Best Way to Practice Piano

How to Practice the Piano

August 6, 2010

Ask the Piano Teacher: Best Way to Practice Piano

Question:

Alexei-Arbeaux, United Kingdom

Answer:

Hi Alexei-Arbeaux,

Thank you very much for writing to me and for your compliments on my site! I very much appreciate it!

So here's what I would do if I were in your situation.

First, you need to correct some of your thinking. This is very important. You are not, I repeat, NOT, uncoordinated, or unable to keep rhythm. You simply have not yet learned how to translate these things through your hands into the keyboard. If you didn't have rhythm, you couldn't walk or talk the way you do: rhythmically. Rhythm is part of who you are and how you live. It's just a matter of learning. So please stop believing these things about yourself and your abilities, OK?

The best way to practice piano

OK. Now that we've got that settled. I suspect your beliefs about your ability may be coming from trying to play things that are too difficult, too quickly, and without good practice technique. Practice does work, but you have to be prepared for the fact that it will take longer than you think it should and you'll need to practice very slowly. It really is the best way to practice piano. So slow it will probably be boring for you at first. But I promise you'll see results. Read this page:

Practice Slowly

There are links to a bunch of other pages at the bottom - read those too - especially the pages on practicing hands together.

You have to teach your hands to play the right notes at the right times, and that means you have to do it slowly enough that you can think about each movement before you do it. So, say a song has 4 quarter notes in the right hand, middle C, D, E, F. Played with fingers 1, 2, 3, 4. Start off by putting your hand in C position. Take the rhythm out at first. Then think about pressing your thumb down (finger 1 for your first quarter note on C). Don't do it yet, but think about it. Think about then playing the D with finger 2, and so on. Now go back and think about playing your C, and this time press it. Next think about your D and play that note. And so on.

You now have two - VERY slow - repetitions of your CDEF quarter notes - without any mistakes. Very slow, right? Do it again. Think, play. Relax your arms, neck, shoulders, head. Sit in a good position. Think, play. You are building both your muscle memory and the correct mental map of playing that series of notes. Now you can try to add in the fact that they are quarter notes. Don't think about how fast it should go eventually, just start playing them at a very, very slow pace. I'll say it again: the best way to practice piano is S-L-O-W-L-Y.

Can you see how this is different from just sitting down and trying to learn a piece, trying to play something, at almost full speed right away? There's no way for your fingers or your brain to be able to make the right connections. When you continue to make mistakes because you go too fast, you never teach your body the right way to play it. You have to BUILD that knowledge, slowly, and go as slowly as you need to to be able to think about each action before you do it and avoid mistakes.

It really is the best way to practice piano...

It might feel as though it's not even a song when you go that slow, just a weird series of notes that you're playing. That's OK. Eventually, you will start to put all these pieces together and build the tempo. And suddenly your fingers will know where to go!

It takes a lot of self-discipline to do this. But it really is the best way to practice piano -- you will actually learn to play FASTER because you won't have to spend such an amount of time correcting mistakes and being frustrated by them!

I don't know if the piano books that are available in the UK are the same as what we have readily available here in the US, but there's a couple of books that will work fine for you. The Alfred's Adult All-in-One course is good - I'm writing free tutorials for this. But the music isn't the most inspiring. I like the Adult Piano Adventures curriculum a lot for better music, but it's a shorter course (only two books) and doesn't have as much extra music available (Alfred's has Adult Christmas books, etc.)

The Alfred's Adult course is used by a lot of people on their own and if you join the forums at Piano World, there are even threads just for each of these books where people interact and give each other tips! Lots of people also record themselves to get encouragement and feedback.

I hope this is helpful for you! I'm excited for your passion and hope you'll keep practicing. The best way to practice piano is to slow yourself down and commit to a good method and regular practice. And do join the forums I mentioned, you'll get very inspired by other pianists and learn a LOT.

Best,

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