Play like a pro

You’re not going to hit the target without expertise. (Library of Congress)

Many experienced piano students come to me struggling with a technical problem I like to call The Claw.

Instead of dropping the weight of their arm into the key with a light bounce, they press into the bottom of the key forcefully, with a tensed finger and wrist.

It’s supposed to be like tapping an iPad; instead, it’s like trying to open a pickle jar. The result is a brittle, labored sound. Harsh to the ears and hard on the body, The Claw makes it impossible to flow gracefully from note to note. As long as The Claw is present, the player will never play the piano well.

It’s easy to see how a person ends up with The Claw. When it shows up at the student’s first lesson, the teacher figures that it can be addressed later, but there is always more music to learn and something else to focus on. Therefore, two or three or twenty years later, this same technical issue persists, even as the student is attempting to play a Mozart or Beethoven sonata.

Trying to play through The Claw is like trying to dance in steel-toed boots and a hazmat suit. When every move requires a heavy motion equal to the one before and the one after, you can’t achieve the grace and ease necessary to create beauty.

An easy sequence of three slow tones, played by someone with good technique, will immediately sound refined and professional. The same three tones played with The Claw will sound awkward and amateurish.

That’s because professionals don’t just play harder things. They play better. Good technique is not a pesky collection of additional movements that slow down the learning process — it’s the exact opposite. Proper technique is the most efficient and sustainable way to play. Correct form makes learning much faster in the long run, preventing stress and strain as you go.

As things get more complex, the person with good technique can quickly learn new material, and it sounds good immediately. The person with The Claw is not only risking injury in attempting to play pieces that are designed for relaxed hands, it will take longer to learn them and they won’t sound good. It’s a dead end.

Obviously, the relationship between technique and outcome is present in virtually every discipline. And like the hacky piano teachers out there, those who are not professionals (or those who teach people who aren’t professionals) might be tempted to forgo the techniques that professionals use, believing that they aren’t necessary — or that they aren’t needed yet. But for those of us who aren’t going to put several hours a day into mastering a craft, isn’t it all the more important that we learn as efficiently as possible, right from the start?

If you learn using the techniques that pros use, you’ll get immeasurably better outcomes. Even if you never approach a professional level of difficulty, you won’t be thinking like a beginner, and you won’t come off that way. You’ll have polish. You can accomplish in fifteen minutes what the unguided amateur can’t reach in four hours of flailing around.

Whatever you’re interested in learning, there is expert advice out there. There is someone who can give you more than just, “Great, keep practicing.” Armed with the tactics and techniques of the professional, you’ll reach your goals faster and with more confidence, even if — especially if — you are doing it just for fun.