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Topic: Piano Practice (Personals, Tips, Questions, etc.)  (Read 4975 times)

Offline ren_marq

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Piano Practice (Personals, Tips, Questions, etc.)
on: November 09, 2013, 02:53:03 PM
Hello fellow pianists! New member here.  :)

I can't say I'm an advance student. I'm 15. I love Classical Music. I got my first formal piano lesson last year. I've been very serious and crazy over this instrument. I really love to practice. When my teacher gave me a John Thompson book, my feelings for this instrument intensified. Two months later, my teacher gave me Clemente Sonatinas which I actually like. I started discovering the vast world of music. I practice Baroque, Classical, Romantic (Chopin FTW!), and a little bit of contemporary.

I usually spend 6-9 hours in practicing starting with scales and arpeggios from Hanon. I took the preface seriously believing this will improve my technicality. But I've been seeing a lot of posts saying "Scales and arpeggios will not improve piano technicality.", "Etudes are better.", "Don't spend too much time time in practicing...", something like that. That's why I made this thread to help me and similar students to gather tips and suggestions from pianists around this global community. Everybody can share! The questions below can serve as your guide.

1. How to the make most of your piano practice?
2. How to improve technicality, interpretation, memorization, sight reading skill, etc.?
3. What are your tips and suggestions in practicing?
4. What's your daily piano routine?
5. What do you think are the daily habits that can make you a good pianist?
6. What are some piano works/exercises that can help you?
7. How did Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt or any other piano virtuosos practice?
8. What are your personal experience/s that seems to improve you?
9. What tools/apps do you use that helps you in your piano education?

Your responses will surely help. Thank you and have a nice day! :)

P.S. I'll be having my 3rd recital this January and my recital pieces are...
1. Liszt - Liebestraume No. 3 (currently practicing, this is a real pain in the @#$) ;D
2. Chopin - Grande Valse Brillante
3. Beethoven - Pathetique (memorization ongoing)
You might as well give tips and suggestions for these.

Offline kevin69

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Re: Piano Practice (Personals, Tips, Questions, etc.)
Reply #1 on: November 10, 2013, 01:58:45 AM
Is your '6-9 hours' practice per week? or per day?

You have been playing longer than me, so feel free to ignore anything i say :)
but these would be my tips:

* plan your practice sessions, including how long you are going to spend doing each thing;
* practice problem areas in small chunks;
* don't play whole pieces repeatably;
* If you haven't solved a problem in 20 minutes, break it into smaller chunks;
* If you can't play a chunk hands together, play hands separate and then merge chunks;
* Don't play wrong notes: play more slowly instead;
* Don't play with the wrong dynamics thinking you'll add that later: you won't, because you'll have learnt the wrong dynamics and unlearning is hard;

Offline lcrommelin

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Re: Piano Practice (Personals, Tips, Questions, etc.)
Reply #2 on: November 17, 2013, 11:48:13 AM
Make sure that you practice with the highest possible quality you can. Everybody says 'practice makes perfect', but I'd rather say 'perfect practice makes perfect'. And don't separate technique from music. The sound quality (singing legato, staccato, balance between melody and accompaniment, a heavy or a light sound, you name it) must be translated into the key through your fingers. That's also technique. Making music is having music in your imagination and translate it into real sound from your instrument.
https://www.pianopage.net

Offline bronnestam

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Re: Piano Practice (Personals, Tips, Questions, etc.)
Reply #3 on: November 18, 2013, 10:30:41 AM
Hello fellow pianists! New member here.  :)

I can't say I'm an advance student. I'm 15...

I usually spend 6-9 hours in practicing starting with scales and arpeggios from Hanon. I took the preface seriously believing this will improve my technicality. But I've been seeing a lot of posts saying "Scales and arpeggios will not improve piano technicality.", "Etudes are better.", "Don't spend too much time time in practicing...", something like that.


Well, er, I really hope you don't spend 6-9 A DAY practicing. That is too much. First, it won't do you very good. Second, I really cannot understand how you manage to put so much time in practicing when you are 15. You have school. You need physical exercise, simple leisure time, to socialize with people and - YES!!! - help your family with household and everyday tasks. All of these things are just as important as piano playing ... even if you want to become a professional piano player.

 

1. How to the make most of your piano practice?
2. How to improve technicality, interpretation, memorization, sight reading skill, etc.?
3. What are your tips and suggestions in practicing?
4. What's your daily piano routine?
5. What do you think are the daily habits that can make you a good pianist?
6. What are some piano works/exercises that can help you?
7. How did Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt or any other piano virtuosos practice?
8. What are your personal experience/s that seems to improve you?
9. What tools/apps do you use that helps you in your piano education?



I just described in another thread that my teacher last week ordered me to restrict my playing to 4x15 minutes a day, with at least 10 minutes physical activity inbetween sessions. This is to make my learning curve even more effective. Practicing and learning is not just a conscious, active process; there is a lot of subconscious processing as well. In the future I will play more again, of course, but this exercise is doing me very good right now!
It is also a well-known fact that your ability to learn significantly decreases after 15 minutes, so taking a break there is always a good thing.

I do not play Hanon and similar exercises. My teacher has given me a sheet of paper with some exercises, but most I simply invent exercises while I work with a piece. If the piece in question is in c minor, I do some technical exercises in c minor, for example. There are always scales and arpeggios in classical pieces, at least most of them, so if I see a scale passage, I practice that section. I might experiment by doing it with both hands, or the other hands, or reverse the passage, or extend it over more octaves, or trying it punctuated or ... whatever.

I like the e-books and online tips by Graham Fitch, check them out. One advice from him, borrowed from Liszt, is: "think ten times, play once". That is, don't feel forced to produce sounds all the time. It is better to plan and think a few times more.
Also use the "feedback loop": plan what you want to achieve with a certain section, then play, then evaluate carefully. If things went wrong - you still felt tense, you still made that mistake, you still felt you got the wrong expression - you must think of how to correct it and then you do it all over again.

When you feel you are getting a good hang of a piece, you should spend MORE time - not less - practicing very slowly. This will stabilize your playing. This is especially important right before a recital. Your last rehearsal should be in very slow tempo!

Record yourself often and listen a lot to yourself. You will hear a lot of things you were not aware of while you were playing ... unfortunately.

If you play from memory, can you stop playing in the middle of a section (or at the signal from your teacher), put your hands on your lap for a few seconds and then keep on playing? Can you do that with just your left hand then? And then, at a given signal, switch to your right hand only? If you can do these things, you have certainly got the piece well memorized. Otherwise ... you should work a bit more.

(Personally I am terrible memorizer, I cling to my notes as a baby to her teddy bear, but I'm working hard to improve.)

I use a simple app called Compound Time, which simply helps me to keep track of my sessions. I get a kick when I see the records of how much I've worked. It got a bit boring after this 4x15 assignment, though. And there I have the material from Fitch, as mentioned, and I have also read the book from Chang ... Chung ... I can never remember his name ... But it was good, and gave some very interesting perspectives. I learned "the old school way" 30 years ago, and even piano education has improved since then ...

Answer to question 5: See above, about what other things you should do except sitting at the piano. All of them will make you a better pianist, and a more successful pianist. Otherwise I also think it is a good habit to plan your practicing carefully, to train your ability to focus (rather than your endurance with marathon practicing sessions!)


... and, finally: use your energy on having fun at the piano, enjoying the music, embracing the music and the great works. Don't spill a second, though, on comparing yourself with other young pianists. I am at this grade and I spend so-and-so much time on practicing and I have been in this competition and blah blah blah. The sad truth is that world does not give a sh*t. There are millions and millions of good pianists around the world, you cannot compete by comparing yourself to them - the only way to succeed is by being uniquely YOU.

Offline coolpianoman

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Re: Piano Practice (Personals, Tips, Questions, etc.)
Reply #4 on: December 04, 2014, 12:30:34 PM
I like the e-books and online tips by Graham Fitch, check them out. One advice from him, borrowed from Liszt, is: "think ten times, play once". That is, don't feel forced to produce sounds all the time. It is better to plan and think a few times more.

Yes this is sound advice from Graham Fitch who in my view has an excellent approach to piano practice.  I for one used to spend little or no time actually thinking about my playing although after a fantastic workshop with Graham F my practice routine and method has totally changed.

Liszt and Fitch's recommendation is not confined to music though.  We had an extension to our home built a few years ago and this involved the use of a couple of huge solid oak beams.  The very experienced carpenter cut one too short - a costly error.  The seasoned builder told him 'measure twice cut once'  ;)

Offline cwjalex

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Re: Piano Practice (Personals, Tips, Questions, etc.)
Reply #5 on: December 04, 2014, 06:13:43 PM
putting a lot of thought into how you are going to practice is important to making the best of it.  be aware of what your weaknesses are so you can focus on them. 

i will also share something that i do that i think some people would think isn't a good idea.  i don't watch any tv but my "tv" is my computer whether it is surfing the web or watching videos there.  i moved my desk so it's perpendicular to my keyboard and i usually sit 45 degrees between the two.  if i want to play piano i just move 45 degrees left.  i'm so impatient that even if im waiting for like a video to load or something i'll start playing and sometimes i get so wrapped up in it i just forget what i was doing on the computer and continue to play.  moving my computer to my keyboard has increased my practice time by a lot since i am pretty much always sitting down within arms reach of the keyboard. 

Offline verqueue

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Re: Piano Practice (Personals, Tips, Questions, etc.)
Reply #6 on: December 04, 2014, 08:15:28 PM


1. How to the make most of your piano practice?
Practice one problem no longer than 3 minutes, then switch to next one. Come back to the previous one later, when you know that you don't have it in your short-term memory. This approach will make your long-term memory working better, so you'll learn faster.
Breaks during practice are also important, don't practice longer than 2 hours at once (for me 45 minutes and 5-10 minutes of break is the best proportion, if I have one "practice slot" of a day).

2. How to improve technicality, interpretation, memorization, sight reading skill, etc.?
By practicing ;). Technical practice should go always with music (in scales there can be music also).  For memorization it's good to sit down on a coach and try to play the piece in your head without score. For interpretation the same, but with the score. After playing the piece in your head play it on the piano.
I heard that Mikrokosmos by Bartok is good for practcing sight-reading.

3. What are your tips and suggestions in practicing?
When you feel tired, stop practicing right away.

4. What's your daily piano routine?
Depends on the day. In weekends I practice about 3 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the evening (with breaks for every 45-60 minutes of practice). At the rest of the days I practice about 3-4 hours in the evening (usually 2 hours on the digital :/).

5. What do you think are the daily habits that can make you a good pianist?
Don't know, still looking for. Maybe that I play very systematically.


6. What are some piano works/exercises that can help you?
I made a big step in my playing just by playing harder repertoire.
For technique - I will try Tausig's exercises. I didn't find Hanon useful.

7. How did Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt or any other piano virtuosos practice?
Read, learn, listen to recordings. Stop listening to recordings, make an interpretation. Practice.

8. What are your personal experience/s that seems to improve you?
Talking about an interpretation with other people.

9. What tools/apps do you use that helps you in your piano education?
Pencil.



Offline bernadette60614

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Re: Piano Practice (Personals, Tips, Questions, etc.)
Reply #7 on: December 04, 2014, 10:58:39 PM
And, I would add:  Before you touch the keys, sit down the score.  Read through each measure and think about it:  How is it structured, does this appear to be a pattern, look ahead and see if that pattern is repeated. Then, I take out a pencil and mark the patterns..for examples, in the Chopin Prelude I'm working, there are 5 repeating patterns. Knowing that there are 5 repeating patterns means that instead of working on a a score, I'm working on 5 repeating patterns.

Before you close the the piece's score till the next day, mark the spots you want to start with the next day...I call them "yips"...the parts that don't feel as secure as the other parts.  I'm very human, and I love to play the sections I play easily, and leave the hard parts of "later". But, by later, I'm ready to be done. Work on the yips of any piece first.
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