Why Great Piano Technique Starts with Musicality
A Logical Beginning 👨🏻🔬
For those that have attempted to learn the piano, it becomes immediately obvious that technique is an issue that needs to be overcome. For many, 4th and 5th fingers don’t want to cooperate, you might have a hard time jumping around and finding the notes on the piano and playing scales evenly is a challenge that takes some time to master. Confronted with an inability to actually physically play the piano, we naturally spend most of our time trying to solve these issues through scales, exercises and repeatedly playing sections of pieces that contain some technical difficulties - and rightly so!
However, unlike technique, musicality is a somewhat hidden issue that doesn’t necessarily hinder your ability to actually play the notes in a piece of music. So it is often an overlooked issue and never really worked on in quite the same way.
Everyone that learns the piano can relate to the feeling of your hands not doing what you want them to, but not many learning musicians experience the same discomfort from lacking musicality in their playing. In fact, most learning musicians aren’t even aware that they are playing without consideration for musicality until it’s pointed out to them. Yet, musicality is a far more important issue to master! Here’s why…
2. Musicality vs Technique 🎼
Firstly, to avoid any confusion…let me define what I mean by technique and musicality.
Technique is your ability to physically play an instrument and your ability to translate ideas onto the instrument. It’s all about training your muscle memory and motor skills. Whereas, musicality is the consideration of meaning and how you translate meaning into the notes that you are playing.
Both of these avenues of learning are fundamental to learning and understanding music as a whole. However, which is more important and should be prioritised?
Ultimately, music is an emotional experience, both for the player and the listener. The aim of music is to convey ideas and meaning. While improving technique is important for being able to convey SOME of these ideas, musicality is essential for conveying ALL ideas!
Imagine for a moment you had no technical issues and you had perfect sight reading, everything you wanted to play on the piano, you could play. What would the learning process now look like? The truth is, many people would answer this with something like “I wouldn’t need to learn it, because I would already be able to play it”.
For a professional musician, this is not so far from a reality, yet they still spend a lot of time practicing and learning pieces. So what are they learning if they can already play the notes? - They are learning why the notes exist in the first place and they are trying to learn how to tell that story in the most effective way.
Sitting down at the piano and fixing a technical problem can feel like an easy win. You know that there is a problem with your playing and you can practice it to make it better. This is in fact how most people practice…yet this is far from how advanced players practice.
3. The Chicken and the Egg 🥚
So, how do you improve and focus on your musicality?
Well…the best way to practice is to solve the musicality issue first…and then let the technique be guided, informed and layered on top of that. When working on any piece of music, the first consideration should be the meaning and intent behind the music. Then the technique needed to convey that meaning can be worked on with the musicality at the forefront of your mind.
If the technique is drilled in without any consideration for how to play that particular section of the music, it can be very hard to change the way that you play it later. This is because you will have reinforced the music into your fingers in one particular way. For example, if there is a difficult scale to play within the music, your first consideration should be unencumbered by the technical difficulty. You don’t want the piece to be limited by your current ability and so considering the musicality first allows you to not compromise on how you want the piece to sound.
What does the scale mean?
Why is it ascending/descending?
What is the purpose of including it in the piece of music?
How does it drive the narrative forward?
How does it relate to the music around it?
The answer to these questions might persuade you that you need to crescendo slightly through the scale, you may feel that it needs to slow down a little towards the end of the scale etc.
From here you can practice the technical challenges of the scale while reinforcing the musicality in your playing. Practicing this way means that the intention of the music comes first. By adding this extra thought process, contrary to what you may believe, it often actually makes the music easier to learn because our hands move in a more natural and relaxed way to cater to the sound that we want. It also helps us remember the music, because we are focused on the narrative behind what we are playing. While it my feel unintuitive to think about how you should play something before you are actually able to play it, doing so will transform your playing and help you connect to the music on a much deeper level.
Matthew Cawood
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