Tips to getting a productive Piano practice Part 2 of 2
One Step at a time: Structured Practice is key to productive practice
Take the parts of the piece that you can comfortably tackle now as in at or just above your current level to begin the process. Begin to sight read and play through moving on to memorizing, to be able to play without the sheet music.
Start at random points in the piece, memorize bar and a half at a time, then joined together and play through with the sheet music turned around. Also starting with the last bar of a section and working backwards, helps during this process, as it defamiliarizes you and forces you out of learning by rote.
Repeat, Repeat, Repeat until you can play the bar and the next one beside it smoothly with an even tempo from memory. Now move on to the next bar and repeat. I would give 30 minutes daily to learning a new piece of repertoire like this if it is not the only one I am currently learning, I usually have 3 to 4 pieces of varying stages of completion on the go at one time.
Repeat this process for all repertoire pieces you are learning, and that's easily 2 to 3 hours of practice daily if you hit all the pieces once.
Pieces can be juggled and arranged so that you are always playing them daily or the parts you’ve memorized to keep them learned, some days more work is done on some pieces rather than others but over all they all hopefully progress at the same rate. Except if one of your pieces is particularly challenging as you've never come across that technique before and need to build up to it over a couple of months these require determination but also patients with yourself.
Now for the next part of your practice session
It is recommended that if you play for 45 minutes to an hour you take a 5 to 10 minute break. Get up from the piano, stretch your legs shakeout your arms, get a glass of water or a snack and then return to the piano.
I always like to include improvisation or composition in my practice sessions as it helps me figure out different ways of using the techniques I'm trying to develop and it lets me do it in a more relaxed setting. I am also exploring the sound of the key that the repertoire is in. If you don't want to improvise on the fly or you aren't inspired to compose that day, just take the parts of the pieces that you are currently practicing in your repertoire and maybe put them into a different key, change rhythms, change harmonies, mess with them, deconstruct them. It's interesting it's fun to make noise, you are allowed to take up space in the world, and music doesn’t have to be treated like a valuable antique. Why not mess around with the 12 bar blues improv, or some lounge piano? Why not just start playing around with the chords in the key of the piece?
After 10 minutes composing, improvising
or as long as you like, move on to a piece that you have already learned and memorised that you can play without the music but you can still have the music in front of you for memory prompts.It is vital that if you are going to have the music in front of you, you need to follow along as you play and know where you are in the piece at all times, otherwise don't have the music in front of you it will be a hindrance.
Spend 10 minutes to 20 minutes Performing your music
depending on the length of the piece playing through the music as if it were a performance, you can even video tape it or record the audio. The rule is no stopping and starting, play straight through from start to finish. Note after any areas that were of an issue take them out separately and work on them. Issues that can pop up are; fingering learnt wrong or awkwardly, incorrect counting/timing, memory lapses or tension and many more, all can be fixed quickly by isolating the exact bars of issue and work through backwards and forwards.
Play through the peace again have these areas improved or does it need to go back into repertoire work.
If the piece was performed well, an improvement from last time with the errors mended, then when you play through the 2nd or 3rd time really focus on your touch and dynamic control. Think about what emotions you want to convey and express to the audience. How does it sound to you and how can you change it? Vary your touch at different points of the peace to experiment against the instructions given. It will help you understand why the dynamic markings are where they are.
It is also a good idea to record the audio of a performance piece to listen to in 2 days' time or so you can objectively critique any areas with the sheet music and that you would like to do differently. This will also help you develop your touch.
We're now up to an hour and a half at least of practice
And you could most likely throw in another piece to be learned and another one to be polished and you're easily up at over 2 hours of enjoyable progressive practice. By breaking it down into chunks like this you can have one day that you have less on and increase practice time, or decrease it on days that you have more on.
In order to improve your technique after you have gotten over the very beginner stages depending on concentration, stamina and age, one hour to 2 hours of structured practice will reap results. This would not be the same results as if you spent 2 hours trying to play a piece from start to finish but never actually getting through it, you need to isolate what is causing the issue and work on it separately this could take months or even years depending on what you're trying to learn.
But you can fill in your technical gaps through hard work, practice and by upping skill one piece at a time. Also the more repertoire you learn the better your sight reading it will be as you remember patterns you seen before and apply them to the new situation. We don't need to keep playing pieces below our level after they have been memorized and learnt, if they are replaced by more technical pieces, only if you truly love the old ones playing keep them.
Well I hope I’ve inspired you with ideas for piano practice, talk you all in April in my next blog post, in the mean time check out my YouTube channel- click the link below for music posted weekly, and everyone have a relaxed, musical March!
Happy St. Patrick's Day!