Topic: Piano practice with Pianoteq
I've been meaning to share my experiences with piano practice with the forum for a while now, but haven't found the time; a recent query about learning again has prompted me to get on with it!
For years I've known that when learning a new work, practicing hands separately until each hand is up to speed, or even faster, and only then attempting hands together, is the quickest way of getting the music into one's hands. The problem for me was always that I would get bored very quickly, especially when practicing LH, and couldn't resist putting hands together long before I was ready, and then not getting anywhere. Recently I installed PT in Garageband, and while mucking around with a Bach Organ Prelude that needed a third hand to play the pedal notes realised that I could use GB to practice hands separately without getting bored. Now what I do is set up a metronome click in the tempo that I think I can cope with, record maybe a page of the RH on one track, then play it back over headphones while playing and recording the LH. GB will provide a bar of count-in if you need it. Then I erase the RH track and rerecord it while listening to the LH track. Straight away I'm hearing hands together while practicing hands separately. Playing like this is great fun, there's an immediate sense of achievement, and I can practice for hours like this. There are other advantages to this approach; as I get more accomplished I can edge up the metronome marking; the metronome forces me through the music, which improves my reading skills; it also gives me a sense of pulse that I can return to once the music is in my hands (listening to recordings of myself playing it's not always clear to me what my base tempo actually is!). Before I left the UK to work in Holland I opened up Beethoven's Andante Favori, something I've always wanted to play but never got anywhere with; by the end of the evening I was past the first page hands separately. Now I'm longing to get back to London to continue my pianoteq practice. Hmm, I wonder if anyone's using that Yamaha keyboard in the Auditorium...