Pianists and the self improvement trap
I once knew a talented professional pianist who, in a quest to become a better player, adopted a rigid method of learning that convinced her everything she’d ever done at the piano was wrong and that she had to start over and retrain herself to play in what the method stated was the right way. I never heard her perform again. The quest to better her playing became her goal rather than the music itself, and in the process her music disappeared.
Self-improvement. It’s a booming industry for a good reason. Every one of us has a niggling feeling that if we simply adopted the correct method, or did the right things, we could eradicate all the traits and bad habits we dislike in ourselves. And the self-improvement movement is happy to oblige. There’s always another new idea, another plan, another sure-fire formula that is guaranteed to work if we follow just a few simple rules…
The music industry is rife with this sort of thinking. And because pianists are always on a quest to be better players, we’re easy prey for all the latest plans/methods/teachings/formulas that will fix our playing problems forever. After all, what is the job description of a pianist? Sitting at the piano, facing our musical inadequacies, and working to fix them. What’s the working definition of a piano lesson? Receiving advice and tips on how to become better pianists. Is it any wonder that pianists so frequently fall prey to the self-improvement trap?
I’m not immune to the lures of self-improvement. I, like most lifelong pianists, have invested thousands of dollars into my music training and have worked to integrate the teachings I was given into my playing. I’ve read all the books on this method or that one. What I’ve learned is that there’s a fine line between learning from another’s expertise and falling prey to an obsession with a system of learning rather than the results themselves.
What all these plans offer is the fantasy that adherence to the correct formula will make us perfect players. This is a fallacy. Each of us must create music using the hands, bodies, minds, hearts, and experiences we’ve been given. And because we’re humans with all the frailties that come with humanity, perfection is a mirage that we’ll never grasp. Besides, even if we could attain that monolith of musical perfection, sometimes our imperfections and failures are what’s interesting. This is why we prefer the living, breathing, sometimes-with-mistakes playing of real people to machine-generated performances.
How do we know what’s good advice and what’s a self-improvement formula that will hinder us? I believe the answer is found in where our focus lies. Are we obsessed with getting the form and formula just right or are we using good ideas to create beautiful music? The proof is in the playing.
Does it feel good in my hands?
Does it give me more freedom when I play?
Does it unlock secrets in the music?
Does it allow me to be a more generous, more expressive player?
If we answer yes to these questions, then it’s healthy, good advice. If, instead, the focus of the advice we’ve adopted is more obsessed with a formula than the music itself, it might be best to reexamine why we’re pursuing it.
As players, we are gifted with the opportunity to create music right now, with our own two hands. When we push beauty, accomplishment, and self-congratulation off into an imagined future where, after all our hard work, we’ll finally arrive at some mythical musical place, we miss the point of playing the piano. Creating music is a time-based art form. It happens in present tense. When we choose self-improvement over music creation, we’ve lost our purpose.
And so I challenge myself (and maybe you) to examine the rules, formulas, self-improvement, playing-improvement templates I’ve adopted. Take what’s useful, but never forget that in the end, all of this has to serve the music, not perfect myself.
Photo by James Lee, courtesy of UpSplash