How to stop playing wrong notes on piano when the notes are already learned
Some passages stay unreliable for weeks. The notes are learned, and still it misses. You have read the notes and the fingering, you know how it should sound, and somewhere in the passage a finger goes wrong again.
When you have learned the notes of a passage and it still misses, check the divisions first. Give each division its own shape of the hand, arched from the base joints, with the fingers concentrated. Then prepare the fingers in that shape at the start of each division.
Before you repeat it again, look at how the passage is divided. The arm movements help the fingers, and divisions help to organise a passage. In this post I stay with the divisions, and with what they ask from the hand and the fingers.
Why repeating it until it goes right programs the wrong notes
The usual answer is to play it again and again, until one time it goes right. Repeating it until it goes right — trial and error, I call that. Then you program the mistake with it.
Every time it misses, the fingers practise the wrong notes as well. A wrong note every third or fourth time is also something they learn. It can take weeks or even months before you finally have those notes somehow in the fingers. I think that is a waste of many hours, days and weeks.
I show another way of working, with Für Elise, in my lesson on learning a piece without mistakes from the first note. The method there is tolerating yourself no mistakes: you play a small part until it goes without mistakes, before you go further. That lesson is about a whole piece; here it is one passage and what the hand needs there.
Why a whole string of notes misses, and what a division is
Why does it keep missing, when you know every note? Often the passage is played as one whole string of notes, with nothing that organises it. Then the fingers look for each note on its own, and somewhere one of them misses. It can go right three times, and the fourth time a finger goes to the wrong key.
If you put too many notes in one whole string, it is very difficult to get them accurate. So it's good to divide passages into smaller divisions and to work in them. That is what I mean when I say that divisions help to organise a passage.
A division is a group of notes that feel pianistically belonging together. Sometimes two or three notes, sometimes an octave. Pianistically means: under the hand, these notes feel like one group. Often a passage can be divided in multiple of these groups, and they don't all have the same size.
How big a division is depends on the passage. In my course there are passages worked in groups of five notes, others in groups of three or four.
You play and find good divisions, so the passage starts to make sense. In my Für Elise lesson, when the left hand enters with A minor, the right hand takes that A minor over, and its notes lie together under the hand. In your own passage, play it slowly and feel where one group ends and the next begins.
Inside each division: the hand arched from the base joints, the fingers concentrated and prepared
So each division gets its own shape of the hand. When the next division has other notes, the hand takes a shape for those notes. In every division the hand is arched from the base joints, and the fingers are concentrated.
Where that arch comes from, and what holds the hand up, I explain in my post on the free, arched hand. Here it is about what that form does for the right notes. You keep that form through the whole division.
Concentrated fingers keep their form. They don't collapse, and they don't grip. Some fingers are rounder, others flatter, and which ones depends on the notes of that one division. In the next division it can be other fingers again.
Fingers are prepared in shape at the start of each new division. In that form, the notes of one division are already in the fingers before you play them. The fingers don't have to look for each note on its own anymore, and very often that searching is where the wrong notes came from.
Between two divisions there is a moment to prepare the next one. More happens in that moment than I describe in this post, but for the right notes this is the part to start with: the fingers take their shape for the next division before it begins.
Try this: wait and prepare each division until it goes without mistakes
Take the passage that keeps missing. Before you play, read the notes and the fingering once more, very clearly, so you know what the fingers should do. Then go through these steps, in this order.
- Play it and hold at the part where it misses.
- Find the divisions there: notes that belong together under the hand.
- Before each division, prepare the fingers in shape: fingers concentrated.
- Play one division, then wait and prepare the next.
- Use the same fingering every time.
- When it goes without mistakes, play without waiting.
In the first step, look for the part of the passage where it goes wrong, a group of notes. That is where you find the divisions. When that part goes well and you connect it with what comes after, you don't have to start from the beginning again. Start a little before, where the two parts overlap.
In my Für Elise lesson it sounds like this: "Wait and prepare. Wait and prepare." You play one division, you stop, and in that stop you prepare the fingers in shape for the next one. Even with the waiting, every note stays on its right beat in your mind, so count from the very start.
The same fingering matters. I see the fingers like a class with ten children. They only can do what they need to do when you instruct them consistently. If you tell them this today and something a little bit different tomorrow, they get confused. So give them the exact same information again and again, until the notes are programmed.
With all that waiting, it may not feel like progress in the beginning. You do this until you start to feel comfortable. But now the right notes are the ones that get programmed, and eventually you learn the passage in much less time than with trial and error.
The waiting is for practising. When the passage goes without mistakes, you play without waiting, maybe a little bit slower at first. Then gradually you go with the tempo to where you want it. The fingers are still prepared in shape at the start of each new division, only now you don't hear the stop anymore.
In short
Whether the right notes come depends on good divisions, the form of your hand, and fingers prepared in shape before each division starts. Practise each division with the same fingering, and wait and prepare between them. When it goes without mistakes, play without waiting.
Where this is built
A passage learned by trial and error depends on luck, on the day. Worked in divisions, with the fingers prepared in shape, it gets reliable. In the Academy the umbrella hand prepares the fingers from the first exercise, and passages are worked in divisions. Let's find the divisions in your passage together.
