Ab, F-A, and so on and so forth. We count the beat, 1&, is easy; 2&, less so. We repeat very slowly, 2&, 2&... We see the keys E-Bb, Eb-B… We hear each pitch. Are you stuck? Feel free to check the score—it’s free! We repeat this until, as usual, we can play it on our knee without any hesitation. We then play it once on the piano. Right hand: Start with F#-Bb. The bottom note is the same as the left hand, but it’s a F# instead of a Gb. It is “enharmonic”—the same note but not the same name, one octave higher than the left. The upper note Bb is one ninth above the Ab of the left hand, then it goes down a major third and starts a chromatic ascension, with broken augmented chords going up to A-C#—and yes, that sound is unstable! Again, we play it slowly on the piano. We close our eyes, repeat on our knee, then on the piano when we know it on our knee. Hands together very slowly on our knees, we count the beat, see each key, hear each pitch. When we can do this, we play it on the piano—et voilá!

Chapter 1: Jardins Sous La Pluie by Claude Debussy

13

chapter

2

Secret of Memorizing Piano Music

Attention! Practice very slowly: the slower the better. Discipline is required: If you do not hear each pitch and see each key you’re playing when practicing on your knees, with eyes closed, the memorization process is going to take much longer. Well, you would say that it is not really a secret, but really the failure to do one OR the other will induce a lot of frustrations! THE ONLY WAY TO DO THAT IS BY PRACTICING VERY SLOWLY. The key is to think about every detail. Sometimes we forget to practice very slowly, which is when the problems start. If you go too fast, your fingers are going to make the motions but your conscious mind will be absent. You don’t have time to grasp all the details, so your practice is a waste of time. We know that we can’t rely on our fingers to memorize. We are like wild horses—we want to gallop. Just pull back on the reigns, step on the brakes! It’s painstaking, but the results more than justify the effort. (You will be very pleased with me and will want to erect a statue to immortalize my glory. You can contact me for the appropriate location.) Here to remove any misconceptions, I’d like to specify an important point. Once you have mastered a passage in your memory, to complete your technique and virtuosity, I recommend before the “hands together” part, working that passage hands separately, up to speed on the piano. Working hands separately is a requirement not only for memory, but also for technique and virtuosity. The Tale of the gazelle and the elephant Thirty years ago at Steinway Hall in Paris, a young man was banging on a poor Steinway trying to show how brilliant his playing was. The Steinway technician who used to tune all those wonderful instruments at the recitals of the most famous pianists in the world said “young man your hands must be light; the sound is produced not so much by the weight, but by the velocity of the attack. The amount of pressure required to activate a key is only measured in grams; 60 grams not kilograms or pounds! I can assure you, one can get a very brilliant sound without banging on my poor pianos. All the famous pianists I see every day play with a light hand. The other night, I tuned the piano for the recital of Mr. Pollini, and I can assure you that his hands are light.” One of the greatest virtuosos of all times, the legendary Georges Cziffra, who was rumored to be Frantz Liszt reincarnation, used to tell his students that to achieve the greatest virtuosity “votre main sera légère et sans raideur,” their hands must be light with no stiffness. Are your hands light when you play? An elephant will never become a gazelle, so why practice with an elephant? Also, when practicing up to speed when you have difficulties with a fast or intricate passage, just “mental practice it” hands separately, very slowly and you will quickly realize that it was induced by your brain who didn’t have a clear image of the notes your fingers had to play!
The legendary virtuoso Josef Hofmann goes even further, and used to say; “a run should be completely prepared mentally before it is tried on the piano.” Oops, I did it again! Why do I give away all those secrets? By the way, the young pianist was me! 14

Chapter 2: Secret of Memorizing Piano Music

chapter

3

The Silent Keyboard Practice

It is playing on the surface of the keys without depressing them. Why is it a very effective way to practice?
 Because without sounds to distract; your active mind is entirely focused on a conscious, intelligent mental practice. When practicing a piece this way, you have no other choice than practicing your aural memory. Without hearing the music in your head with your inner ear, you can’t use silent keyboard practice. You will also have your conscious and investigative mind totally alert when wearing your Sherlock Holmes hat for your analytical memory. Without the sounds to distract, you will also solve technical difficulties. One morning Glenn Gould was struggling with a very difficult passage until the maid came in the room with the vacuum cleaner. He found out right away the solution. Of course, it also challenges and builds your visual, tactile and key memory. Last but not least, you can rehearse at odd hours without being accused of terrorism. How to practice it? You take one or two measures. You play first the right or the left hand on the piano. Now, you play it again without looking at neither the score nor depressing the keys but of course: using your inner ear to hear each sound. You repeat this silently until perfect. Of course as needed, you can check the score or play it again to hear the sounds. When ready, you play it by memory depressing the keys this time. You do the same with the other hand, then hands together.
This very powerful way of memorizing piano music is an alternative, and can also be used in conjunction with our normal mental practice.

chapter

4

Do I Really Know It?

I sit on a comfortable chair. Can I play the entire piece in my mind very slowly, while seeing and feeling my fingers playing the keys of every note of the piece, while hearing every pitch: left hand alone, right hand alone, hands together? Again slow; to insure you’re using your conscious mind, not a nervous habit. Very slow, thorough practice away from the keyboard – hands separately and together – is the very best way to insure against forgetting.

Chapter 3: The Silent Keyboard Practice

15

chapter

5

The Vocal Approach and Relative Pitch

When we play, we must hear in our heads—in our mind’s inner ear—the next notes we are going to play. If you have a memory lapse, it is because you incorrectly heard that part (or maybe never really heard it at all!). You relied too much on your automatism—or finger memory. Your brain doesn’t really know what you are supposed to play. We know how to hum or sing the national anthem or “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” well; we should do the same with everything we play. One day at an amateur competition, I saw a young lady (she was not a doctor!) playing a Beethoven Sonata, but suddenly and sadly, it stopped. There was no more music. Her fingers forgot, and she didn’t have the music in her head. When we play music, we must know and hear the piece in our head so that if we hit a wrong note or anything happens that can distract us, we know where we are in the piece and we can continue. Being able to sing a piece in our minds means that we have it in our conscious memory. In short, we must be able to sing it, and if you can’t sing it, it means you don’t know it! One day I was playing the Rachmaninoff, prelude in G minor, but came to a part that I wasn’t sure about my accuracy with the left hand—90% of memory slips come from the left hand! But I knew the chords and I knew the melody perfectly because I sing the notes of every piece that I play. So I continued and nobody knew that I was “a great saboteur!” Aural memory is the guard rail for continuity. When we see famous musicians rehearsing or giving master classes, they always sing or grunt. We don’t need to all do like Glenn Gould, whose mother told him to sing everything that he played, making him renowned for his phenomenal memory for the most intricate music like Bach fugues or Berg or Webern—but created challenges for the recording engineers! Our aim is to sing inwardly when we play. We want some vocal cord activity with our inner voice. The correlation of the music we hear in our head and the motions of our fingers on the keyboard to reproduce it are key. It helps tremendously—if not what we call fluent relative pitch, at least to get pitch accuracy, and to know how each interval sounds. There are costly methods you can buy on the internet to learn relative pitch, requiring a thirty-year loan and eight years to complete. But you can also work the traditional way. J. S. Bach did not buy CDs on the internet; instead, he used “elbow grease”—or ear grease? The best way to know and recognize intervals is to associate them with the first two notes of a popular song or very familiar melody. Knowing that an ascending perfect fourth is the first two notes of “Here Comes the Bride” and a major sixth is the first two notes of the famous song “My Way” by Frank Sinatra or a perfect ascending octave is the first two notes of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” will fix it in your mind forever.

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Chapter 5: The Vocal Approach and Relative Pitch

Here is a list to help you. I recommend memorizing it, drilling every day, singing them and verifying with the piano. Take your pick. Choose the melody most familiar to you. Also, listen carefully when you sing, for the differences like a major or a minor third. If you are unfamiliar with a melody, writing it on your favorite search engine on the internet will let you hear it.

Minor second up: Jaws, Charade, Stormy Weather Minor second down: Joy to the World, Für Elise, O Little Town of Bethlehem

1 half tone

Major second up: Happy Birthday, Silent Night, Frère Jacques Major second down: Auld Lang Syne, Mary Had a Little Lamb, Deck the Halls

2 half tones

Minor third up: Brahm’s Lullaby, Greensleeves Minor third down: Hey Jude, Frosty the Snowman, Star Spangled Banner, Misty

3 half tones

Major third up: Oh When the Saints, Big Ben, Mozart’s C Sonata Major third down: Beethoven Fifth Symphony, Summertime

4 half tones

Perfect fourth up: Here Comes the Bride, Oh Christmas Tree, Amazing Grace Perfect fourth down: Shubert’s Unfinished Symphony, I’ve Been Working on the Railroad

5 half tones

Tritone up: The Simpsons, Maria (West Side Story) Tritone down: Blue Seven (Sonny Rollins)

6 half tones

Perfect fifth up: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, Also Sprach Zarathustra (Richard Strauss) Perfect fifth down: Feelings, The Flintstones, Fantasy Impromptu (F. Chopin)

7 half tones

Minor sixth up: Morning of the Carnaval, Love Story (third and fourth notes) Minor sixth down: Love Story

8 half tones

Major sixth up: My Way (F. Sinatra), NBC, My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean Major sixth down: Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Been

9 half tones

Minor seven up: There’s a Place for Us (West Side Story), Twilight Zone Minor seven down: Watermelon Man (H. Hancock), American in Paris

10 half tones

Major seven up: Superman, Fantasy Island, Ceora Major seven down: Hee Haw (Grand Canyon Suite), or minor second inversion

11 half tones

Perfect octave: Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Let It Snow

12 half tones

Chapter 5: The Vocal Approach and Relative Pitch

17

We are now going to do a little warm-up exercise. We hum or sing each interval several times, while thinking about it’s “popular song,” to have them well fixed in our minds through “meaningful repetition,” and we can verify it with the piano. We start with the major second—C-D—while thinking, for example “Happy Birthday” followed by C-E while thinking “Oh, When the Saints” and so on and so forth. After we’ve completed the entire scale up and down, we hum or sing them randomly. For example, you start on a F, go up a major third, then down a perfect fifth, and so on and so forth. ------------------8’ lower for male voices---

Now, let’s practice a five minutes daily exercise with familiar melodies. It’s like learning how to read. We start with the alphabet (only twelve letters in this one!); we sing and recognize the intervals, and now we are going to start “reading simple sentences.” You remember when you started to read? It was not very easy; there were some hesitations, and you were not fluent. Then you read and read, and now you are fluent—no more hesitations, you don’t even think about the alphabet anymore. It should be the same for your ears. We must hum or sing those simple melodies while finding the intervals and checking them on the piano to verify. There should be some vocal cord activity for better accuracy. Sometimes in a song, like the pieces we play, the pitches become fuzzy and we think we know them, but we realize that it is not true. Only singing the interval can put us back on track! Of course, we should do this slowly and think about our intervals, which we now recognize. We already know how to sing them because they are the first two notes of our familiar songs! We start with one per day and review it a couple of times during the day, slowly while thinking about those intervals. When we start to get better and we finish one song in a specific key, we should either repeat it or play it on different registers of the piano. Do some other songs. Use what is called the multi-key approach: transpose it in at least five or six keys, to really recognize and hear the intervals. Say we start in C major, then G and D, A, E, B... or practice a combination of those three exercises! It is also strongly recommended to review the previous songs every day, having your “little repertoire” while adding a new one each day. The more familiar the song gets, the more you have time to listen and recognize the intervals. In addition, you can do a different key every day, say today we are going to be in D major, tomorrow in A, so on and so forth. By doing this, you will also facilitate—little by little—scale step identification. You will hear that this song starts on the dominant, listen to how the dominant or the third degree of the scale sounds in relation to the tonic, so on and so forth... Every, ear training works the best if we practice a little bit every day. Your voice is your best personal instrument, but it should be kept in tune! I carry a little pitch pipe, which I use when I’m “on the road”. Now look at your watch: five minutes a day, that’s all it’s going to take to be soon able to play everything you hear, on the piano! Like everything else, the secret is: a little bit every day... Almost right away and more and more, you will recognize intervals while listening to music and will soon become a real musician not just a repetitive key pusher!

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Chapter 5: The Vocal Approach and Relative Pitch

Below is a list, but feel free to add some more—it could be that melody or a couple of notes from the last music you just heard on a CD or on the radio! Look at your watch and go for five minutes. Little by little, like learning a new language (the language of music in this case), you are going to become fluent. You will recognize those intervals more and more quickly and be able to go faster and faster. But at the beginning, one key word my friends: SLOW. If you are unfamiliar with a melody, just write it down on your favorite web browser on the internet! Adeste Fidele/ O’ Come All Ye Faithfull A la Claire Fontaine Alouette Amazing Grace America Anchors Aweigh Auld Lang Syne Battle Hymn of the Republic Bear Over the Mountain Brahm’s; Lullaby Beethoven’s; Eroica Theme Big Ben Bizet’s; Carmen Chariots of Fire Christ was Born on Christmas Day Clementine Coventry Carol Deck the Halls Dixie Dvorak, Largo from New World Symphony For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow Frère Jacques God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen God Saves the Queen Greensleeves Happy Birthday Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

Here Comes the Bride Hey Jude Holly and the Ivy Home on the Range House of the Rising Sun Il Etait un Petit Navire I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas I’ve Been Working on the Railroad I’ve Got Rhythm I Saw Three Ships Jesus, Joy of Man’s Desiring (J.S. Bach) Jingle Bells Joy to the World La Donna è Mobile La Marseillaise Let it Be Love Me Tender Maman les Petits Bateaux Mary Had a Little Lamb Merrily we Roll Along March of the Kings (Bizet) Mozart’s; Klein Nacht Musik Oh! Susannah O Christmas Tree O Holly Night O Little Town of Bethlehem National Anthems

Ode to Joy On Top of Old Smoky Oh, When the Saints Pont d’Avignon Pop! Goes the Weasel Ride of the Valkyries Row, Row, Row Your Boat Shubert, the Trout She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain Silent Night Somewhere Over the Rainbow Star Spangled Banner Star Wars Theme Gershwin’s; Summertime Swing Low, Sweet Chariot Taps Trumpet Tune Trumpet Voluntary TV Advertisements and Jingles Twelve Days of Christmas Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star We Three Kings of Orient Are Wedding March (Mendelssohn) We Wish You a Merry Christmas When Johnny Comes Marching Home When You Wish Upon a Star Yankee Doodle

Chapter 5: The Vocal Approach and Relative Pitch

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Now, next time you learn a piece on the piano, you will think the music in terms of the intervals you are going to recognize. Say, we are learning the first two measures of “Jardins sous la pluie”; the first notes are no problem because they are stepwise motions. But then it jumps to a perfect fourth which we now recognize. The same applies for the following descending perfect fifth. From now on, we will practice our piano music in a different way. Say that today you are learning a two- or four-measure phrase. You are going to sing or hum the left then the right hand part after playing it on the piano while recognizing its intervals. You will in addition to instantly understanding and memorizing that passage often discover how inaccurately you heard that part. Of course, you repeat this little exercise every day, adding your newly learned phrases. Also by doing this, you are practising a daily solfege exercise, improving your relative pitch tremendously. Solfege is more fun when practiced with Brahms or Mozart rather than Cramer or Henry Lemoine! Memory wise, you are placing yourself in safe, indestructible territory. These exercises help you not only memorize easily, but also perform with confidence because before you didn’t know how to recognize all those intervals—they didn’t “speak” to you. Now you are sure. Oh, yes, now you know, that perfect fourth is the first two notes of “Here Comes the Bride”! When practicing this little solfege exercise, I use the fixed do system. It has the advantage of no matter what scale you are in, a C will always be a Do and a D will always be a re. It helps especially with modern works, where the tonality or the lack thereof could be ambiguous. Learn this:



Do Re Mi C D E

Fa Sol La F G A

Si B

When you sing a note, no matter if it’s sharp or flat, it will always be sung natural. Example: a D# will be sung: Re or a Bb a Si. There is a very good reason why solfege is a requirement for any serious music school. Being a real musician and or memorizing a score involve multiple aspects. Solfege will help by singing and giving you a unique experience with your music by physically feeling the intervals and the intonations, but also will give you a tremendous aid in your musical memory. 
When you learn or review your two or four measure phrases, at least sing the “melody”, the leading voice, the “guard rail”. Even though it is good but not always obvious to sing the other parts, they will be covered with your inner ear, the analytical part and the mental practice. Some musicians judging solfege too mechanical prefer while of course using the intonations, humming out loud, singing vowels or something like “da-da-da”. Myself, I like singing the names of the notes (do re mi…) like the lyrics of a song. While learning and rehearsing phrase by phrase, repeating like that the name of the notes only ads another serious and conscious backup to your memory! Now you are differentiating yourself from the majority of student pianists who, for lack of studying solfege, do not know intervals and are unable to play “Mary had a Little Lamb” or “Pop! Goes the Weasel” by ear! Believe me, Hélène Grimaud, Evgeny Kissin, and Andras Schiff all know how to play “Pop! Goes the weasel.” 20

Chapter 5: The Vocal Approach and Relative Pitch

chapter

6

Master Class

When you attend master classes, watch videos, or see famous musicians rehearsing, you will notice a similitude; like birds, they seem to sing all the time (their voices though, don’t always sound like those of the little birds!). I was at the master class of a very famous Julliard professor whose students are famous for winning the first prizes of most international competitions. The young artist was playing Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz pretty well, but for her it was not “devil sounding” enough—it was too tame. She was sitting at the other piano, but she sung the passage, showing him the intonations, and asked him to do the same; it was not the same music! A young artist was playing Mozart in a pretty plain way. The master, a famous international performer, and pedagogue played while singing the parts. Suddenly all those Mozart phrases made sense, became alive and that “boring” sonata magically was transformed into a beautiful masterpiece. The master said, “especially for the young artists in the audience, singing the melody is the best way to understand your music.” Another day, I witnessed another young artist playing a Chopin ballade like a music box: boring! But the master, who is also a famous soloist and pedagogue, asked him to sing the passage in three different ways. The magic started; the torments, almost the craziness, of Chopin’s music in that piece came out. Music comes from your soul, and your voice comes directly from it. Chopin said to Mme. Rubio, “You must sing if you wish to play.” When you sing, the intonations come naturally, and it is easier to first express them with your voice—that’s why the famous pianists always sing! A captivating speaker uses intonation. How captivating a pianist are you? Do you hear the wind in “Jardins sous la pluie”? How will you express it?

chapter

7

I Used To Play It!

If you own a nice painting, a masterpiece like a Rembrandt or a Corot, would you leave it outside on your patio, fade away with the sun and the rain? So why would you do the same with a Debussy or a Mozart, let it fade away into oblivion after all the efforts you spent to acquire it? In order to prevent this unfortunate event to happen, just on a recurrent and regular schedule review your “assets”. Jardins Sous La Pluie is one of those very beautiful and exciting masterpieces you don’t want to lose. It is ten pages long. Just mental practice and play at the piano five pages today, five pages tomorrow. If done on a regular basis this will take no time at all, and you will keep your masterpieces in you!

Chapter 6: Master Class

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chapter

8

Fugue in C Major by J.S. Bach

Why are we going to study this? Because, like Kennedy’s “man on the moon,” it is difficult. It is especially hard to memorize, it’s a four-voice fugue, and there is a lot going on at the same time. If you don’t have a good method to memorize, it’s almost impossible. It’s like a test. It would be easy for me to let you get by with easy pieces and declare “mission accomplished.” But if you can memorize this fugue (and you will!), you will be able to memorize everything! Just to show you that you are not wasting your time with me. Also, it is not what we call a “national sport”; when I tell people that I didn’t watch TV last night but instead studied a four-voice fugue from J.S. Bach, I like to see the expressions on their faces. We are going to start by memorizing the first line. Three measures is a “little chunk” that is easy to memorize. With fugues, it is more difficult to musically divide them into two or four measure phrases because there are always some other voices continuing in the background with notes that we should hold. So it is better to divide more in “workload” criteria—say two measures or a line a day, depending on how much time we can practice. But of course, especially here, due to the intensity of the information we have to memorize, it is good to only do a little bit every day. Remember; we climb the mountain one step at a time!

We play the left hand slowly, and write down the appropriate fingering. It should be done now; you know that an insecure fingering is going to sabotage your work. We start our little detective work with the “magnifying glass.” The “subject” of the fugue, melodic pattern, starts on the tonic C, climbs stepwise to the dominant G, goes stepwise a third down, two consecutive fourths up, pause on the dominant, and now goes down by successions of four notes, descending stepwise down to A. It then jumps a sixth to F#, which leads to the dominant G (now the new tonic of the modulation)—a “short Mordent” around F# then a major third down to D (dominant of G major, the new key). We have to put a “special note” for the interval in measure 3, A-F#, because all hand or finger movements of a fifth or more induce memory lapses! We close our eyes and play it very slowly on our knee. We see our fingers on every key, and we hear every pitch. Now we recognize the sound of those ascending fourths as well as the descending fifth from A to D separating them. We also think about our little analysis while we play. That’s why it should be painstakingly slow; we have to do all this. Haste makes waste, and we don’t want to waste our time. Like the successful people, we want to work the most efficient way. Here, we don’t want to skip any detail. If we are not sure, we can of course check the score. But, we don’t play it on the piano yet until we can play those three measures on our knee, with eyes closed, without any hesitation.. We are not using finger memory here! We play so slowly that we are only using conscious memory. 22

Chapter 8: Bach; Fugue in C Major

Ready? We play it now, slowly on the piano, while thinking about the little details. Andras Schiff often plays with eyes closed. The reason is not that he makes himself fall asleep! He is listening to himself, and every note he makes is beautiful (the secret of the famous pianists). Is every note you make beautiful? He also loses himself in his magnificent music and goes some places we all wish we could go. Now we play the right hand slowly and write down the correct fingering. It is very important that we finish at the first notes of the next measure: “the chain link.” A little detective work: The “answer” of the fugue starts on the dominant. It is now transposed on a nearby key, G major. The “real answer”: nothing has changed from the subject. If you have the sensation of déjà vu, you’re right—it’s the same as the one-anda-half previous measures! We play it very slowly on our knee, with eyes closed. We see each key, hear each pitch, while thinking about our little detective work. When we can do this without hesitation, we play it slowly on the piano, still listening and thinking about all the details. Now, we play once with both hands very slowly on the piano. We are looking for the “vertical relationships.” We notice that the answer starts on the second E from the second four notes in a descending series of the left hand. Now we close our eyes and play it extremely slowly on our knees. If we do it slow enough, we should not have any problems. It is good to take note though, that in the third measure, the D of the two consecutive fourths—B-E A-D—of the right hand is played with the first F# of the “short Mordent” of the left hand. You need to notice this because it follows a long “irregular” note. It doesn’t fall into that J.S. Bach “beat,” which makes us want to tap the time with our feet while listening to his music—or at least we have to, in addition to our counting, put a special note about when to play that “mordent.” If you know each hand separately very well and you encounter a difficulty playing hands together, the most likely reason is that there is an error somewhere. Check the accuracy of each hand, but the most frequent error will be in the rhythm, which is why it is important to put our “special notes.” If we need to, since the third measure is more intricate, we can repeat it or even a single beat several times, with eyes closed on our knees very slowly until “in place”. Once we master that line very slowly, with eyes closed on our knees, giving us enough time to see every key and hear every pitch, we can play it on the piano. And that’s it for today. It is strongly advised that, if you have time, you review it on a chair or a couch, playing it on your knees, with eyes closed, before you go to bed. It also helps tremendously—if time permits and depending on your deadlines—to review it after waking up in the morning while your mind is still fresh. The next day, like every day, we will start with our review work that I described in “Jardins sous la pluie” in Chapter 1 (it is in the paragraph just below the one with the little moon). We will also learn two more measures or even the entire line if we can.

Chapter 8: Bach; Fugue in C Major

23

Measures 4 and 5 offer no particular difficulty if we do our work seriously—I mean, strictly following the steps described above and, first and foremost; do it extremely slowly giving us time to see, with eyes closed, every key and hear every pitch while thinking about our little analysis. Like measure four, soprano ascending stepwise four notes are the “inversion” of the descending stepwise four notes of measure two. Because it is quite dense, I suggest studying measure by measure, ending on the first notes of the next one. In some pieces—as needed depending on the complexity of some parts—it’s sometimes good to repeat, beat by beat. As we saw previously, we also have to pay particular attention at the vertical relationship with rhythmic irregularities, such as, short notes after a long one. Measure six illustrates this very well. We have to make a “special note” that the left hand D is played with the right hand F-A and G-F going to E (left hand) starts on B (right hand)! We can either repeat it 98 times and maybe still make mistakes if Aunt Lucy is entering the room or just repeat it very slowly once or twice, giving us time to notice and think about all those little details and have them fixed in our conscious memory. It emphasizes again, that the key for a more complicated work like a fugue, is that you want to give to your mind the time to get a clear picture of every note, especially when rehearsing hands together. You don’t want a blurry picture! You need this time, to get a clear snap-shot of every note which is played together. We of course are going to use our “inner voice” to hear every pitch, but, be careful! Some parts are going to be inaccurately heard in your mind’s ear, because, for some reason, they sound strange to you or you just neglected them. Only singing them during your rehearsals will put you back on track. If you have a problem vertically, look horizontally. Sometimes if you are not sure of a note, look before and you will see that it belongs to a melody that you are not aware of playing! Some people mark every entry and learn every voice separately; however, since we play them together and already learn hands separately, I think just being aware of them will suffice. By the way, can you sing in your head the subject of the fugue in three different ways? Which one do you prefer and which one will be yours? What about the other parts? Now that you have the method, I’ll let you continue the good work on your own, but nevertheless, we have to know this very important fact: NOTHING IS AS VALUABLE AS REPETITION. We are of course not talking about brute, mindless repetition that will let you down during a performance, repeating it hundreds of times using only our finger memory—Instead we want a conscious, intelligent mind activity through mental practice repetition. We want to play that line slowly on our knees, with eyes closed, hands separately, again and again until mastered totally and completely. Then the same hands together. Every time you will play it, you will discover a little detail, a little information that will help you know the score a little better. I would go even further on this matter. If you have a problem memorizing more specifically hands together, ask yourself this simple question: do I really know perfectly my right hand, my left hand? Can I sing their part with accuracy? Do I really hands separately, master each of them perfectly with no hesitations on my knees seeing each note and hearing each pitch? You will see that most of the time the answer was no! 24

Chapter 8: Bach; Fugue in C Major

chapter

9

Chord Progressions with the Circle of Fifths

It is also very important, in order to better understand and memorize music, to have knowledge of harmony, or at least understand how music is built with chords and their progressions. The chords and their progressions or harmony is the “foundation”, like the one of a house, on which music is built. Also, reading and thinking about the score in groups of notes makes it easier to understand and therefore, makes it much easier to memorize, than just seeing a jumble of unrelated notes.

First, we are going to review our chords and learn some basic recipes on how to build any chord from any note on the keyboard! First and foremost is our basic major chord—the one on which every chord is built. If you have to memorize a formula, this is the one! Here it goes: the root +4 half tones+3 half tones. The root here is C; four half tones higher, we get E, and three half tones higher is G. R+4+3—memorize this formula! Minor chord: flat the third. Diminished chord: take a minor chord but flat also the fifth. Augmented chord: take a basic major chord and sharp the fifth. Sixth chord: add the note two half tones above the fifth. Minor sixth: do the same with a minor chord. Diminished sixth: add the note three half tones above the fifth of the diminished chord; stack of minor thirds (reversible chord; every note is spaced the same all the way to the octave!) Seventh chord: add the note two half tones below the root. Minor seventh: do the same with a minor chord! Major seventh: add the note half a tone below the root. Now, let’s do a little daily practice. Pick any note on the keyboard: a randomly selected root +4 half tones+3 half tones. Then build and play, one after the other, all the other types of chords while really listening and then singing them arpeggio style. The aim of this little daily exercise is to familiarize yourself with them and—most importantly—to work on your relative pitch so you know how they sound. Normally, the basic major chord is said to have a “big solid” sound. The minor chord is often associated with sadness. Diminished and augmented chords—because every note is at the same distance from each other and sound like they are in equilibrium as we don’t really hear what the root is—are said to have an “unstable sound.” On the contrary, the sixth and seventh chords are said to be comfortable and rested sounds. The major seventh is said to have a more, “modern and unresolved sound.” In order to get the composer’s idea and better understand the score, always seeking for some patterns, we now are going to see how all those chords are organized and how they progress in our music with the famous “circle of fifths.” As we previously saw, one of the characteristics of a pattern is that it’s elements repeat in a predictable manner. We are going to see that, with the “circle of fifths,” we can predict quite a fair amount of how the chords progress in music. Chapter 9: Chord Progressions with the Circle of Fifths

25

When we look at it, it looks like a clock, with 12 hours. On top we see C, and when we go clockwise, every stop is a fifth above the preceding one, and each has one more sharp. On the other side, going counterclockwise from C, each stop has one more flat. And that is how the major keys are built: 1 #, you are in G major; 2 #, you are in D; and so on and so forth. What is the most interesting for us is that it shows how the chords progress in music. Mostly, it starts on the tonic, from there, it goes to another chord and then comes back. We say it RESOLVES towards the tonic. For some examples let’s have a look at the famous theme from Franz Schubert’s unfinished symphony.

It starts on the tonic G, goes back one step to D7 (dominant7), which resolves going back to the tonic G. Nothing really surprising so far—it is a I-V-I chord progression. But then it makes a jump to E and from there comes back “home,” step by step, to G. When you look at the circle, which you should memorize (perhaps start with one side at a time), you see that counterclockwise it resolves in fourths, going “home” stopping on E, Am, D7 to G! When we do our ear training work, it is very good practice to harmonize one once a day when we find the melody by ear. Get used to finding and hearing chord progressions. We start with the immediate neighbor in the circle, with a basic I-V-I progression, and then we experiment further down the circle, resolving back to the tonic. This can of course be done artistically with nice broken chords. You can also do this with melodies of your own. Start composing, five or six notes or maybe fewer, something as short as a television jingle that you have in your head. Find the notes as an ear training exercise, then harmonize them on the piano. Another example, we now are going to see how J.S. Bach used the circle of fifths in his prelude in C major, which preludes the fugue we are studying. It starts on the tonic C, goes a couple of steps backwards on the circle, and then comes home step by step, resolving towards the tonic.

26

Chapter 9: Chord Progressions with the Circle of Fifths

It’s a nice feeling to predict which chord is going to come next, isn’t it? Don’t you have the impression of already understanding—therefore, knowing—a very important part of the piece? Of course, every piece has different chord progressions that you should discover to better understand the composer’s idea. They are not always so obvious, but they always follow some kind of pattern. Again, the more you know about the music you are studying, the more you understand it, the easier it is to memorize it. To recognize the chords in order to write them down on your music, you should make stacks of thirds. For example, in Bach’s prelude, second measure, C-D-A-D-F, when you stack them in thirds, you get D-F-A-C: Dm7—voilá! If there are any ambiguities, identification of the real bass or “the root” of the chord will clear them up.

Chapter 9: Chord Progressions with the Circle of Fifths

27

chapter

10

Checklist Or Working Like A Famous Pianist

To be organized and efficient in aviation in the “no messing around world” we use checklists. If you judge your time spent at the piano important, why not use the procedures used by professionals preparing a new piece? When we study a passage, a musical phrase maybe two or four measures, here are the steps of the checklist!

• Aural description and write down on the score the name of the chords and the “little discoveries.”



• Mental practice left hand, right hand and hands together.



• Practice by rehearsing on the piano this passage hands separately and hands together, very little chunks at the time. You want it NOW to sound like the ideal version you have in your head. Don’t waste time with your automatism postponing it to a later date, you already know the score! So you are going to repeat until satisfaction while attentively listening to yourself, in order to dose properly and make the movements of your hands, flexibility of your wrists, the weight of your arms and the attack of each note automatic. We call this a “conscious, controlled” automatism!



• We repeat the procedure, for this phrase every day.



• We are happy with the results and we dance around in the house.

• Sing at least the melody while recognizing the intervals.

Now, I would like to make a little comment about why, we are as the Leimer/Gieseking method suggests, right at the beginning memorizing systematically everything we want to perform at performance level. The main reason is enabling us, as Frantz Liszt who liked to say “nobody in the audience listens more to his playing than himself,” to really listen to oneself and correct any little inequality or flaws in our playing. Having the material we are working on memorized, enable us for a better audition to even close our eyes and really listen to the piano and make the little adjustments to our automatism.

28

Chapter 10: Checklist Or Working Like A Famous Pianist

chapter

11

Minute Waltz by Frédéric Chopin

Its real name is not “Minute Waltz.” If you want to learn the very nice Chopin legacy, I would suggest that you order Valse kk IVb, #11 in A minor. But I call it this because it should take you one minute to memorize the left hand and one minute to memorize the right one! Ready? Top chrono! Just kidding! It’s not a race here, and we know that haste makes waste. But really, if you use our method, you will be able to master this in no time! Now that you understand chords and their progressions, as illustrated by the colored notes, page 27, it is very good practice to “X-ray” your music to differentiate the stable notes of the chords from the restless passing ones. It tremendously simplifies the score to reveal “the frame of the house”: the structure from the ornamentation. What looks like a jumble of notes soon becomes clear and simple, making it easy to memorize. Again, we are always seeking a greater comprehension of the score. First we start by learning the left hand. We start with the first line, the first four measures. We see that it begins with the A chord, resolving itself by going step by step around the circle to C. Chopin repeats this chord progression four times on this page— nice chord pattern! The more notes that repeat that we can find, the better, and we look for the common ones between each chord. And we see that between

A and D is A →

D and G is F →

G and C is G

The base jumps in fourths, resolving itself towards C! Every day we are going to repeat our little analysis aloud. Now we play it slowly on the piano. Then we close our eyes and repeat it, slowly on our knee. We see each finger on each key and hear every pitch, while thinking about those bases jumping fourth by fouth, step by step in the circle, and those chords with their common notes. If we’re stuck, no problem, we can check the score, but don’t play it yet on the piano until we can play it with no hesitations on our knee, with our eyes closed. Now, we study the right hand. It starts on E, jumps a fourth (Here Comes the Bride!) to A, and from there it goes stepwise to F after repeating twice on C. It jumps down a fifth to B (be careful of all jumps of a fifth or more because you don’t want to forget them! I recommend writing a little exclamation mark with your pencil in front of them). Then, it makes like a little pattern: three notes up, jumps to A (another fifth!) then it goes symmetrically three notes down and descends to E with a little appoggiatura around E. This is the entire phrase, which sometimes makes more sense when we see “the big picture”—like the story of the blind and the elephant. The first two measure motif repeats itself four times on this page: nice melodic pattern! But I suggest—especially if you are not used to memorizing—to start memorizing measure by measure. We play it slowly on the piano after having written down the proper fingering, while thinking about our little analysis. We close our eyes and play it on our knee very slowly; we hear each pitch, see each key, while thinking again about our analysis. When we can do this with no hesitations, we play it on the piano.

Chapter 11: Minute Waltz by Frédéric Chopin

29

Minute Waltz

30

Chapter 11: Minute Waltz by Frédéric Chopin

Frédéric Chopin

We now play it very slowly, both hands on our knees. Normally, you play it slowly enough not to get stuck. If you do get stuck, again, feel free to check the score, but, you know that it is very important to not play it yet on the piano until that line is mastered totally on your knees, with eyes closed. For the second four-measure phrase, I let you get your magnifying glass and your Sherlock Holmes hat and hunt for the differences with the first four measures! Well, I’ll help you this time—I’m like that! Measure 5 the base starts one 8’ higher. In measure 7, the second G7 chord swaps the B for D and the last note of the right hand is now B, leading tone to C! The third four-measure phrase is exactly the same as the first one. The next phrase starts this time on C, with the same melodic pattern. Measure 15 is also different with kind of appoggiatura around G, dominant of the little modulation. You see, you have almost memorized the first part in no time! We should memorize only two or four measures a day, but I just want to show you here that—with a good analysis and knowledge of chord progressions—when we understand the system, it’s piece of cake. The little part beginning measure 17 is just as easy. We want to look harmonically and see a chord pattern; Chopin swaps E7 to Am all throughout, resolving on Am. For the right hand, measure 17, a little “scale motif ” is followed by” little turns” around the chord with restless notes not of the chords and those which belong, pausing on the root at the last beat for measures: 18, 19, and 20. In measure 21, an arpeggio this time followed by the same “little turns” around the chord until the end of that part. We just memorized half of Chopin’s “Valse” in no time! Now that you know how to work, I’ll let you continue on your own. But, we are not going to finish this lesson without talking about some very important points in the next chapter.

Chapter 11: Minute Waltz by Frédéric Chopin

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General Considerations

First, when we pull out our magnifying glass and start our little analysis, in order to help us make a precise aural description of what we are studying and therefore have it set in our conscious mind, we look as we saw in the previous examples, for some specific points. Here are some general guidelines: Key signature and modulations Scale degrees Are there: • Any repeating patterns? • Similarities, differences? • Parallels?

• Melodic, scale or chord patterns? • Inversions? • Repeating notes (tonic, dominant?)

What direction is the music going—up or down? Does it goes stepwise or does it skip? How many voices are there? Mark the entry of a new one. Observe the vertical relationships. Analytical memory is very important for some pedagogues—it is said to be the most reliable. As a pilot, I often stay overnight in hotels. If they give me room 623 to remember, I could either repeat “623” five hundred times and maybe still forget or just think once that six equals two times three, to have it in my mind forever! (The next night, in a different city and a different hotel, I will still go to room 623; normally the staff at the front desk help me out.) The more you can talk about the piece, the better—the more you practice a piece, the more little discoveries you are going to look for and are going to make. Some people mark them down on the score. Since you are going to repeat them orally every day, there will be a point where you will know the piece like you know your name. A lot of professional pianists use a “little script” in their head which they repeat while playing. The little script is the aural description or analysis supplemented by our “little discovered associations and patterns”—as previously showed in the examples, plus some strategic considerations: “here comes the sixth the jump to A—this is the first scale down—the thumb is on the C, the second one it’s on the B, so on and so forth. Of course, while we play, this should be done in the background, while your inner voice is singing loud in the foreground! Be very careful not to neglect small details in the “easy parts” as they don’t produce a big effect on your mind. Those are the ones the most likely, if lack of the “oral description” which are going to give you memory lapses. You might be nervous to perform because you know that a passage is insecure. It could be something as small as one beat, which could “derail the entire train.” Don’t procrastinate and let that happen! Just take your magnifying glass and do a thorough aural description—look for the neglected information. Sing it to remove any ambiguity and play it on your knees, with eyes closed, over and over, while thinking about the note or the neglected information until you have mastered it totally!

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Chapter 12: General Considerations

The way, we practice, repeating on our knees every day, working line by line or phrase by phrase, makes it easy for us to start anywhere in the score. I sit at one piano, my professor sits at another one with the score, and after he plays a passage to show me how it should be done, I have no problems—without the score—resuming from there. But, for better assurance, in the case of memory lapse, it is better to “drill” a lot of starting places ahead of where you are in the score. You play, then, say your wife tells you that she filed for divorce. You stop, then resume a little bit ahead in the score. Some pianists are real masters at that. One day, when I was watching a piano competition, there was a very nice Scarlatti piece; but when I talked to the pianist about it, he only talked about the memory lapse, which I was totally unaware of! In order to “master this art,” just write down numbers at some strategic parts of the piece. Practice by starting at those different numbers. Also by playing, stopping and then resuming at the next number. Of course, it is very important to do so in the form of mental practice repetition. Say, you are sitting on your couch, close your eyes and start playing on your knees from those different numbers. Do you really take advantage of this wonderful tool which is mental practice? It is as easy to hear and see piano keys in your head as it is to think for example, how ugly your neighbor’s garden gnome is! 
 Let’s try: Say you are standing up, running on a treadmill or seating on a chair across someone who doesn’t stop talking and you find this conversation/monologue a little bit boring. Now with your eyes open, see your fingers of your left hand playing slowly each key, of the first two measures of say; Jardins Sous La Pluie while hearing each pitch. You see it works. Now do the same with the right hand. It works too! Let’s try hands together, very slowly: Bingo! You see it is easy and you start to realize the tremendous advantage you have over other pianists, being able like this to rehearse your music in your head during any dead moment of the day! Nothing is a valuable as meaningful repetition! During a performance, a lot of nuisances can take a toll on your concentration, like coughs in the audience, ringing cell phones, or a fly which finds your nose very pretty and stubbornly thinks it’s the best place to be during your performance. To better prepare for them, before an important performance, it is good to play in front of friends or—even better—at a friend’s house on a different piano—or try anything that can make you nervous. For example, have a friend sneak behind you and suddenly make a loud noise, filming or recording yourself. They now have very nice digital pianos on which it is easy to record yourself. You may realize while doing this that some spots need more attention with your memorization (maybe those fifth or above jumps again!). You may not like what you hear at first, but, if you listen to the recordings while following the score and, as a master at a master class, mark with your pencil the passages which you dislike, you will very quickly get results which please you. Even a tape recorder and a microphone will do. Successful people, always use every resource available to help themselves. Recording oneself was recommended by a famous international virtuoso during a master class at TCU.

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Also, digital pianos have several different instruments; and it is always interesting to play a Bach fugue on the organ or piano and choir, hear it sung by human voices, or Debussy on an exotic instrument since he was so fond of them! It’s also like a little memory challenge because your ears are not used to hearing such sounds, so you get distracted. Other than new and awkward hand spacing, that is the reason why playing a piece on different registers of the piano is also a very good memory check. When we play at some friend’s house, it helps that we play on a different piano because it pressures you to only think about and listen to your music, not at the cake you are going to have for desert, while experiencing the acoustics of that different instrument. Again, all these well-known “memory checks” which are going to sound familiar, like playing the entire piece on a table or our knees, while pretending it’s the piano, playing the entire piece first with your left hand then right hand or playing it very slowly or being able to sing or hum the entire piece. The problem is that this is the normal way we work! Our basic routine is what is supposed to be the most challenging. We only use conscious intelligent work through mental practice, so of course we can do all that! If we can’t, it means we’re not ready yet! Many student pianists practice by aimlessly repeating and repeating the score on the piano, with no thought or direction—maybe trying to memorize! Does it sound familiar? This student is not you anymore because now you know how to memorize. Your new way to practice is like Hélène Grimaud, Andras Schiff and many others—these “piano magicians”; maybe, like them, you close your eyes, play while listening to yourself, and make every note beautiful. Your new assignment: Ask yourself while playing each note “Am I happy with how this note sounds? Are my intonations in this phrase correct? Does it sound like the ideal version I have in my head?” In relation to what we just said and to fight nervousness during a performance, you must realize that your audience has only one goal and focus: to be moved by your music. Please do a nice job and only concentrate your attention on your music, maybe closing your eyes and making every note beautiful. As for every other activity, the more we do anything, the better. The more proficient and the easier it becomes. Therefore, why not commit ourselves like Yo-Yo Ma at memorizing every day two or four measures? You will before you know it become a superior musician, an expert memorizer and end-up with a great repertoire! Last but not least, remember that your inner voice is the fuel of your music memory. With no more voice, the memory will stop. Don’t let that singing stop! All of this seems like a lot of work, but, don’t forget that we do just a little bit every day, conquering our mountain one step at a time. The joys of really owning a masterpiece more than compensate for it. Happy music! I sincerely hope that I contributed to giving you the wings that will fly you through a wonderful musical journey.

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Chapter 12: General Considerations

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