Enjoy the Process

Learning to play the piano is a huge passion for a lot of people and no-one suddenly wakes up one morning and declares that they are going to learn, without ever thinking about it for some considerable time beforehand. Because people who decide to start to learn to play the piano are doing so from a real desire, the process of learning can be long, challenging and hard. It can also be quite annoying and frustrating at times. Maybe sometimes it feels even maddening. I think that the more you desire to play the piano the greater the urgency to improve and unfortunately, the greater the pressure you can put yourself under to not only learn but learn quickly.

What is so very important to remember is that you need to enjoy the process of learning to play the piano. You need to make sure that you are enjoying your daily (or almost daily) practice. So whether you are practicing as a beginner or an experienced musician, you need to take enjoyment in both what you are playing and any progress that you make.

I understand just how frustrating it can be when you are nowhere near your goal. I understand because I have seen it with so many of my studnets over the years and I have also lived it myself.

It is good to have a big goal that you are aiming for, but in the day to day practice, you almost have to let go of the big goal and just focus on the small goals, such as making sure that chord transition is seemless or that wrong note in the right hand is corrected in that piece of music.

What is also necessary is trying to enjoy the parts of learning that you don’t really like. For instance, when I was forced to learn scales (which I’m glad of now), I thought they were boring, but when I started kind of making a competition with myself as to how fast and how smooth I could make my scales, I found that they were much less tedious and annoying. I actually got myself to the point where I no longer disliked practicing them.

Learning to play the piano is not the easiest set of skills to master and it does take a number of years to get good at it. The trick, though, is to try and enjoy everything that you are practicing and to also to appreciate and enjoy any and all improvements. By doing these two things, it will help you to stay motivated and keen to practice regularly over time, so that you can achieve your ultimate goal of being able to play the piano well.