How To Practice The Piano
Improve your piano practice with new these tips, new approaches, and recommendations
Practice makes perfect. But how do you perfect your practice?
I’m a classically trained pianist — with distinctions in all my piano examinations, including ABRSM grade 8 and ATCL diploma, who also enjoys modern and jazz repertoire.
But my practice is far from perfect — to this day I still struggle to stay focused, engaged and motivated. I do know, however, that with the following techniques and approaches honed over many years I have been able to improve my practice, and I hope you can too!
The fundamentals of practice
All too often, students approach new material and are instantly overwhelmed by the length and complexity of the music, leaving them disheartened and frustrated. To overcome this, when you approach any new material, take a listen to a recording on YouTube, Spotify, or Naxos, and split the music up into small, manageable chunks, clearly labelling each section with brackets on the sheet music. Every time you sit down to practice take one section at a time and play it until you are happy to move on. Don’t be tempted to skip forward and play the next section, or worse — play the entire piece poorly over and over again (I am sometimes guilty of this!).
Do establish a practice schedule, nothing detailed mind you. Its purpose is simply to make you accountable — list the piece, section, goals and target duration of practice.
How often and for how long?
I strongly believe teachers should encourage a sustainable, long-term approach to practice — one where students progress at a suitable pace whilst hopefully enjoying it more and more each day.
I recommend students plan for manageable chunks of effective and productive practice each day. The student should be in a focused state, attempting to maximise their engagement with the material. I am cautious to suggest an exact duration of practice as the quality is far more important than the amount of time. I think the student should judge it themselves, stopping as their focus declines, leaving practice ineffective. Splitting up your daily practice into more manageable chunks in the morning and evening for example can help too, especially for beginner pianists.
The merits of daily practice cannot be understated! This approach will return far greater success than two, three or four hours of disengaged, ineffectual practice. Like many things in life, smaller durations of focus tend to produce greater results — the piano is no different in my experience.
My top tips
I won’t be delving into specific techniques for scales, arpeggios, ornaments etc. Instead, I want to give my top eight tips for learning/practicing any new material on the piano. When learning and playing material keep these tips in mind and you should see improvements!
- Warm-up
Whilst often neglected, a warm-up is a great way to prime yourself for an effective practice session — 5–10 minutes for a beginner/intermediate, and 20 mins for a more advanced pianist will more than suffice. I recommend playing through a few scales — similar motion, contrary motion, chromatic, arpeggios and thirds, on different notes of the scale and for varying number of octaves. If you are more advanced, play around with exercises from Czerny or Hanon but only if you feel comfortable — I recommend Czerny Op. 299 and Op. 337 if you can get hold of them.
2. Engage in what you are playing
It’s so important that students truly engage with what they are playing. I find it’s the loss of engagement with a piece, often after months or years of a playing it repeatedly, that audiences pick up on in a performance.
First, try and find a location in your house or practice space where you can remain uninterrupted by parents or siblings. I understand that in a busy family setting this can be hard but try your best. Perhaps look at investing in a decent digital keyboard that you could play in your room, undisturbed.
Most importantly, students should only select repertoire they truly enjoy playing and are passionate about, no matter their level of ability. Sure, it’s helpful to play pieces that improve your technique and test your musicality, but it’s crucial the majority of your practice is filled with music that motivates you and thus keeps you engaged.
3. SLOW practice
Slowing down is a great way to overcome challenging sections in your playing. Even when you have prepared a piece to performance standard, go back and play it at 1/4 or 1/2 of the full tempo — you should become acutely aware of how different the sound is, and it may inspire new musical choices. Also play around with hands separately and start at different points within the music to add variety.
4. Experiment with a different style
Sometimes a fresh perspective helps when learning new material — if you are playing a Bach Prelude for example, experiment with playing it in a swung, jazz style, or barcarolle. I’ve found experimenting with different rhythms to be particularly rewarding.
5. Make use of the metronome
The metronome is a great piece of kit that every pianist should make full use of. I particularly recommend its application when a student has got to grips with the basic material (hand positioning, fingering, dynamics, etc.) and now wants to increase the tempo up to performance speed. Select a small passage of the music, find the speed you are comfortable with and gradually increase the tempo over time. A physical metronome has the added benefit of notches with progressive speed increments, but a digital one can work well too.
6. Learn when to stop and move on
Forgive yourself and accept that you won’t necessarily be able to pick up a passage of music instantly! Too often students set too high expectations for themselves and burn out. If it comes to that point, I’ve found that taking time away from the piano is effective by doing something completely different — for me that may well be hitting the gym but do whatever you enjoy. Later that day, take another look at your material but away from the piano, and decide on the best strategy to reapproach the music.
It’s also important to recognise when you have reached the point of diminishing returns, musically speaking, with a passage. At that point, it’s important to recognise that the rate of improvement is slowing down, and you may want to adjust your approach to practice accordingly.
7. Practice away from the piano
Hear me out on this one. After you next practice, listen to three different recordings of the section/piece you just practiced and visualise yourself playing it with the sheet music in front of you. In the past I’ve found this helps in a performance, where I will actively listen to what I am playing and relate to the recordings I’ve heard. Other teachers have also mentioned to me that practicing the fingering of a section away from the piano can also help!
8. Record yourself
This is a tip I have recently began to employ — just grab your smartphone and record yourself playing a new piece/section, then on another day and before your next practice session, review the footage and jot down some notes on where to improve — technicalities, musical choices, voicing, phrasing etc. Recording also primes you for a performance setting, where you only have one chance to play your best.
Good luck employing the approaches and techniques I have suggested and feel free to get in touch with comments and further suggestions!
Billy Baker (billybakermusic.com)
