In my article Practice Tips I outlined some basic principles of practising the piano. In this article I go into a bit more detail about how you can make your practice even more effective.
Practise hands separately until you can play each hand fluently and easily with very few mistakes. Aim to get to the stage where you are anticipating what comes next instead of fumbling or struggling to find the next note in time. Work on the rhythm of each separate hand in several ways: 1. Tap out the rhythm on your knee or the piano lid while counting the beats. 2. Clap the beats while saying the note names out loud in the correct rhythm. For example if your first note is an E which is held for two beats, followed by two Cs for one beat each, you would clap the four beats evenly while saying the letter names E C C but give the E two claps and the Cs one clap each. This helps you learn to read the notes more quickly as well as improving your rhythm. 3. Play one hand while tapping the beats with the other hand, or counting out loud. 4. Sing the melody out loud or in your head while tapping the beats.
Reinforce your learning of the melody and harmony by playing the left hand accompaniment (if the accompaniment is in the left hand) while singing the right hand melody out loud or in your head. This achieves two main things: 1. It develops your confidence and technique in the left hand because you are playing it more than the right hand. This is beneficial if you are right handed - the less dominant hand often needs more practice. Even with left handed people, it can be harder to interpret and makes sense of the left hand because it is usually more of an accompaniment and less melodic than the right hand. I often find this is the case with left handed pupils, not just right handed ones. Therefore, more left hand practice seems to benefit most people. 2. Singing the melody instead of playing it improves your awareness of the note patterns on the page and how they translate into sound, which reinforces your memory of the melody. Singing this melody while playing the harmony helps you to develop awareness of the sounds of simultaneous parts, and to think of simultaneous parts independently of one another, whilst being able to coordinate them.
Once each separate hand is fluent, put the piece hands together one bar at a time. Play the left hand of the first bar a couple of times, then the right hand of the same bar a couple of times, then attempt this bar hands together, very slowly. Do the same with the next bar. Then practise these first two bars together a few times. Move on to bars 3 and 4, and do the same. Carry on building up the piece in this way.
Don't just practise the piece from the beginning, but also practise from the end working your way backwards. I.e. play the last bar a few times, then the last two bars a few times, then the last three bars a few times etc. It is a very common problem for the ending of a piece to be less well known than the beginning and for it to gradually get less and less fluent as you go along. Practising backwards in this way helps avoid this problem. I have mentioned the benefits of practising backwards in this article too: Nerves When Performing Piano.
Practise phrase by phrase. Take one phrase and work on it as a single unit, aiming to get it flowing and keep going right to the end of the phrase. Think of the shape of the phrase and inflections within it, singing it in your head as you go along so that you can better understand how to communicate the expression. Imagine if you were singing it, and how you would breathe. Most likely you would aim to sing the whole phrase in one breath (unless it is very long), taking a breath at the end of the phrase. Imagining this can help you to get more natural shape and expression into the music, and to see how to go from one phrase to another in a musical way.
If there are hesitations that you are struggling to get rid of, mark with a pencil an area about a bar or two before the hesitation (depending on how long the bars are) up to a bar or two after the hesitation. Practise this marked section repetitively. Often a problem area requires work on whatever is leading into it.
To get the whole piece more fluent, take four bar sections and go through each four bar section several times, instead of always playing through the whole piece from start to finish. You will start to find that each four bar section flows a bit better. Then you need to work on linking these four bar sections. Do this by going from half way through one four bar section to half way through the next four bar section. Again, repeat this chunk several times. Do the same for the whole piece. Repetition of small bits like this helps increase fluency and develop muscle memory.
Practise away from the piano. For a really securely learned piece, you don't want to just rely on muscle memory. Take the score away from the piano and read through whilst imagining the sound and moving your fingers on an imaginary keyboard. This kind of visualisation helps to reinforce your conscious recall of the notes. You could also try practising one bar in this way a few times, then cover up the music and see if you can recall the notes, sounds and fingering from memory. This is a good method for memorising music away from the piano, and it also adds to the reinforcement of the learning process.
Go back to the piano and practise your piece with the metronome. Choose a slow speed to begin with, that you can easily keep up with. This will help to even out your tempo and bring your attention to areas you may be rushing or hestitating on without being aware that you are doing so. Aim to perfect the piece at this speed before moving on to a slightly higher speed. Gradually work your way up like this until you have reached the correct speed.
After you have got the piece up to speed, you may find certain areas difficult to control or coordinate, with one hand getting ahead of the other. Take out these problem areas and practise them at a super slow speed again. You will be better able to coordinate the hands at a super slow speed, and if you do this enough times, you will form a habit of well coordinated hands in the problem area. Then you can speed up these sections again with fewer problems. Super slow practice also helps you to focus on correct rhythm and technique; and getting the movements more under control. Again, doing this enough times forms good habits so that you are automatically doing it the right way even at the faster speed.
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Practise hands separately until you can play each hand fluently and easily with very few mistakes. Aim to get to the stage where you are anticipating what comes next instead of fumbling or struggling to find the next note in time. Work on the rhythm of each separate hand in several ways: 1. Tap out the rhythm on your knee or the piano lid while counting the beats. 2. Clap the beats while saying the note names out loud in the correct rhythm. For example if your first note is an E which is held for two beats, followed by two Cs for one beat each, you would clap the four beats evenly while saying the letter names E C C but give the E two claps and the Cs one clap each. This helps you learn to read the notes more quickly as well as improving your rhythm. 3. Play one hand while tapping the beats with the other hand, or counting out loud. 4. Sing the melody out loud or in your head while tapping the beats.
Reinforce your learning of the melody and harmony by playing the left hand accompaniment (if the accompaniment is in the left hand) while singing the right hand melody out loud or in your head. This achieves two main things: 1. It develops your confidence and technique in the left hand because you are playing it more than the right hand. This is beneficial if you are right handed - the less dominant hand often needs more practice. Even with left handed people, it can be harder to interpret and makes sense of the left hand because it is usually more of an accompaniment and less melodic than the right hand. I often find this is the case with left handed pupils, not just right handed ones. Therefore, more left hand practice seems to benefit most people. 2. Singing the melody instead of playing it improves your awareness of the note patterns on the page and how they translate into sound, which reinforces your memory of the melody. Singing this melody while playing the harmony helps you to develop awareness of the sounds of simultaneous parts, and to think of simultaneous parts independently of one another, whilst being able to coordinate them.
Once each separate hand is fluent, put the piece hands together one bar at a time. Play the left hand of the first bar a couple of times, then the right hand of the same bar a couple of times, then attempt this bar hands together, very slowly. Do the same with the next bar. Then practise these first two bars together a few times. Move on to bars 3 and 4, and do the same. Carry on building up the piece in this way.
Don't just practise the piece from the beginning, but also practise from the end working your way backwards. I.e. play the last bar a few times, then the last two bars a few times, then the last three bars a few times etc. It is a very common problem for the ending of a piece to be less well known than the beginning and for it to gradually get less and less fluent as you go along. Practising backwards in this way helps avoid this problem. I have mentioned the benefits of practising backwards in this article too: Nerves When Performing Piano.
Practise phrase by phrase. Take one phrase and work on it as a single unit, aiming to get it flowing and keep going right to the end of the phrase. Think of the shape of the phrase and inflections within it, singing it in your head as you go along so that you can better understand how to communicate the expression. Imagine if you were singing it, and how you would breathe. Most likely you would aim to sing the whole phrase in one breath (unless it is very long), taking a breath at the end of the phrase. Imagining this can help you to get more natural shape and expression into the music, and to see how to go from one phrase to another in a musical way.
If there are hesitations that you are struggling to get rid of, mark with a pencil an area about a bar or two before the hesitation (depending on how long the bars are) up to a bar or two after the hesitation. Practise this marked section repetitively. Often a problem area requires work on whatever is leading into it.
To get the whole piece more fluent, take four bar sections and go through each four bar section several times, instead of always playing through the whole piece from start to finish. You will start to find that each four bar section flows a bit better. Then you need to work on linking these four bar sections. Do this by going from half way through one four bar section to half way through the next four bar section. Again, repeat this chunk several times. Do the same for the whole piece. Repetition of small bits like this helps increase fluency and develop muscle memory.
Practise away from the piano. For a really securely learned piece, you don't want to just rely on muscle memory. Take the score away from the piano and read through whilst imagining the sound and moving your fingers on an imaginary keyboard. This kind of visualisation helps to reinforce your conscious recall of the notes. You could also try practising one bar in this way a few times, then cover up the music and see if you can recall the notes, sounds and fingering from memory. This is a good method for memorising music away from the piano, and it also adds to the reinforcement of the learning process.
Go back to the piano and practise your piece with the metronome. Choose a slow speed to begin with, that you can easily keep up with. This will help to even out your tempo and bring your attention to areas you may be rushing or hestitating on without being aware that you are doing so. Aim to perfect the piece at this speed before moving on to a slightly higher speed. Gradually work your way up like this until you have reached the correct speed.
After you have got the piece up to speed, you may find certain areas difficult to control or coordinate, with one hand getting ahead of the other. Take out these problem areas and practise them at a super slow speed again. You will be better able to coordinate the hands at a super slow speed, and if you do this enough times, you will form a habit of well coordinated hands in the problem area. Then you can speed up these sections again with fewer problems. Super slow practice also helps you to focus on correct rhythm and technique; and getting the movements more under control. Again, doing this enough times forms good habits so that you are automatically doing it the right way even at the faster speed.
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Watch a video