Progress

I've been playing piano since I was in middle school. My grandmother taught me. I played all the classics—Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin. I learned to play pieces exactly the way they were supposed to be played, according to the sheet music. Even though my grandmother taught me some theory, I didn't really understand music theory. I didn't need music theory to play those pieces.

A couple of years ago I noticed that even though I played these pieces, I barely understood what was happening. Why is this chord here? What's the voicing? How is this compared to the next chord? That's when I decided to take piano lessons again. I wanted to get an understanding of why a musician chose to write a piece a certain way.

I am now learning to play pieces by ear. I first try to find the key by listening to the bass notes. The bass note determines the key a chord is in. Learning to play by ear practically means that I listen to a note, stop the music, humm the note, and then find the matching note on the piano. Then all that's left is to find the right voicing. This might not make sense to you if you know nothing about music theory.

I play piano (almost) every day. Playing piano can be very boring. Whether that's through playing by ear or by sheet music. If you really want to be good at playing a piece, it might mean that you have to play that piece well over a hundred times.

Most days you will not feel like you make any progress. Some days I just practice because I have another lesson at the end of the week.

This experience perfectly illustrates what James Clear describes in "Atomic Habits" as the "plateau of latent potential." Clear explains how often we expect progress to be linear, but real improvement works more like an ice cube melting. You can heat an ice cube from -4ºC to -1ºC and see no change, but at 0ºC, it suddenly starts melting. All that work from -4 to -1 was necessary for the breakthrough at 0.

What recently happened was that playing by ear began to click. I can't really explain what that click means. I got over a point where it was suddenly way easier to find notes. You get to the next level of hearing things. I was listening to an intermediate piece and got the right chords within half an hour.

This is exactly what Clear calls the "breakthrough moment". It's when all those moments of seemingly unproductive work accumulate into something visible.

I've experienced the same pattern multiple times. It's when you have a sudden pace bump when running, and you can run at a higher speed but at the same heart rate. I'm lifting weights and I can suddenly add another 10 kg. Or programming concepts that suddenly make sense after months of practicing.

These moments are rare. You'll feel like not making any progress, but you are. The click is right around the corner.