How to Practise
It’s obvious how to practise piano isn’t it? Play through your piece again and again, right?
Wrong, I’m afraid.
If this is what you thought practice was and you or your child is are learning to play piano, read on.
Practice is the stumbling block that gets in the way of most people’s learning whether you are currently having face-to-face or online piano lessons (or any music lessons for that matter) thinking of taking them, are self-teaching piano, or learning through a video course, but if you get it right you will reap the rewards. I’m not going to give you shortcuts – they don’t exist – but there are tips that will help you succeed and make the most of your piano practice time.
Firstly, we need to be aware of the difference between practice and performance. When we perform a piece, whether in a professional concert to thousands of people or at the beginning of your lesson for your teacher, or it could be for one other person in your household, or even just for yourself, you want to get all the way through it with no stopping, going back and trying again. Practising on the other hand is very different. It involves lots of stopping and repetition, often of short sections. Playing through the piece in its entirety might then come at the end of your practice session once we have ironed out those parts which needed more work but much of your piano practice will not be playing your piece all through.
So typically, a practice session focusing on a new piece of music might go like this…
Piano Practice Routine
The play-through.
Firstly, play through the whole piece very slowly to get an overview of its character, structure, and the parts that are likely to prove challenging.
Chunk it up
Break your piece up into sections to be conquered one at a time. A wavy line is always my divider between sections. Watch out for any repetition – you probably spotted some in the play through. For example, are the first four bars repeated half way through? If so, you have learnt that chunk already when you get to it. The length of your sections will depend on the length of your piece, your stage of development as a pianist and your personal preference. Go with whatever you are happy with. You’re just making the piece into lots of small digestible, achievable chunks. If you are working on a long classical piano piece or a popular piano song with more than a simple verse and chorus structure you might focus on just one or two small chunks of it in a practice session.
Practice a chunk or chunks
Now comes the real work. Practice the chunk or section you are going to start with today. Do it over and over. Do it in different ways, use the further tips below to really understand how to practice your small chunk(s) in different way, but most importantly, stick to this chunk before you move on.
Stick it back together
Once those sections which you have worked on today are correct you can begin to stick them back together. This is often a gradual process. For example, you may do the first chunk plus the first bar of your next chunk or the last bar of your previous chunk with the whole of the next chunk, then add a little more and a little more to put two or three sections together.
Top Tips for piano Practice
You can try these things for each chunk of music
1. Slow and steady wins the race. Begin practicing your piano piece or small chunk at a very slow pace and gradually build speed. This sounds obvious but can be hard in practice. It takes discipline and patience to play slowly but it pays off.
If you start off at a sprint i.e. You run before you can walk, you’re bound to fall over. It’s just the same with your piano practice….
2. Play hands separately. Practising one hand at a time perhaps for even longer than you think is needed is so valuable. Every run-through of a chunk of music with one hand is helping commit it to your subconscious and making it easier and easier to put it hands-together.
3. Get the notes right first with correct fingering from the start so you don’t create incorrect ‘muscle memory.’
4. Next conquer the rhythm (but stay slow). You may want to tap out the rhythm off the piano before adding the notes to it.
5. Then add in other details like dynamics or expression marks like staccato.
6. Finally put the two hands together (slower than you did one hand). You may want to go back to focusing on one aspect of the piece at a time at this stage – i.e. Getting the correct pitches first, then the correct rhythm, then correct expression etc.
7. Challenge yourself – randomly choose a particular bar or phrase to play.
My last word on practising is this: do little and often. Especially youngsters will find it much more productive to do 5 minutes every day rather than half an hour the night before their next lesson. Of course, if you’re learning piano as an adult or teenager you will find rewards in longer practice sessions which is great, but try not to leave long gaps between them.
Happy practising!