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Here are tried and tested piano practice tips and exercises to help you get better results and improve the effectiveness of your practice.
I like my students to work on several pieces at once. We work on different types of repertoire, etudes, exercises, scales, chords, sight-reading, and chord piano, for example.
This can be a lot of material to work on and can lead to confusion unless the material and the practice time are organized.
Let's start the piano practice session with some form of warm-up.
Scales and chord practice, for example. If you are working on any particular exercises for piano technique, do this first as well.
Next comes the study of repertoire.
Your pieces will be in different levels of completion, so to create a sense of where you are with each piece and to quickly assess what needs to be done, the piano practice tips below are of immense help.
I recommend The Musicians Way, a book crammed with great tips and plans for organizing your practice. It has inspired me and my teaching a lot.
Also, The Practice Revolution: Getting great results from the six days between lessons is a fun resource for kids and adults.
Here are piano practice tips in a plan that you can work with step by step.
Each piano piece will be worked on through 6 different levels:
This part of the piano practice is done in your mind, away from the piano.
Have patience! Even though you now may feel so revved up, you’d love to start playing the piece hands together- DON’T!!
Your goal is to learn each hand separately, slowly, and then at tempo.
Once you can play the whole piece hands separately slowly without mistakes, learn how to use a metronome to gradually increase speed a little daily.
Do this until you can play the whole piece hands separately in full tempo.
Finally, you are “allowed” to play with both hands together. Use this simple formula:
"The speed you can play your hands separately must be halved when playing both together."
This will feel very slow but will make it possible to coordinate both hands without mistakes.
Work each small section by section, coordinating both hands like this:
Master, and then combine the small sections like this:
Continue until you have learned the whole piece. Then combine the larger sections: A+B and C+D, etc., until you slowly master everything with both hands.
Again, working with the smaller or medium-sized sections, work with the metronome to gradually build up the tempo until you can play the whole piece in full tempo with both hands.
Congrats! Record or videotape yourself and evaluate what you need to improve.
More Piano Practice Tips: A very successful way of practicing is to use random or interleaved practice. Learn more about an interleaved piano practice routine here.
Learning to memorize music is easier for some people and more challenging for others.
If you are lucky to belong to the latter category, you will already have learned the piece by heart by now!
For the rest of us, it's back again to the smaller sections...
Although it will be easier now, you must patiently go through each section as you did before. But this time, memorize each hand separately, then both, and rinse and repeat each section as before.
Once a piece is memorized, it will only stay that way if you review it occasionally.
I hope this gave you some tips on how to practice more effectively!
Found a great way to practice? Share your favorite piano practice tips or a practice routine that works well for you. Maybe you can help someone else with a problem? You can also add a helpful comment!
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Why After Practicing Do I Make Mistakes When Performing? Not rated yet
I would like to know why after carefully practicing a piece of music and feeling that I have mastered it, I then find myself making mistakes in performance. …