HOW to Practice the Piano

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Practicing the piano involves sitting down at the piano and playing through all that you are working on, right?

You could practice this way and you wouldn’t be wasting your time, but there are several things that you can do that will make your practice more effective. Here are 6 techniques that will help you get the most out of your practice:

  1. If you are having formal lessons, then listen and do what the teacher recommends. I know this is obvious but sometimes the student thinks they know better than the teacher (it is much less likely to happen when the student is an adult, but it does happen sometimes). Most piano teachers have years of experience and they can really give you a lot of hints and tips to make the most of your practice.
  2. Practice when you aren’t in a rush or feeling flustered. Picking a time to practice when you can focus and concentrate on what you are doing is going to maximize your practicing efforts. Also, practicing earlier in the day rather than later when you are feeling tired will also help you get the maximum out of your practice.
  3. Don’t just play through everything once or twice. Certainly it is important to play through what you are working on regularly but if there are bits that you make mistakes in EVERY TIME then spend some time working on those few bars. Go over that section maybe 5, maybe 10 times so that when you play through your piece of music again, then you can hopefully hear an improvement. If you can’t hear an improvement then repeat the step of practicing the few bars that are not working several times before playing the piece as a whole. You might need to do this several times over several days but persist – it is only a matter of time before those ‘not so good bits’ work beautifully.
  4. Sometimes you need to take a break if some part is just not working. Yes practice is the key to success but if you are getting frustrated with a particular piece or section, then either work on something different or get up from the piano and take a walk, have a cup of coffee, do something that will give you a chance to lose your frustration and then come back to the piano and try again.
  5. Don’t always start at the beginning. In my many years of teaching the piano (and I certainly experienced this when I was a student), that in the process of learning, the beginning of a piece of music can sound really wonderful, while the end sounds terrible. The best way to fix this is to sometimes start half way through or three quarters the way through that particular piece of music. Picking a point in the music where it starts to sound ordinary and practicing many times from that point will make the last part improve quicker than always starting at the beginning.
  6. Don’t worry about mistakes. I don’t mean that it doesn’t matter if there are mistakes. What I mean is don’t let it bother you if you are making mistakes as you are learning something new. Mistakes happen, especially when you are a beginner or you are challenging yourself to something harder. MANY MISTAKES WILL HAPPEN – LEARN FROM THEM AND MOVE ON. THEY ARE SIMPLY PART OF THE PROCESS.

I hope these tips will help you get the most out of your practice, so you can reach your goals quicker.