admin Posted on 6:22 pm

How to practice the piano in five easy steps

Here are some simple steps to learn quick and easy ways to practice the piano. The most important step is not the amount of time spent on practicing but the time quality (how well you use your practice time).

Remember to visit your piano every day! A little daily practice is much better than none! Ready to start?

* All against some of it

* split it

* bag it up

* chain it

* Record it and play it back

PRACTICE OF WHOLE VERSUS PART: A song can be practiced as a whole or it can be practiced in parts. When you’re first learning a song, practicing a part is often more effective. Later, when mastering a piece, full practice situations come into play more often. Don’t try to learn a piece in one go; take it in sections and practice one section until you can do it without making mistakes three times. Then move on to the next section. Remember the value of taking a section slowly, making sure you play all the notes correctly and counting the difficult sections. Playing in tempo comes later when you have the right notes and rhythm.

CHUNKING: Chunking practice is essentially “partial practice”: taking chunks of a piece and working on them individually. Determine the bits or parts to practice before combining the bits into a whole. Take fragments of a piece of music and solve them methodically. You won’t do well if you start too fast. Slow down and work at your own pace. After you play smooth and even, then increase your speed!

SANDWICH PRACTICE: This practice technique is used when you want to definitely master a certain difficult section of a piece. One could chunk it many times in a single practice session, interspersing it between compositions or practice segments. The chunk to be learned is reinforced over and over again in a single day of practice, similar to a loop. Remember that repetition is a good thing because you are working out all the mistakes. So, keep playing over and over again!

BACKWARD CHAINING: Practice from the end to the beginning. Take the last step to the first progressively but in reverse order. Learn the last “chunk” or part of a song first, and then learn the next “chunk” followed by the combination of those two parts. Learn from the third to the last section and then combine all three sections. And so on. Music is often written in ABA or Verse Chorus Verse form. A very valuable way to tell if you have learned a piece is to learn it well enough that you can play either hand independently starting anywhere in the music.

RECORDING/PLAYBACK PRACTICE: One of the best ways to objectively hear where you are and what to do next is to record and play back your performance. Then listen to the music you just played and practice with the recording. You will discern what should come next in practice by objectively listening to your own interpretation.

Learning a new piece of music is very hard work. I have shared information on how to practice playing written music and how to overcome not being able to play a piece on the first try.

I’ve listed 5 easy steps for a beginner just starting out wondering how to practice in a way that makes it more interesting and fun, especially when learning songs like O’ Susannah and Camp Town Races! Piano practice was never meant to be boring! I hope these steps enliven and add flavor to your piano practice!

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