Practice Piano More Efficiently with These 6 Tips

This is a transcript from my video Practice Piano More Effectively with These 6 Tips so check out that video if you prefer video content.

Intro to Practice

Today I wanted to make a post talking about some piano practice tips that have been very useful for me and very useful for my students. I teach private piano lessons and I play piano for a youth theatre program. So I’ve played about 9 different musicals on piano and a whole bunch of other music on piano. So I’ve had to learn a few things about practicing and as a result I’ve got some tips.

Tip #1: Slow it down

Slow it down. Whatever you’re playing, whatever you’re trying to learn, play it slowly. If you can’t play it slowly you won’t be able to play it quickly. You want to be able to play it slowly because you want to be able to play it fast, but controlled and accurately. And if you can’t play it slowly you can’t play it fast.

Tip #2: Practice Hand Separately

This one is probably pretty obvious for most piano players, but a lot of the time I sometimes forget to do this. Especially if it’s something I’m trying to learn quickly I don’t practice hands separately even though I should. It might be something that’s a weird amount of coordination and if I just got it better in my left hand I’d be able to play it hands together a whole lot better.

Tip #3: Practice just rhythm

Third one is just practice the rhythm or tap it out. Take what the rhythm is in each hand and practice it just by itself. This is probably my favorite one to give my students. They always feel really goofy doing it, but it always helps a ton. So if you just take the rhythm as just the rhythm. No notes, no piano. And just sit and tap it on your legs or on a desk or on your chest or wherever you’re tapping it. Just tap out the rhythm between your hands. That can often help a ton because you’re getting used to just that weird coordination.

Tip #4: Loop it

Loop whatever you’re doing. If you’re learning something and there’s one measure that’s difficult, try to play that measure over and over and over again. Don’t practice anything else but that measure. It might take 10 times through looping it, but looping it makes it just a little bit more difficult than you’re going to have to do and you’re practicing it repeatedly. So it’ll get you used to that coordination or whatever is difficult about it faster.

I also do this if it’s multiple things. So I might not just loop one measure, but I might loop one measure. Then add a measure and loop two. Then add a measure and loop three. So I’m playing those three measure back to back to back. Then I add one more and I’m playing four measures back to back. Looping stuff can be super useful.

Maybe you only need to do it for two beats. Because then you’re practicing it a whole bunch of times in a very short mount of time.

Tip #5: Improvise with it

Number five, improvise with it. So let’s say there’s some hard left hand rhythm that you’re trying to do or some weird left hand pattern. It’s this tricky left hand part that you’re trying to get and it’s hard to play the other stuff on top of it in your right hand. Once you can get that stuff in your right hand, try and improvise something while doing that same left hand part. It’ll make it so much easier to do and it’s often so much more fun than just repeating the same thing over and over and over again. And it kind of gets you past the level that you kneed. The level you need is playing that specific thing, but if you can improvise on top of it you can play it in multiple contexts other than just the song that you’re learning

6. Simplify it and add on

Last one, which is six. Simplify it and add onto it. Maybe you’re learning a song that has, not just octaves in the right hand, but it has chords block chords and octaves of the melody in the right hand. Before you can do that you need to be able to play the melody just by itself. Then you need to be able to play the melody in octaves. Then you can add the chords.

So you’re doing a couple things when you do that. You’re simplifying so that you don’t have to tackle this one really difficult task all at once. You’re breaking it into small pieces so that you can learn them separately. It can often be very overwhelming to learn a piece of music that has something that’s significantly past your level. And I think personally it’s much more enjoyable to be able to play something, even if it is simpler, at my level. Than struggle for a year to play something that’s way past my level.

I’d rather in a month be able to play something. Then two months after that play something more difficult and then maybe a couple months after that you can add on and keep adding onto that same thing.

So you see this all the time with method books for guitar or piano or whatever instrument. It has a simplified version of the song. You can get books that are called “easy piano” and if you look at those let’s say for “Claire de Lune” or something the piece is going to significantly simpler than the original one, but it’ll still sound like the melody and it’ll still sound like the chords for the most part.

So think about it like that. Strip down stuff that you don’t really need right away. Practice the stuff you can. Then add something. Once you get good at that add something else. Once you get good at that add another thing.

Now I know a lot of these kind of run together and they’re kind of similar, but thinking specifically about using one practice technique when you need it can be very useful. If you’re whatever you’re struggling with thinking, “what is the best way to learn this in the shortest amount of time?” Try to think “How can I learn this in five minutes? How can I be able to play this measure in five minutes of practice?” That’ll often get you really good results because you’re crunching all the time you need into one very specific practice method.

That’s all for this post. I hope you found it useful. I hope you learned something about music and as always thank you for reading. See you next time. Peace.

ISJ