“Now go home and do some piano practice”. - OK, but how exactly? Get some tried and tested practice ideas here!
Actually, I didn't start learning proper piano practice techniques myself until I started teaching piano.
Some people have the ability to practice and get great results without having learned much about how to practice, that is true. But most people don’t.
After more than 25 years of teaching piano, I find it is absolutely essential for all piano students to learn about effective practice routines and how to practice as soon as possible.
And still I notice that practicing the piano is somehow assumed to just work by itself, as if every piano student was born with a “how to know how to practice” gene!
So, here are some more tips on how to practice with more efficiency and better results!
I can really recommend: The Musicians Way, it's a book crammed with great tips and plans on how to organize your practice. It has inspired me and my teaching a lot.
I like my students to work on several pieces at once.
Different repertoire, etudes and exercises, scales and chords, some prima vista and chord piano for example.
This can be rather a lot of material to work on, and can lead to confusion unless the material and the practice time is organized.
It is common to start the piano practice session with some form of warm up, scales and chord practice is good for example.
If working on any particular exercises for piano technique, this is good to do first as well.
Next, the study of repertoire. These 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, I have found this plan below to be of big help.
Each piano piece needs to be taken through 6 different levels.
This part of the piano practice is done in your mind, away from the piano.
Patience! Even though you now may feel so revved up you’d love to just start playing the piece hands together- DON’T!!
Your goal is to learn each hand separately, slowly 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 every day until you can play the whole piece hands separately in full tempo.
Finally you are “allowed” to play both hands together. But remember my simple formula?
"The speed which you can play hands separately must now be halved."
This will feel very slow, but will make it possible to play without mistakes.
Work section by section 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 have learned the whole piece slowly hands together.
Again, using the smaller or medium sized sections, with the metronome gradually build up tempo until you can play the whole piece full tempo with both hands.
Congrats! Record or video tape yourself and evaluate what you need to improve.
A very successful way of practicing is to use random, or interleaved practice. Learn more about an interleaved piano practice routine here.
Learning how to memorize the piece is something that comes easily for about 50% of people, and harder for the other 50%.
For some of you, you will already have learned the piece by heart by now.
The rest of us, back again to the smaller sections.
Although it will go faster now, you need to patiently go through each section and learn each hand separately by heart, then both, repeat and rinse for each smaller then larger section.
Once a piece is memorized, it will only stay that way if you review it occasionally.
Here are tips on how to deal with performance preparation and how to manage stage fright: 10 tips to overcome stage fright.
To keep several pieces organized regarding level of “readiness”, I keep a simple folder with the different levels written out as dividers.
Once a piece “graduates” from one level to the next, I simply move it to the next level.
I try to have at least one piece, repertoire and etudes, on each level.
This keeps the piano practice varied and more fun.
Give it a try and let me know if this piano practice plan worked for you!
Subscribe to our eZine "The Piano Player", and get updates with tips and tools for beginner piano players. You'll get a free e-book with piano playing tips too!
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." ~Mark Twain
Have a favorite quote that inspire your piano playing? Please share it here!
Comments
Have your say about what you just read! Leave me a comment in the box below.