Two-Step Piano Practice Using God-Circle

Watch this video gaining traction on my YouTube channel. Transcription below. 

Transcription

Hi, happy end of September. So we started our new school year at the beginning of September, and many of my students were just excited to start the new school year, and some of them really wanted to just excel, which made me very happy. And so, especially my adult students, they really wanted to just make some progress and change in their practice and in their playing. But this is what happened. As they started practicing more and coming back, I started hearing feedback like they practiced for hours, but they didn't really see much difference. So I went into my diagnostic mode, which is actually a lot of my teaching anyways, like what is really going on here? You know, what is the experience and what's missing? And the first thing I realized is that oftentimes they weren't really aware of what was not happening right. So the very first question, so I'm making this video to help everybody, whether you're playing the piano or any other instrument, or even, you know, other kinds of performance arts, dancing. If you're having trouble getting results, first you have to understand where your trouble spots are. And when I asked my adult students, surprisingly, even though they are very, very capable, intelligent people, they had a misdiagnosis of where the spot was and what their trouble was. So first of all, you have to know that. How do you know it? If you are playing and you find yourself stumbling over a certain part, yes, and then you find yourself correcting every time you get there, you get it wrong, and then you correct. That's a trouble spot. Another thing is where you have big gaps, you're not trying to create gaps, but like gaps are created because you don't know what you're doing. Like you don't know where your hand is going, or you don't know where you're on, on the music. The other thing is rushing. You are kind of unsure, so you just rush through it and hope for the best. So these are areas where there is trouble. Now, everybody can use their phone to record themselves. And I know that many people don't like it. Until I started creating online courses, I didn't want to look at myself talking or playing, but it is powerful. And it is actually an incredible tool to train yourself to self-critique. You know, you're going to be saving a lot of time and a lot of money. So that's number one. Number two, I'm going to just share with you one technique on how to deal with this. So a lot of times people will rush through a spot, or you know, they might even stumble, or they pause, but at the end of the day, they just kind of rush through it. And it's kind of interesting, right? Because you should actually slow down and learn it better. But our default response is to rush, probably because like, you know, trouble, our DNA tells us to run away from the trouble. But we need to train ourselves to do the other. And this technique that I learned from another teacher at a conference I went to, is called God-Circle. So I have my Bach Prelude in front of me. Number one in C, this one. Let's say I always make a mistake there. I will try to show you. That's this spot, but I would put a circle right in between. And so I'll just kind of start right before that. When I reach the circle, I count 1234, give myself time and play it right. And the God-Circle is going to get smaller and smaller. So I'm going to do it again. Second time, I'm going to say 123, go. Until you're not taking any extra time. So basically, you can use this concept in, you know, anyway, I mean, you can count, or you could just very intentionally slow down your practice for that spot so that you can play the right note with the right fingering, hopefully. It can be just a simple thing as you're practicing your scales like B flat, five finger scale. That's it. But you always make a mistake here. You can think about it and get it right. And then try to have a shorter count one two. One. And next time, you don't have a gap there. So the wisdom of this is that you don't want to practice with mistakes. Yes, mistakes are part of learning. But when you are learning something that involves physicality, you want to practice with the right form because the more you practice with the wrong form, in the case of piano, like wrong notes or wrong fingering, it's just going to be ingrained. And it's going to take double the time to undo it. So it's much better to take time because taking time means you're taking control over what's going on and being more mindful rather than hoping for the best. So I hope this helps you. If you have a spot, first of all, take time to analyze and diagnose where your trouble spots are. If you can do that, I mean, that's huge. That is so much of what the teachers do. But if you can do that for yourself, you're you know, you're really empowering yourself. Secondly, do the opposite of what our ancestors have done, which is to run away from the trouble. Piano is not going to kill you. So take your time and teach your brain, your body to do the right thing there. So hopefully this helps you. So if you find my advice helpful, please check out my new course, Simple and Beautiful Piano for Adult Beginners. It's launching on October 10th. I have really put a lot of thought into it. I really think it was my labor of love because, you know, I know that learning how to play the piano is not just about information. You can get a lot of information, but I have really tried to incorporate what I have learned as a teacher, what I have observed, and what I have learned about learners. You know, those are my like so much of like musings, eating breakfast and thinking, well, why didn't that student get that? So all of these experiences and knowledge I gathered over 10,000 hours of teaching, I really tried to incorporate that into my time with you. So please check out and otherwise subscribe to my YouTube and I will be sharing more things more regularly. See you soon.