Getting Great Piano Practice Every Day!

Tip #2 For Piano Students - All Levels

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Piano Lessons In Marlton, Voorhees, Haddonfield & Cherry Hill, NJ.

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Jonathan Plowright, the piano virtuoso from Britain, in an article from 2012, giving young piano students tips on practicing, said that he likes to get 4 or 5 short practice sessions in every day.

• He says this allows him to get the highest level of concentration, while helping him avoid any possibility
  of daydreaming.

Of course, his idea of a short practice session is roughly 45 minutes to an hour, which he repeats 4 or 5 times each day. 

Now as much as I'd love to hear that all of my students were investing 3 to 4 hours a day into piano practice, I'm aware of the fact that most piano students have other activities on their daily rosters and practicing even an hour a day may not be practical or realistic.

However, if a student really wants to learn how to play the piano at even the modest level of competency, there is no avoiding the truth, and the truth is that consistent practice every day is more of a factor than the amount of time you put in.

• My teacher once told me to "master a little bit every day", no matter how much time I had to practice. In other words, get the most out of each practice session.

So if I only had enough time to learn one measure of a song, than it was better to learn just one measure, than to try to play through the entire song once or twice.

By the way, this is probably the most common mistake that piano students make. Playing through a new song once or twice a day isn't really good, concentrated practice.

While it may be good for developing your sight-reading skills, it's not going to provide the sufficient amount of repetitions necessary to learn a piece thoroughly from top to bottom.

Depending on the level of difficulty, practicing a song in small portions, whether it's one measure at a time or four measures at a time, will allow you to first, remember your mistakes, and then secondly, go back and immediately make the necessary corrections.

• The "small portions" approach allows you to get more repetitions in, especially if your have 15 minutes or less to practice every day.

Yes, it will definitely take longer to learn a song, but if you master a little bit at a time, you'll play the song with more confidence and skill, and you'll get more out of your daily practice sessions than you would if you just played through an entire song a couple times every day.

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Check back next week for more great piano practice tips!

Piano Lessons In Marlton, Voorhees, Haddonfield & Cherry Hill, NJ.

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