At the beginning of my piano teaching career, I taught mainly beginners. After a few years those beginners had either advanced or decided to spend their time elsewhere, and I had replaced them with more beginners. By the time I had been teaching for twenty years I had students who covered the spectrum—very young beginners, middle schoolers who were competent and growing more so by the month, and then some advanced students who had begun studying concerti and the solo masterworks of Bach, Mozart, Schubert, and others.
The practice assignments for each group was different and the difference had little to do with the amount of time they practiced. For very young beginners simply getting them to play a piece again and again taught them hand-eye coordination and the basics of music reading. If I could get them to play each of their three or four 8 bar pieces four or five times a day, I knew it would be perfect when they came back the next week and they would be ready to add a new note or two on the staff and new keys on the piano. In addition, the practice offered its own reward as they gained proficiency and what had taken them 20 minutes the first day took only 10 by the end of the week. For middle schoolers the trick was to get them to just sit there and play for a certain amount of time. I gave them a section or page of a piece and calculated how long it would take for them to play it through once and then multiplied the minutes into a time frame I was certain would give them enough repetitions to gain the proficiency to move on.
Now we get to the advanced students. At this level they were expected to not only perform more difficult pieces but to interpret them. How do you assign practice with that? I gave them a chart made of squares, one square for each piece, each day. I told them that time was not the issue, and playing it a certain number of times didn't matter either if they just kept playing it the same way again and again. The point now was to become an artist, to decide what you wanted the audience to feel when you played the piece and how you would go about doing that. They were to put an objective in the square by the piece they were working on and write in it what they intended to accomplish, then work until they had accomplished that goal. At first it might be "Play the Rondo section without error." After all, if you kept making the same mistakes you would never reach the point of interpretation. Once you accomplished the "easy" objectives, you were to move on to something deeper. "Figure out which hand is the melody and make the accompanying hand sound like it is in another room so it won't drown out the melody." "Find the focus of each phrase and make the music move to and away from that focus." "Decide on and create a mood that you wish to project with this piece." Now we are becoming pianists, artists instead of simply piano players. That kind of practice keeps you working on the same piece for several months—without getting bored.
I thought of all that when I heard Keith give a young man some prayer advice he has given others for years. If you really want to learn to pray like the men in the Bible—like Jesus and Paul and the apostles, like Daniel and the other prophets who prayed long and hard—get yourself a cheap kitchen timer. Set it for 15 minutes. Then start praying. Do you know what will happen? At first you will pray the way you normally do, about the same things you normally pray about. You will repeat phrases you have heard at church, some of them all your life because you are desperate to fill up the time. When you completely run out of things to say, you will look at the timer and find out it has been a walloping 5 minutes—if you're lucky. It might just be two or three. But don't stop. Now you will find out what it really means to pray as you open your heart and really start talking to God, telling Him things you only tell your best friend, if that. You will examine yourself far more closely and see where you need to change. You will ask for God's help and really mean it. You might even cry, and your determination to be better will sweep over you like a tidal wave. And when that timer goes off, you might just ignore it and keep going. The purpose of the timer was to help you reach that point. You might not need it again, but if you do, use it.
Do you know how I know all this? Because that is the way it worked for me. Try it yourself. Your prayer life will suddenly become a means of survival, something you cannot live without, instead of a pesky chore you save till the end of the day and often forget. Guess which one God is happier with?
O Jehovah, the God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before you. Let my prayer enter into your presence; Incline your ear unto my cry Ps88:1,2
Dene Ward
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