Piano Practice Ideas for Adults (and Children)

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Children rarely master the idea of how to practice, but that is no surprise since kids are just learning how to approach both tasks and their completion. A child’s piano lesson can subtly become practicing, and an experienced  children’s piano teacher knows that lesson/practice may be all the child gets that week.

But adults are used to budgets, routines and constraints, and are actually better candidates for real progress at the piano than children because of their acceptance of self-discipline.

But what discipline? Routine is fine if you’re certain a routine will give the results expected. If you go to a conservatory, you have the skills already to carry out whatever routine they give you. And they give you the routine, exactly. Follow it and you may succeed.

The simplest overview of learning a specific song is this:

1. Notes: learn the notes and their location. Memorize them.
2. Assign fingers to produce the notes more efficiently. Use them consistently.
3. Correct the rhythm.
4. Find the worst places and refine them before endlessly playing the easy parts. Don’t just play what you can play. Play what you can’t play.
5. Join all the parts together, easy and difficult, and repeat #4 until perfect.

But what if you’re a beginner, with no skills and no experience? What if you have no teacher to guide you in every move?

What exactly do you do during each repetition?

What basic ideas are common to practicing as a whole, and which of them can you apply to yourself without a piano teacher? In other words, what was the hypothetical teacher thinking when they devised your routine?

1. Discern two types of playing: either play through a piece for continuity, or stop and start to clean passages. They are entirely different approaches and if you confuse the two you will waste time and effort. Beginners always start at the beginning, play through the piece, and then wonder why it isn’t any better.
2. Find the place in the piece that is most difficult, and play ONLY that part for a while, a day, five minutes, whatever you can stand. Isolate the spot. Do not ignore it like dreaded homework. Face it straight on, persistently, even when no progress appears.
3. Relieve the stress of playing the hard parts by playing the easy parts.
4. Play hands separately on difficult passages until you have some sense of control.
5. Play slower than necessary. Never play faster than you can control without major errors. Most time is wasted playing things too fast and then you learn nothing from that repetition except how to fail at the passage. The answer is always, “Play slowly until you have control.” Make each repetition count.

The most important practice rules are to embrace and play the hard parts, and to play everything slower generally.

All of these ideas apply to adults, and to children of all types as well, provided you simplify the commands and expectations. For example, with children, the “easy” parts are just as difficult, and you’d be well advised to apply these ideas to the easiest passage first before you attempt any higher level of difficulty.

Don’t just start from the beginning every time. Find what’s broken and go and fix it, and it is rarely the beginning of the song.

Here’s a good book to get started with if you’re an adult and you like classical piano:

http://pianoiseasy2.com/easyclassical.html