CRITERIOS APLICABLES A LA CESIÓN DE ÁREAS

Slow play can waste a lot of time; if you play twice as fast, you practice twice as often, so why

practice something you don't need at full speed? To make slow play pay off, combine many objectives into each slow practice:

(1) Slow play is beneficial to good technique, especially for practicing relaxation and correct keystroke [(11) Basic Key Stroke; Legato, Staccato].

(2) It reinforces memory because there is time for the playing signals to travel from the fingers to the brain and back several times before succeeding notes are played. Always practicing at fast speed will only reinforce hand memory and will not help true memory: slow play is an insurance against blackouts.

(3) Practice thinking ahead of the music you are playing, which provides more control over the performance and can even enable you to anticipate impending flubs. Always think at least one bar ahead of the music and practice feeling the keys before playing, to guarantee 100% accuracy.

(4) It is one of the best ways to erase bad habits that were picked up during fast practice [(27) Fast Play Degradation, Eliminating Bad Habits].

(5) Practice the ability to detach yourself from the music, and mentally wander around and multi- task, such as looking around or talking to someone.

(6) Always end a practice session with slow play. Repeat: the last run-through of any practice session should be slow, especially when practicing for speed, memory, or performance preparation [(55) Performance Preparation, Videotaping]. Though one of the simplest, this is one of the most important rules of piano practice.

Suppose you are practicing a Parallel Set, speeding it up, having repeated it 20 times, and want to switch hands. Play it once or twice at slow speed before switching. If you just played one of your favorite pieces at full speed and you want to preserve it in perfect condition, play the entire piece slowly before going on to something else. Always play the recital pieces slowly after practicing them, especially during the week before the recital. After a recital, if you need to play the same pieces again soon, play them slowly at least once as soon as possible. Apply this rule all the time, not only before recitals, because its cumulative benefits over years are enormous.

Why this method is so unbelievably effective is not completely understood; some reasons are: (1) it is free of bad habits (but you must make sure to use the same motions as required at faster speed),

(2) this improves true memory, and reduces hand memory, (3) it erases the bad habits developed during fast practice,

(4) the last run-through during practice has an inordinately strong effect on technique compared to preceding run throughs possibly because each run-through partially erases preceding run-throughs. This means that you should pay special attention to the last run-through, and

(5) this effect is cumulative so that it can build up to enormous benefits after extended periods (years).

(23) Post Practice Improvement, Sleep, Fast/Slow Muscles

Technique is acquired in two major steps. The first is the application of new hand motions, parallel sets, relaxation, memory, etc., that can immediately improve technique during a practice session. The second is called Post Practice Improvement (PPI) that results from physiological (mostly nerve & muscle) changes that occur after you stop practicing, a process that takes weeks or months. During practice, monitor your progress and quit as soon as a point of diminishing returns is reached, which usually starts after about 10 minutes. Like magic, your technique will keep improving by PPI for at least several days after a good practice. The next day, you should be able to play better even if you made little progress during practice the previous day. PPI is the basis for claims by many respected teachers that, if done correctly, you do not need more than two hours of practice a day.

It is more profitable to practice several things at one sitting and let them all improve simultaneously by PPI (while you are not practicing!), than working too hard on one thing. Over-practicing can hurt technique if it leads to stress, bad habits or injury and beyond a certain number of repetitions, you enter a state of diminishing returns. A minimum number of repetitions is required, about a hundred repetitions, for PPI to take effect. But because we are talking about a few bars played at speed, practicing dozens or hundreds of times should take only a few minutes. Don't fret if you practice hard but don't see much improvement during a single practice session. This might be normal for that particular passage and you just have to wait for PPI; the worst thing you can do may be to keep practicing. If you don't make any progress after a few days (no PPI), it is time to stop and think of new things to do, such as new hand motions or practice methods — don't keep practicing, because if you don't make progress, you are doing something wrong — that is the basic principle of this book.

There are many types of PPI depending on what is holding you back. These types differ in the length of time over which PPI is effective, which varies from one day to many months. The shortest times may be associated with conditioning, such as the use of motions or muscles you had not used before. Intermediate times of several weeks may be associated with new nerve connections, such as HT play. Longer times may be associated with actual growth of brain/nerve/muscle cells, and conversion of slow to fast muscle cell types.

The methods of this book are ideal for PPI because they emphasize practicing only those segments that you cannot play. If you play HT slowly and ramp up the speed for a long section, PPI is insufficiently conditioned because you don't have enough time to make the necessary number of repetitions. In addition, the PPI process becomes confused because you mix a large number of easy segments with the difficult ones. If you practice too many skills for PPI together, they tend to cancel each other. Therefore, practice one skill for a sufficient amount of time, play it slowly once, then move on to the net skill.

PPI is nothing new; let's look at three well-known examples: the body builder, marathoner, and golfer. These examples will teach you how to optimize PPI for piano. While lifting weights, the body builder's muscles don't grow; he will in fact lose weight. But during the following weeks, the body will react to the stimulus and add muscle. All the muscle growth occurs after the exercise. Thus the body builder (and the pianist) must concentrate on whether the exercise produces the appropriate conditioning for PPI. Another example is the marathon runner. If you had never run a mile in your life, and tried it for the first time, you might be able to jog for a quarter mile before you need to slow down for a rest. After some rest, if you tried to run again, you will still tire out in a quarter mile or less. Thus the first run resulted in no discernible improvement. However, the next day, you may be able to run a third of a mile before tiring -- you have just experienced PPI. This is how marathoners condition themselves to be able to eventually run 26 miles. For pianists too, PPI is cumulative and, in the long run, can make the difference between success and failure. Golfers are familiar with the phenomenon in which they can hit the ball well one day, but terribly the next because they picked up a bad habit. Thus hitting the driver (the most difficult club) too many times tends to ruin your swing, whereas practicing with the #5 wood (one of the easiest clubs) can restore it; therefore it is important to practice with a easier club before quitting practice. The analogy in piano is that playing fast, full tilt, tends to ruin the PPI whereas practicing simpler material (short sections HS slowly) tends to improve it see [(27) Fast Play Degradation, Eliminating Bad Habits]. This is why the principles of this book apply to many disciplines, not only piano.

PPI occurs mainly during sleep. A mechanic can not service a car while it is traveling on the highway; likewise, most of the growth and maintenance of the body cannot occur during the waking hours. Sleep is not only for resting, but also for growth and rebuilding the body; this is one reason why sleep is necessary. Babies need so much sleep because they are growing rapidly. This sleep must be the normal, over- night type with all of its major components, especially REM sleep. You may not get good PPI if you did not sleep well that night. PPI is triggered by cell death and stress; hard practice causes stress and even cell death, and the body over-compensates for this. You might think that 100 repetitions can't possibly kill cells, but millions cells are replaced every day, and any extra work will increase this replacement rate. "Cell death" is an over-simplification because chemical, physical (stress), etc., factors also induce cell growth (The Human Cells, in Scientific American, October, 2014, P. 76.).

Muscle bundles consist mainly of either fast or slow muscles. The slow muscles provide strength and endurance. The fast muscles are for control and speed. Depending on how you practice, one set grows at the expense of the other. Obviously, when practicing for technique, we want to grow the fast muscles. Therefore, avoid isometric or strength type exercises that grow the slow muscles. Practice quick movements,

and as soon as the work is done, rapidly relax those muscles. This is why any pianist can outrun a sumo wrestler on the keyboard, although the wrestler has a lot more muscle. These muscle growths occur mainly during sleep. Practicing Hanon type exercises for hours, "to strengthen the fingers" might actually grow more slow muscles.

Another major process that occurs during sleep is the removal of bad habits during the nightly flush of toxins, etc., out of the brain (Kang, etc., Brain Flush,). How does the body know what is a bad habit? It doesn't, of course. Whenever you practice, you gain technique as well as bad habits. Most bad habits are random motions and small compared to the desired technical motions, that are repeated many times. One of the things that happens during sleep is the "flushing out" from the brain of "junk"- small, random excitations that are generally not useful. In this way, the brain rejuvenates itself, avoids expending resources on useless items, and concentrates on the important ones; i.e., it throws out most of the bad habits and builds useful technique.

What does "flushing bad habits out of the brain" mean in neurological terms? During waking hours, numerous chemicals accumulate or are depleted in specific locations in the brain, such as in the spaces between synapses. This is what happens during practice to condition the cells for PPI. During sleep, the accumulated chemicals are flushed out and the depleted ones are replenished as part of the brain's

rejuvenation process. Since stimuli (for technique, etc.) are stored as chemical changes at specific locations in the brain, this flushing process removes most of the weak stimuli, leaving only the strong ones that are too large to flush out. Thus the weak bad habits are literally flushed out of the brain or muscle cell.

There is one type of bad habit that is not small and random - speed walls. If you play faster than what your skill level allows, you will repeat the same stressed motions so frequently that the body will acquire that bad habit. One way to get rid of speed walls is to stop practicing that piece and practice something else. Practicing new material weakens old material until it becomes small enough for the brain to flush it out. Since the speed wall is not reinforced, is becomes smaller every night, and is eventually flushed out. Of course, the methods of this book for avoiding speed walls are better than not practicing, which may take a long time.

Memory also undergoes PPI for long term memory, during sleep. As with technique, it is important to play slowly at least once before quitting, and then get a good night's sleep. Memory PPI explains why cramming into the late night before an exam is counter productive. This robs you of the time to get a good night's sleep, the cramming only confuses the brain and erases the lessons learned previously, and whatever is learned is only in short term memory and, without good sleep, is lost by exam time. You will get much better test scores if you only review the main lessons from the text book (which is usually the least confusing source of information and from where the test questions will be taken) and then get a good night's sleep. You sleep better, and the body functions better when happy, so watching a movie or enjoying other fun activities before going to bed will also improve the test score.