Thursday, August 25, 2011

How To Practice The Piano

By Andy Penbram


To learn piano or keyboards could be a little upsetting when you focus on your playing for days on end only to find that you don't seem to be getting anywhere. The most important reason the majority students quit the piano, especially in kids is a noted lack of advancement. Here are a number of ideas to help with your own personal practice sessions which ought to help to progress quicker.

Prepare your practice time - Build a little routine for your practice periods. The important points of the routine will be different from individual to individual depending on the of music they're learning how to play.

The very first thing to do when you sit down to practice is to warm up. A great way to do this is by practicing your scales for some time, this will loosen your fingers and in the long term will help you to learn pieces in various keys.

As soon as you have finished the warmup you may then go on to working on your pieces. You ought to know after the first few times of practicing a new piece where the difficult sections are. Start with these sections just before you try to play the whole piece. Play the section with separate hands. Keep swapping hands though so as not to let the other hand get cold. Now play the troublesome passage with both hands together.

You now have the ability to try the entire piece from start to end with a belief that you will be more comfortable when it comes to the hard parts.

Always utilise a metronome when you play your scales and arpeggios and use it for your pieces too if they permit it. Set the metronome to a reduced speed than is needed initially which will help you to play the piece easily. Over the space of a couple of days you can slowly start to increment the rate of the metronome until you are playing it at speed. You could even benefit from playing the piece more speedily than it should be just to get your fingers really working and used to the piece.

You have got to learn the way to relax while you are playing. Relax your fingers, your back and actually your entire posture. If you are tense while you play then you'll find it far harder to control your fingers and for your playing to flow. This is sort of like learning how to ride a bike or drive a car. To start with there are so many things to remember and coordinate but at some particular point it all of a sudden clicks and it all fits into place.

Daily practice on it's own is not really enough to master the piano properly but a steady and structured practice routine will definitely give you an advantage.




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