Alex McDonald on avoiding injury, and why playing loud teaches you to play soft
The pianist and teacher on injuries, rest, hidden tension and why loud practice helps soft playing.
Alex McDonald is a pianist who competed in the 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and was inducted into Steinway’s Teacher Hall of Fame in 2023. He teaches at McDonald Music Studios in North Texas.
Here are fourteen of his best tips, from his Piano Star Masterclass on avoiding and recovering from injuries on Piano League.
1. To play soft, practice loud
Sometimes to practice softer or to play softer, I will actually practice really, really loud. Sounds totally weird, makes no sense, right? It’s like, in order to be hungry, I will eat or something. Well, what it does is it activates the fingertips, it makes them more alert.
Alex McDonald
2. If you can’t rest, you can’t heal
If you can’t find yourself or successfully become what you are, then you can end up feeling like you have failed at life, and this can result in a lot of overwork and the inability to rest. If you can’t rest, you can’t heal.
Alex McDonald
3. Let the soil recover
I like to look back to the wisdom of the ancient Hebrews, who would even give the land a whole year off. It could just grow whatever it wanted to grow for a year, and it was actually very wise: the soil regained nutrients. I think similarly we have to find healthy work-rest patterns so that our body has a chance to recover. If you’re practicing an octave etude for four hours straight, you are asking for it.
Alex McDonald
4. Don’t binge practice, then binge rest
So the solution for her was not finding a more efficient way to move her wrists. It was just making sure that she didn’t get into this unhealthy pattern of binge practicing because I have a deadline, and then binge resting: oh, I have to recover. You want to try to find healthy consistency. So look for consistent work and consistent rest.
Alex McDonald
5. Watch for the tension that feels normal
If we’ve always felt a certain amount of tension, we might not realize that we’re feeling tension, because it’s what’s normal to us. We don’t know what it’s like to be without that tension, because it’s just always there.
Alex McDonald
6. Don’t let your technique become a straitjacket
I don’t think it’s a good thing if your technique becomes a straitjacket. If you have a technique that says you must only move your fingers but you cannot move your arm, that’s a straitjacket. If you have a technique that says you must move your arm, do not lift your fingers or something horrible will happen to you, that’s a straitjacket.
Alex McDonald
7. A quarter on the wrist can backfire
Now that has translated for some people to a stiff wrist. Here’s the thing: you don’t know that it’s going to translate to a stiff wrist when you’re teaching a five-year-old. You don’t know that in 15 years they’re going to not know how to release their wrist and end up becoming very tense.
Alex McDonald
8. Listening to your body is a skill
Listening to the body takes a lot of self-discipline. It’s not as easy as it sounds. I think it takes really several years of just, as you’re playing, saying: how does this feel? Could this feel better?
Alex McDonald
9. Listen to your mind too
I think anxiety has a way of increasing tension as well, and so it’s really worth taking stock to see: am I feeling really anxious, am I feeling defeated by music or by life? Because these things can really have an impact on our ability to release, to not hold things down, to be able to move exactly the amount we want to move and no further.
Alex McDonald
10. If you’re injured, build your own cocktail
If you are injured, research different treatments. Don’t settle on just one and say this is the one that’s going to get me there. Most people I’ve talked to that were injured had to kind of create their own cocktail of approaches.
Alex McDonald
11. Come back a minute at a time
I was allowed to practice at first six minutes a day, in three two-minute sets. I remember after my first set I realized that I’d accidentally gone two minutes and 30 seconds. I was like, no, I just went 25 percent too long in my first set, I have to be more careful. It was just a very long, long journey. If I felt okay, I was allowed to add one minute.
Alex McDonald
12. Others may not feel as easy as they look
Sometimes when we watch other people play, it just looks like they have no trouble, and then we look at ourselves and we think, oh, woe is me, I cannot do it. But we don’t know what they actually feel. We only know what we feel ourselves.
Alex McDonald
13. Give your left hand extra help
I always find that if I have a left-hand melody, I have to bring it out more than I would bring out a right-hand melody. Something about the way we humans are, I think we’re just more likely to hear a melody in the right hand than we are in the left hand. We have to try a little extra hard.
Alex McDonald
14. Don’t serve chips with a side of chips
You don’t want just a chip, right? Something to go with it. It’s like, what if I said I would like to serve you chips with a side of chips, and here’s a bowl of little crumbly chips that you can dip your chips into, extra crunchy. It just gets weird, right?
Alex McDonald
Quotes are lightly edited for length and clarity. They come from Alex McDonald’s 2020 Piano Star Masterclass on avoiding and recovering from injuries. You can watch the full masterclass on the Piano League YouTube channel.
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