Success in Piano Playing Or Anything Is NOT a Steady Line Upward…

 Good morning. This is Duane. I’d like to ask you a question. How do you get from A to Z in any field in any field? In piano playing, in baseball, in medicine or whatever. How do you get from A to Z? Sounds like a silly question, but it’s apropos because I have many students, and they get discouraged along the way because they don’t see that the path from A to Z. They think it’s a straight line. Let me just illustrate here.

Maybe you can see this straight line here down a lower left corner up to Z. And we’ll let A represent where you start. Let’s say I start taking piano lessons, which I did. I was about 7 years old and my folks signed me up to take piano lessons from a sweet little old lady and she put my hands on the keyboard and said, “I want to teach you where middle C is.” And I learned to play middle C, and I think I probably played it like that at first, but she said no you hold your hands in curve position so your fingers fall on the keys like that in kind of a logical order. So I learned three notes up, up we go. Then with my left hand I learned three notes down. Down we go. That’s how everybody that learns anything begins their career in whatever field they’re taking up and of course I’m talking about piano playing today.

You have to start somewhere, so wherever A is that’s where you’re beginning. Now, Z you can define in many different ways, and it’s different or any person. Some people want to be a performing pianist like they want to play in a church or a club or whatever, at a concert, so their goals are very high and so it takes longer to get from A to Z. But a lot of folks, a majority of folks, they define Z as being able to play so that they can play the songs they love and relax. For some reason I’ve had over the years I’ve had many, many, many doctors and their goal of course is not to play professionally, although one doctor that I had in Seattle, his goal was to play at this neighborhood restaurant after work. He wanted to play at that restaurant or maybe on Saturday. Something like that.

Anyway, he did reach his goal. But a lot of doctors, their goal is to simply come home after work and not think about medicine anymore. Not think about patients, not think about all that that they have to think about. They want to sit down and relax, so their goal is entirely different than your goal or my goal or some other goal. Okay? Now when people see me play, they don’t see A, they see Z and they think how in the world does that guy play like that or anybody you see that you admire. You say well, gee, I’ll never be able to play like that. Excuse me. Now the problem comes in that straight line. People think you go from A to Z in a straight line and so students get discourage because they’re not progressing rapidly. They’re not progressing evenly I should say.

But that’s not how learning takes place. It’s not how learning takes place. That’s over the course of a lifetime or the course of however many years you dedicate to that. What it looks like, what that line should look like and does look like in the short run is like this. It’s a series of plateaus followed by jumps up, plateaus, jumps up, plateaus, jumps up, and where people get discouraged are in these plateaus. They go along and they don’t think there’s every going to be that jump up. Now the answer to that is to do what you know to do and don’t worry about what you don’t know to do. In other words, keep working, keep progressing and it will come in time, okay? Maybe not as much as you want it to, but it will come in time. That’s how anybody gets anywhere. That’s how anybody graduates from college or whatever.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say that you’re, as you know I’ve taught many, many people over the years both in person and through online and DVD and so on. Let’s say you’re playing and you’ve gotten to where you can play a simple melody. Maybe the instructor wants you to play that in thirds. Parallel thirds. But you find that hard to do. Well, don’t worry about it. Play the part you do know over and over again and think about it when you’re lying in bed. Let’s see, how would thirds work? Okay I’ve got 5 fingers. It doesn’t make sense to start there if I’m going down with those fingers so maybe I’ll start with those fingers. Oh yeah, it’s much smoother to do that. Oh look at that. And gradually it will occur to you how things will work and your fingers will pick up that knowledge and they’ll get some … we call it muscle memory. It’s not exactly muscle memory, but it is you’re getting history into your fingers so to speak so that you can build on that history.

Then you move up to the next lesson and maybe your teacher wants you to play that in sixths rather than thirds. Well, and you find that hard to do. Well, play thirds then. You learned how to play thirds, well keep on playing thirds and get better at thirds. Think about sixths and how they might work and they’ll come in time. Then maybe he wants you to play in octave thirds. You see that? It happens step by step, but it’s in those plateaus where people get discouraged, so the answer is do what you know to do and eventually you’ll know what to do.

So you just do the work. You do the work and keep on doing the work and the steps up will come in time. So whatever you do do not give up. Whatever field you’re in. If you want to be a professional baseball player. Don’t give up. At some point you may have to, but don’t give up. Same way with piano playing. In piano playing you don’t have to make a team or anything, so you never have to give up. You can play your whole life and get better and better and better and gradually you’ll assimilate all these things.

Okay. Enough of my lecture today. Sorry to harp on it, but a lot of people do get discouraged and I want them to know that. Remember that success in piano playing or any other field happens in plateaus with steps up - not in that straight line we illustrated on the video. That’s not how learning happens. Thanks. Bye-bye. See you tomorrow.

Here is the YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHHNooSIGYk&feature=youtu.be

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