December Read: Five Minutes to Remedy Wrong Notes

Stephanie Zi Yi Yang

“All instrumental training has a ‘practice index’ - if the practice method is correct, performance abilities will be improved. On the contrary, using the wrong method will cause the problem to continue to magnify, until better performance skills feel impossible to achieve. Using the wrong methods, one may need to spend twice as much time practicing in order to slowly correct these deeply rooted errors.”

It is very common to receive inquiries from parents, expressing annoyances that their children often make mistakes. Even if these mishaps are unintentional, their appearance will not only affect daily learning, but also make children lose enthusiasm for piano practice. In severe cases, it will even cause them to lose confidence and accuracy during performances.

The cause of this problem is almost always due to the "heartlessness" of the students when practicing the piano. If they can concentrate while practicing, and let these wrong sounds be detected and corrected in time, these mistakes will not become a habit; they will not develop the bad habit of "playing the wrong sounds".

All instrumental training has a "practice index" - if the practice method is correct, performance abilities will be improved. On the contrary, using the wrong method will cause the problem to continue to magnify, until better performance skills feel impossible to achieve. Using the wrong methods, one may need to spend twice as much time practicing in order to slowly correct these deeply rooted errors.

Causes and effects

Generally speaking, the problem of wrong notes can be roughly divided into two types: "fixed wrong notes" and "non-fixed wrong notes". "Fixed wrong notes" refers to making mistakes on individual notes, usually due to inertial errors such as muscle memory, or momentary mishearing or misreading of the notes on the page. Under these circumstances, students only need to practice a little. Pay more attention, and these problems can be corrected quickly.

"Non-fixed wrong notes" refers to making mistakes at any time and place. This is roughly due to the player’s psychological pressure and physical incoordination, such as anxiety, impatience, lack of attention, and failure to listen carefully or read scores. Under these circumstances, students need to have complete physical and mental coordination before they can solve the problem.

With all of this in mind, in order to solve these problems, we must first understand our own learning characteristics. After we realize the root of the problem and discover its seriousness, we will come up with effective solutions. In any case, the main causes of fixed or non-fixed sounds can be roughly divided into the following four types. Now let's see - which one do we belong to?

“In contrast to the freer style of popular music, playing classical music generally requires the performer to stay close to the ‘original’ markings of the composer. If we play without paying attention to the notes in the score, we are ultimately ignoring the original intentions of the composer.”

1. Just listening, not reading

Students with excellent ears often only need to listen to the music a few times in order to memorize most of the score. However, it may become difficult for these students to concentrate on reading the notes themselves, because they subconsciously feel that they have "heard" the music already. Unless the piece is written very simply, it is almost impossible for one to memorize an unfamiliar piece of music without missing a note. The reason is simple; because everybody’s feelings about music are very different. Many times we always wishfully think that the music we perceive is what the composer wrote; however others hear numerous differences, such as wrong sounds or wrong rhythms.

In contrast to the freer style of popular music, playing classical music generally requires the performer to stay close to the "original" markings of the composer. Although sometimes the music that is written may not fully meet our wishes, if we play without paying attention to the notes in the score, we are ultimately ignoring the original intentions of the composer. In the end, when we find that there are too many problems that could not be improved or fixed, we choose to give up. Just imagine how many pieces that have been abandoned because this "halfway" process. Are they sitting in the bookshelf?

2. Lack of listening

In many piano competitions, it is common to find students who are playing pieces that are not compatible with their own scores. This serious mistake is due to the fact that the students never really listened to themselves during practice. There is no doubt that people with strong reading abilities tend to "read" music as words, and ignore the importance of truly listening. Of course, this is often not done intentionally, but because of their innate reading ability; they almost always forget the need to "listen" and "sing" the music.

In a nutshell, a score is like an article. One can say that a note is equivalent to a word, a combination of several notes is equivalent to a phrase, a few phrases of music can be combined like a paragraph of an article, and so on. However, attentive listening is very important for everyone who learns music. When we listen to music carefully, we will find that music has more ups and downs than plain text. Buried within the circumflex notes, the emotions are often more varied than the most poetic of texts. Even words can't describe music, which means that a good piece of music is worth more than a thousand words.

3. Lack of concentration and confidence

Slowed-down practice is universally believed to be the only way for every musician to improve, especially if the music is still in the early stages of visual comprehension. Many unintentional mistakes are caused by our lack of concentration, or lack of self-confidence. We must understand that our brains need to handle multiple tasks at the same time when practicing piano, and our hands must have enough time to coordinate smoothly.

If one cannot arrange for a prolonged amount of time to practice, one can try to reduce the number of mistakes, bit-by-bit each time. For example, think clearly and listen carefully to the notes before playing, in order to prevent any mistakes. You can give yourself a practice goal every day, remembering to be kind yourself to a certain extent. If you can persevere and properly implement your practice plan, several problems will be resolved within a short time.

4. Too subjective

Have you ever tried singing a piece of music to yourself, but eventually start veering off from the original tune? It can even be difficult for you to recognize this phenomenon, because you know that your musical taste is better than that of musicians - right? Ha!

First of all, this is not your fault. It is understandable that you may have been upset by the appearance of these feelings, but these are all due to the subjectivity caused by our natural musical sense. The composer and the performer are two independent individuals; one of them is responsible for producing the music, and the other is responsible for presenting the music. Although they are both part of the art form, they are different when it comes to the same piece of music, because of their inevitably different feelings. So sometimes it is normal when we fail to reach an agreement with the composer's soul!

In any case, for some contemporary music, the adventurous notes and rhythms are representative of a particular style of the time. This kind of music may be very fresh to some people, but others can find it very harsh. With this in mind, we can actively choose to listen, watch, play, and sing many different types of music - this helps us cultivate our openness and objectivity towards music. After we broaden our musical horizons, we can solve this problem of subjectivity.

“You must be aware that bad habits cannot be erased in a moment, so we need to stay alert, be more patient, and avoid rushing for full success. Remember that all problems need time and appropriate methods to be fully dealt with.”

Solutions

If you already understand the limitations of your practice habits, but have not been able to find a specific solution, here are some suggestions for you. When encountering the problems of wrong notes, in general you should:

• Calm down first, then slow down your tempo.

• Listen and read each note carefully, and immediately circle those that can be identified as incorrect.

• When necessary, extract some bars/voices for analysis, and listen/practice separately.

• Repeat the measure with the wrong notes, or just that beat, until the wrong note is corrected. Then start from the previous measure, and repeat the exercise in units of two measures at a time. After the two measures have been practiced, start one measure before, and so on.

• Practice with the score, but away from the piano: find a quiet place and try to sing the music without the instrument. Allow yourself have a deep connection with the score, concentrating on each note and confirming each note’s place, before returning to play at the instrument again.

• Reflect on your practice, asking yourself: “Where I was wrong just now? Which note is wrong? Did I misread the treble and bass clefs? Did I forget the accidental?” and so on.

• Method of comparison: extract similar phrases from the score and compare them, analyzing them carefully and discovering the differences (if any) between them.

If you have difficulty listening to yourself while playing, you can try to record and relive your own playing, so that you can review your music and compare it with the notes on the score. Generally, without the pressure of playing the instrument, you can easily listen to and read every detail of the score. If you are still unable to identify your problem, you can pause the recording or listen again, until you can find the exact position of the wrong note.

If there are just too many wrong notes, you can try a step-by-step approach - 30% every day as an improvement goal towards practice. For example, today you change five wrong notes, tomorrow change six, the day after tomorrow seven, and so on, until all the mistakes are corrected.

You must be aware that bad habits cannot be erased in a moment, so we need to stay alert, be more patient, and avoid rushing for full success. Remember that all problems need time and appropriate methods to be fully dealt with.

In summary

Effective practice can not only improve our performance skills, but also make our learning habits more effective and efficient. As long as we listen carefully when we practice, examine the content of the score, think clearly before playing, our determination towards excellence will improve. We must be fully engaged with the optimum practice mentality, and persist in correcting mistakes. As such, practicing with goals will never be a waste time.

On the contrary, if we stick to our own opinions, and make mistakes but ignore them, we will never be able to achieve our goals. No matter how many times you practice, you will not achieve any success in the long-term. Apart from solving any problems, it is more likely that our learning will remain in a long-term negative state forever, without any breakthroughs. Once the bad habits are consolidated, this may even become a problem that can never be cured; if you don't want to waste time and crash, you must not be too rash. Concentrate on practicing, and your playing will soon be better!