- Students should learn to LISTEN to what they are playing.
- Creativity is hand-in-hand with talent.
- Hard work can truly pay off more than mere talent.
- Help with nerves: "If you have practiced the best you can and have done everything you know how to do right, then you deserve to perform your very best."
Arthur Rubenstein:
- "I have found that if you love life, life will love you back."
Rachmaninoff:
- "The most efficient manner in learning to memorize a piece seems to be the one which proceeds in an error-free manner."
New York professor:
- "If what you are playing is recognizable, then you are playing it too fast."
- Mozart was known to repeat a musical passage 10 times during practice. His father would place 10 dried peas in Wolfgang's left coat pocket and after each successful attempt, a pea would be moved to the right pocket. Of course any failure--even on the 10th repetition--would mean all the peas were moved back to the left pocket and young Wolfgang had to being over again. What encouragement to slow down and play a passage perfectly!
- The best way to practice is 1) with instrument and with music 2) without instrument and with music 3) with instrument and without music 4) without instrument and without music. Try it!
Dr. Richard Anderson:
- The Spirit is what God will ask if we had here on earth, not how proficient we are at something.
A nice quote:
- "You can't improve unless you fail first." What do you think of this?
President Thomas S. Monson:
- Tax your talent.
- Mediocrity will never do.
- Our talents are not ours. Never let pride overcome you.
Dean of BYU:
- If you give talents to the Savior, you will bloom
- Be charitable with others in our musical talents. Only be highly critical of yourself. Be non-judgemental and aggressively humble
Dr. Jeff Shumway:
- Hear the notes before you play. This takes so much concentration
- Don't listen backwards (meaning after you play something. Your focus should be in the present)
- 100 percent fingering and analyzing the music before you play
Henry B. Eyring:
- You can pray to "be lifted above [your] natural abilities."
- "Humility is also the doorway to educational excellence."
- "No problem is too hard for us with his help."
- See how this relates to piano: "The wise learner cares more for the jottings than for the grade at the top of the page. In the same way the wise student of a new language seeks not the tutor who praises whatever they say but one who won't let a mispronounced word or an error in conjugating a verb pass uncorrected."
- "Great learners are careful about what commitments they make and then keeping them."
- "When people quit working they quit learning, which is one of the hazards of getting too much recognition early in a career and taking it too seriously."
- "You will notice that the learners who can sustain that power to work hard over a lifetime generally don't do it for grades or to make tenure in a university or for prizes in the world. Something else drives them. For some it may be an innate curiosity to see how things work."
- "Those who learn most over long lives seem to have a generous view of others, both in what they can learn from other people and the capacity others have to learn. Those who can't suffer fools gladly become more foolish themselves. They have shut themselves off from what they can learn from others. Those who learn best seem to see that everyone they meet knows something they don't and may have a capacity they don't have. Because of that you will find that the best learners make the best company."
- "Some learning has been easy for you. But more often your enemy has been discouragement. You may try to avoid that by choosing to learn only what is easy for you, looking for the path of least resistance. But the great learner expects difficulty as part of learning and is determined to work through it."
Dr. Paul Pollei:
- You never know something until it is completely comfortable
- The secret of learning is in the drill
- Both feet are always in front of the pedals. No exception.
- Put the pedal(s) down before you start playing
- You will be a genius if you copy 4 measures of music each day
Rosalind Hall:
- It is always more fun to be excellent!
- How much extra effort does it take to do it right the first time?
- When you are capable of that, you should never do anything less.
