PRACTICE

The General Routine:

Mental Preparation: use of the prepotential without action. training in sensitivity to the
prepotential and honing of that is the "secret" of a piano technique. There is, of course, no
secret to the existence of the seemingly impossible: it exists. The secret is a general
understanding of a metamethod by which the seemingly impossible is achieved; and, this is
the subject at hand which I am trying to make as scientifically reasonable as I can. There is a
long way to go for a "proof".
The question and answer that I'm trying to get at here is just how this training and honing can
be accomplished
Physical Preparation: Occurs after the mental preparation
To try to give bones to the theory, I'll give a series of exercises, starting with the simplest, that
can be applied with suitable changes to working at any musical material.
Exercise 1. [Awareness and Imaging]
Place both hands in some in some standard "five finger" conformation on the keyboard, e.g.,
C-G as in a C major scale. Close your eyes and let the hands relax as much as possible. The
fingers are just barely touching their keys. Visual a focused attention on each finger starting
at one side and working slowly, finger by finger to the other side. Work backwards. All the
while, move absolutely nothing; only your point of attention will move. If you keep this up, you
should become of aware of two things, 1) As you focus your attention on one finger, your
mental image of the others will fade. 2) After a while you will evenetually loose the sense of
where your fingers are relative to each other and even the mental image of your hand.
If 1) does not happen, two things are possible, a) you have already learned how to expand
and superpose attention states and are probably a pretty good pianist already, or b) you are
fooling yourself into thinking that your attention and visual imaging is the best you can do.
With such completely internal subtleties it is very easy not to see what you don't see. Try
harder to see the holes, lapses, droupouts or fadeouts of you internal imaging.
If 2) does not happen, you are cheating in absolute stillness. If you move fingers or hand,
even ever so slightly, you will be exciting the proprioception sensors of both joints and
tendons that will send signals to the brain about where fingers and hand are in space. If you
remain absolutely still, these sensors will loose excitation and not feed back the
proprioceptive information; that's just neurological reality. Perform this exercise with various
hand positions in scale and passage segments and chords. Although, physically, you are doing
nothing observable, which is the point, you are developing a mental foundation, and
becoming aware by experience of proprties of mind and body.
Discounting problems 1) and 2), this should have been relatively easy. The ease is partially
associated with the cultural ease of point centered attention and left hemispheric dominance.
The next exercise complicates the first, by adding an action.
Exercise 2. [Isolating Mental preparation]
Use the same starting position as in the first exercise. Only now the notes will be played. As
before focus attention on each finger separately, but for each finger, after attention is
focused, visualize as clearly as possible what you would do if you were to play the note under
that finger. Unhurriedly, rehearse several times what you would do, each time looking to
clarify the image of the independent playing of this finger. You will reach after 6 or less such
mental rehearsals a point of dimishing returns where no further internal visual clarification is
had. Now, play what you just rehearsed, noticing how it conformed to your final best
rehearsal. Just drop the finger and retract it; slowly, we're not going for speed here but rather
clarity of purpose. Does the hand otherwise remain still? Is the action of the finger smooth?
Assured? Without hesitation on your volition? If not try to get it as good as you can noticing

once again a point of dimished returns. When that happens, move on to the next finger. For a
variation, use other sequences of fingers than simply up and down.
While single finger attention is not hard, the eventual object is to have full unwavering
attention to and visualization of both hands together and superposed, also supposed with
simultaneous clear visualization and control over each of your ten fingers. I propose to get
there by entending the point attention slowly by building ever more inclusive pictures and
dragging new objects of attention into successive pictures as the building progresses. So we
can start with uniting two finger attention states into one while maintaining the original
individual pictures. This gives three supeposed states of attention.
Exercise 3. [First expansion of attention]
Use the same hand positions as the last two exercises. Pick two adjacent fingers, and work
like exercise 1, focusing attention first on one and then the other, but alternate just between
the two fingers. Remember this is eyes closed and there is no movements of eyes involved; it
is all internal. Slowly increase the frequency of alternation, but while one finger is being
focused upon, try to increase the attention and internal visual clarity of the other finger
Perform the same with all 10 posible combinations of two fingers for one hand and then
expand the set of fingers to both hands with 45 combinations. It's a very simple exercise and
you can make a lot of soundless work for yourself. Expand this then to actual playing as in
exercise 2, with two possibilities: play the notes together or alternately in an even 1-2 pattern
or in triples, or in quintuplets or ....
Exercise 4. [Expansion of attention between hands, Symmetric playing]
This is the same as exercise 3, except that the thinking and playing involves symmetric or
"mirror" playing. The hands are mirror images of one another and by playing mirrorsymmetrically, and new kind of refinement of attention and criterion for internal clarity arises,
namely the difference between what each hand is doing. The image of each hand is
automatically a clarifier for the other. This is almost a sneaky trick to work on internal
clarification. A C major scale, chomatic or whole tone scale beginning on Ab or D, or Persian
mode (D Eb F# G A Bb C#D) are good starting material.
Exercise 5. [Further expansion of attention]
Use the same hand position as in exercises 1-4. Work as in exercise 3, but pull a third finger
into the picture so that the three fingers are pulled into a consolidated picture while attention
is also simultaneously on each of thne individual fingers. Use the method of switching back
and forth beteen fingers and 2-1 combinations of them fuszzing the isolated pictures until
there is a smooth solid image. It is important to prepare both mentally and physically, every
action. Different combinations of fingers will be more difficult than others.
Continue the prococess pulling in an additional finger until there is a complete picture of both
hands together with each hand seprately and each finger seprately. This is much easier said
than done. Patience, attention and time. When things start to slip in your mind, go back to
something easier. Playing notes without strengthening the internal control images is a mistake
and more than a waste of time.
Exercise 6. [Keyboard independence - flying passage work]
Here, understanding and fluency, not perfection, with exercise 5 is assumed. The following
should be performed first slowly, by looking in order to establish references and gauges;
second by looking away and stealing quick glances to restablish orientation when the internal
images fail; third with eyes closed and no visial feedback at all.
Pick any scale or passage segment. Keep the hands above and away from the keyboard. Think
of which finger in each hand will go to the starting note. Spread the fingers of both hands.
Visualize the complete two hand picture. Think about flexing the begining fingers. Flex the
begining fingers, in preparation. Now, move both hands down to the keyboard so that the two
fingers come just into contact (with assurity), but without playing the notes. You will work on
trying to make this motion (physical preparation) as quickly and as accurately as possible

through mental preparation (rehearsal) of the movement by also varying your initial position
and trajectory of approach (from above, from L from R) all combinations and everything in
between. After every approach, lay the flexed finger into the note, playing it. Immediately
extend and retract the finger while the hand move back to some initial [position in
preparation for the next note. Procede in the same manner, note by note. Vary the initial
position for any note so that it becomes arbitrary. Work toward doing all of this with eyes
closed, visualizing hands, fingers and keyboard.
Exercise 7. [Hand positions in pasage work]
Use the same system as in exercise 6, but have two fingers arrive at two notes
*simultaneously*. Increase the number of fingers and use various combinations of however
many fingers you are working with so that the hand and its control pictures take into account
the keyboard, but are not bound to it. While doing this expand and stretch the hand or close
its conformation. The accuracy should not depend on any specific hand conformation. Start
this very slowly so that every motion of articulation and retraction is deliberate and conscious.
Exercise 8. [Hand positions in chords]
While exercise 7 was concerned with scalelike material, execise 8 is the same, but with
chordal material which will sometimes use all 5 fingers of a hand, and sometimes only a
subset.
Exercise 9. [Chordal artriculation]
Pick a chord, any chord, preferably both hands Spread both hands for the chord and rest the
fingers of each hand lightly in position. (personal preference is ninth chords); use the same
chord in each hand or arrange mirror symetrical chords. Now divide the fingers in to sets I and
II. Play the alterations in both hands of set I and II using mental preparation. Keep minimal
tension and sometimes maximal temsion in playing of the sets. Use all possible combinations
for sets I an II. Divide further into sets I II III and work similarly.
Perform any exercise, not as a physical rote exercise, but as an exercise for mind and body,
making as much distinction and variation in touch, speed, dynamics, rhythm as can be
conjured and invented. For any session, there is as in weight training a point of failure. Learn
to recognize it and desist; you would be wasting your time.
Some Afterthoughts
Considerations of The Purpose of Scales:
The playing of scales has been part of every keyboardist's training, and there are two ways to
look at scales: 1) as boring and mindless repetition, which should be avoided; or 2) as a
particular kind of exercise that has a value that must be discovered.
Because of the ubiquitous nature of the exercise of scales, I would prefer the second attitude
as being more valuable, no matter the ultimate conclusion one comes to.
The usual explanation for scales, chords and arpeggios as being good exercise is that musical
material is made up of these as components, and the reasoning goes that if you master these
elements then anything which is composed of them will come much easier ounder the fingers.
That may have some truth, but I see another reason. The practice and performance mindset is
not an ordinary state of consciousness.
One of the traditional methods common to many diverse cultures of inducing an altered state
of consciousness, particularly that of a shamanistic type of light trance is repetitive sound that
becomes familiar.
I suggest that this purpose can also be served through the attentive playing of scales. The
practice can also serve simultaneously as a physical warmup and as a psychological cue.
More on Flying Scales and Passages

In this type of practice, the speed and accuracy, of positioning the fingers of each hand just
touching the destination notes is point. Bring the hands as much as as a foot or two from their
intended destination and again internal rehearse the motion, spreading and keeping the
attention over both hands while the appropriate fingers are being singled out.
Obviously, the idea can be extended to any type of exercise or passage in any composition.