Practicing piano can be a daunting task, especially to beginners. This post will help you navigate how and what to practice.
–Thomas H. Dotson
Independent Practice
When new piano students sit down at their instruments for the first time after a lesson, they often have many questions about how and what to practice. Lessons can provide a false sense of security to new students because their teacher is directing them through every step of playing. However, when they get home, these students forget many of the notes, tips, and information that their teacher has imparted. To remediate this common problem, this blog will guide you through how to start a practice session and how to incorporate an effective routine.
Warming Up
When you first sit down at the piano, you should begin with a quick warm-up. This advice cannot be overstated because so many musicians, especially intermediate musicians, neglect the warm-up phase of their practice in favor of their repertoire. When you warm up, you are not merely warming the muscles and tendons with blood flow, you are allocating time to work a specific technique, theoretical idea, and brain to body coordination. Scales are non-negotiable for pianists. New students should start with scales and then arpeggios. Beginners should start with their five-finger scales around the circle of fifths and arpeggiate the chords in each covered scale. (C, F, G, Am, Dm, Em, etc.).
Playing Repertoire and Assigned Pieces
After sufficiently warming-up, you should open up your method book and play through the pieces for the week. Write down the numerical count of the beats under each note, and write in the alphabetical note names above each note where you need. If you frequently err at a section of the piece, then you should practice the section in phrase chunks. To create phrase chunks, you should divide the section into melody fragments. Remember, this is not an exact science, the intention is to partition the problem into digestible bites. Once divided, you should practice each phrase until you can play it at performance tempo (even if you have to practice each hand separately at this phase). Then you should combine the phrases until you can play the entire section at performance tempo. The last step would be to insert the section back into the piece. Play the piece from the beginning and focus on what you have practiced when you reach that problem section. Continue this process until you reach the end of the piece and can play it thoroughly at performance tempo with a metronome. To improve, we must focus on our errors. This fixation on problems and shortcomings can discourage new piano students, so I exhort you to exercise mercy on yourself while you are eliminating mistakes. Heed the maxim that I divulge to my students, “if we are not challenged, we do not grow.”
Practice Length
A sustainable practice routine lasts between ten minutes and an hour while you are new to the piano. You cannot complete a real task in under ten minutes, and your efficiency will drastically wane after an hour at the piano. If you set a constricting time requirement to your sessions, you will begin to dread practicing piano. Your time at the piano should remain purely fun at the start of your piano journey. This is the discovery period; the honeymoon phase.
Just Keep Listening
To supplement your learning, you should be listening to music whenever you have the chance. We internalize the elements of music when we listen. Deep listening fosters a sort of innate comprehension of music that transcends active study. That is not to say that we should only learn through osmotic listening. In the past, I have inherited several students that could play technically but cannot feel a pulse or intonate a melody back to me. These students learned to play like how a machine performs a task: emotionless and artless. To avoid this fate, we should listen to music to develop our ear and integrate musicality into our playing. While we study piano, we must resist becoming a typewriter pianist and aim higher at becoming full-fledged musicians.
Good luck and happy practicing!
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