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> If you've ever been to a kid's recital and all the pieces sound awful, it's not because they can't play their instruments, it's because their teachers taught them the mental habit of stopping when they made a mistake

Professionally I’m a collaborative pianist. My job is accompanying pre-college instrumental students in auditions, recitals, master classes. Trust me, there’s a near infinite variety of ways to sound awful, only some of which relate to the mode of practice you describe. (Stopping on mistakes is not an inherently bad thing, but it does require that you consciously reintegrate it, which most students do not do.)

I do agree with the observation that some of these problems relate to playing in isolation. This is true of the vast majority of piano students, most of whom will never in the course of their training play in chamber music settings, or even accompany others. This is a very neglected area of piano pedagogy. It also relates to the great difficulty of most chamber works for piano. There’s practically nothing out there for piano trio (piano, vln, cello), quartet, quintet, etc that’s not a RCM grade 10++ difficulty. By the time students reach this level, the rhythmic/collaborative horse is out of the barn.

> This is a very neglected area of piano pedagogy. It also relates to the great difficulty of most chamber works for piano.

You are SO right. I really wish that modern composers would come up with a bunch of chamber stuff that actually sounds good (i.e. like real baroque/classical/romantic music) but isn't incredibly difficult. I have never once played in a chamber ensemble as a pianist, and I was up to about the level of the easier Beethoven sonatas by the time I "quit" and started focusing on guitar. All of my favorite chamber piano pieces (Mendelssohn piano trios, Schubert Trout Quintet, Brandenburgs, etc.) would require 2-5 years of intense daily practice to even play a movement at speed with mistakes.

> Trust me, there’s a near infinite variety of ways to sound awful

Yeah, yeah, okay, fair enough. But I'd bet that the biggest improvement most of them could make right off the bat would be keeping time properly. (Maybe not if you're on a wind instrument and can only honk.)

Yeah, I was astounded by how quickly my singing improved when I started practicing with a metronome. Keeping time seems to me the easiest thing to improve if you focus on it (but that's just my subjective opinion). Once you can keep good time, the rhythm of the song imposes restrictions on you that actually help you figure out how to physically perform the movements demanded by the music and then subsequently groove them so that you can focus on all the other elements of making music.

My kids both went through music lessons, and I believe a lot of this "culture" is brought by hyper competitive parents. It's not inherent to the process. The Suzuki method (which is the dominant variant in the US today) starts kids playing by ear, and involves them in as much group playing as possible. You can't get in the habit of stopping, if nobody else stops.

Imposed on top of this is a culture of treating it like a contest. This is an easy trap to fall into, because the repertoire is organized by difficulty. But I quickly noticed that the most laid back parents were the ones who were performing musicians themselves. I'm a performing jazz musician so my kids have heard me play plenty of clams on the bandstand without stopping. ;-)

The parents have to get out of the habit of stopping their kids when they make a mistake. I read a comment from a famous teacher, that he doesn't stop his students when they make mistakes, because it kills their flow. Unless the mistake is repetitive. Isolated mistakes are not teachable, repetitive ones are.

My daughter's teacher had a really nice thing, an open recital at his house every Friday evening. Because it was so frequent, kids could just show up and play whatever they were working on.

There are alternatives to traditional classical teaching. In addition to their classical lessons, my family has gotten into fiddling. That's a totally different vibe. We went to a fiddle jam, and recognized one of the fiddlers from the previous night's symphony concert.

Now for my own opinionated opinions, not necessarily contrary to yours: 1) At least in classical and jazz, a player has to get over the hump and learn to play in tune at some point. In any event, intonation problems typically reveal technique problems. 2) "Feel" is not orthogonal to technique. Wherever the note belongs, your brain and body working together have to put it there. And "feel" is anything but absent from classical music -- you just have to listen harder for it because it's more subtle. You can hear it when it's too rigid.

Great comment, I agree with pretty much everything you said. I'm definitely going to steal the "Friday recital" idea.

I was just watching Rick Beato's interview with Billy Corgan and one of the things they dwelled on was that while the early band had intonation and feel sorted out, they were a mess with keeping time (i.e. "playing to a tick") and it caused a number of interesting problems for them as their popularity exploded and the production level of their albums increases. They all eventually had to learn to play correctly because it enabled them to bring in other musicians, and layer in other sounds more reliably. It also more or less became a requirement in the post "pro-tools" world that they transitioned into.

I agree with you on the vast majority of this, but I think it's a bridge too far to put intonation above feel unconditionally.

You are correct that keeping time (what an engineer would call "maintaining a common time base between transmitter and receiver") is necessary to play together with other musicians. But what musicians would call "feel" is what an engineer would call "phase modulation" -- whether a note is ahead of the beat, on the beat, or behind the beat; and by how much. Especially in Black American music (jazz, blues, soul, R&B, and a bunch of pop that's been influenced by those styles), there is a lot of crucial information there beyond what is conveyed in the "gridded" rhythms that are conveyed in Western musical notation. If you are not aware of this, you will still have problems playing with other musicians. From personal experience, it is anxiety-inducing to play with musicians who are ignorant of their beat placement and as a consequence have what an engineer would call "jitter" -- their timekeeping is correct on average, but on each given beat, they might be a little bit ahead or a little bit behind. You can play with a metronome for ages and never realize you're doing this wrong, as you're not consistently rushing or dragging, you're just inconsistent.

> whether a note is ahead of the beat, on the beat, or behind the beat; and by how much. Especially in Black American music (jazz, blues, soul, R&B, and a bunch of pop that's been influenced by those styles), there is a lot of crucial information there beyond what is conveyed in the "gridded" rhythms that are conveyed in Western musical notation.

I agree wholeheartedly, but I actually lump this in my head under "rhythm" rather than "feel". One of the reasons that black musicians tend to have on-average better <"feel" for you, "rhythm" for me> is that they often have spent a lot of time physically dancing or playing live gigs at church/with their adult friends, and had to learn how to place notes just by hearing other people do it. This is a more effective method for training feel/rhythm than showing someone note durations on a sheet of music and telling them to figure it out themselves.

I think the way to correct the bad "feel" habits you're talking about is to play a lot with talented, on-beat musicians who will correct your playing in rehearsal. They will also assign you parts that you can handle that serve the sound of the band, rather than serving the intentions of the composer per the sheet music. Another issue that young western musicians have is that they most often play with other players at about their skill level, which stops them from being able to quickly learn good habits from better musicians.

There's a video up of Barry Harris giving a class around feeling the and that this reminded me of. Not sure why you're being down-voted, because feel is super important to practice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uMNrujMdJU

words of wisdom, no idea who is downvoting this

You must play through mistakes like they're not there, keep the rhythm with your foot and the melody line in your head. Also don't play the hardest stuff you just learned in recitals, play stuff you can do with your eyes closed while holding a conversation.

Brilliant life advice in general, keep your head in the game, carry on and maintain the flow.

OMG, yes. Any conductor will tell you they'd much rather you play or sing the wrong note in time than the right note with the wrong rhythm

I was at a recital of adult piano students. "Kill me now" was my reaction when one of the students had that habit of stopping and playing every note "right" before continuing.

I grew up with the same habit, and sometimes could actually see the wincing in the audience during recitals. It was so disheartening. Last year I started deliberately playing incorrect notes during practicing, ceasing to play, and getting back on the melody line without losing the beat. It's improved my live playing a great deal.

Cannot +1 this enough. I learned so much more when I took lessons from an improvisational jazz bass teacher who focused on

(1) Learning as many songs and standards as is reasonable each week

(2) Focusing on improvising along to my teacher playing the melody on piano. He wouldn't stop unless I asked, so I needed to keep time with him. If I made a mistake, and lost my place, he would keep playing and I'd listen to where he was and jump back in when I found it again

I've also been studying with a jazz bass player (I'm on piano) and from the beginning he always emphasized just getting back into the tune. He never interrupts me.

The other big one is singing the lyrics to every song I'm learning, which I really didn't like at first. He told me the story of Ahmad Jamal recalling a time playing with the sax player Ben Webster when Ben just stopped playing a tune: "Why'd you stop Ben?" "I forgot the lyrics!".

My son is learning the piano and I cannot seem to teach him rhythm. Aside from the habit of stopping at every error (which bugs me to no end), he can hear a song once or twice and pick out the correct notes, but rhythm is still a mystery to him.

I learned rhythm so long ago (it was a core part of my elementary school music class before I ever started learning an instrument on my own) that I have no clue how to help him.

If you’ve done all the standard stuff, clapping out beats, playing drums, etc and it’s not clicking. The best tool I’ve ever found is dance. Try to get him to learn how to move his body in time to music. Doesn’t matter what he’s doing or what kind of dance. Rhythm is something you feel.

It really depends what his temperament is like. If he's like I was when I was young and is really stubborn, resistant to practicing stuff that matters in favor of stuff that's fun, and doesn't listen to your advice, then you'll probably need to find a local talented adult musician that he latches onto and hero-worships to teach him rhythm. I don't know what they'd do so I can't predict anything there.

If he listens to you really well and wants to collaborate:

1) You can play a lot of rhythm games all the time. Here are a few starter videos with source material to improvise rhythm games off of:

Rhythm Yardstick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sw_trDFJw8

Counting Lesson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dALpbzL7xqo

Counting to Seven: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Njy7pMVKJ8Q

As a game for when you're waiting around with him in line or in the car or whatever, I also recommend challenging him to try to keep time differently with different limbs--can he tap quarters with left foot, eighths with left hand, halfs with his right foot, and the melody with his right hand? Can he cycle these responsibilities randomly on his limbs?

You can also play songs and challenge him to identify the time signature and count along to it, or sing the songs and clap along at the same time.

2) Listen to a lot of music together, and dance/snap/tap/head nod to the music. Really rhythmic music is good in this case--Irish, Bluegrass, Gospel, R&B, and Motown are typically the most exciting and danceable.

3) Play "call and response" improv games. Sit at the piano with him, play a jazz backing track, and play and sing him simple rhythmic phrases to play back by ear alone. "Quarter Quarter Quarter Dotted-eigth-sixteenth!" etc.

4) Get him drum lessons.

5) If he's totally rhythmically deficient, let him have piano as just a fun random hobby and teach him to fight instead ;)

The most important thing to remember is that a good sense of rhythm can take 5-10 years to really develop. It's more important to attack the same thing every day until it's really mastered than it is to press forward for unearned progress.

Metronome diet.

I play professionally and still use the metronome every single day. I tell students if I can, they can too. Some may see it as a crutch that prevents one from developing an internal pulse. I disagree; but maybe it’s a fake it ‘til you make it circumstance.

If you set the metronome to accent the downbeat, it is difficult to allow yourself the luxury of stopping and restarting on errors.

The most frequent issue though is starting the learning process faster than you can consciously process the music. When a student asks me about the correct tempo, my answer is always the same: it’s the tempo of perfection. If you play a piece no faster than you can play it perfectly, most things take care of themselves.

> it’s the tempo of perfection

I believed in this as well for many years, but I've taken some lessons with famous bluegrass guitarists and all three of them said that you can't really play fast (which in bluegrass is "blistering") unless your body has a feeling for what it's like to be moving quickly at speed without tensing up. All three recommended occasionally taking a swing a tempo that was too fast just to get the feel there.

I've ended up on the following practicing diet, all to metronome:

CYCLE THROUGH:

- 1 rep Slow, No Mistakes (you can think really deliberately about what comes next)

- 1 rep Medium, 1 Mistake Max (you're using mostly muscle memory)

- 1 rep Fast, 3-5 Mistakes Max (focusing on how your body feels moving this quickly without tensing)

Then at the end of the practice session I'll take one or two (or admittedly five or six) inappropriately fast just for fun. I've been informed that this is possibly undoing some of the work I did in the practice session, but I'm playing music to enjoy myself, not to get as good as possible as quickly as possible.

I also do run-throughs at speed to make sure my fingerings are sufficient; at slower speeds everything works

Also I'd have them try setting the metronome to half speed so it counts the 2 and the 4. It forces you to internally feel the downbeat. Plus it's nice to switch things up during your practice session.

double speed?

Half. For instance, if the tune is at 100, set the metronome at 50. And that’s your two and four. The one and the three are in the silence/your body. It ends up at the same tempo.

Right. Not enough coffee when I commented

Not sure how old your son is, but this is what I'm doing with my 5 year old with the same issue. Find some good old-school funk from the late '70s / early '80s with a four-on-the-floor type of drum beat. Zapp, Cameo, Gap Band, or something like that. Get your son to count along "1-2-3-4" with each of the beats and clap his hands on "2" and "4". Once he's reliable at doing that when you don't start it for him, then get him to stomp his foot on "1" and "3", or just "1". Once he's got that down, there are all sorts of things you can do. He can copy rhythms you clap, or if he's good with notation, he can practice writing down a rhythm you clap.

Alternatively, you could always get him drum lessons. This is the meat and potatoes of what a good drum teacher would cover.

Play with him together. Ask him to play a very easy bass line while you are playing / improvising a simple melody, and then change. Do no stop when he stops. Keep the time rigorously and request that from him. My teachers lesson always starts with such a simple improvisation together. It is fun and he will learn a lot.

For improving rhythm I really like this book by Uwe Kropinski and highly recommend it:

https://www.kropinski.com/english/timing-problems-getting-in...

> If you look up "Victor Wooten Music Lesson" on YouTube

I can't recommend Victor Wooten enough. His book "The Music Lesson" is also great.

As a music student at a conservatory, I believe this is true in that setting as well! (Though I would say feel is more important than intonation, as long as a baseline level of intonation is in place, and of course ideally you have both)

It's of course my own interpretation of what's important about music, but I've found that an arrangement sounds better if everyone's in tune and playing robotically than if everyone's out of tune and playing with a lot of passion. You kind of said it with "as long as a baseline level of intonation is in place"; if someone's playing way out of tune but with a lot of feel and passion... you get folk punk and "gifted kid" middle school folk ensembles.