Practice Mastery

Before you start practicing, ask yourself:

What do I want to accomplish during this practice. Take five minutes to decide what result you want to attain.

I, ____________________, promise myself that I will practice at least ___ minutes a day. I will be patient with myself and will keep in mind that my instrument is a long term project.

Use reminders on any device you usually carry with you to remind you of your sessions. There are good apps for recording your practice time and techniques.

The one thing that holds back students, by far, is not having consistent practice. SO, set a specific time in your schedule now (ex. 6:00-6:30 PM) and leave it free every day!

• Start by playing the piece really slowly. What matters at first is that you get the progression of notes and chords. (Don’t always begin a piece at the beginning. Start by learning the last page first, for instance. Or the very end. Or perhaps the middle.)
• After you've mastered the progressions and development of the piece, start perfecting your rhythm.
• Use sectioning while learning. Learn sections of the song, master them and then move to the next section. A section can be a melody, a chord progression, a chorus or refrain, etc.
• When practicing more complex pieces, start by practicing the right hand part of the piece, then the left hand (or vice versa) then try to play them together. Take your time, don't rush it. Once you've mastered one part, move to the next, and not before that.

Practice Plan

1. Start by limbering up to a few exercises. If you are more advanced you may like to practice some Hanon finger exercises or Czerny Studies. 1-2 Minutes.

2. Then focus on some technical work or scales and arpeggios for 5 minutes.

3. Spend 10 minutes practicing your assigned pieces for the week; work at them purposefully and slowly, separate hands at first. Use a metronome or try to develop a feel for keeping the pulse or beat – count out loud if necessary.

4. Now spend maybe 5-10 minutes reviewing past pieces. It’s always a good idea to go over old pieces reminding yourself of what you have already learned and to build up a little repertoire of pieces.

5. If you can spare a little more time then try to do a couple of sight- reading exercises. You just need to look at two short passages; look through them noting all their features then play them slowly forcing yourself to keep going in time until the end. Your sight-reading will improve no end if you do this regularly. (5 Minutes)

Practice alternating one hand with the other, having established an absolute and unerring sense of pulse. With this process, using the metronome is not a bad idea. Leave a bar’s rest between each repetition or new variant, being strict about keeping the beat going during this measured silence.

You might have success by practicing the very last bar first.  Then a few bars leading into the ending, and then a few more bars to the end until you can establish an ending section. Then a few bars leading into the ending section, and a few more until there is an obvious middle section. Then a few bars leading into the middle section, and then a few more until there is a definite beginning section. Many pieces will have more sections but the basic idea is to work each section an equal number of times over the long run.

Pick out a difficult section of your piece. Try to play it three times in a row without a single mistake. When you can do this, try playing five times in a row without a mistake. When you can do this, try it ten times in a row perfect. When you can do this, you know you've mastered the passage.

Once you can do all the small sections perfectly, you can combine them and try to play the larger sections perfectly. Keep combining sections until you can play the whole piece flawlessly.

Practice Merry-Go-Round

At first, you might just try to get all the notes. Now is the time to memorize the fingerings. (If you change the fingerings, write them in the music and erase the old ones.)

Later you'll want perfect rhythm, tone, phrasing, dynamics, pedal, balance, evenness, etc. Work on just one small section and one thing at a time, repeating several times until perfect!

You can keep a record of how many mistakes you make each time you play a passage. First, record the passage. If you play it perfectly, put a "P", otherwise put the number of mistakes. You'll be amazed at how many mistakes you make and never even noticed before.

Add-a-note at a time. Practice this tiny bit almost in tempo and only add the next note if the others are „easy“.

For advanced practicers:

Visualize.

Start with a piece you have memorized. Close your eyes and try to imagine yourself playing it at the piano. Imagine the piano keys, and your hands playing them. Try to make it just as vivid in your mind as it is when you actually do it.

Visualising is one of the best practice methods, but it takes a lot of thinking! Here are some ways to make it a little easier:

·      Visualize just one hand at a time. This is much easier than doing both hands.

·      Visualize only a short passage at a time. Play it, then try to visualize, then play it again. Keep doing this until you can visualize it very clearly.

·      Look at the music while you visualize. This builds up your visual image, but you don't have to have it memorized first. In fact, it will help you memorize it more easily.

·      Try table-top practice, that is, play your piece away from the piano. You simply imagine the sound and feel of a real piano as your fingers play on the tabletop. If you can play a piece or a passage this way, you really know it!

Exercising your brain is just like exercising a muscle: with visualization, you have start out with just a little bit, and then gradually work your way up.

Begin playing your piece.  Have a friend say “Stop.” Keep thinking (playing) the music in your head.  When your friend says “Start” again, pick up where you are in the piece. This technique is easier with a metronome.

Think the first beat and begin playing on the next.  Think the first two beats and begin playing on the next. Then three beats, etc. Can be done with metronome.

Practicing in a variety of ways, with a variety of touches, builds and strengthens your memory. If you have practiced your piece soft, loud, staccato, legato, with and without pedal, with five different kinds of stops, hands separate, visualized it, counted it, recorded it, played it with metronome at a variety of tempos, and practiced in small and large sections until they were flawless—you really know it.

Draw a "Board Game" that includes several of the items on this list.  Roll the dice and do the thing on which you land. 

Make practice flashcards, with each one listing an item from this list that need attention in your piece.  Select one at a time and practice that way.

For example, the cards for one piece might say

a.      “Play 3 times at quarter note equals 88

b.      “Play right hand three times”

c.      “Play left hand three times”

d.      “Count or verbalize and clap rhythm in measure 8”

e.      “Imagine an angry dragon (happy clown/ dancing girl) and play the middle section” 

Play one hand while singing the other, in solfège syllables, note names, or counting numbers, a good exercise in coordination and musicianship.

Metronome:  Start very slowly with metronome.  Play the piece or passage again, and increase the metronome number by a click or two.  Continue, gradually increase the tempo again, until the goal tempo is reached.  Write down the top metronome marking achieved each day, and try to surpass it the next day. 

Micro-metronome:  Assign the metronome to the smallest unit of the beat in the piece and subdivide each longer note in relation to it.

Double Bubble:  In 4/4, with 16 sixteenth notes per bar, do this at tempo, but with pauses after doubled notes: 

a.  double first note of each group of 4

b.  double second note of each group of 4

c.  double third note of each group of 4

d.  double fourth note of each group of 4

Play a certain finger number, say 1, with an accent. Every time that you play the first finger, say “one” out loud and accent the note. Do this 3-5 times.

a)   do the same with the second (third; fourth; fifth) finger. Always say the finger number out loud.

b)   Now say the names of the notes that a particular finger number are playing. Accent the note, too.

In each group of four equal notes (eighths, sixteenths), play the first note a bit longer and the others fast. Lengthen the second note. Then the third. Then the fourth. The others are played fast.