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Here are
several tips to help you
practice more
effectively.
1.
Go easy on yourself and
ease up on your
expectations.
Remember, playing the piano is
supposed to be fun. (Why do you
think they call it "playing"
the piano?) Feeling pressured
to improve your skills on a
self-imposed timetable will
only create frustration and
eventually you may stop playing
altogether. Your playing skills
will not improve in a linear
line in other words, your
skills will improve more on a
chart that looks like the Dow
Jones average.
2.
Occasionally recognize
your accomplishments.
The tendency we all have to is
compare ourselves to other
pianists who are more advanced.
This is good if it keeps you
motivated to continue
practicing. But, I encourage
you to also, often, compare
yourself to where you were last
month, or last year, and feel
proud for what you can do
now.
3.
5-minute rule: don't
put off practicing because you
don't have a full 30 minutes,
or other self-imposed time
frame. The 5-minute
rule is an agreement you make
with yourself (and it can be
used everyday). If you feel
that you don't have enough time
to practice, or youre too
tired, stressed, hyper, sleepy,
etc. to play, then tell
yourself that you only have to
practice for 5 minutes at that
particular time. Run through a
quick warm-up and then practice
a song, a passage, a finger
drill, a chord progression, but
practice something with
purpose. After 5 minutes, you
can quit and will have
ethically lived up to your
agreement. Or, you may continue
playing, knowing that you have
not tricked yourself into
practicing more but are
practicing because of your own
free will.
4.
Get in the habit of
always warming up.
Even if you only have a few
minutes to play the piano, at
least loosen your fingers
through the 5-finger warm-ups,
and/or one or two Hanons,
and/or a scale and/or arpeggios
and/or inversions,
etc.
5.
Practice alone, if
possible. (I encourage
you to occasionally play for
family or friends, but playing
and practicing are two
different things.) If you have
an electronic piano or
keyboard, get a pair of
headphones so that you can play
when others are
around.
6.
Practice two different
ways:
a.
Keep your eyes on the
music. When playing
etudes and other written
pieces, practice reading
skips and steps and other
intervals rather than
looking at your hands.
Youll soon have an
excellent sense of keyboard
geography and wont get lost
as when you constantly look
down at your hands and back
at the
music.
b.
Practice without
music. You can look at
your hands then! (Liberace
watched his hands all the
time, but who wouldnt?!?
Maybe he was just looking
at his rings.) Its
important that you spend
some time playing without
reading music. Regularly
practice chords, chord
drills and chord
progressions without
looking at the music. If
you read it, you can't hear
it, so you can't play
it. In other words,
when reading a song, its
easy to be so intent on
getting the correct notes,
fingering, rhythm, etc.
that you won't even hear
what you're playing. This
makes for very mechanical
music not to mention that
it gets boring after
awhile. By playing chords
and progressions without
the music, youll find you
play songs written songs
easier, you'll develop your
ear and get better at
playing by ear, and you'll
enjoy it
immensely.
7.
Practice songs in
sections: divide a
song in halves or thirds or
even quarters, or the verse and
chorus. Isolate difficult parts
and play them several times
even if its as short as two
notes that your fingers can't
seem to coordinate.
8.
Occasionally, start
your practice session at a
different part of the
music. We tend to
always start at the beginning,
which is often easier than a
later section. Every time we
play it, the beginning gets
smoother, and we slide through
a later, more challenging
section. There are many songs
we never really learn to play
through completely.
9.
Practice each hand
separately first until
you're comfortable playing that
section. Practice until each
hand can comfortably play at
the required tempo. Put your
hands together after youre
fairly comfortable playing them
separately, and occasionally,
practice hands separately
again.
10.
Play as
fast as you can. You
may have heard advice to
practice slowly until you can
play smoothly and then increase
your speed. It is a fact that a
certain amount of slow practice
and attention to detail is
absolutely necessary. And you
should never perform a
song faster than you can play
the most difficult part in
other words, the tempo should
be consistent. However, slow
practice doesnt allow a chance
to develop fluidity involving
shading, dynamics, phrasing
differences in touch and
rhythmic vitality. Here are a
few tips concerning tempo when
practicing:
a.
Take a section of the song,
play it slowly at first,
but then try it at the
suggested tempo, or at
least close to it. If you
stumble, try again. Then go
back to the slower tempo.
You can play a short
section 20 times in a few
minutes at one sitting and
even memorize the section.
Then at the same sitting or
another time, start another
short section. This is more
effective than learning the
whole song slowly then
gradually speeding
up.
b.
At times, practice sections
faster than the suggested
tempo and, when proficient,
you'll be amazed at how
easy it is to play it at
the correct
tempo.
By
practicing sections this
way, you will get more of a
feel of the song when you
start putting them
together. You may change
your mind about how to play
the song as new sections
are added this is
interpretation.
11.
Memorize
a piece as you are learning to
play it. You may not
want to memorize every song you
play, but there will be some
that you definitely want in
your repertoire. A mistake many
students make (I know I did
this) is to think, "I'll
memorize the song after I learn
to play it." But, to memorize a
song you have learned to play
will require almost as much
times as it took to learn it in
the first place. It may
surprise you to find how
difficult it is to play a
section without looking that
you can already read well. When
working on any particular
section, spend a few minutes
playing the section without
looking at the music. At first,
you may have to look at the
music over and over just to
play 3 or 4 notes. In a few
days or weeks of practicing a
section, try to have it
memorized, even if you still
struggle to play it at tempo.
Memorizing sections this way
will help you when you're
playing chords and chord
progression without music.
You'll have your own bag of
memorized licks that will
sometimes come out when you're
not expecting them.
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