Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about why corrections are so hard on the piano. You may have had this experience where you have something in your music you learned wrong or something doesn’t quite come out right. So you correct the mistake. You cement the correction. You do it over and over again until you get it perfect. You can play it ten times perfectly, no problem at all. Then you play for your teacher or at a performance and the same mistake comes back! You corrected that mistake, so how could it possibly come back to haunt you?
Why do old mistakes come back?
I’m going to give you a parallel here. Imagine there is a job you drive to every day for months, maybe years. Every day you get in your car and you go the same way. You’re so used to that route you don’t even have to think about it. That’s the problem! Because then let’s say you get a new job. You have to take a different way. But you’re so used to the old way that you end up making a wrong turn. You know which way you’re supposed to go, but it’s early in the morning and your mind is on other things. You end up reverting to the old way. The same thing happens in your piano playing! Just because you can play a correction ten times in a row, as an abstraction by itself in your practice with nobody there, doesn’t mean it is 100% solidified. The way you played it hundreds of times before, or that route you drove 100 times before, is still back there in your brain. It’s there, and it can come out at any time.
Correcting mistakes involves more than just correcting the mistakes.
You have to learn to be aware of the correction at the time it comes. During a musical performance in particular, when there are many distractions and perhaps a little extra nervous energy, you might revert back to something that you can’t even believe you would do. So what’s the answer to this? Of course, practicing incessantly on the correction until it’s ironed out is crucial. But there is more to it than that. You need to be aware when you get to the correction, just like being aware when you’re driving so you don’t make a wrong turn. Make a mental note so you’re aware of it when you get there. By doing this, you are present at that moment to incorporate the correction. You already know you can do it. You just need to keep the presence of mind to execute it when it comes.
I hope this is helpful for you! Let me know how you feel about this in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
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6 thoughts on “Why Corrections Are So Hard on the Piano”
Thank you. That’s helpful!
I am convinced that the fingers have a better memory than the brain! I can go back to piano study books I practiced when I was a child, very easy for me now, and sure enough, I will make the same mistakes I did decades ago! Mother used to mark with a pencil where the mistake occurred, so that I would pay more attention as I approached those notes, and not repeat the mistake.
I play non-classical, and there’s a closely related problem in changing to a different arrangement. It’s not that there are right and wrong notes, both are reasonable choices. I just want to change to the new one. Nobody’s going to notice which way I go, so it’s not that big a deal if I drop into the old bridge, etc.
One thing I’ve tried is putting a song aside for a year or two to try to forget the old arrangement. It’s no silver bullet, but it seems to help.
That’s the wonderful thing about jazz and other improvised forms. You can change your arrangement and try new things. I guess sometimes it can be a challenge to avoid playing the same things again and again!
Very good advice Robert. Another tip could be to never allow the mistake to become a habit, by correcting and practicing correctly right from the first time you notice it.
That’s exactly right! That’s why I teach a method of learning music at the piano by taking tiny phrases at a time, hands separately, starting with the right hand, studying all the details until memorized, double-checking the work. Then the same is done with the left hand. Finally, hands together, checking and re-checking until the music is solidified. After working on the next small section the same way, phrases are connected, always re-checking the work as you go. This is done all the way until the entire piece is memorized. From there, reinforcing the memory with the score assures no mistakes creep into the learning process which avoids the difficult task of correcting mistakes on the piano!