Five Piano advices for beginners

Ways to boost Your Piano Practice

There are of course as many methods of approaching piano practice as there are pianists. Nevertheless, there are certain ancient general truths always worth thinking about when you are in a dilemma with your new piece and you feel that you have to raise your quality a little bit to meet its demands. Here are five of them:

1) Make sure that you keep practising the hands separately sometimes. Many pianists start ignoring this need when they feel they have progressed to a level where they can trust their coordination. But to keep developing both hands, it's essential that both of them get particular attention from time to time.

2) Keep a balance between fast and slow practice. It's wise to start learning things in a slow tempo, but right from the start you should also try short fragments of your piece at the speed you would like it to have. This gives you a better idea of the movements needed for a proper execution, and reminds you of what you want to achieve.

3) Use your time at the piano in an creative and efficient way. For example, begin your program with a few minutes of something that will make you feel better about your own playing - a composition that you really appreciate, a passage that you are proud of - to increase your confidence and to repeat yourself about why you are doing this. Then go explicitly to the most daunting part of your current piece. Too many pianists, even quite advanced ones, always just sit down and go over pieces from beginning to end, a waste of time that turns to an uneven performance.

4) On the other hand, of course you need to run through your piece to experience the sweep of it and to know that you can comfortably play from beginning to end. You need to take time once in a while to play without any stops at all, trying to cope with your inaccuracies as you go along. This will show you where you need to start practising next time. It will also educate you mentally for your next performance, during which some small incident is very likely to occur - and dealing with the audience, of course you can't interrupt to correct it.

5) Know when to stop! To keep your thoughts and fingers fresh, you should allow yourself a lot of small breaks during your training session. And you should try to decide the moment when it's best for you to end a day's job. The amazing thing is that your brain will keep working at your keyboard problems while you're taking a nap, a shower or even a few weeks vacation.