So apparently piano players are introverted loners who like to play for hours
on their own.....and my teacher thinks pianists are perfectionists
because they can play for hours on their own...

SO, what is the "saddest" thing you've ever done to achieve perfection?

I think for me it is watching the hammers in a Hanon exercise go up at
precisely the same time for left and right hands

I have only been playing for 7 months so have not got round to watch the hammers yet I'll remember it though for future 'reference'
I'm afraid I am not as 'sad' as you yet and the 'saddest' things I've done so far is:
-take a keyboard with me to Italy on holiday and stayed in and practice EVERY DAY instead of sight-seeing/etc
- Again spent the other 2 weeks off work I had just practicing!

Probably all of my teenage years from 13-15, playing the piano and nothing else really It's ok because I make up for it now, hence having a crush on Leonardo diCaprio a few years ago and various other teenage behaviour

Gave up my dancing to pass my piano diploma - many years ago now.
Hoping to take it up again before I get too much older!

It depends how you define "Sad". Whilst I know what you mean (I think) I will choose to answer the flip side of the question: The saddest thing I've ever done in music was give up lessons for over 30 years and settle for mediocrity. By the definition I think you actually mean (!) the saddest thing I've done is restart lessons after a 34 year gap!

Well - my gap was 40 years but believe me - it was great to re-start lessons and really make progress - even if there are days like to day when I have to stop practising for a break because my shoulders are aching.

Well, If I can't play a passage right more than 3 times in a row, I get very fustrated and practice untill I get it right, try the next day and can't play it right, get fustrated again.....

Missing lunch at school a lot so I could practise, I suppose...

There is nothing sad in aspiring to perfection, in my humble opinion.

Erm Sitting infront of the TV doing "silent practise" when it's too late in the evening to play, and taking my music to bed so i could read it through and play it in my head

I have a long commute twice a week and do silent practice on the train quite a lot

What he/she said!

A lot of my acquaintances seem to think taking up the recorder was in itself a "sad" thing to do...

Flaming cheek

oh come on, where's your sense of humour?
I'm ALL for perfection.

So I thought of something else I did..... I didn't want to be put off in my lesson
by the fact my teacher's piano had a different sound to mine,
so I practised my piece on a digital piano.... I made sure I could play the
piece through without stumbling regardless of what tone button
I'd pressed. Bach in telephone rings, fantasy bells, male choir oohs and aahs,
guitar above middle C and strings below...... I think I could have played it in cow moos....
anyway it worked!!!!

^^ Is it sad that I think this is a great idea and am thinking of trying it?

In the run up to my G7 exam, I spent about half an hour twice a day practising the same phrase over and over again. Drove my family nuts. (Tchaikovsky, Octobre song - my family would like to never hear that piece of music again, along with the Dussek Allegro from G6 a couple of years ago!). Also, if I'm having trouble articulating a phrase clearly enough I'll play it with woolly gloves on to force me to be accurate.

I'm a bit too impatient to do that...

No it's smart


I've heard about playing in gloves, so it works?

I also spent hours practising a phrase, and then in my lesson I got it wrong and had to keep playing through
a fit of silent giggles........thus discovered I need to practise the hard bits with the bit just before as well so
as not to trigger the earlier muscle memory

Well, we read this and we tried it (Me, my son doing grade 2 next week, my mate doing dip & LRSM next year). I couldn't manage to keep going without the aural input but they thought it was great.

My son then lined up the acoustic piano and the digital, at right angles to one another, and played through all his exam pieces and scales with one hand on each keyboard. He then turned his BACK to them and did it the other way around! I'm waiting for him to do that thing where you lie under it with your legs sticking out and have to cross your arms to get your hands in the right place, and play blind from there (c.f. Tom Hulce in the title role of Amadeus)

Saddest thing I did was not start learning to sing until my mid 40s.

I'd been told I couldn't sing at school, so never even thought it was possible.

Teachers have a lot to answer for sometimes don't they

Ambs
x

wow!!! I expect nothing will phase your son in his exam

I've heard of teachers doing strange things while their pupils practise their recitals....so they're not put off by sudden loud
bangs and so on in the exam/audition room ....the mind boggles at the possibilities .....

I can't help thinking of that movie "The Knowledge" where the London taxi license examiner (played by famous english actor
who also played Sir Humphrey in Yes, Minister) would ask for directions to X from Y in London and during the answer
did shocking things in the exam room (few of which I can describe without blushing)....presumably to see if the candidate
could cope with customers doing appalling things in the back of their taxi while navigating and driving......

I myself never did manage to play my Bach piece with hands crossed, as I was recommended to do,
but I thought I was also supposed to play the left hand part with the right hand, not just the right hand
part several octaves lower (if you catch my meaning) so maybe I was trying something just too difficult.
Or maybe I need longer arms......
I also experimented with playing the invention I was learning backwards on the grounds that it would
probably still be musical.......but my sightreading is so awful I gave up.
Ah well......something for the future.......

yes, it is sad (according to standard meaning of sad). What's really sad is believing the teacher.
In fact I discovered early on that teachers could mark things wrong when they right, as early as grade 2,
that my dad knew more than them etc etc etc


I remember a real tyrant who I would
have spat on if I ever saw her again, a truly nasty person. Of course, the only
thing you can change is your own response .. its been a real
challenge at times to find the response that gets the change I've needed.
Ask me about sexism in the workplace if you ever need to know.

Goes to show how wrong a teacher can be.

Yes, I've done that too!

I think that was also the week that I took blank manuscript and wrote out my Grade 3 pieces from memory

maybe I should get out more...

(Still, there is the gloves idea....)



HVL

I've been devoting my frees to piano practice all year...

There was a teacher at my primary school (in the 60's) who picked on one pupil every year in order to encourage the others. When she died one of her victims told me that he was reminded of the song from "A Chorus Line", where the singers acting coach had died, and the singer ". . . dug right down to the bottom of my soul and cried, 'cause I felt nothing, absolutely nothing".

Can I just say ditto to all that (except for me it was late 40s).

When I teach little ones how to practise I tell them to "PLay Monsters". First you get a pencil and paper and draw three cross faces. Then you learn a section of a piece, practise it until it is known and then perform it. If it is correct you kill one monster by scribbling it out. Then you repeat the passage again, killing one monster each time it is correct. When all three are dead you have won. If you make any mistakes you have to draw another monster though. The sad part is that I use this methood myself too.

That's brilliant, Petra

SO, what is the "saddest" thing you've ever done to achieve perfection?

My children think the fact I play duets with a CD as a partner very sad indeed. Actually, I find it most enjoyable and therapeutic and very good practice for playing with a human partner!

hi i think maybe crying before i went to india this time because i couldnt take my flute would be thought of as sad by some and rushing into the house on our return to play her as soon as i got in the house (poor husband was still carring the cases in the house!)

i plan to smuggle a older not shiny anymore flute with me in dec ( i can not and will not not play flute for a month)

also playing plastic fife in the bath might be thought of as a bit weird

I do that

I bet the acoustics make it sound great!!



When I travel I always ask if there is a piano in the hotel. In joensuu in Finland they let me
into the penthouse wedding party/banquet room, and I played with a fantastic 360 degree
wrap around view, feeling like i was floating on the level of the clouds..

I went to Minneapolis for a month to a workshop
at the university and because I had an official UM badge I was allowed to practice in the music dept
student practice rooms. A whole floor of a large building was made up of practice rooms each
with a steinway baby grand...or a boston, or a .... after a while I was getting picky...
I felt like a teenager playing hookey from class.

So about 2 months ago I was in Cambridge in a hotel with a very nice grand piano in an enormous
foyer type area. It was 11:30 pm and the professional pianist who had been playing on it was long gone.
I asked and yes, I could play on it. My husband was chatting to a friend still with us and no-one
else was around. So I played (I play from memory so lack of music is not a problem) and wasn't
too under the weather to play OK. When I "emerged"/regained normal consciousness, a whole group of people
now sitting at the other side of the foyer cheered!!!!!! Now, I can hear the huge difference between how I play and
how my teacher plays, but still, it was a positive experience.

Yes

Hmmm I have a few kind of ridiculous things...
I went to Florida for a vacation but didn't have a piano so I caslled up a random church and asked to use their piano for a few hours...
I've done that twice actually haha...

And yes, silent practicing i do a lot... haha it is actually QUITE helpful...

And besides that once I learned/memorized the Schumann piano concerto first movement in 3 weeks... the final week before my performance I was on the piano pretty much 6-7 hours a day... that is a little excessive if you ask me, especially since I was in still school at the time...

So yes... rather "sad" haha

Making a full size blue peter style fake keyboard out of paper and sellotape that I could roll out and bust moves on in the train.

Blindfolding myself.

Breaking into the school practise rooms at 2/3/4/5 in the morning when I was a bored insomniac boarder.

Skipping lessons... to practise.

Joining this message board to talk about achieving perfection.


Jack x

Welcome to the forums jackgmackenzie

I love the blue peter keyboard idea. Definitely I'm going to have to get one, I've so much travelling
coming up. How strong does the cardboard need to be etc etc etc????????????

Learning to play the right hand with the left hand and the left hand with the right hand - blows the mind but improves the independence of the hands.

When I was about two or three i had an "incident" involving a wooden plank, teenagers, a little kid and a slide. Its a long story but bascially my top lip got all cut open and i had to have stitches. Because of this I have a small bump and scar on my top lip towards the right.
I wanted flute lessons in year 3 at primary school but the HORRIBLE teacher said there was absolutely no way I could play because of this small bump. Apparently I couldn't get the right shape of mouth because of it or something. She was one of those teachers who simply decided who she wanted/didn't want to teach.
The year after she left and we got a new teacher. I went again as I decided I wanted to play a woodwind instrument even if it wasn't the flute, so i went having clarinet in mind. However when I'd mentioned about flute the teacher said there was absolutely no reason why I couldn't play it!
I was so annoyed with the first teacher, she'd held me back for no reason. Ive just taken gr4 and passed with merit. But reading your thing brought back that memory, maybe i'd be furthur on if she hadn't been so mean!
Not only did it hold back my flute playing but it also caused me to be very self concious about my scar.
Grr silly teacher!!!

Anyways I love my flute now soo
x

When I was a teenager, I used to pretend that was practising the piano in the school hall, and all the tasty blokes from the sixth form crept in (without me noticing of course) and I was playing so beautifully that they all fell in love with me immediately! Sad or wot?

I also used to use one of those ancient reel to reel tape recorders to record RH on its own, and LH on its own to practise the other hands, if you see what I mean!

Nowadays, the saddest thing I do is tell myself off when I make the same mistake for the 3rd time, and use unladylike language to describe my feeble efforts when it still doesn't go right. Always reckon that the computer and music practise bring out the most colourful language in my vocabulary.

Some people would say I was sad because I am addicted to scales and get really bad withdrawal syptoms if I don't play them (ie doing the right fingers and singing the notes very badly!) I do every single piano scale and arpeggio in existence before I go to school and every single flute scale and arpeggio in existence when I get home from school (plus all the other stuff you need for grade 8) If I miss a day, I do then twice the following day, or catch them up in school! However, I have had full marks for scales in exams, and it does strengthen your hands and make everything generally easier (plus is ideal for very impressive warm-ups, zipping up and down the keyboard at a million miles an hour!)

uhh, I slap my hands really hard when I make a teensy weensy mistake. Repeat until mistake goes away (quite quickly as well, faster than if I didn't slap them.)