Mental Play(MP)

Many or most of the piano students will ask :"how to memorize a piece ? and how do concert pianist memorize a piece that played for an hour more without any mistake?"

The only way to memorize well is to learn Mental Play (MP). In fact, MP is the logical and ultimate goal of all these practice methods that we are discussing because technique alone will not enable you to perform flawlessly, musically, and without getting nervous.

There are at least five basic methods of memorizing; they are: (1) hand memory (audio/tactile), (2) music memory (aural), (3) photographic memory (visual), (4) keyboard memory/mental play (visual/tactile, brain), and (5) theoretical memory (brain). Practically everybody uses a combination of them. Most people rely mainly on one and use the others as supplementary help.

In this method, you learn to play the piano in your mind, away from the piano, complete with accurate fingering and your concept of how you want the music to sound. You can use keyboard memory or photographic memory for MP, but I recommend keyboard memory for beginners because it is more efficient; for advanced players, keyboard memory and photographic memory are the same, since if you can do one, the other follows naturally. Whenever you memorize a small section, close your eyes and see if you can play it in your mind. Once you have memorized an entire piece (HS), you should also be able to play that in your head. This is the time to analyze the structure of the music, how it is organized and how the themes develop as the music progresses. With practice, you will find that it requires only a small investment of time to acquire MP. Best of all, you will also discover that once solid MP is established, your memory is as good as it can get; you will have confidence that you will be able to play without mistakes, blackouts, etc., and will be able to concentrate on music. MP also helps technique; for example, it is much easier to play at a fast speed after you can mentally play it at that speed; very often, the inability to play fast originates in the brain. One benefit of MP is that you can practice it at any time, anywhere, and can greatly increase your effective practice time.

Memory is an associative process. Super memorizers (including some savants) and all concert pianists who can memorize hours of music depend on algorithms with which to associate their memory (whether they know it or not). Musicians are especially fortunate in this regard because music is just such an algorithm. Nonetheless, this "memory trick" of using music as an algorithm to memorize is seldom formally taught to music students; instead, they are often advised to keep repeating "until the music is in the hands", which is one of the worst methods of memory. A large component of your initial memory will be hand memory, which comes from repeated practice. The hand just goes on playing without your really remembering each note. Although we will discuss all the known types of memory below, we will start with analyzing hand memory first because historically, it was frequently thought of as the only and best method of memory although, in reality, it is the least important. "Hand memory" has at least two components: a reflex hand motion that comes from touching the keys and a reflex in the brain from the sound of the piano. Both serve as cues for your hand to move in a pre-programmed way. For simplicity, we will lump them together and call them hand memory. Hand memory is useful because it helps you to memorize at the same time that you practice the piece. In fact, everybody must practice common constructs, such as scales, arpeggios, Alberti accompaniments, etc., from hand memory so that your hands can play them automatically, without having to think about every note. Therefore, when you start to memorize a new piece, there is no need to consciously avoid hand memory. Once acquired, you will never lose hand memory, and we show below how to use it to recover from blackouts.

When we talk about hand memory, we usually mean HT memory. Because hand memory is acquired only after many repetitions, it is one of the most difficult memories to erase or change. This is one of the main reasons for HS(hand separate) practice -- to avoid acquiring incorrect HT habits that will be so difficult to change. HS memory is fundamentally different from HT memory. HS play is simpler and can be controlled directly from the brain. In HT memory, you need some kind of feedback in order to coordinate the hands (and probably the two halves of the brain) to the accuracy needed for music. Therefore, HS practice is the most effective method for avoiding the dependence on hand memory and repetition results in "hand memory" which is a false type of memory that can lead to many problems, such as blackouts( i already have this experience) . With MP, you associate the music in your mind with how you produce it at the piano. It is important to practice MP without playing the piano because you can acquire "sound memory" (just as you can acquire "hand memory") and use the sound of the piano as a crutch for recall, and sound memory can cause the same problems associated with hand memory.

Why are memory and MP so important? They not only solve the practical problems of technique and performance but also advance your musicianship and increase intelligence. Just as you can speed up a computer by adding memory, you can increase your effective intelligence by improving your memory. In fact, one of the first signs of mental deterioration, such as Alzheimer's, is loss of memory. It is now clear that many of those feats of great musicians such as Mozart were simple byproducts of strong MP, and that such skills can be learned.

The Practice Routine For Almost all Piano Students

Many students use the following practice routine:

1. First, practice scales or technical exercises until the fingers are limbered up. Continue this for 30 minutes or longer if you have time, to improve technique especially by using exercises such as the Hanon series.
2. Then take a new piece of music and slowly read it for a page or two, carefully playing both hands together, starting from the beginning. This slow play is repeated until it can be performed reasonably well and then it is gradually speeded up until the final speed is attained. A metronome might be used for this gradual speed-up.
3. At the end of a two hour practice, the fingers are flying, so the students can play as fast as they want and enjoy the experience before quitting. After all, they are tired of practicing so that they can relax, play their hearts out at full speed; this is the time to enjoy the music!
4. Once the piece can be played satisfactorily, memorize it and practice "until the music is in the hands". (v) On the day of the recital or lesson, practice the piece at correct speed (or faster!) as many times as possible in order to make sure that it is in top condition. This is the last chance; obviously, the more practice, the better.

EVERY STEP OF THIS PROCEDURE IS WRONG! The above will almost guarantee that the students will not progress beyond intermediate level even if they practice several hours daily. For example, this method tells the students nothing about what to do when they hit an impossible passage except to keep repeating, sometimes for a lifetime, with no clear idea of when or how the needed technique will be acquired. This method leaves the task of learning to play the piano completely to the student. Moreover, the music will come out flat during the recital and unexpected flubs will be almost unavoidable. You will understand all this as soon as you read about the more efficient methods described below.

Lack of progress is the main reason why so many students quit piano. Students, especially youngsters, are smart; why work like a slave and learn nothing? Reward the students and you will get more dedication than any teacher could want. You can be a doctor, scientist, lawyer, athlete, or anything you want, and still become a good pianist. This is because there are methods that let you acquire technique qickly, as we shall soon see.

Note that the above practice routine is an "intuitive" (or "instinctive") method. If a person of average intelligence were marooned on an island with just a piano and decided to practice, that person would most likely devise a practice method like the one above. That is, a teacher using this type of practice routine isn't teaching anything -- the method is intuitive. When I first started to compile the "correct learning procedures" of this book, I was struck most by how counter-intuitive many of them were. I will explain later why they are so counter-intuitive but this offers the best explanation for why so many teachers use the intuitive approach. These teachers never learned the correct methods and therefore gravitated naturally to the intuitive methods. The trouble with counter-intuitive methods is that they are harder to adopt than intuitive ones; your brain is constantly telling you that they are not right and to get back to the intuitive ones. This message from the brain can become irresistible just before a lesson or recital -- try telling (uninformed) students not to enjoy playing their finished pieces before quitting practice, or not to over-practice on recital day! It is not just the students or teachers. It is also any parents or friends with good intentions that influence the practice routines of young students. Parents who are not informed will always force their children to use the intuitive methods. This is one reason why good teachers always ask parents to accompany their children to the lessons. If the parents are not informed, there is a virtual guarantee that they will force the students to use methods that are in direct contradiction to the teacher's instructions.

Students who started with the correct methods from the beginning are the "apparently lucky" ones. However, they must be careful later in life if they weren't taught what the wrong methods are. Once they leave the teacher, they can stumble into the intuitive methods and have no idea why everything is suddenly falling apart. It's like a bear that had never seen a bear trap -- it gets caught every time. These "lucky" ones often can't teach either, because they may not know that many intuitive methods can lead to disaster. On the other hand, the apparently "unlucky" students who first learned the intuitive methods and then changed over to the better ones have some unexpected advantages. They know both the right and wrong methods and often make much better teachers. Therefore, although this book teaches the correct methods, it is just as important to know what NOT to do, and why. This is why the most frequently used wrong methods are extensively discussed here.

We describe the components of a proper practice routine in the following sections. They are presented in approximately the order in which a student might use them from start to finish of a new piece of music.

Fundamentals of Piano Practise

Teachers play a critical role in showing students how to play and practice musically. For example, most pieces of music begin and end with the same chord, a somewhat mysterious rule which is actually a result of basic chord progression rules. An understanding of chord progressions is very useful for memorizing. A musical phrase generally starts and ends with softer notes, with the louder ones in between; when in doubt, this is a good default principle. This may be one reason why so many compositions begin with a partial bar – the first beat usually carries the accent and is too loud. There are many books that discuss musical interpretation (Gieseking, Sandor), and we will encounter numerous pointers throughout this book.

Musical training is most rewarding for the very young. Most babies exposed frequently to perfectly tuned pianos will automatically develop perfect pitch -- this is nothing extra-ordinary. Nobody is born with perfect pitch, because it is a 100% learned skill (the exact frequencies of the musical scales are arbitrary human conventions -- there is no natural law that says that middle A should be 440 Hz, most orchestras tune to 442 Hz, and before it was standardized, it had a much larger range of allowable frequencies). If this perfect pitch is not maintained, it will be lost later in life. Piano training of young children can begin around the ages of three to four. Early exposure of youngsters (from birth) to classical music is beneficial because classical music has the highest musical content (complex logic) among all the different types of music. Some forms of contemporary music, by over-emphasizing certain narrow aspects, such as loudness or simplistic music structures that do not stimulate the brain, can detract from musical development by interfering with brain development.

Although you need to be musically gifted to compose music, the ability to play the piano is not that dependent on the musical brain. In fact, most of us are more musical than we give ourselves credit for and it is the lack of technique that limits our musical expression at the piano. We have all had the experience of listening to famous pianists and noticing that one is different from the other -- that is more musical sensitivity than we will ever need to start playing the piano. There is no need to practice eight hours a day; some famous pianists have recommended practice times of less than an hour. You can make progress practicing three or four times a week, one hour each.

Finally, total music education (scales, time signatures, ear training [including perfect pitch], dictation, theory, etc.) should be an integral part of learning to play the piano because each different thing you learn helps all the others. In the final analysis, a total music education is the only way to learn piano. Unfortunately, the majority of aspiring pianists do not have the resources or the time to follow such a path.

Statistically, students who excel in playing the piano almost always end up composing music of their own(like me haha). Studying music composition is not a prerequisite for composing. Some teachers frown on learning too much composition theory before starting to compose your own music because that can prevent you from developing your individual style.

The Great Interpretation - Karajan

Herbert Von Karajan was a was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor, one of the most renowned 20th-century conductors. His obituary in The New York Times described him as probably the world's best-known conductor and one of the most powerful figures in classical music.Karajan conducted the Berlin Philharmonic for thirty-five years(for his whole life).

He was a child prodigy in piano and he was encouraged to study conducting. Many people said that he had a special gift for extracting beautiful sounds from an orchestra.

Karajan was the recipient of many honours and awards. On 21st June 1978, he received the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Music from Oxford University.He was honored by the “Médaille de Vermeil” in Paris, the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society in London, the Olympia Award of the Onassis Foundation in Athens and the UNESCO International Music Prize. He received two Gramophone awards for recordings of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony and the complete Parsifal recordings in 1981. In 2002, the Herbert Von Karajan Music Prize was founded in his honour; in 2003 Anne-Sophie Mutter who had made her debut with Karajan in 1977, became the first recipient of this award.

Herbert von Karajan was recently selected as a main motif for a high value collectors' coin: the 100th Birthday of Herbert von Karajan commemorative coin. The nine-sided silver coin, in the reverse, shows Karajan in one of his typically dynamic poses while conducting. In the background is the score of Beethoven’s Ninth.
ARGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i want this coin so badly but still can not buy it because 1st no credti card, 2nd dono where to buy it=.= argh!!!!

So please listen to his conducting on Beethoven Symphony No.9, i would it was fantasic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2AEaQJuKDY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSEqQsAXbJw&feature=related
please enjoy^-^

My Music Composition

Haha my second music composition in this year... look nice ?
take me about 1 month and a few days more to complete it...
the picture i scan above is just the introduction for the music only...
everyone says that it sounds great, grand, and sadness.
well this piece i use the key in C-minor as my maestro - Ludwig Van Beethoven
like it so much.
Joseph say it got the feeling of moonlight sonata,great i like his comment
hope 1 day he will be a great pianist...and i will get free entrance for his performance
hehehehe.....don't tell him this ar=.=

i get so many comments for my composition(bad and good ones)
the comments are:
1. great nice introduction
2. feels like the storms are coming
3. i feel loneliness, sadness
that the good comment

for the bad comment...
1.too much pedaling is used
2. the introduction is nothing special
3.it just like playing scales and appregios
4.and it sounds noisy

well for those who give comment (bad or good) i really appreciate it
because your comments can make me improve more in composing...
nvm although this piece is NOTHING SPECIAL(to the person who said it)
but can you composed it? can you composed it when you have no theory about composition?
by the way i tell you i just grade 3 and learn nothing about composition. How many people can compose thier own songs/music/piece in Alor Star?
i think got less then 7% knows=.=
why? because composing is not as easy as you think it was....
it need inspiration...idea...a strong composing theory...
but if you are Mozart ok nvm just write music out of your mind will do...
( that was what Mozart did)

So....for this piece i will keep it for the next 2 years coming for further modification...
until everyone says that is piece is amazing....i will stop modify it just like my maestro have done
He (Beethoven )keep his composition private and always modify it bar by bar until a final and great piece is done. no wonder his composition is so great.

Enzymes the "lock and key hypothesis"

1st I wanted to congratulate Malaysia Biology reference book (most of it) and text book for being so outdated...

1st what you know about enzyme?
you would have say like this : " enzymes are made up of proteins( tertiary structure) and are biomolecules that increase the rate of biochemical."
yes you are right...

but when i ask this question to my friends mostly their answer are perfectly wrong....=.="
here are my question
In the lock and key hypothesis model enzymes are key or lock and the substrate are lock or the key?
well their answer is enzymes are lock and the substrate is key....well that is totally wrong...
not their answers only but most of the Biology reference book and text book(malaysia) like Total Pro(Puan khoo use one), Sasbadi, Pelangi, and many many more...except for longman they do not say that enzyme are key or lock.

well let me prove that enzyme are not the lock.
first let us look at the general chracteristic of enzymes
thier chracteristic are:
1.they are very specific
2.are not use up/destroyed in the reaction
3.enzyme catalyse reversible reactions
4.many enzyme are only able to work under the presence of a coenzyme
5.they are sensitive to pH.

take a look on the general characteristic No.2 it says that enzymes are not use up or destroyed in the reaction, if all the conditions are normal to the enzymes.

ok look back to the lock and key model.
enzyme are lock. lock changes its shape when it is opened by a key right?
so we can't say that enzymes are lock because it DOES NOT SUIT ITS GENERAL CHRACTERISTIC.

and this lock and key model has proven inaccurate and the induced fit model is the most currently accepted enzyme-subtrate complex figure only.

so the conclusion is enzymes is key, substrate is the lock.

but 1 book i found that contains the correct answer , SAP
it stated that enzymes are key while the substrate are lock. thats right.

so why malaysia government don't want change the fact of this? do they do not know they are "planting" the wrong information/ideas/concept to the students?
hope that 1 day malaysia government will know that but i don't know when they are going to know it....