Increasingly, Tomoko likes gardening. She likes to start the day in the garden to recharge her psychic batteries; "It's a fresh feeling." She also likes bringing order to nature, and that includes weeding.
Tomoko contends that learning to play the piano is like gardening. Both take much planning, work, and patience. The rewards can be immediate, as when planting or weeding – such as working through a particular section of a composition – and sometimes it takes years to see the results. But planning is necessary in either case; “It brings order to life.”
More specifically, weeding is often needed when starting to play the piano as well as when learn an individual piano piece.
Good playing starts with a healthy body, just like a garden needs good soil, water and light. Good eating habits, sound sleep and regular exercise all impact how you play. Even the time of day and your schedule can impact how well you practice. your immediate environment can also upset your playing; distractions such as noise, other people, phone calls. If those conditions are not met, it may be time to weed out those bad daily life habits and environmental negatives.
Obviously, If it is a new piece, you are more likely to make mistakes. Tomoko says, "You need to be well grounded in your music That takes deep roots in the knowledge of music and performance."
Let's say that you are in the middle of practicing a piece.. When you make a mistake, you need to stop and identify the mistake -- the musical weed -- and figure out why the mistake was made. Is it a new piece? Is it a physical problem, such as hitting the key alongside the right key? Are you playing too fast -- or not paying close enough attention? Are the notes hard to read? Does this section of the piano piece differ from the prior one in terms of signature, rhythm, tonality, theme; is that transition hard to do? Is a passage particularly difficult such that you get nervous when you know it's coming?
In any case, take the time to figure out the mistake and why you are making it. Then you can weed it out. Mark the mistake and difficult parts of the composition. Start playing just before the mistake until just after it, remembering the reason for the mistake and how to correct it (e.g., adjust the fingering, getting the muscle memory to play correctly, slowing down, figuring out how to transition more smoothly). Sometimes it helps to practice each hand separately to focus on the issue. More generally, you need to focus on the problem mentally, not just physically.
Just as you need to pull out a weed completely, including all the roots, you need to pull out the mistake completely by overriding it with correctly playing the passage. A good idea is to repeat that passage correctly seven times so that your mind and your fingers remember it faultlessly.
We all know that one mistake can spoil the enjoyment of a piano piece, so weeding out inevitable mistakes at the start, just like weeding in the bad, is a good i9nvestment of time.
Tomoko advises, "Playing well takes patience. You need ongoing weeding of bad habits. Music is to be cultivated through preparation, development, and maintenance."
