Piano Technique: Mental Ease

Lesson Goal: To understand that the solution to a technical problem is always found in the direction of mental ease, not mental exertion and strain…

Table of Contents

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Prerequisites

Basic music reading… LOVE of music… and the discipline to study and practice.

back to… Table of Contents

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Did You Know?

That highly skilled musicians don’t have some superhuman capacity to think about enormous strings of unrelated sounds or dots on a page? (Nobody’s that smart. NOBODY.)

That the key to success is to find the meaningful simplicity in apparently meaningless complexity.

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The Magic Compass

*** Top Secret ***
The solution to a technical problem is always found in the direction of mental ease.
*** Top Secret ***

This is so vital to successful and enjoyable music making that it’s worth repeating…

The solution to a technical problem is always found in the direction of mental ease!!! (and physical ease, too!)

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An Illustration of Meaningless Complexity

Let’s pretend our homework is to perform the following–either by reading or from memory…

If you’re a human being, it won’t be long before you feel totally overwhelmed by this task. But rest assured–it’s not because you’re stupid. 99.99% of other humans would find this task to be absolutely exhausting and frustrating, too.

Yet eager, trusting students are taught to read, memorize, and play music like this all the time. The predictable result is that most students eventually quit–mistakenly concluding that they just don’t have what it takes.

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An Illustration of Meaningful Simplicity

Now consider another set of visuals…

And realize how little effort is required to “memorize” and perform this set of doodles! (Frank bets a nickel that you can do it easily and have fun doing so in real time in just a few seconds.)

THIS is what it should sound, feel, and look like when you read, think about, and perform music.

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The Takeaways

1. Musical piano technique and confident performance are enabled by mental ease.
2. When things feel easy or at least easier—you are going in the right direction!
3. When things feel hard or harder—you are going in the wrong direction!
4. Mental ease is enabled by using your brain in a way that your brain likes to be used.
5. Your brain enjoys PATTERNS. It easily and naturally understands and remembers them.
6. The path to mental ease is paved by studying and practicing the fundamental building blocks–scales, chords, chord progressions, form, meter, etc.–like a musician–by ear, intellect, eye, and muscle.
7. Such musical literacy will transform what you hear and read from musical gibberish into meaningful musical patterns that enable you to play like an artist. Guaranteed.

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