PIANO PRACTISING: HOW TO PRACTISE MORE EFFICIENTLY

PIANO PRACTISING: HOW TO PRACTISE MORE EFFICIENTLY

PIANO PRACTICE ROUTINE: HOW TO DEVELOP A MORE EFFICIENTLY PRACTISE SESSION

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oODBiEz1FU

An exemplary student: Mark Yeo performance of Haydn Bozner Sonata at WKMT Music Festival 18.11.2017 London – Fitzrovia

Not performing for long time-spams can prove to be detrimental to our piano skills and artistic abilities. To be honest lacking time for piano practice is the worst enemy of any kind of performer. Reaching the momentum once again can prove to be both a very tedious and quite disappointing process altogether.

As performers, we need to make a significant time investment to stay in tune and constantly improve our piano skills. The latter effort implies keeping up with our constant practising. We will see life getting in the middle of our way, but we will have to stay strong and continue our piano practise regardless of our fears. In the end, this is the same challenge we face in a concert. We need to learn to blackout the outer world and commit to connecting with our conscious and subconscious selves.

We support our practising on three different pillars: patience, continuity, and consistency.

CONTINUITY:

Keep the continuity and the problems of not keeping up with it

Our fingers are built up from tiny muscles. As such, they can become under-exercised quite easily. On the upside, they also may come back in shape quite quickly. Both characteristics are two faces of the same coin – a coin that requires lots of attention -.

The physical dimension of our performance skill can be utterly demanding. Therefore, when we practise the piano and learn new exercises, we must do so by keeping the state of our muscles as healthy as possible.

We could be tempted to cluster our practising hours in one day of the week, or even two. This is not good piano practice. The reason: piano requires constant stimulation. In that sense, studying one hour a day will prove to be far more effective than practising 6 hours one day a week.

Inconsistent practising can lead us to progress slowly. It takes some time for our mind to get in the momentum, that state in which we feel extremely productive. This type of insightful feeling is the one we need to train to access faster and faster. That’s the main reason we need to practise more often. The ability to reach a musically insightful state of mind quicker and quicker is what we should aim to enhance the most. Developing that skill is what optimises our studying time more dramatically.

As a concert pianist, I can give you some tips on how to improve your piano playing skills:

  1. Divide your daily piano practice into professional practising and repertoire work.
  2. I would always start with 15 minutes of piano scales, arpeggios, thirds, sixths, and trills.
  3. Then, when our performance system – our hands – is warmed up, we start working on our repertoire pieces.

You should divide your repertoire training into two different sub-sessions: new repertoire and old-repertoire maintenance. When studying new “repertoire”, you should focus on sections. Don’t play the piece from beginning to end. On the contrary, when you maintain “repertoire”, I recommend you to start from the beginning and very slowly. We should try and memorise even the name of the notes so that we can control the triggering to the maximum detail.

How much should we practice:

Length of our practising sessions

When my students ask me how to practise piano, I recommend practicing no less than six days a week. Either the study is on a digital or an acoustic piano, the amount of time we should invest in our practicing sessions varies significantly by our pianistic level.

I suggest the below practising times six days a week.

1. Beginners: 15 to 30

2. Intermediate (Grade 1 to 5 equivalent): 45 minutes minimum

3. Advance (Grade 6 to 8 equivalent): 60 minutes minimum

4. An advanced student (Diploma equivalent): 120 minutes minimum

Either the piano practice is on a digital or an acoustic piano, the precise amount of time the student needs to invest in their studies is subject to their personal, intellectual and physical abilities. If you don’t own a piano yet, there are quite a number of piano practise rooms in London that you can use, including our venues.

PATIENCE:

Keep calm and study hard

Some days we will feel we are advancing a lot and some others we will feel frustrated, that’s the life of the musician. Nevertheless, we should always keep on trying hard. Perseverance and patience are the most important talents in an artist.

CONSISTENCY:

Follow one clear method

Changing your mind about the way you approach each passage in your piece can make your practising inefficient. For that reason, we need to apply a successful piano technique. At WKMT we use Scaramuzza technique. The fact that it defines five piano movements makes the challenge of resolving technical passages very easy. You might struggle to sort out a passage, but at least you know which move to perfect and use to perform it. Otherwise, we would end investing most of our time in trying to discover how to address each passage gymnastically.

Repertoire consistency is also something we should pay attention too. Maybe Martha Argerich and Horowitz proved the world that there are pianists who can play anything they want, but unless you are in that category of artists, it is a good idea to focus on one music style. The world we live in rewards excellence.

Note: This article is good for piano students following our piano lessons for beginners course or the piano lessons for adults programme, and can be completed with some piano practice tips. Also, continue your learning on how to practice effectively.

#JuanRezzuto #pianolessonsforbeginners #pianolessonsforadults #practisepiano

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