Piano Video Lesson: How to play the Ocean Etude Op. 25 No. 12 by Chopin

Take your mind and focus on the things you want in life. It's the one thing we all have control of is your thoughts.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. Robert Estrin here with one of the most important aspects of your piano practice which is think the correction not the mistake.

How many times do I tell students this? They're adolescent, they miss something, go, oh what did I do wrong there? Let me find the mistake and I stop them in their tracks and say think the correction not the mistake. Why is this so important? Well, what you think about manifests itself.

This goes not just for your piano practice, it goes for performance also.

If for example you have a performance coming up and you're thinking about oh man what's going to happen if I mess up? Oh man it would be horrible if I play wrong notes. Oh I hope I don't forget something.

And you just keep thinking those thoughts.

You know what's going to happen when you get to that performance? You're going to mess up, you're going to forget things, you're going to do exactly what you told yourself you would do. Remember this, self -talk you believe what you say. You do. You'll take it to heart whatever it is. So you have to absolutely flip your thinking.

Only think the correction in your music. When you miss something where was that? What is the right note there? That's the question to ask yourself.

Concentrate on the correction. Oh is a D sharp there, D sharp.

Ah that's it and understand the correction in context. Okay it's a B dominant seventh chord, of course it's a D sharp there.

And cement that in your thinking. And this goes as I said about anything you're doing in music, of course this goes for life itself. People who keep thinking of the negative thing like oh man I shouldn't have that bag of chips, it's ten o 'clock at night, I shouldn't do that, I shouldn't do that, oh man if I eat that I'm going to be so, oh. You keep thinking about it. You know if you're like ah forget about it I'm just going to have the damn bag of chips.

Don't think about it. Think about how good you feel that not having those chips. Think about anything else. Think about something productive. Maybe if it's not too late sit down with a piano and do something. Read a book.

Take your mind and focus on the things you want in life. It's the one thing we all have control of is your thoughts and what you think about manifests itself in your life and in your music. And that's a lesson for today. Take it to heart. It can really make a huge difference in your music and in your life. Thanks again, I'm Robert Estrin. This is LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource. See you next time.

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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