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How I Practice Piano

480 points by yarapavan 5y ago

TimTheTinker 5y ago
I'm a classically trained pianist, and this is good advice. I'd also suggest doing exercises periodically to improve the independence and coordination of your fingers - chord balancing (progressing from 3 notes to 5) and Hanon were particularly helpful for me. (You can google chord balancing and Hanon if you're unfamiliar.)
- kucing 5y ago
  Totally agree that exercises are good and sometimes mistakenly ignored by people. Although I'd like to also note that the best practice method is what works for one and are actually used by the person. Especially if someone is not going to be a concert pianist, to enjoy practice & playing is invaluable IMO.
tonystride 5y ago
I really like the analogy of trying to learn to run by speed walking faster and faster. It can’t be done, you have to specifically practice your ‘running’ form. Sometimes I do this way before I’m ready and make tons of mistakes like you mentioned, but with the focus of understanding the ‘running’ form as opposed to the speed walking form. This can literally be hilarious, I laugh so much at how ridiculous it can sound but it is really helpful! What do you think about accidentally learning too rote like? For example I never really understood how to play a lot of classical until I was able to feel what it feels like to ‘speak’ music as a jazz pianist. Now I really try to understand what I am saying when I play as if it were my own notes. I can still get in the habit of relying on reading & memorizing without really getting to the heart of the notes and it usually causes me to hit a plateau. For example I’ve been working on James P Johnson’s ‘Carolina Shout’ off of a transcription and hit this plateau without even knowing it. I realized it when I heard Ethan Iverson perform it and realized he was owning the song so much more than the rote attempt I was making. What do you think about moving past the rote learning and owning a piece? https://youtu.be/eM09yob0RFM https://youtu.be/eM09yob0RFM
- jmcphers 5y ago
  My own experience is that I can't really develop the appropriate expressiveness and dynamics in a piece until the notes and fingering can fly on autopilot. So learning it by rote is sort of a necessary first step towards owning it. But the exact mechanics of musical memorization and expression are different for everyone, so there isn't a lot of one-size-fits-all advice out there.
dota_fanatic 5y ago
I've been listening to the Huberman Lab podcast[0] recently, and in one of the earlier episodes he talks a lot about how to create the environment for neuroplasticity in the adult brain. I've only listened to most episodes once so I hope I'm not misrepresenting him, and this is simplified, but a critical component of causing the release of the chemical bath which allows for robust neuroplasticity is making errors, an experience which should feel a bit uncomfortable. "Errors are the basis of neuroplasticity." Without that focused set of attempts and discomfort of trying to do something and failing, the brain isn't getting the high quality signal that it needs to do some rewiring because the current networks simply aren't making the cut. This is at odds with a quote from OP's second point: > If you keep making mistakes when practicing then you are just going to get good at making them, so it’s best to avoid them in the first place. That aside, the article seems like great advice. With Huberman's account of encouraging adult neuroplasticity in mind, my thinking would be to amend this method towards going just fast enough to be able to do the chunk of music but not so slow that the attempts are free of errors. And probably the errors should be of one type at a time? Instead of erring in dynamics and fingering and articulation all at once, try to get everything right except for one aspect. For that, attempt to surpass your abilities and err. [0] https://www.youtube.com/c/AndrewHubermanLab/featured https://www.youtube.com/c/AndrewHubermanLab/featured Edit: Said another way, “perfect practice makes perfect,” where you aim to play perfectly but consistently just barely fall short. The correct networks are strengthened while those tiny errors get tweaked via neuroplasticity the nights after and consistent improvement results.
- nostoc 5y ago
  Learning a piano piece is simply building up muscle memory, through repetitions. If you practice and make mistakes, you are building up muscle memories for the wrong notes. As a piano player, what OP says wrings very true. It's tempting to just "play the piece" to practice it, but this is very inneficient, for the reason stated above. focused repetitions is order of magnitudes faster.
  - holri 5y ago
    Muscle memory is only one aspect of it. Muscle memory fails badly in stress or performance situations. There also has to be a solid intellectual knowledge of the piece. Mental practice can help with this.
pferdone 5y ago
I started playing piano in February/March and since 'real' lessons are out of the question right now, I wanted to learn it the right way. I looked around and I didn‘t wanted it to be a party trick, where I can play 3 songs by heart and that‘s it. I found pianote and to me it‘s one of the best teaching sites about a particular subject I‘ve ever seen. They take so much time to teach you the fundamentals and their progression path with 'The Method' makes learning fun and challenging. If you‘re looking for a good online course, I think there‘s no better one out there. Even a friend of mine, who plays drums in a band heard of it and said he only heard good things about it. I practice almost everyday and pianote is the best investment in myself I did in a long time. edit: ah well, the HN downvote army comming in for voicing my experience on the subject discussed, what can you do... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- kungito 5y ago
  This sounds like a fake review. They cost 200$ yearly to get the books or 30$ per month for online material. I guess the pricing may be ok for the US but for eastern Europe you can get learning materials for way less
  - thrwaway987692 5y ago
    While I do not speak on behalf of Pianote, there is definitely no paid shilling going on, it may be the case that the OP is a non-native english speaker, and in that way the tone comes across differently. As for the cost, I would definitely say Pianote's goal is to be a pianote lesson replacement, and in that way the content is cheaper, hopefully for a better/different experience than what you'd get taking sit down lessons
  - pferdone 5y ago
    Haha, I knew my post had the potential to be taken the wrong way...and its not $200 for 'books' but for hours upon hours of video learning material, live sessions with teachers, backing tracks for your practice songs, PDFs with practices for your particular lesson and so on. I‘m just really a fan of the site and wanted to share my experience, and no I haven’t been paid to write this text on my 5yrs old account with 100 karma. :) p.s yes I‘m not a native speaker
kucing 5y ago
Slightly OOT. It is refreshing to see how common an article about piano appears at the front page of HN. I have been struggling with the stereotypes / pre-assumption that most software engineers' hobbies (esp fresh grads) seems to be always around tech / electronics.
- esrauch 5y ago
  I feel like it's also a stereotype that mathy nerds play piano and violin when they're younger.
- ternaryoperator 5y ago
  I find that there is a huge cross-over between programming and music. IIRC, someone told me years ago, that the most common non-CS degree among programmers was music. I can't verify it, but my experience does not belie it either.
  - golemarms 5y ago
    Most common non-STEM degree maybe. I'm sure there are a lot more EE/ physics/ math grads working as programmers than music grads.
    - dpwm 5y ago
      One of the more surprising combos at university was Physics and Music. That was the degree, and the numbers were similar to those doing Computational Physics.
      - golemarms 5y ago
        Imperial College actually used to offer a BSc Physics and Music Performance course[1] (it was suspended recently). This is notable because dual majors, even between similar/adjacent academic fields, are rare for UK undergraduate degrees. [1] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/ug/courses/physics-department/physics-music-bsc/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/ug/courses/physics-departme...
PianoGym 5y ago
If anyone is looking for a digital tool to practice Piano I have made a FREE website called Piano Gym! https://pianogym.com https://pianogym.com It's flash cards but for Piano, and works with MIDI Piano connected to your computer. We use spaced repetition to schedule the flash cards and all you have to do is show up every day and do your reps! The big goal is to remove friction from learning and allow anyone to make their own content if they want to. I'm hoping in a few weeks to make a show hacker news post, but right now I'm bug fixing and working on getting our curriculum loaded up. Once that's done everything is ready to go! So come check it out if you're looking for a new approach to Piano practice and learning! And if you're really into this idea, we're on Patreon and appreciate any help making the dream come true! https://patreon.com/PianoGym https://patreon.com/PianoGym
- schemescape 5y ago
  Sounds interesting, but the interactive demo for sheet music doesn't work for me in Chrome. There are many CORS errors and then an error in: sheet_music_display_controller.tsx:187 ERROR
  - PianoGym 5y ago
    Drats! Like I said, I'm working on bugs and curriculum stuff before I go for a grand reveal. Thank you for the heads up. If you have the time and are interested send an image of your bug or steps to reproduce to support@pianogym.com! Otherwise stay tuned and check it out! I'll make sure to fix this :)
  - PianoGym 5y ago
    Update: I have fixed the bug! I just wanted to say thanks for pointing this out, as I can't believe how I overlooked it! Seriously, I appreciate it! Tell everyone about Piano Gym!
- Graziano_M 5y ago
  There's also https://sightreading.training/ https://sightreading.training/ which I found helped me a lot to learn how to sight read faster, and it also lets you plug in your piano via MIDI.
spekcular 5y ago
I assume when he mentions the Piano Street forums, he's talking about people like Bernhard. The guy was a legend. Some of his posts are collected here by topic: https://pianoselfteached.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/contents/ https://pianoselfteached.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/contents/. But, the information density is rather low, so besides the repertoire suggestions I recommend skipping it. This blog does a great service by distilling all his ideas into a short post. For a book-length treatment along the same lines, there's Chuan C. Chang's Fundamentals of Piano Practice: http://www.pianopractice.org/ http://www.pianopractice.org/. His daughters won state piano competitions using these practice techniques. Beware, though, that there are a few crazy tidbits sprinkled in (for example, his claim that if you practice piano while sick, you might cause brain damage). But most of it is useful.
j7ake 5y ago
Did some classical training when younger and I would maybe add one thing about broader strategies of being a musician in general: Spend up to 1/3 of time with fundamentals (eg scales) Spend at least 1/3 of time with learning pieces (like this article describes) Finally spend the rest of the time with just playing and improvising on the piano.
turtlebits 5y ago
While this method sounds effective, it's not very enjoyable. As a "for fun" piano player, I just like to power through a song slowly, as far as I can get (not stopping for minor mistakes or even skipping notes). Side effect of this is that it has made my sight reading very good.
- danielvinson 5y ago
  I agree completely. I play several instruments, and when I learned I wouldn't have been able to motivate myself to do it if I was just practicing small sections over and over again. I might have taken twice as much time to gain the same skill level, but in my opinion, finding the motivation to improve is harder than actually improving at most skills.
- skybrian 5y ago
  Here’s a trick I like: start at the end. I practice the ending a few times, then once I’m happy with it I go back one measure and play from there, and so on. The result is that playing gets easier as you go.
- lcuff 5y ago
  Definitely a 'Your Mileage May Vary' moment here. On guitar, I used to 'slog' rather than 'power through' a song. It took weeks before it came close to sounding like music. Now I start with a couple (tough) bars (think Doc Watson, Deep River Blues) and that bit sounds like music in a day or two. Plus, I find muscle memory develops much more quickly when I play the same bit over in a short time span. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VAbrnjdtYw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VAbrnjdtYw
honkycat 5y ago
I've been learning guitar and ive been amazed at how bad lessons and education is for adult students. The apps i have used barely work and are extremely unambitious. Classes are so disorganized and i am constantly wading through material that is a mile wide but a foot deep. Yes i have seen Justin Guitar I'm not a huge fan. I dont want to have to wade through content to find the exercises that are relevant to me. I think Duolingo has an interesting approach to this, where has you re-visit concepts every day and it tells you what to practice to reduce decision fatigue. I want a dashboard that is keeping track of my goals and progress akd has an opinionated way for me to measure my skill, and to direct my effort.
- hashkb 5y ago
  Have you thought about taking lessons from a teacher?
- YZF 5y ago
  When you say you've seen Justin Guitar do you mean the web site or YouTube? He has a structured program: https://www.justinguitar.com/classes/beginner-guitar-course-classic https://www.justinguitar.com/classes/beginner-guitar-course-... I haven't seen the new site design but it seems ok. When I started learning the guitar (~6 years ago) Justin was a huge help but I complemented that with in person lessons with some teachers and with additional material/random songs. So consider me a fan. I also recommend getting in touch with other musicians/players, that's gonna push your level way more than an app would. May I ask how long ago you've started learning and what level are you at? I think there is a lot of great material online. But in order to grok most of it you need to have some foundation. I've never used any app (well, I use a metronome app) since I haven't seen anything that looked useful. Ear training apps could be useful but I haven't been able to stick with it. In general "apps" seem a poor fit for teaching the guitar.
  - honkycat 5y ago
    Honestly I just got really frustrated when I tried to sign up for the Justin guitar paid site and it just broke and wouldn't let me sign in and pay them.
siraben 5y ago
Classically trained pianist here (since 7 years old), I like the article's advice. > Use the correct fingering, dynamics, articulation, etc. from the very beginning; you are never going to get around to “fixing” it later. When I was an impatient kid my piano teachers would keep insisting I play sections slow on a first pass, which annoyed me (it was like reading a book out loud slowly), but it was only until many years later when I played pieces like Un Sospiro[0] which are intractable if you do not start practicing at something like 16 times slower than performance tempo. If you start out correctly, the rest will follow, and IME, sight reading greatly improves as well. > [...] you may reach a point where you can’t play any faster, no matter how hard you try. What is likely happening is that the hand motions you are using—which come naturally at the slower tempo you started with—simply will not work at such high speeds. This is completely true, for instance, in ragtime, the left hand makes big, quick jumps and there is often no time to look at where it will land (which one likely does when playing slowly), so repeating a bar over and over again to incrementally refine your distance estimate is crucial. This applies to things like typing on a keyboard as well, if you focus on correct finger placement (and correct use of the 4th and 5th fingers), your WPM might take a hit for a few days or a week, but in the long term it really helps. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po_a1SmZKLs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po_a1SmZKLs
- turtlebits 5y ago
  I think it all depends. I ignore dynamics and fingering when starting out, and I think for the most part, fingering doesn't really matter unless you are trying to play extremely fast sections, which pretty much require repetition to get right. FWIW, if I was learning Un Sospiro, I would just try get through the whole song. I played it at 1/2 speed and that seemed to be a reasonable attempt. Sometimes I feel if you have to follow the techniques in the OP, the song may be too challenging for you.
  - siraben 5y ago
    Sure, for Un Sospiro there were definitely sections that were easy (first few pages are quite repetitive) so not much issue there, but there are runs in the middle where I practiced slowly for a while until it came naturally.
deleted 5y ago
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the_cat_kittles 5y ago
probably not the most efficient way to learn pieces, but sometimes i like to just read through one to two pages a couple times, every day. after about a week that section is mostly memorized, depending on the density of the music. then i can sit with it and let the fingerings i like naturally evolve. im a guitarist, so i think fingerings are a little more complicated and contextual sometimes. the constraints of the left hand, and the multiple positions to play a single note really up the possibilities. all the things mentioned in the article are good and in my experience mostly correct, except the fingerings, but that probably varies by person. i have two additional pieces of advice for fast passages, if you keep messing them up: - make sure you can subdivide the bar in a couple different rhythms. often ill realize there is some kind of rhythmic discomfort i havent fully smoothed out. for starters, make sure you can tap your foot on the quarters. if you feel any hesitation or discomfort, then there's your problem. - refinger something. its sometimes hard to know if a fingering is going to work at fast tempos, so just try a different one if the current one you are using isnt gelling. for a phrase maybe a bar long, id give it 3 days and if it isnt improving, id start to think about reworking it.
mb_72 5y ago
I was (initially) forced to learn piano from the age of 5... but, by God, was I glad that my parents did this. The article covers pretty much exactly what I - and my teachers - worked out over a number of years. And the basic approach works for any instrument. It's a real boon coming to other instruments - electric bass is my main instrument now - with a grounding in not only music theory but also the 'how to' learn pieces / parts / songs.
gbajson 5y ago
What do you think about applications like Simply Piano? I am 40+ yo, and never played any instrument before. After 3 years of practicing with Simply Piano I am able to read and play some sheet music, but I'd like to know which areas need improvements. Do you know any applications which can record performance of a song and evaluate it?
- djaychela 5y ago
  I don't think this is a solved problem yet, in terms of technique. You may well be pressing the keys in the right order, at the right time, and with the right dynamics, but there's a lot to playing technique that is about your hand position and movement which isn't detectable via MIDI capture. I've been a guitar teacher for 20 years, and I've seen people who are incredible players with terrible technique. Yes, that means it's possible to play well by doing so badly, but with the right technique (which is still being developed in some areas), there's a whole lot of improvement that could happen, or the player in question could play for longer (both in the short term, and longer term because of injury). Only complex video / 3D capture of your hand position and movement would solve this, and as far as I'm aware this doesn't exist yet. Find a good teacher, even if it's just for the occasional lesson. With the right teacher (and this is horses for courses), you'll make much more progress, even if you still use the app. (All IMO, of course!)
hzay 5y ago
Indian classical dancer here. > Do not work on this section for more than twenty minutes. This is not something I've heard often in my field but I had to learn this over the years. Performers want to present a piece as if it was never practiced and was all made up on the spot, and yet we do have to practice a piece day after day. Losing vitality and "becoming rehearsed" through over-practice is a real problem. The book "A Soprano on Her Head" by Eloise Ristad, who was a piano teacher, really helped me with my dance & acting practice. I restructured a lot based on that book (added improvisational elements, reduced forceful drill-like elements, more self-observation, less verbal cues), and my technique and enjoyment both improved a lot during covid lockdown. She also wrote a book called "Bold Beginnings" for teaching piano using a new method that she made up, but I've not been able to find a copy.
- vajrabum 5y ago
  I'd completely forgotten about Eloise Ristad and "A Soprano On Her Head." Fanstasic book. Thanks for the reminder. I poked around looking for Bold Beginnings and didn't find it but I did find this page that might be interesting. https://www.modernmusicology.com/elosie-ristad-bold-music-teaching/ https://www.modernmusicology.com/elosie-ristad-bold-music-te...
  - trivialcode 5y ago
    A Soprano On Her Head is available at archive.org, and I found a seller for Bold Beginnings here: https://www.naomialdort.com/book-bold-beginnings.html https://www.naomialdort.com/book-bold-beginnings.html
afterwalk 5y ago
I’ve always been taught to spend >50% time practice hand separate first, increase tempo one hand at a time, and only combine after much practice, which seems to differ than the post. Does anyone have a view on how soon to jump into two hands when learning a new piece?
- Hackbraten 5y ago
  I never practice with separate hands. My experience is that muscle memory kind of resets anyway once the other hand joins. So why bother? I prefer practicing in a super slow tempo but with both hands right from the start.
  - jb1991 5y ago
    > My experience is that muscle memory kind of resets anyway once the other hand joins. I’ve never heard anyone suggest that before, and it is certainly not my experience.
    - Hackbraten 5y ago
      It’s highly subjective but it’s also certainly not just me. From [1]: > Your experience is quite typical. Playing two hands at the same time is completely different than playing both separately. But the point of learning parts separately is NOT about making it easier to play both hands together. It's about learning all the "other" stuff (like correct hand position, articulation etc.) without having the distraction of the second hand. From [1] but another person: > Put another way, instrument playing is a conscious action, controlled by our executive function, and we only have one area of the brain that controls the executive function. Thus, homo sapiens's conscious control is, for better or worse, unitary, and we cannot do two independent tasks at once. > The same is true for the piano. From [2]: > Hands separate practices the aural knowledge, or aural memory; and the intellectual. It practices physical on a smaller level, because you aren't practicing the coordination between two hands, but rather the security of one hand alone. But I think the amount it gives to physical knowledge is small enough that it doesn't really count as a method for improving that knowledge. [1] https://music.stackexchange.com/q/53699/ https://music.stackexchange.com/q/53699/ [2] https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=28007.0 https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=28007.0
singingfish 5y ago
My sax teacher has me play the leading notes of the next bar after what I'm actually practicing. It makes a big difference. On the piano I'm currently learning how to put a walking bass on the left hand side with a melody on the right. It's really challenging. One problem with playing it slowly is that it produces clashing notes that sound wrong but will disappear once being played at the correct speed.
wombatmobile 5y ago
Should young children be “forced” to learn piano? That verb “forced” invites an answer in the negative, but music is a wonderful gift that brings so much joy and social opportunity. Music is best learned young. But what if a child says no to lessons? I didn’t say yes and I see now that I cost myself a lot of joy.
- lovelyviking 5y ago
  Or perhaps you have managed to keep the joy and music related. I've seen people who learned piano in music school and as soon as they have passed theier final exams they forgot about it and never came back to piano because they learned to hate it during their "education". Contrary to that I said "no" to a bad teacher and enjoy plaing music to this day. I do not have a perfect training but still enjoy to learn and play when I can. I believe though such "hard" choice should be avoided if possible. One should have a good teacher and with a good teacher you do not need to "force" anything because it is a joy to learn. Unfortunately I didn't have access to such teacher so I had to learn by myself and it's not easy because when you stuck you have to figure out how to move forward. It happens from time to time and right now for instance I am really puzzled about what to learn next and I do not know where to get a good advice that is "workable" in my current situation.
- oriolid 5y ago
  Classical piano training is a great way to take joy away from music.
- criddell 5y ago
  > Music is best learned young. In what way? When I was a kid, I would have been a horrible music student. I was interested in 500 things and music wasn't one of them. I eventually bought a guitar when I was around 25 and took lessons. When it's something you want to do and you have songs you want to play, it's a much different experience. I don't think I would want to trade the thousands of hours I spent playing with legos, swimming, riding my bike or doing any of the other things I did as a kid (including more passive things like reading books and playing video games). So to answer your initial question, no I don't think kids should be forced to play any instrument with a few exceptions. Childhood is too short.
pantulis 5y ago
These are great tips from someone who is a great player and has experience teaching the piano, but I'd also add that you need to also practice the theory behind the piece, specially for modern music as this speeds up the process of learning the piece. Also, we all have very different objectives when approaching piano playing. Some will want to perform live with a band, others having just some fun at home and some will try and become classical concertists. Different goals, different approaches IMHO.
markvdb 5y ago
In some cases, practicing some things slowly is more exhausting and less efficient than starting at at least medium speed from the very beginning. The slow tempo loses you mental oversight of what you are trying to play. You'll learn when this is through experience. If you can't wrap your head around the super slow practicing, try to practice it at a much higher tempo. Still need to be super accurate about fingerings though!
- cuddlecake 5y ago
  > The slow tempo loses you mental oversight of what you are trying to play. When I was a drummer, I used to think that too, but it turned out to be false most of the time. If I really wanted to make something sound good in a fast tempo, I had to make it sound perfect in a slower tempo. My teacher used to say "if you can play it fast, make sure you can also play it slow" But, as always, it depends.
  - markvdb 5y ago
    The original article spoke of piano. I should have mentioned that the advice I gave is more tailored to polyphonic instruments like the guitar, the piano and the accordion. Even on these instruments, the best advice in most cases usually is to practice slowly at first. Just not always. That's what 20 years of teaching the guitar has taught me.
nojs 5y ago
> Use the correct fingering, dynamics, articulation, etc. from the very beginning; you are never going to get around to “fixing” it later. As both a piano player and language learner I am often torn about this. On the one hand it’s better not to give your brain a chance to learn the “wrong” way, because then you trip up on that section over and over. But for language, my experience is that people who speak prolifically, even if it’s badly wrong, do better than those who speak less but make sure it’s always correct. I would love to know if there is any evidence as to which is better, and if it’s different for language than other skills like piano.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  Language is different because people tend to be very forgiving of strangers with poor pronunciation and grammar. As long as you can make yourself understood, no one cares if you're not speaking like a local. If you really do want to speak like a local you'll need lessons from a professional voice coach - not just a language teacher - who will teach you how to move your mouth muscles to make the correct sounds. While some talented people can work this out for themselves, most people can't. Piano is the equivalent of having to work it out for yourself. Muscle memory of right-notes-in-the-right order is the start of musicality, not the end of it. You have to master that level to the point where it's unconscious before you control dynamics, tempo, and evenness - which are the performance details that make a performance successful and expressive, as opposed to sort-of-competent.
cyberscientist 5y ago
Thanks for this post, I've been struggling to learn how to play piano for few years now.
suicas 5y ago
This is a great article, one I wished I read a long time ago after a lot of inefficient learning. One thing I'm still keeping an eye out for is how to best learn when time is limited. As I get older, free time is at a premium, with job/kids/life/etc. meaning that some days even 20m practice is a luxury. So I've always been curious how to make the most of that and unexpected slots of free time. Should I just work on technical exercises/scales? Have a set of things written down to work on in case free time appears? Follow the advice in the article? Or accept that nothing worthwhile can be done in such short time and noodle around?
- monster_group 5y ago
  I am in same situation as you. What keeps me going is practicing songs that I enjoy. If I am working on a song that I enjoy, I am excited to pick up the guitar and am more or less able to find time every day. I also see progress because I am learning what I enjoy.
dominicrose 5y ago
Honestly I don't have strict rules to practice. I'm learning the 3rd movement of K310 by just playing it with the sheet from beginning to end with both hands. Once I get fast and comfy with it I'll start playing it avoiding eye-contact with the sheet as best I can until I can drop the sheet completely. Then it starts to be really motivating to play the piece again and again and I'll experiment with different tempos, with or without the metronome, with different numerical sounds and tone transpositions. Playing eyes closed is interesting too but I rarely think of doing it. I don't want to be strict and write down rules to follow, if I don't think about it I don't do it. I don't really agree with "you are never going to get around to “fixing” it later" because I do that all the time, I make lots of mistakes all the time and I just don't care because I know I'll fix them later. Glenn Gould trained sometimes with background noise like TV or radio to avoid hearing his mistakes.
jacquesm 5y ago
For once this isn't entirely off-topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFRdoYfZYUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFRdoYfZYUY
CuriouslyC 5y ago
Some tricks that have worked for me with other instruments. * Learn how to make random note sequences sound good. With the right timing and fingering it's usually possible. * Spend time jamming to develop improvisation skills and musicality. * Focus on the parts of the music that are hard rather than trying to play through.
- criddell 5y ago
  I think your first bullet points out an undervalued skill. So much time is spent on rote learning when I think improvisation should be encouraged once the very basics have been learned.
throw0101a 5y ago
Professional pianist Tiffany Poon has a channel where she posts some of her practice sessions with why she does certain things: * https://www.youtube.com/c/TiffanyPoonpianist/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/TiffanyPoonpianist/videos
jancsika 5y ago
> If it’s too easy to memorize, choose a bigger section. This doesn't work with fast passages where the pianist must feel how to use the momentum to their advantage. Better path-- choose a small enough section that may be played immediately at the preferred tempo. > Practice the section slowly enough, at first, to avoid making mistakes. By playing a bite-sized segment of music at the preferred performance tempo from the outset, the pianist can greatly simplify the entire section in the author's step 2 here. Example of the problem: 1. Pianist breaks up a difficult passage in the development section of the 3rd movement of Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata and applies a comfortable, sensible fingering. 2. Pianist ramps up the tempo. 3. Eventually, pianist hits a critical tempo where the fingering turns out to work against the momentum of their hand. 4. Pianist realizes that the new momentum of the faster tempo opens up a new possibility for a fingering-- e.g., just throw the thumb at a new position and let the torque from the forearm land it correctly. If the rest of the arm/shoulder stays loose that torque is a strong and reliable way to reposition the hand. 5. Pianist now has learned two fingerings that compete in their muscle memory-- one for the wrong tempo, which they learned first and methodically ratcheted up, and one for the right tempo which is newer and must be drilled more than the old fingering. 6. Pianist drills away at new fingering alone in a practice room. 7. New fingering becomes comfortable and seemingly secure. 8. Pianist goes plays at a different location, in front of other people, and that wrong fingering stabs at their brain like a black magic spell. This is all avoided by a) practicing small segments of music at the preferred tempo b) joining them together to divide and conquer the piece. Anyway, this is a common problem for a few reasons: 1. Pianists have a general reluctance to choose very small segments of music to practice. 2. Pianists have a propensity to choose pieces that are too difficult for their current skill level. This means they won't come armed with general-purpose fingerings for virtuosic passages, making them likely to choose wrong fingerings when starting to learn virtuosic passages at slow tempos. 3. Music cognition is an early science. Most amateur pianists know the feeling of playing something wrong even once and then feeling how their body somehow memorizes that mistake and haunts their entire practice. But even professional pianists don't have a shortcut for turning that experience on its head-- i.e., there's no way to play a thing correctly once and have one's body memorize that feeling as solidly as it memorizes a single mistake!
toolslive 5y ago
> If you only play the piece fast, the piece will deteriorate as mistakes inevitably get introduced and never get fixed. I know this and I experienced it first hand (pun intended) but I don't understand why it happens.
- tgbugs 5y ago
  The underlying motor sequence is learned and probabilistic based on prior sequences that you actually played. Therefore if you introduce a mistake early it will be one of the set of motor sequences that can occur following the start of the sequence. The faster you go the less time you have to anticipate and correct an upcoming mistake. This can happen at even fairly low speeds as soon as you cross the threshold where you can no longer consciously determine what motor movement happens next in the sequence. An extremely overly simplistic model would be something like, let's say you play a sequence 10 times and make a single mistake. You now have a 10% chance on any future run of making that mistake. However if you do, then you probability of making that mistake goes up in the future. Assume that you can reduce that 10% slighly by applying top down (conscious) attention if you play at some reasonable pace. Playing faster means that you can't use any top down feedback to reduce the probability of the incorrect sequence from occurring. Under stress (e.g. during a competition) you may not be able to dedicate enough attention to keep the incorrect sequences in check, so the mistakes reappear at the worst possible time. This also happens if you get angry because you made a mistake. The best way to avoid this is to never make a mistake in the first place.
mmcnl 5y ago
One important piece of advice is missing: sleep. So many times I've struggled with a certain piece, only to be able to play it flawlessly the following day.
georgeam 5y ago
Here is a book I happen to own (and I recommend highly), on the general topic of how to practice piano effectively. "The Practice Revolution: Getting great results from the six days between lessons", by Philip Johnston. It contains a lot of advice including some overlap with some of the comments in this thread.
jbaber 5y ago
This is a surprisingly simple idea for learning pieces higher than my current level.
MrGando 5y ago
Just wanted to add my two cents here. This is great advice for classical piano (or any other instrument) practice. It does not apply to Jazz Piano playing at all though, in Jazz you should avoid falling into the trap of repetition. Playing slowly and clean, yes, repetition? Not so much.
- mmcconnell1618 5y ago
  The author's advice is fantastic for learning a specific song, note for note as written. @MrGrando is smart to point out that Jazz and other forms of music are much more about free expression and improvisation. A level above the author's practice would be to start understanding the structure of the piece from a music theory standpoint. The relationship between the notes becomes the important element and you begin to see things like a II V I chord progression. By understanding the structure, you realize you can improvise on implied scales, transpose to other keys and harmonize with new chords to add your own creativity.
  - MrGando 5y ago
    That's exactly it. I have to say that the highest-level classical performers reach that level, but through different means. Not the improvisational part, but harmonically, understanding what the voices are doing in a counterpoint Bach passage for example. In classical you're an interpreter, and that's very challenging. In Jazz, you're an interpreter of an improvisation, which is like composing in real-time. I also have to point out that the great classical composers did improvise a lot, and that trend was lost with time but is documented if you research Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin for instance.
- j7ake 5y ago
  I thought most jazz pianists start out classically trained and then branch out into jazz later in life. Is the training methods for classical not a good foundation for jazz?
  - MrGando 5y ago
    Hey, I would say that it's a mix, and now things have been formalized a lot in the realm of Jazz (that's a whole subject on its own). I would say that classical training can definitely help a lot from an interpretation standpoint, there are many technical and harmonic concepts that definitely hold. Some classical repertoire probably helps more and has more parallels to Jazz too. Something that I have to emphasize though, is that you can be quite proficient at playing classical piano and also have a not very sophisticated harmonic understanding ("interpreter v/s composer"), that understanding is required if you're doing Jazz. Some examples of non-classically trained Jazz pianists that are incredibly relevant: Thelonius Monk, Art Tatum. On the other hand, many important Jazz Pianists had extremely relevant classical training. Jarrett being one of the greats and I would mention Brad Mehldau as someone who's extremely influenced by classical as well, and who's still alive and expanding the language of Jazz. Regarding the "training methods", I would say that the classical training methods are problematic if they're tried to be applied to learning jazz. The successful student will have to adapt and drop a lot of them to learn improvisation, which in the end is the essence of the jazz language.
BugWatch 5y ago
Oh hai! This is your daily site's cookie/privacy pop-up analysis: (-) site does "legitimate interest" toggle shenanigans which are defaulted to ON and there is no disable/disagree to all for them. (+) the "non-legitimate" interests have a disagree to all. These are things I will not stand for, ergo I care not to read the website, since it is disrespecting my time and expects me to show each and every "vendor" to checked whether it has "legitimate interest" toggle, and to manually turn it off. No. I'm sick of it. To hell with your website. Signed, -- frustrated now-not-user/reader
XCSme 5y ago
I am a casual piano player and use the Simply Piano app (which is amazing btw, way beyond my expectations) and I do hate playing slow. Lately I try to play any piece at first sight at the original tempo, even though I make many mistakes, I started doing this for more complex songs/pieces and I realized that my sight-reading improved by a lot and that when I go back to easier songs I can play them without any mistake in the first try. I am not saying this is the way to go if you want to become a great classical pianist, but for the casual player that just wants to learn fast to be able to play some songs, I find that trying to force your brain into quickly recognizing patterns and quickly making the correct movements works pretty well.
kingsuper20 5y ago
Interesting discussion as a lot of people have their own secret sauce. I'll add mine. . Practice at least five minutes a day. Doing it often is more important than rare, longer sessions. OTOH, Paul Desmond claimed to never practice because it made him play too fast. Go figure. . One way to slow down a song for learning is simply to divide the speed by two. That keeps the clock more locked in. . Learning tunes is valuable. Reading is useful but can also be a crutch. Playing songs you actually know frees up brain power for playing. . Lessons aren't particularly valuable. Time in harness is. . Backing tracks make really good metronomes. . The only use of a computer I would bother with, aside from as a playback device, is software that slows down without changing pitch. Transcribe! is useful. . On that note, transcribing will greatly improve your ear. . Don't get too involved with gear porn websites. . Playing with other people is a good thing. . Record yourself. It keeps you honest. . There are industries out there devoted to selling equipment, magic software, instruments, video lessons. Ignore them. . Time matters more than notes. . School band programs have limited value. They are mostly setup to deal with large numbers simultaneously and to impress parents. Use at your peril.
JabavuAdams 5y ago
Sweet! This is basically the same as my method. I studied piano up to about Grade 5 RCM, but then was married to a very good pianist for ~15 years and got to listen to her play and practice. Have spent the last few years just doing Hanon's piano exercises as meditation. Finally starting to learn pieces again, with a method very similar to this article. Was going to write an article, but now I don't have to, plus I get validation. My upstairs neighbour is a more advanced pianist, but plays the same stuff again and again way past the point of diminishing returns IMHO. Don't bang your head against a wall. Do some short, efficient practice, then sleep on it. You will automagically be better the next day. The point about not repeating mistakes is key. It's much slower to unlearn than to not have learned the glitches in the first place. Your brain doesn't know the difference between repetition and training. Anything you repeat is training. Also, the point about playing faster resonates with me. I just love playing exercises faster and faster for no particular reason. That said you could compare it to a test-pilot expanding the flight envelope. By pushing past cruising speed, you increase your natural cruising speed. Your error rate will go up, so it's important not to spend too long pushing it, but when you slow back down, you'll feel like you have more time, and be less stressed -- feeling less like you're barely holding on and about to crash. EDIT> Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Mindful, efficient practice is key.
vergessenmir 5y ago
Some comments have mentioned memorising the piece which helps a great deal. One major difference I employ in my practice is this: Instead of speeding up, I speed down. I play the section of notes as chords (which is the fastest you can go). Then I gradually slow down by rotation of my hand as I'm discovering the fingering dynamics. I find this to be considerably faster for me. I find it hard to speed up and never do so enough when starting slow. I'm by no means an expert but this has helped me
jefftk 5y ago
This article does a good job of describing an approach which is useful if you have lots of willpower, limited time, and want to learn to play a complicated piece exactly as written. I'm occasionally in that situation, in which case I use this approach, but at least for me this is a small portion of my practicing. Instead, I try to make sure I sit down at the piano at least once a day, and play whatever I want. The goal is to have fun, and let my fingers learn how to play by giving them a lot of time. If I have more willpower, I'll try harder things, occasionally stopping and slowly working through something that feels just a little bit too hard for me, but even when I just play I'm building familiarity and fluidity. (This isn't specific to piano: it works with any instrument)
zweinz 5y ago
This is good, standard advice (if you can play it slowly...) Once this is done and the notes are under your fingers, though, most pianists would probably say you have about 80% of the work on a piece left. The next most important thing next is to train your ears to get yourself to the next level. I highly recommend recording yourself in small ~30 second chunks and identifying what you want to change. At this point most progress will be made from listening and analysis, not from fingers on keys. Of course, this is hard work and requires proper motivation and training, for which a good teacher has no substitute.
spobin 5y ago
I've been making a VR piano app to help with my own practicing. I find that it helps to see the recorded hands moving in 3d space in front of you. I can also slow down the movements to make it easier to replicate. It's certainly easier than learning sheet music! Here's a video if anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnBmjtgb2rA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnBmjtgb2rA
aasasd 5y ago
This is also pretty much exact same advice as one should use for learning touch typing. I was stuck on some lesson because I was trying to go too quickly and kept mistyping. It's said in many places that you should go slow enough to not make mistakes. Once I did that, I went ahead just fine. By the way, touch typing took about a month to learn, twenty minutes a day—though of course a few more months to get used to it, in practice. (As for playing music, however—never managed that.)
stevage 5y ago
I think this is an effective method, but too boring for most amateurs, including myself. I have used something like this for Bach, because there's basically no way to fudge your way through full counterpoint like that, but otherwise...no thanks.
acjohnson55 5y ago
This is how I practice, in the rare times that I have the discipline to do so systematically. Most of the time, I start from the top and play until I get tired. So I'm always better at the earliest parts of pieces.

480 points by yarapavan 5y ago

I'm a classically trained pianist, and this is good advice. I'd also suggest doing exercises periodically to improve the independence and coordination of your fingers - chord balancing (progressing from 3 notes to 5) and Hanon were particularly helpful for me. (You can google chord balancing and Hanon if you're unfamiliar.)

kucing 5y ago
Totally agree that exercises are good and sometimes mistakenly ignored by people. Although I'd like to also note that the best practice method is what works for one and are actually used by the person. Especially if someone is not going to be a concert pianist, to enjoy practice & playing is invaluable IMO.

tonystride 5y ago

I really like the analogy of trying to learn to run by speed walking faster and faster. It can’t be done, you have to specifically practice your ‘running’ form. Sometimes I do this way before I’m ready and make tons of mistakes like you mentioned, but with the focus of understanding the ‘running’ form as opposed to the speed walking form. This can literally be hilarious, I laugh so much at how ridiculous it can sound but it is really helpful! What do you think about accidentally learning too rote like? For example I never really understood how to play a lot of classical until I was able to feel what it feels like to ‘speak’ music as a jazz pianist. Now I really try to understand what I am saying when I play as if it were my own notes. I can still get in the habit of relying on reading & memorizing without really getting to the heart of the notes and it usually causes me to hit a plateau. For example I’ve been working on James P Johnson’s ‘Carolina Shout’ off of a transcription and hit this plateau without even knowing it. I realized it when I heard Ethan Iverson perform it and realized he was owning the song so much more than the rote attempt I was making. What do you think about moving past the rote learning and owning a piece? https://youtu.be/eM09yob0RFM https://youtu.be/eM09yob0RFM

jmcphers 5y ago
My own experience is that I can't really develop the appropriate expressiveness and dynamics in a piece until the notes and fingering can fly on autopilot. So learning it by rote is sort of a necessary first step towards owning it. But the exact mechanics of musical memorization and expression are different for everyone, so there isn't a lot of one-size-fits-all advice out there.

dota_fanatic 5y ago

I've been listening to the Huberman Lab podcast[0] recently, and in one of the earlier episodes he talks a lot about how to create the environment for neuroplasticity in the adult brain. I've only listened to most episodes once so I hope I'm not misrepresenting him, and this is simplified, but a critical component of causing the release of the chemical bath which allows for robust neuroplasticity is making errors, an experience which should feel a bit uncomfortable. "Errors are the basis of neuroplasticity." Without that focused set of attempts and discomfort of trying to do something and failing, the brain isn't getting the high quality signal that it needs to do some rewiring because the current networks simply aren't making the cut. This is at odds with a quote from OP's second point: > If you keep making mistakes when practicing then you are just going to get good at making them, so it’s best to avoid them in the first place. That aside, the article seems like great advice. With Huberman's account of encouraging adult neuroplasticity in mind, my thinking would be to amend this method towards going just fast enough to be able to do the chunk of music but not so slow that the attempts are free of errors. And probably the errors should be of one type at a time? Instead of erring in dynamics and fingering and articulation all at once, try to get everything right except for one aspect. For that, attempt to surpass your abilities and err. [0] https://www.youtube.com/c/AndrewHubermanLab/featured https://www.youtube.com/c/AndrewHubermanLab/featured Edit: Said another way, “perfect practice makes perfect,” where you aim to play perfectly but consistently just barely fall short. The correct networks are strengthened while those tiny errors get tweaked via neuroplasticity the nights after and consistent improvement results.

nostoc 5y ago
Learning a piano piece is simply building up muscle memory, through repetitions. If you practice and make mistakes, you are building up muscle memories for the wrong notes. As a piano player, what OP says wrings very true. It's tempting to just "play the piece" to practice it, but this is very inneficient, for the reason stated above. focused repetitions is order of magnitudes faster.
- holri 5y ago
  Muscle memory is only one aspect of it. Muscle memory fails badly in stress or performance situations. There also has to be a solid intellectual knowledge of the piece. Mental practice can help with this.

pferdone 5y ago

I started playing piano in February/March and since 'real' lessons are out of the question right now, I wanted to learn it the right way. I looked around and I didn‘t wanted it to be a party trick, where I can play 3 songs by heart and that‘s it. I found pianote and to me it‘s one of the best teaching sites about a particular subject I‘ve ever seen. They take so much time to teach you the fundamentals and their progression path with 'The Method' makes learning fun and challenging. If you‘re looking for a good online course, I think there‘s no better one out there. Even a friend of mine, who plays drums in a band heard of it and said he only heard good things about it. I practice almost everyday and pianote is the best investment in myself I did in a long time. edit: ah well, the HN downvote army comming in for voicing my experience on the subject discussed, what can you do... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

kungito 5y ago
This sounds like a fake review. They cost 200$ yearly to get the books or 30$ per month for online material. I guess the pricing may be ok for the US but for eastern Europe you can get learning materials for way less
- thrwaway987692 5y ago
  While I do not speak on behalf of Pianote, there is definitely no paid shilling going on, it may be the case that the OP is a non-native english speaker, and in that way the tone comes across differently. As for the cost, I would definitely say Pianote's goal is to be a pianote lesson replacement, and in that way the content is cheaper, hopefully for a better/different experience than what you'd get taking sit down lessons
- pferdone 5y ago
  Haha, I knew my post had the potential to be taken the wrong way...and its not $200 for 'books' but for hours upon hours of video learning material, live sessions with teachers, backing tracks for your practice songs, PDFs with practices for your particular lesson and so on. I‘m just really a fan of the site and wanted to share my experience, and no I haven’t been paid to write this text on my 5yrs old account with 100 karma. :) p.s yes I‘m not a native speaker

kucing 5y ago

Slightly OOT. It is refreshing to see how common an article about piano appears at the front page of HN. I have been struggling with the stereotypes / pre-assumption that most software engineers' hobbies (esp fresh grads) seems to be always around tech / electronics.

esrauch 5y ago
I feel like it's also a stereotype that mathy nerds play piano and violin when they're younger.
ternaryoperator 5y ago
I find that there is a huge cross-over between programming and music. IIRC, someone told me years ago, that the most common non-CS degree among programmers was music. I can't verify it, but my experience does not belie it either.
- golemarms 5y ago
  Most common non-STEM degree maybe. I'm sure there are a lot more EE/ physics/ math grads working as programmers than music grads.
  - dpwm 5y ago
    One of the more surprising combos at university was Physics and Music. That was the degree, and the numbers were similar to those doing Computational Physics.
    - golemarms 5y ago
      Imperial College actually used to offer a BSc Physics and Music Performance course[1] (it was suspended recently). This is notable because dual majors, even between similar/adjacent academic fields, are rare for UK undergraduate degrees. [1] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/ug/courses/physics-department/physics-music-bsc/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/ug/courses/physics-departme...

PianoGym 5y ago

If anyone is looking for a digital tool to practice Piano I have made a FREE website called Piano Gym! https://pianogym.com https://pianogym.com It's flash cards but for Piano, and works with MIDI Piano connected to your computer. We use spaced repetition to schedule the flash cards and all you have to do is show up every day and do your reps! The big goal is to remove friction from learning and allow anyone to make their own content if they want to. I'm hoping in a few weeks to make a show hacker news post, but right now I'm bug fixing and working on getting our curriculum loaded up. Once that's done everything is ready to go! So come check it out if you're looking for a new approach to Piano practice and learning! And if you're really into this idea, we're on Patreon and appreciate any help making the dream come true! https://patreon.com/PianoGym https://patreon.com/PianoGym

schemescape 5y ago
Sounds interesting, but the interactive demo for sheet music doesn't work for me in Chrome. There are many CORS errors and then an error in: sheet_music_display_controller.tsx:187 ERROR
- PianoGym 5y ago
  Drats! Like I said, I'm working on bugs and curriculum stuff before I go for a grand reveal. Thank you for the heads up. If you have the time and are interested send an image of your bug or steps to reproduce to support@pianogym.com! Otherwise stay tuned and check it out! I'll make sure to fix this :)
- PianoGym 5y ago
  Update: I have fixed the bug! I just wanted to say thanks for pointing this out, as I can't believe how I overlooked it! Seriously, I appreciate it! Tell everyone about Piano Gym!
Graziano_M 5y ago
There's also https://sightreading.training/ https://sightreading.training/ which I found helped me a lot to learn how to sight read faster, and it also lets you plug in your piano via MIDI.

spekcular 5y ago

I assume when he mentions the Piano Street forums, he's talking about people like Bernhard. The guy was a legend. Some of his posts are collected here by topic: https://pianoselfteached.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/contents/ https://pianoselfteached.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/contents/. But, the information density is rather low, so besides the repertoire suggestions I recommend skipping it. This blog does a great service by distilling all his ideas into a short post. For a book-length treatment along the same lines, there's Chuan C. Chang's Fundamentals of Piano Practice: http://www.pianopractice.org/ http://www.pianopractice.org/. His daughters won state piano competitions using these practice techniques. Beware, though, that there are a few crazy tidbits sprinkled in (for example, his claim that if you practice piano while sick, you might cause brain damage). But most of it is useful.

j7ake 5y ago

Did some classical training when younger and I would maybe add one thing about broader strategies of being a musician in general: Spend up to 1/3 of time with fundamentals (eg scales) Spend at least 1/3 of time with learning pieces (like this article describes) Finally spend the rest of the time with just playing and improvising on the piano.

turtlebits 5y ago

While this method sounds effective, it's not very enjoyable. As a "for fun" piano player, I just like to power through a song slowly, as far as I can get (not stopping for minor mistakes or even skipping notes). Side effect of this is that it has made my sight reading very good.

danielvinson 5y ago
I agree completely. I play several instruments, and when I learned I wouldn't have been able to motivate myself to do it if I was just practicing small sections over and over again. I might have taken twice as much time to gain the same skill level, but in my opinion, finding the motivation to improve is harder than actually improving at most skills.
skybrian 5y ago
Here’s a trick I like: start at the end. I practice the ending a few times, then once I’m happy with it I go back one measure and play from there, and so on. The result is that playing gets easier as you go.
lcuff 5y ago
Definitely a 'Your Mileage May Vary' moment here. On guitar, I used to 'slog' rather than 'power through' a song. It took weeks before it came close to sounding like music. Now I start with a couple (tough) bars (think Doc Watson, Deep River Blues) and that bit sounds like music in a day or two. Plus, I find muscle memory develops much more quickly when I play the same bit over in a short time span. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VAbrnjdtYw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VAbrnjdtYw

honkycat 5y ago

I've been learning guitar and ive been amazed at how bad lessons and education is for adult students. The apps i have used barely work and are extremely unambitious. Classes are so disorganized and i am constantly wading through material that is a mile wide but a foot deep. Yes i have seen Justin Guitar I'm not a huge fan. I dont want to have to wade through content to find the exercises that are relevant to me. I think Duolingo has an interesting approach to this, where has you re-visit concepts every day and it tells you what to practice to reduce decision fatigue. I want a dashboard that is keeping track of my goals and progress akd has an opinionated way for me to measure my skill, and to direct my effort.

hashkb 5y ago
Have you thought about taking lessons from a teacher?
YZF 5y ago
When you say you've seen Justin Guitar do you mean the web site or YouTube? He has a structured program: https://www.justinguitar.com/classes/beginner-guitar-course-classic https://www.justinguitar.com/classes/beginner-guitar-course-... I haven't seen the new site design but it seems ok. When I started learning the guitar (~6 years ago) Justin was a huge help but I complemented that with in person lessons with some teachers and with additional material/random songs. So consider me a fan. I also recommend getting in touch with other musicians/players, that's gonna push your level way more than an app would. May I ask how long ago you've started learning and what level are you at? I think there is a lot of great material online. But in order to grok most of it you need to have some foundation. I've never used any app (well, I use a metronome app) since I haven't seen anything that looked useful. Ear training apps could be useful but I haven't been able to stick with it. In general "apps" seem a poor fit for teaching the guitar.
- honkycat 5y ago
  Honestly I just got really frustrated when I tried to sign up for the Justin guitar paid site and it just broke and wouldn't let me sign in and pay them.

siraben 5y ago

Classically trained pianist here (since 7 years old), I like the article's advice. > Use the correct fingering, dynamics, articulation, etc. from the very beginning; you are never going to get around to “fixing” it later. When I was an impatient kid my piano teachers would keep insisting I play sections slow on a first pass, which annoyed me (it was like reading a book out loud slowly), but it was only until many years later when I played pieces like Un Sospiro[0] which are intractable if you do not start practicing at something like 16 times slower than performance tempo. If you start out correctly, the rest will follow, and IME, sight reading greatly improves as well. > [...] you may reach a point where you can’t play any faster, no matter how hard you try. What is likely happening is that the hand motions you are using—which come naturally at the slower tempo you started with—simply will not work at such high speeds. This is completely true, for instance, in ragtime, the left hand makes big, quick jumps and there is often no time to look at where it will land (which one likely does when playing slowly), so repeating a bar over and over again to incrementally refine your distance estimate is crucial. This applies to things like typing on a keyboard as well, if you focus on correct finger placement (and correct use of the 4th and 5th fingers), your WPM might take a hit for a few days or a week, but in the long term it really helps. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po_a1SmZKLs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po_a1SmZKLs

turtlebits 5y ago
I think it all depends. I ignore dynamics and fingering when starting out, and I think for the most part, fingering doesn't really matter unless you are trying to play extremely fast sections, which pretty much require repetition to get right. FWIW, if I was learning Un Sospiro, I would just try get through the whole song. I played it at 1/2 speed and that seemed to be a reasonable attempt. Sometimes I feel if you have to follow the techniques in the OP, the song may be too challenging for you.
- siraben 5y ago
  Sure, for Un Sospiro there were definitely sections that were easy (first few pages are quite repetitive) so not much issue there, but there are runs in the middle where I practiced slowly for a while until it came naturally.

deleted 5y ago

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the_cat_kittles 5y ago

probably not the most efficient way to learn pieces, but sometimes i like to just read through one to two pages a couple times, every day. after about a week that section is mostly memorized, depending on the density of the music. then i can sit with it and let the fingerings i like naturally evolve. im a guitarist, so i think fingerings are a little more complicated and contextual sometimes. the constraints of the left hand, and the multiple positions to play a single note really up the possibilities. all the things mentioned in the article are good and in my experience mostly correct, except the fingerings, but that probably varies by person. i have two additional pieces of advice for fast passages, if you keep messing them up: - make sure you can subdivide the bar in a couple different rhythms. often ill realize there is some kind of rhythmic discomfort i havent fully smoothed out. for starters, make sure you can tap your foot on the quarters. if you feel any hesitation or discomfort, then there's your problem. - refinger something. its sometimes hard to know if a fingering is going to work at fast tempos, so just try a different one if the current one you are using isnt gelling. for a phrase maybe a bar long, id give it 3 days and if it isnt improving, id start to think about reworking it.

mb_72 5y ago

I was (initially) forced to learn piano from the age of 5... but, by God, was I glad that my parents did this. The article covers pretty much exactly what I - and my teachers - worked out over a number of years. And the basic approach works for any instrument. It's a real boon coming to other instruments - electric bass is my main instrument now - with a grounding in not only music theory but also the 'how to' learn pieces / parts / songs.

gbajson 5y ago

What do you think about applications like Simply Piano? I am 40+ yo, and never played any instrument before. After 3 years of practicing with Simply Piano I am able to read and play some sheet music, but I'd like to know which areas need improvements. Do you know any applications which can record performance of a song and evaluate it?

djaychela 5y ago
I don't think this is a solved problem yet, in terms of technique. You may well be pressing the keys in the right order, at the right time, and with the right dynamics, but there's a lot to playing technique that is about your hand position and movement which isn't detectable via MIDI capture. I've been a guitar teacher for 20 years, and I've seen people who are incredible players with terrible technique. Yes, that means it's possible to play well by doing so badly, but with the right technique (which is still being developed in some areas), there's a whole lot of improvement that could happen, or the player in question could play for longer (both in the short term, and longer term because of injury). Only complex video / 3D capture of your hand position and movement would solve this, and as far as I'm aware this doesn't exist yet. Find a good teacher, even if it's just for the occasional lesson. With the right teacher (and this is horses for courses), you'll make much more progress, even if you still use the app. (All IMO, of course!)

hzay 5y ago

Indian classical dancer here. > Do not work on this section for more than twenty minutes. This is not something I've heard often in my field but I had to learn this over the years. Performers want to present a piece as if it was never practiced and was all made up on the spot, and yet we do have to practice a piece day after day. Losing vitality and "becoming rehearsed" through over-practice is a real problem. The book "A Soprano on Her Head" by Eloise Ristad, who was a piano teacher, really helped me with my dance & acting practice. I restructured a lot based on that book (added improvisational elements, reduced forceful drill-like elements, more self-observation, less verbal cues), and my technique and enjoyment both improved a lot during covid lockdown. She also wrote a book called "Bold Beginnings" for teaching piano using a new method that she made up, but I've not been able to find a copy.

vajrabum 5y ago
I'd completely forgotten about Eloise Ristad and "A Soprano On Her Head." Fanstasic book. Thanks for the reminder. I poked around looking for Bold Beginnings and didn't find it but I did find this page that might be interesting. https://www.modernmusicology.com/elosie-ristad-bold-music-teaching/ https://www.modernmusicology.com/elosie-ristad-bold-music-te...
- trivialcode 5y ago
  A Soprano On Her Head is available at archive.org, and I found a seller for Bold Beginnings here: https://www.naomialdort.com/book-bold-beginnings.html https://www.naomialdort.com/book-bold-beginnings.html

afterwalk 5y ago

I’ve always been taught to spend >50% time practice hand separate first, increase tempo one hand at a time, and only combine after much practice, which seems to differ than the post. Does anyone have a view on how soon to jump into two hands when learning a new piece?

Hackbraten 5y ago
I never practice with separate hands. My experience is that muscle memory kind of resets anyway once the other hand joins. So why bother? I prefer practicing in a super slow tempo but with both hands right from the start.
- jb1991 5y ago
  > My experience is that muscle memory kind of resets anyway once the other hand joins. I’ve never heard anyone suggest that before, and it is certainly not my experience.
  - Hackbraten 5y ago
    It’s highly subjective but it’s also certainly not just me. From [1]: > Your experience is quite typical. Playing two hands at the same time is completely different than playing both separately. But the point of learning parts separately is NOT about making it easier to play both hands together. It's about learning all the "other" stuff (like correct hand position, articulation etc.) without having the distraction of the second hand. From [1] but another person: > Put another way, instrument playing is a conscious action, controlled by our executive function, and we only have one area of the brain that controls the executive function. Thus, homo sapiens's conscious control is, for better or worse, unitary, and we cannot do two independent tasks at once. > The same is true for the piano. From [2]: > Hands separate practices the aural knowledge, or aural memory; and the intellectual. It practices physical on a smaller level, because you aren't practicing the coordination between two hands, but rather the security of one hand alone. But I think the amount it gives to physical knowledge is small enough that it doesn't really count as a method for improving that knowledge. [1] https://music.stackexchange.com/q/53699/ https://music.stackexchange.com/q/53699/ [2] https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=28007.0 https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=28007.0

singingfish 5y ago

My sax teacher has me play the leading notes of the next bar after what I'm actually practicing. It makes a big difference. On the piano I'm currently learning how to put a walking bass on the left hand side with a melody on the right. It's really challenging. One problem with playing it slowly is that it produces clashing notes that sound wrong but will disappear once being played at the correct speed.

wombatmobile 5y ago

Should young children be “forced” to learn piano? That verb “forced” invites an answer in the negative, but music is a wonderful gift that brings so much joy and social opportunity. Music is best learned young. But what if a child says no to lessons? I didn’t say yes and I see now that I cost myself a lot of joy.

lovelyviking 5y ago
Or perhaps you have managed to keep the joy and music related. I've seen people who learned piano in music school and as soon as they have passed theier final exams they forgot about it and never came back to piano because they learned to hate it during their "education". Contrary to that I said "no" to a bad teacher and enjoy plaing music to this day. I do not have a perfect training but still enjoy to learn and play when I can. I believe though such "hard" choice should be avoided if possible. One should have a good teacher and with a good teacher you do not need to "force" anything because it is a joy to learn. Unfortunately I didn't have access to such teacher so I had to learn by myself and it's not easy because when you stuck you have to figure out how to move forward. It happens from time to time and right now for instance I am really puzzled about what to learn next and I do not know where to get a good advice that is "workable" in my current situation.
oriolid 5y ago
Classical piano training is a great way to take joy away from music.
criddell 5y ago
> Music is best learned young. In what way? When I was a kid, I would have been a horrible music student. I was interested in 500 things and music wasn't one of them. I eventually bought a guitar when I was around 25 and took lessons. When it's something you want to do and you have songs you want to play, it's a much different experience. I don't think I would want to trade the thousands of hours I spent playing with legos, swimming, riding my bike or doing any of the other things I did as a kid (including more passive things like reading books and playing video games). So to answer your initial question, no I don't think kids should be forced to play any instrument with a few exceptions. Childhood is too short.

pantulis 5y ago

These are great tips from someone who is a great player and has experience teaching the piano, but I'd also add that you need to also practice the theory behind the piece, specially for modern music as this speeds up the process of learning the piece. Also, we all have very different objectives when approaching piano playing. Some will want to perform live with a band, others having just some fun at home and some will try and become classical concertists. Different goals, different approaches IMHO.

markvdb 5y ago

In some cases, practicing some things slowly is more exhausting and less efficient than starting at at least medium speed from the very beginning. The slow tempo loses you mental oversight of what you are trying to play. You'll learn when this is through experience. If you can't wrap your head around the super slow practicing, try to practice it at a much higher tempo. Still need to be super accurate about fingerings though!

cuddlecake 5y ago
> The slow tempo loses you mental oversight of what you are trying to play. When I was a drummer, I used to think that too, but it turned out to be false most of the time. If I really wanted to make something sound good in a fast tempo, I had to make it sound perfect in a slower tempo. My teacher used to say "if you can play it fast, make sure you can also play it slow" But, as always, it depends.
- markvdb 5y ago
  The original article spoke of piano. I should have mentioned that the advice I gave is more tailored to polyphonic instruments like the guitar, the piano and the accordion. Even on these instruments, the best advice in most cases usually is to practice slowly at first. Just not always. That's what 20 years of teaching the guitar has taught me.

nojs 5y ago

> Use the correct fingering, dynamics, articulation, etc. from the very beginning; you are never going to get around to “fixing” it later. As both a piano player and language learner I am often torn about this. On the one hand it’s better not to give your brain a chance to learn the “wrong” way, because then you trip up on that section over and over. But for language, my experience is that people who speak prolifically, even if it’s badly wrong, do better than those who speak less but make sure it’s always correct. I would love to know if there is any evidence as to which is better, and if it’s different for language than other skills like piano.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
Language is different because people tend to be very forgiving of strangers with poor pronunciation and grammar. As long as you can make yourself understood, no one cares if you're not speaking like a local. If you really do want to speak like a local you'll need lessons from a professional voice coach - not just a language teacher - who will teach you how to move your mouth muscles to make the correct sounds. While some talented people can work this out for themselves, most people can't. Piano is the equivalent of having to work it out for yourself. Muscle memory of right-notes-in-the-right order is the start of musicality, not the end of it. You have to master that level to the point where it's unconscious before you control dynamics, tempo, and evenness - which are the performance details that make a performance successful and expressive, as opposed to sort-of-competent.

cyberscientist 5y ago

Thanks for this post, I've been struggling to learn how to play piano for few years now.

suicas 5y ago

This is a great article, one I wished I read a long time ago after a lot of inefficient learning. One thing I'm still keeping an eye out for is how to best learn when time is limited. As I get older, free time is at a premium, with job/kids/life/etc. meaning that some days even 20m practice is a luxury. So I've always been curious how to make the most of that and unexpected slots of free time. Should I just work on technical exercises/scales? Have a set of things written down to work on in case free time appears? Follow the advice in the article? Or accept that nothing worthwhile can be done in such short time and noodle around?

monster_group 5y ago
I am in same situation as you. What keeps me going is practicing songs that I enjoy. If I am working on a song that I enjoy, I am excited to pick up the guitar and am more or less able to find time every day. I also see progress because I am learning what I enjoy.

dominicrose 5y ago

Honestly I don't have strict rules to practice. I'm learning the 3rd movement of K310 by just playing it with the sheet from beginning to end with both hands. Once I get fast and comfy with it I'll start playing it avoiding eye-contact with the sheet as best I can until I can drop the sheet completely. Then it starts to be really motivating to play the piece again and again and I'll experiment with different tempos, with or without the metronome, with different numerical sounds and tone transpositions. Playing eyes closed is interesting too but I rarely think of doing it. I don't want to be strict and write down rules to follow, if I don't think about it I don't do it. I don't really agree with "you are never going to get around to “fixing” it later" because I do that all the time, I make lots of mistakes all the time and I just don't care because I know I'll fix them later. Glenn Gould trained sometimes with background noise like TV or radio to avoid hearing his mistakes.

jacquesm 5y ago

For once this isn't entirely off-topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFRdoYfZYUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFRdoYfZYUY

CuriouslyC 5y ago

Some tricks that have worked for me with other instruments. * Learn how to make random note sequences sound good. With the right timing and fingering it's usually possible. * Spend time jamming to develop improvisation skills and musicality. * Focus on the parts of the music that are hard rather than trying to play through.

criddell 5y ago
I think your first bullet points out an undervalued skill. So much time is spent on rote learning when I think improvisation should be encouraged once the very basics have been learned.

throw0101a 5y ago

Professional pianist Tiffany Poon has a channel where she posts some of her practice sessions with why she does certain things: * https://www.youtube.com/c/TiffanyPoonpianist/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/TiffanyPoonpianist/videos

jancsika 5y ago

> If it’s too easy to memorize, choose a bigger section. This doesn't work with fast passages where the pianist must feel how to use the momentum to their advantage. Better path-- choose a small enough section that may be played immediately at the preferred tempo. > Practice the section slowly enough, at first, to avoid making mistakes. By playing a bite-sized segment of music at the preferred performance tempo from the outset, the pianist can greatly simplify the entire section in the author's step 2 here. Example of the problem: 1. Pianist breaks up a difficult passage in the development section of the 3rd movement of Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata and applies a comfortable, sensible fingering. 2. Pianist ramps up the tempo. 3. Eventually, pianist hits a critical tempo where the fingering turns out to work against the momentum of their hand. 4. Pianist realizes that the new momentum of the faster tempo opens up a new possibility for a fingering-- e.g., just throw the thumb at a new position and let the torque from the forearm land it correctly. If the rest of the arm/shoulder stays loose that torque is a strong and reliable way to reposition the hand. 5. Pianist now has learned two fingerings that compete in their muscle memory-- one for the wrong tempo, which they learned first and methodically ratcheted up, and one for the right tempo which is newer and must be drilled more than the old fingering. 6. Pianist drills away at new fingering alone in a practice room. 7. New fingering becomes comfortable and seemingly secure. 8. Pianist goes plays at a different location, in front of other people, and that wrong fingering stabs at their brain like a black magic spell. This is all avoided by a) practicing small segments of music at the preferred tempo b) joining them together to divide and conquer the piece. Anyway, this is a common problem for a few reasons: 1. Pianists have a general reluctance to choose very small segments of music to practice. 2. Pianists have a propensity to choose pieces that are too difficult for their current skill level. This means they won't come armed with general-purpose fingerings for virtuosic passages, making them likely to choose wrong fingerings when starting to learn virtuosic passages at slow tempos. 3. Music cognition is an early science. Most amateur pianists know the feeling of playing something wrong even once and then feeling how their body somehow memorizes that mistake and haunts their entire practice. But even professional pianists don't have a shortcut for turning that experience on its head-- i.e., there's no way to play a thing correctly once and have one's body memorize that feeling as solidly as it memorizes a single mistake!

toolslive 5y ago

> If you only play the piece fast, the piece will deteriorate as mistakes inevitably get introduced and never get fixed. I know this and I experienced it first hand (pun intended) but I don't understand why it happens.

tgbugs 5y ago
The underlying motor sequence is learned and probabilistic based on prior sequences that you actually played. Therefore if you introduce a mistake early it will be one of the set of motor sequences that can occur following the start of the sequence. The faster you go the less time you have to anticipate and correct an upcoming mistake. This can happen at even fairly low speeds as soon as you cross the threshold where you can no longer consciously determine what motor movement happens next in the sequence. An extremely overly simplistic model would be something like, let's say you play a sequence 10 times and make a single mistake. You now have a 10% chance on any future run of making that mistake. However if you do, then you probability of making that mistake goes up in the future. Assume that you can reduce that 10% slighly by applying top down (conscious) attention if you play at some reasonable pace. Playing faster means that you can't use any top down feedback to reduce the probability of the incorrect sequence from occurring. Under stress (e.g. during a competition) you may not be able to dedicate enough attention to keep the incorrect sequences in check, so the mistakes reappear at the worst possible time. This also happens if you get angry because you made a mistake. The best way to avoid this is to never make a mistake in the first place.

mmcnl 5y ago

One important piece of advice is missing: sleep. So many times I've struggled with a certain piece, only to be able to play it flawlessly the following day.

georgeam 5y ago

Here is a book I happen to own (and I recommend highly), on the general topic of how to practice piano effectively. "The Practice Revolution: Getting great results from the six days between lessons", by Philip Johnston. It contains a lot of advice including some overlap with some of the comments in this thread.

jbaber 5y ago

This is a surprisingly simple idea for learning pieces higher than my current level.

MrGando 5y ago

Just wanted to add my two cents here. This is great advice for classical piano (or any other instrument) practice. It does not apply to Jazz Piano playing at all though, in Jazz you should avoid falling into the trap of repetition. Playing slowly and clean, yes, repetition? Not so much.

mmcconnell1618 5y ago
The author's advice is fantastic for learning a specific song, note for note as written. @MrGrando is smart to point out that Jazz and other forms of music are much more about free expression and improvisation. A level above the author's practice would be to start understanding the structure of the piece from a music theory standpoint. The relationship between the notes becomes the important element and you begin to see things like a II V I chord progression. By understanding the structure, you realize you can improvise on implied scales, transpose to other keys and harmonize with new chords to add your own creativity.
- MrGando 5y ago
  That's exactly it. I have to say that the highest-level classical performers reach that level, but through different means. Not the improvisational part, but harmonically, understanding what the voices are doing in a counterpoint Bach passage for example. In classical you're an interpreter, and that's very challenging. In Jazz, you're an interpreter of an improvisation, which is like composing in real-time. I also have to point out that the great classical composers did improvise a lot, and that trend was lost with time but is documented if you research Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin for instance.
j7ake 5y ago
I thought most jazz pianists start out classically trained and then branch out into jazz later in life. Is the training methods for classical not a good foundation for jazz?
- MrGando 5y ago
  Hey, I would say that it's a mix, and now things have been formalized a lot in the realm of Jazz (that's a whole subject on its own). I would say that classical training can definitely help a lot from an interpretation standpoint, there are many technical and harmonic concepts that definitely hold. Some classical repertoire probably helps more and has more parallels to Jazz too. Something that I have to emphasize though, is that you can be quite proficient at playing classical piano and also have a not very sophisticated harmonic understanding ("interpreter v/s composer"), that understanding is required if you're doing Jazz. Some examples of non-classically trained Jazz pianists that are incredibly relevant: Thelonius Monk, Art Tatum. On the other hand, many important Jazz Pianists had extremely relevant classical training. Jarrett being one of the greats and I would mention Brad Mehldau as someone who's extremely influenced by classical as well, and who's still alive and expanding the language of Jazz. Regarding the "training methods", I would say that the classical training methods are problematic if they're tried to be applied to learning jazz. The successful student will have to adapt and drop a lot of them to learn improvisation, which in the end is the essence of the jazz language.

BugWatch 5y ago

Oh hai! This is your daily site's cookie/privacy pop-up analysis: (-) site does "legitimate interest" toggle shenanigans which are defaulted to ON and there is no disable/disagree to all for them. (+) the "non-legitimate" interests have a disagree to all. These are things I will not stand for, ergo I care not to read the website, since it is disrespecting my time and expects me to show each and every "vendor" to checked whether it has "legitimate interest" toggle, and to manually turn it off. No. I'm sick of it. To hell with your website. Signed, -- frustrated now-not-user/reader

XCSme 5y ago

I am a casual piano player and use the Simply Piano app (which is amazing btw, way beyond my expectations) and I do hate playing slow. Lately I try to play any piece at first sight at the original tempo, even though I make many mistakes, I started doing this for more complex songs/pieces and I realized that my sight-reading improved by a lot and that when I go back to easier songs I can play them without any mistake in the first try. I am not saying this is the way to go if you want to become a great classical pianist, but for the casual player that just wants to learn fast to be able to play some songs, I find that trying to force your brain into quickly recognizing patterns and quickly making the correct movements works pretty well.

kingsuper20 5y ago

Interesting discussion as a lot of people have their own secret sauce. I'll add mine. . Practice at least five minutes a day. Doing it often is more important than rare, longer sessions. OTOH, Paul Desmond claimed to never practice because it made him play too fast. Go figure. . One way to slow down a song for learning is simply to divide the speed by two. That keeps the clock more locked in. . Learning tunes is valuable. Reading is useful but can also be a crutch. Playing songs you actually know frees up brain power for playing. . Lessons aren't particularly valuable. Time in harness is. . Backing tracks make really good metronomes. . The only use of a computer I would bother with, aside from as a playback device, is software that slows down without changing pitch. Transcribe! is useful. . On that note, transcribing will greatly improve your ear. . Don't get too involved with gear porn websites. . Playing with other people is a good thing. . Record yourself. It keeps you honest. . There are industries out there devoted to selling equipment, magic software, instruments, video lessons. Ignore them. . Time matters more than notes. . School band programs have limited value. They are mostly setup to deal with large numbers simultaneously and to impress parents. Use at your peril.

JabavuAdams 5y ago

Sweet! This is basically the same as my method. I studied piano up to about Grade 5 RCM, but then was married to a very good pianist for ~15 years and got to listen to her play and practice. Have spent the last few years just doing Hanon's piano exercises as meditation. Finally starting to learn pieces again, with a method very similar to this article. Was going to write an article, but now I don't have to, plus I get validation. My upstairs neighbour is a more advanced pianist, but plays the same stuff again and again way past the point of diminishing returns IMHO. Don't bang your head against a wall. Do some short, efficient practice, then sleep on it. You will automagically be better the next day. The point about not repeating mistakes is key. It's much slower to unlearn than to not have learned the glitches in the first place. Your brain doesn't know the difference between repetition and training. Anything you repeat is training. Also, the point about playing faster resonates with me. I just love playing exercises faster and faster for no particular reason. That said you could compare it to a test-pilot expanding the flight envelope. By pushing past cruising speed, you increase your natural cruising speed. Your error rate will go up, so it's important not to spend too long pushing it, but when you slow back down, you'll feel like you have more time, and be less stressed -- feeling less like you're barely holding on and about to crash. EDIT> Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Mindful, efficient practice is key.

vergessenmir 5y ago

Some comments have mentioned memorising the piece which helps a great deal. One major difference I employ in my practice is this: Instead of speeding up, I speed down. I play the section of notes as chords (which is the fastest you can go). Then I gradually slow down by rotation of my hand as I'm discovering the fingering dynamics. I find this to be considerably faster for me. I find it hard to speed up and never do so enough when starting slow. I'm by no means an expert but this has helped me

jefftk 5y ago

This article does a good job of describing an approach which is useful if you have lots of willpower, limited time, and want to learn to play a complicated piece exactly as written. I'm occasionally in that situation, in which case I use this approach, but at least for me this is a small portion of my practicing. Instead, I try to make sure I sit down at the piano at least once a day, and play whatever I want. The goal is to have fun, and let my fingers learn how to play by giving them a lot of time. If I have more willpower, I'll try harder things, occasionally stopping and slowly working through something that feels just a little bit too hard for me, but even when I just play I'm building familiarity and fluidity. (This isn't specific to piano: it works with any instrument)

zweinz 5y ago

This is good, standard advice (if you can play it slowly...) Once this is done and the notes are under your fingers, though, most pianists would probably say you have about 80% of the work on a piece left. The next most important thing next is to train your ears to get yourself to the next level. I highly recommend recording yourself in small ~30 second chunks and identifying what you want to change. At this point most progress will be made from listening and analysis, not from fingers on keys. Of course, this is hard work and requires proper motivation and training, for which a good teacher has no substitute.

spobin 5y ago

I've been making a VR piano app to help with my own practicing. I find that it helps to see the recorded hands moving in 3d space in front of you. I can also slow down the movements to make it easier to replicate. It's certainly easier than learning sheet music! Here's a video if anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnBmjtgb2rA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnBmjtgb2rA

aasasd 5y ago

This is also pretty much exact same advice as one should use for learning touch typing. I was stuck on some lesson because I was trying to go too quickly and kept mistyping. It's said in many places that you should go slow enough to not make mistakes. Once I did that, I went ahead just fine. By the way, touch typing took about a month to learn, twenty minutes a day—though of course a few more months to get used to it, in practice. (As for playing music, however—never managed that.)

stevage 5y ago

I think this is an effective method, but too boring for most amateurs, including myself. I have used something like this for Bach, because there's basically no way to fudge your way through full counterpoint like that, but otherwise...no thanks.

acjohnson55 5y ago

This is how I practice, in the rare times that I have the discipline to do so systematically. Most of the time, I start from the top and play until I get tired. So I'm always better at the earliest parts of pieces.