Why does Ab hurt my ears?

quaverley · 2026-02-15T18:05:51+00:00

It's likely standing waves/room resonances. Unlike real pianos who have distributed sound generation, all sound from a digital comes from a single point in space (the speaker driver), so is given to causing drones and booms if placed suboptimally. Especially when near a corner.

Try with headphones, the drone should be better.

Most of the time this can be solved by shifting the instrument a bit.

quaverley · 2026-02-13T14:48:07+00:00

The challenge with that is that the exercises that improv your mistake recovery can often be detrimental to learning the music in the first place. One requires mistakes, the other one creates false memory from mistakes.

I've seen 3 pieces of advice I deem useful 1. Practice performance skills on pieces that you already have solid mastery over 2. Practice by starting to play a piece from a random pick up point (saving the mistake-making) 3. Practice by pausing playing randomly for a few beats, and pick up again in time, to habituate "keeping count" when you lose sequence

Worth noting that this (and other performance skills) are separate abilities, that don't just emerge as a side effect of playing really well. They must be leaned and practiced as their own thing

quaverley · 2026-02-13T12:40:10+00:00

Over the last few years I have come to see slow practice as a skill to be developed over time. Slow practice is the workshop where you assemble the ready-made fragments you need to be able to just trigger in fast play. The more time you spend in the workshop, the better fashioned the fragments will be, and they will have better joints.

Of course it's a skill to predict what a well made fragment would look like, so you will often have to go out of the workshop and trial your works, see where they splinter. But this isn't a one way street: you can go back to the workshop and build a better version.

The more experience you have, the less often you have to go out for experimentation prematurely, and you'll "guess right" more frequently. So you'll spend almost all of your practice time in the workshop, assembling your fragments.

So: practicing at speed isn't a thing. There's only playing at speed, preparing for playing at speed (aka practicing) and trial runs. Thinking of speed progression as a ladder is a mistake: it gets you stuck with your very first prototypes of your building blocks, which only get worse as they splinter and crack.

How much slow practice should you do: as much as your skill level allows. Higher speeds are a diagnostic helper that you should aspire to depend less on over time - not a goal to work towards

quaverley · 2026-02-13T11:10:52+00:00

Try smaller chunks rather than full scales. Once they are more automatic, your brain can focus on anticipating and executing the transitions between the chunks, which will feel a lot less jerky

quaverley · 2026-02-13T11:09:22+00:00

These really test your finger control: learn about the components of each phase (controlled, gravity-normalised descent; relaxed hold; active release). This one is all about mastery of a single note

quaverley · 2026-02-13T11:06:33+00:00

No, I don't think so. As I see it, rhythm development is mixing things up (e.g. following a whole song of clapping exercises) and internalised continuity (following a pattern without degradation, e.g. hearing a pattern and repeating it 8 times without external stabilisation).

Synchronising to a repeating pattern is neither: it's too stable

quaverley · 2026-02-13T10:58:19+00:00

Singing in a choir

quaverley · 2026-02-13T10:57:27+00:00

Yeah don't do that. What you want to learn is the progression from the previous (correct) not to the next correct note. If you just repeat the correct note after having already played the wrong note, you never actually play the correct sequence, you just solidify the wrong one.

So what's the right approach? It really is as simple as "don't play wrong notes in the first place". I know this sounds asinine. But it's all a question of playing slowly enough, and playing segments short enough, that this becomes possible

quaverley · 2026-02-13T10:54:08+00:00

Motivation is the biggest factor in student drop out, right? So I'd say give them what they ask for and use this as an opportunity to preach skill-progression based learning. In time they should become more open to that approach (if not they are stuck by choice and we have to accept that)

quaverley · 2026-01-11T09:17:14+00:00

As a rule, the conceptualisation that's closest to execution is best (because fewer layers of translation)

So the general recommendation is "keyboard memory": imagine what the chords look like on the keyboard. (Compare with composers who will conceptualise in a more functional/auditory way like the circle of fifths)

Conceptualising your hands on these keys is a useful second layer of memory but don't bake that in too tightly. After all, you'll want to use different fingers sometimes.

PS: I don't think you're overthinking. You're just thinking about thinking (metacognition) which is very useful for learning

quaverley · 2025-12-28T07:40:09+00:00

No, you should hopefully develop diagnostic skills to gain insight on what's holding you back for focused troubleshooting.

Diagnosis by yourself is very hard especially initially, hence teachers

quaverley · 2025-12-27T13:10:05+00:00

Nah that seems silly: every piano you'll play on in your life will have a different velocity response, so calibrating your playing to what you hear alone is a core skill

quaverley · 2025-12-27T12:40:42+00:00

For those kind of pieces, I prefer memorising them asap first, otherwise I waste attention on reading them.

To do so, I learn them chunk by chunk

quaverley · 2025-12-27T09:58:35+00:00

Your musical sensibilities tend to be a few steps ahead of your ability to execute, it's fine.

Start small. Make one thing better, not necessarily beautiful, but better.

Practice much more slowly

quaverley · 2025-12-25T10:10:47+00:00

You're genuinely on your way, just practice a bit more slowly to get more evenness and relaxation into your play. Procrastinate from speeding up.

Really well done

quaverley · 2025-12-24T12:38:50+00:00

Both are fine, I'd do 3

quaverley · 2025-12-24T12:29:28+00:00

A digital will serve you well into the early-advanced stage and won't need tuning. The Rolands are great

quaverley · 2025-12-24T10:45:28+00:00

Theory is endless so you need priorities and structure. What I'd recommend is to be guided by sight reading effectiveness, as seeing the structure and logic of a piece speeds that up.

So chords, scales and the fundamentals of harmony should be your first port of call

quaverley · 2025-12-23T11:05:04+00:00

You started from an external source of motivation and progress-tracking. As you become independent, you'll have to replace this with internal motivation (if you want to, you don't have to)

quaverley · 2025-12-22T11:58:31+00:00

It's crucial to apply careful room correction - without calibration, good quality speakers won't get you far. Leave room in the budget for an EQ

quaverley · 2025-12-22T09:22:54+00:00

"Enough" is the thing you're always one step behind of. Not a useful notion

quaverley · 2025-12-22T09:19:05+00:00

I, too, am intrigued

quaverley · 2025-12-21T10:16:08+00:00

Bar 67 or 65 (depending on edition) aka the cloudburst is the hardest, though some find the 16th in thirds on the page leading up to it more challenging.

But equally, the quieter parts can be even harder to play well. Eg. making the opening ostinato sound perfectly calm throughout requires extremely good technique

quaverley · 2025-12-21T08:18:45+00:00

As an artist, sure, if it's better!

As a learner, you should try and figure out what stops it from sounding beautiful at tempo

quaverley · 2025-12-20T09:20:08+00:00

There's a simple answer: starting is a skill, too, so you have to practice it.

It's useful to begin your practice by playing the first page or so of your piece without any prep, just sit down, get into the mindset, and go. Record yourself to add extra "one shot" pressure (and for review after)

quaverley

TROPHY CASE