Tip Five: Reverse Goal Settling

This is the fifth installment in our series of articles on hidden or obscure strategies for improving musicianship.

You may have heard this one before. It's almost a cliche. All the personal improvement gurus talk about this one. Earl Nightengale espouses it. So does Brian Tracy, Tony Robbins. All of them. It's a powerful tool, if you use it right. Does it work for learning music? Yes. But I've got a little twist for it.

I'm talking about goal setting. All those human achievement gurus are always harping on goal setting. You've probably heard it all before. Set a specific goal: "I will double my income in 12 months." That's a perfect example. You have a specific goal with a number attached to it and an allotted time period in which to get it done.

Then you must write the goal down. That's what they tell you. And read it on a regular basis. Every day. Then you do the visualization. That's all a part of it. You actually imagine the aroma of the leather seats in your brand new luxury autombile that you will own once you have doubled your income in 12 months thanks to your careful goal setting.

Aaaahhhh. Smells beautiful doesn't it?

So does all this goal setting, visualization, affirmation stuff really work? I think it does. Or at least I think it can.

Does it work for learning an instrument? That's another story.

First, it's a little more difficult to quantify a goal as far as musicianship goes. "I wanna be a lot better," is kind of vague. So is "I wanna be able to improvise." Or, "I wanna play like Oscar Peterson."

Those are tough goals to attain, even if you write them down.

What makes it harder is that your progress comes so gradually, and it's very hard to measure progress in music. I suppose you could use a metronome and measure success in terms of how fast you can play "Donna Lee" or "Tico Tico."

But there's a lot more to music than playing things fast. We all know that.

So how does one set goals, get them on paper, and measure progress?

By doing everything backwards.

To evaluate your progress, instead of writing down how you want things to be in a year, instead, chronicle how things are now. And then store it in the archives.

For example, pick out three tunes you're working on right now, any scales or exercises you're working on, and perhaps a representatve selection of the chords you now use. Assemble all these things at your piano. Now comes the scary part. It's scary, but it really works, so listen up.

Get a recording device of some sort, click the "record" button, and spend the next several minutes playing those songs, scales, exercises, and chords into the microphone. Try to relax and goof around a little too while the tape is rolling. (I know they don't use "tape" anymore, but try to humor me here.)

Just get a good representation of how you play now, warts and all. Then file the recording away for at least six months. Make it six months to a year. Then after that time period has elapsed, pull out the old recording device again and repeat the process. Three new songs, whatever scales and exercise you're working on, chords, goofing off. Record it and lock it up.

But. Don't forget to play the recording you made the year before. Peer into the past to listen to how you sounded back then. You won't remember otherwise. If you play a little every day, you'll be so much better in a year. But you'll never know it until you actually play your archived recording of yourself.

Now you'll see, hear, and experience the goal. "I wanna be a better piano player in a year." You'll actually see those results, once you review your original recordings. Repeat the process once or twice a year to get the best results.

Like I said, it's a little scary to record yourself at first, but you can get used to it. All serious professionals do it.

Of course, have goals. We can't peer into the future to see what we are to become. But we can peer into the past to see from whence we did come. And that often can provide you with the impetus, if not the downright inspiration, to keep on task.

Try to learn a new song every week. New scales. New exercises. Explore books. Take a private lesson every once in awhile. Enroll in a music camp. Play in a band. Do any or all these things, and put in 20 to 60 minutes at your piano every day.

And have fun listening to those old recordings to see how bad you really were compared to how good you are now.

P.S. To get a glimpse of my 18 month master plan for learning pop piano, click on the link and download the Study Guide (Success Manual) that comes with the Integrated Home Study course. It may inspire you to set up a few goals of your own.

Tip Four: It's About Time

This is the fourth installment in our series of articles on hidden or obscure strategies for improving musicianship.

Obviously, spending time playing your instrument is extremely important in developing your talent. However, these articles explore some of the subtler more psychological angles to gain musical advantage. Sometimes you have to trick your mind or body into acquiring the behaviors you need in order to reach the musical goals you want.

So here is Tip Four. It's all about time.

You need to find the Golden Time. You need to carve out that little segment for your piano playing each day, and make it a sacred priority.

Here's the trap. You decide to pick up a new hobby, learning piano or whatever. So making time for this new activity is something new to add to your already busy schedule. You don't have a busy schedule? Yes you do. Everybody has one.

So now you've got to squeeze an extra 45 minutes into your daily routine. So what do you do? You tell yourself, OK after the day is over, after the chores are done, the dishes are washed, the kids are in bed, hey that's going to be my ME time. And I'm going to spend my ME time practicing the piano.

Wrong.

Doesn't work. When day is done, your body is programmed to go into shut-down mode. Your brain is starting to disengage. Resistance is futile. That's not the time, not if you have a busy day schedule for tomorrow.

You need to find a special, specific time to do the ME time. And then make it your priority. So when is that going to be? That's the challenge isn't it? The answer will vary, depending in part on how dedicated you are.

We've heard about would-be authors who decide to write a book, so they set their alarm clock for 4 am instead of 6. And they spend those two hours every morning writing their manuscript. The rest of the day is as usual. Work, family, social, etc. But they carve out their writing niche. And two years later their novel is done.

You want to play piano on cruise ships in two years? That's one way to do it. Set that alarm clock. (How counter intuitive for a musician)!

I look back on the early days of my piano studies and I see how powerful this time management stuff can be.

I've told the story repeatedly about how I got hooked on playing the piano when I was 23. And I started taking lessons then. The part of the story that you may not know is that at the time I started these piano lessons, I didn't even own a piano.

I was working full time as a clerk in a camera store in East Oakland and lived in a little one room hovel that was attached to a garage. We're talking tiny. And I had no piano to play. But I was paying for weekly lessons, and I was determined to succeed.

So for the first six months, every day, six days a week, I drove to my parents' house just to do my 45 minutes of practicing. It was a perfect situation. I got to use a piano, they got some attention from me, I got dinner every night and a chance to do my laundry once a week. And the money I saved on meals and laundry helped pay for my piano lessons. And I was saving up to buy a piano of my own some day.

The point is I had to make a concerted effort EVERY DAY to drive the five miles to the parents' house just to make my piano commitment. After a few months I knew my passion was real, and I saved up $85 and bought my first piano at a yard sale. But the pattern was established, and that 45 minutes a day became sacred to me.

Can you find your time? Even if it's just 15 minutes a day, that's enough to get yourself into a pattern, which then becomes a habit, which then becomes a routine, which then becomes your desired behavior. Playing piano.

Two True Stories

Here's a couple of very short true life stories.

Short Story One

I retired from "show biz" a long time ago. But I still like to play music, of course, and I like to play with other people, which sometimes results in playing out in public.

Last night my little band had one of our gigs at a local restaurant. This is a real specialty band. We play exclusively Brazilian tunes that were written like between 1920 and 1960. It's not samba, it's not bossa nova. It's a precursor to those styles. The style is called choro. Pretty obscure stuff.

The music is all written out, kind of like classical music, except with chords too. I prefer to memorize the music. I have more fun if I don't have to worry about following along in sheet music.

But the chord changes are really hard to learn. There are so many of them. But there is a tool I depend on for memorizing these songs. It makes things easy.

Short Story Two

Same location, the local restaurant, same time, same characters. Pam, my spouse, plays in this band too. Clarinet. She's good. In between our regular choro sets, we had a special guest join us o the band stand, Pam's father. He's going to be 92 on Monday, and he still plays guitar every day. We got Buck to join us for a few songs. He came up, 92 years old, plugged in his electric guitar, and wailed away.

Pam and I accompanied him, and one of the songs he chose to do was a song I had heard of, but had never played before. And I had no music. Yet I was able to play the chords as if I had the music right in front of me. There was a tool I used that enabled me to do that. Same tool.

What was the tool? It was the Circle of Fifths. The trick is in knowing how to use it. Anyway I couldn't wait to write out these stories, and send them to you.

Click below to find out more about this tool, and to order my special presentation for less than ten bucks, no strings attached.

http://pianofun.com/circle/promo_OF.html

Comments on Your Comments

All right, we're getting blog comments now. The way it should be. And since recent comments from the community have had a common thread, let me see if I can address them all in this one entry. Most of what I'm saying here pertains to comments posted on the previoius blog entry: Tip Three-What's Important

It's true a large part of mastering pop piano is getting over the hurdle of learning chords. With 12,000 chords (or more) to deal with, which ones are essential, and which ones can wait?

I already addressed part of that question in my previous comment. Learn the 12 majors, 12 minors, and 12 sevenths. That prepares you to play any song as long as you have the Chord Simplification Flow Chart that is in the back of the book you get when you take my Instant Piano three hour workshop.

Then I suggested learning the 12 basic chords that lend themselves best to the key of C. You can find those in my previous post as well as in my book How to Play Piano by Ear.

Here's another strategy. Learn new chords as you learn new songs. Make a list of songs you want to have in your repertoire. Then make a pact with yourself to learn one new song a week.

Go through each song and make a list of the chords you don't know from that song. Then do the research and learn the chords.

Play the chords with the left hand in the order they appear in the song. Chords may be difficult by themselves. But learning to change from chord to chord is even more demanding. So do this exercise for 15 minutes a day, and you will probably be able to keep up with your one-song-per-week goal.

As for the question of playing everything in the key of C. That might work as a short term strategy. But don't jump to the conclusion that C is the most important key. It isn't. But it's the easiest. And that makes it easy to fall into a "key-of-C" bias. Not good.

The Master List of 12 important chords (The Top Twelve List) I listed in a previous comment only works for the key of C, by the way. But in the course I teach how to transpose that list into other keys.

As I was learning piano I played almost exclusively in the key of C for the first five years. Nothing to be proud of. But I got good. In the key of C. Then I joined a band. The guitar player liked to play everything in the keys of E and A. I was pretty lost for awhile.

Once again, if you learn one new song a week, and you don't just choose them because they are in the key of C, then you will learn to play in all the important keys pretty fast too.

Hayden, you mentioned the Study Guide being only available to those who have the 18 month course. The fact is anyone can download that from our web site for free. http://pianofun.com/catalog/detail_HSC.html. But it doesn't help too much unless you also have the course (unless you just are curious about what you learn in the course.) Go ahead and download it if you want.

Now here is the best way I know of learning the basic chords, because it helps you with not just the chords themselves, but with changing the chords, AND in recognizing the most common chord progressions in life.

It's called the Circle of Fifths. Or the Circle of Fourths. Same thing. If you've taken my "Piano by Ear" workshop you have that chapter in the book. And more importantly you have the CD called "Circle of Fourths Practice."

If you have that, and you have gone through it, I'd love to hear your comments about it here on this blog.

If you have it, but haven't gotten around to it yet, maybe now is the time.

If you don't have it........ Hummm. Let me think about that for awhile.

Play on, and thanks for the interaction. Tip Four is coming up soon.

Tip Three: What's Important?

Time for Tip Number Three in our series of 22 not-so-obvious, outside-the-box ways to improve ones musicianship other than practicing ones butt off. One of the biggest drawbacks to this crazy Information Age in which we currently live is that there is simply too much damn information. The problem is not that we have a hard time finding information. It's that we have a terrible time trying to manage it.

The key to information management is to know what information is important and what isn't. It's to prioritize. And this is very true when it comes to learning the piano or any other instrument. There is so much one can do. Where do you start? Do you learn scales? If so, which ones? Do you try technic exercises? What songs should you learn? What helps, and what is just a waste of time?

You can easily obtain a catalog of over 12,000 chords. But you can't learn them all at once. Which ones do you learn first? Which are the most important?

But with so much information now at our disposal how do you sort the wheat from the chaff?

Making this decision is one of the primary roles of the piano teacher. A teacher (or anyone who has already traveled the road that you want to travel) can be qualified to make those decisions. One could argue that music teachers might be superfluous. It's true that many great musicians are self taught.

But a teacher (or some authority) can be very valuable in helping you sort out the "important" pile from the "not-so-much."

Of course employing a teacher to help you sort things out, in and of itself, leads to an opinion too: the opinion of the teacher. That's why it's so important to choose a teacher very carefully, if you choose to use one.

So now the question would be, how do you find the right teacher? Here's what I think is important.

1. the teacher knows the information you want to learn

2. the teacher is able to perform the music you want to learn

3. the teacher has excellent two-way communication skills

And this last one is the kicker. Two way communication skills. Yes, the teacher must be able to transmit information to you. But he must also be able to listen to you, to find what you want to know, to discover what you already know, to know what gaps you have and how to fill them.

In other words, the teacher needs to know what it is you don't know, and then remedy that by providing the information that's important and only the information that's important. We just don't have enough years in our lives to fill in all those gaps with random, unstructured information.

My own piano education is kind of unusual, I guess. When I was 23 I found a pro piano player (age 18) with whom I studied for a year. Then he moved. Since that time I've had lessons with dozens of different players. With a few I studied for several months. But with the overwhelming majority of them I just had one lesson. Maybe two at the most.

And one super positive benefit I got from taking just one lesson from so many people is that I uncovered a few choice beliefs that they all shared. A consensus. And those beliefs constitute what I consider to be the "important" things in music.

And these beliefs form the central core of what has come to be known as my teaching system: the workshops and the coursewhere. I haven't got the time to learn everything there is to know. And I certainly don't have the time to teach everything there is to know.

Some things musically just don't matter as much as others.

And knowing which is which is half the battle.

Tip Two--Have Role Models

How do you become the musician you've always wanted to be? Of course there's the old Practice Practice Practice route. You've heard that before. But are there some hidden strategies that can make you better, besides putting all those hours in the wood shed?

Last time we talked about cultivating enthusiasm. Today the secret is...have a role model.

Sure you want to be a good piano (or something else) player. But that's a pretty vague goal. Here's a more targeted goal: Who do you want to sound like?

Pick a person, and start striving.

Hopefully you're not going to choose Bill Evans or Oscar Peterson if you're a beginner. Their stuff is really hard to approach. But there's got to be someone out there whose piano stylings resonate with you. I cannot tell you who to pick. But I can give you an example from my own life.

I was in my early twenties, fresh out of college, when I decided to learn to play piano. (No, music was not my major in college.) I happened to have a chance meeting with a guy who played bass in a band that was playing regularly, once a week, in Berkeley, California. It was a six piece western swing outfit that had a piano player. At the time I had no idea what western swing was. But I immediately fell in love with the sound the band had and found myself coming to their gigs every Thursday night at the Longbranch Saloon on San Pablo Ave.

I loved the sound of the piano player so much that I decided I wanted to learn how to play like him. Yes, I found a role model. So one evening during a break I introduced myself to the guy and asked if he gave lessons. The answer was no.

OK. So I asked him again the following week. Same response. And then I asked again and again until he finally relented. I showed up for the first lesson. He gave me a book of Hanon exercises to play. I thought he was pretty sure I wouldn't show up the following week.

But I did. And I kept coming back every week for a year, until the band finally moved to Austin, Texas to find their fame and fortune. So I had my mentor in Floyd. I was his only student for one year, and I had one year to find out everything I could from him during that time.

Over that period I acquired several role models to emulate. The first, I believe, was Jerry Lee Lewis. You could spend a lifetime learning to play like Jerry Lee perfectly, but his music was simple enough to understand and to try and mimick. Sometimes it was just three chords per song. At least that's what it was in his early rock n roll days.

I soaked up all those old rock n roll songs from a Jerry Lee Greatest Hits LP, with guidance from Floyd. Then I bought everything by him that I could lay my hands on. By then Jerry Lee was doing mostly country. OK, so now we had songs with four or five chords. But I voraciously devoured the music. I listened to the recordings morning, noon, and night.

I played along with them. I asked Floyd how to do certain stuff, and figured out certain stuff on my own. But I'm positive that just by listening to the records, some of Jerry Lee's playing style crept into my playing style.

Months later in a similar fashion I latched on to the music of Count Basie. It would be folly to imagine that I could acquire Basie's technique (chops) in my first year. But after buying tons of Basie records and soaking them up, I was starting to pick up his nuances a little bit. A few months later I got to see the Count and his orchestra in person with special guest Ella Fitzgerald. Wow. Even more incentive.

As an interesting side light, my teacher's band recorded a Count Basie song on their second album and Floyd picked up his first Grammy Award for his effort.

So on it went. I've had a lot of these role-model/mentors over the years. Some of whom really influenced my playing. Others (such as Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson) I've listened to a LOT and unfortunately never picked up anything from. (Or if I did, it's subtle. Very subtle).

But whether or not you learn directly from your CD mentors, just surrounding yourself with the music as much as possible can give you some incentive to hit the piano every day and dare to play along. And if you're playing, you're learning.

So who do you want to sound like? Whoever it is, try to soak up as much of that one artist as you can. Listen, listen, listen. Get ahold of the charts to their songs, and spend equal amounts of time learning from the paper and learning just by listening to what they play. At the end of the day, all of us use the same basic chords, chord progressions, forms, rhythms, and melodic structures. It's all learnable. It's just that learning by listening can be a lot more fun than from sheet music. Try it.

Mastering Piano without Pain: First Tip

Practice Makes Perfect. That's what they tell you. Do you believe them?

Certainly time spent at the piano is essential for growing your skills. There is no doubt about it. But there's more to learning music than just practice. And how are you going to remember to practice? And what are you going to practice? And what about the quality of your practice?

I believe there are a lot of key factors that help insure the time we spend at the piano is profitable, and that we learn the most in the shortest amount of time. I jotted 22 of these factors down last week, and I want to cover them for you one at a time.

These are the hidden strategies. The inner game. The zen. The a-ha.

Tip One. Be Enthused.

What if you're not enthused?

Then get enthused.

Music might be the most emotional force in the human race. OK, the second most, but it's still very powerful. Think of how music influenced your life between the ages of 16 and 22. Think of the records you bought, the concerts you attended, the music videos you watched. Were you ever obsessed? Good.

What drove that? Emotion. Time to harness that emotion and to put it to work for you. OK how?

When I give a piano workshop, I promise the participants that after the one session they will be able to play any song they want. So I suggest they start making a list of the songs they want to play. This would be a list of songs THEY want to play as opposed to a list of songs that I want them to play. See the difference?

It's just the opposite of how piano lessons worked in the old day when it was the piano teacher who chose the songs you were supposed to learn. I realize that those who come to my seminars are not there because their mothers made them come. And their moms aren't going to make sure they practice 30 minutes a day.

My students are only going to grow as piano players if they play consistently. And they are only going to play consistently if they genuinely want to be playing at the piano. And they are only going to want to play if they are playing music they enjoy. Chances are that music has at some point had a strong influence.

So what songs, artists, groups, or styles of music have had a strong, positive, emotional influence on your life? It may have been a long time ago, but if it was there then, it's probably also there now for you.

Make a list. If it isn't classical music, chances are I can show you what to do to be playing these songs in a very short period of time. Three and a half hours is what it takes me to do this at the workshop.

Get emotional.

See you next time.