My fingers always miss the keys. Even after I have perfected it.

[dontcheeseme]

I could never play pieces at my level perfectly. And that's because my fingers always slip and miss keys, at least one or two....or at worst seven. Even after employing slow practise. Or am I not employing slow practise enough?

And once I have gotten it down pat perfectly, after 2-3 plays, my fingers start missing the keys again. Need help!

[dogperson]

First, I would suggest that you seriously look at whether you are learning repertoire that is truly at your level.  If yes,  consider the following:

- Playing it once or twice correctly does not mean you have perfected it.  If you find that you begin missing keys, play it again:  SLOWLY, SLOWLY, SLOWLY, hands separate and then hands together.  So slow that it becomes unrecognizable as the original.
-Work separately, and repeatedly on those measures with the slips.   You must work repeatedly until it is correct repeatedly. 
- Then join those measures with the one before and after.

[thirtytwo2020]

So you cannot play pieces "at your level" perfectly - what about pieces below your level, say pieces that you have learnt really well one or two years ago? Are you able to play these without slipping?

If you can, this is a sign that you are expecting too much after too little time. Maybe the fact that you are often missing one or two notes means that you are actually working at a level that is a perfect challenge to you. If you were only playing pieces that you could easily play "pat perfectly", you wouldn't improve as much. Besides, it depends of course on what pieces you are playing - even seven slips wouldn't be very much in a difficult thirty-page sonata.

Of course I am only guessing, but I think your pieces need more time and that you need to employ all kinds of practice, not only slow practice. Try practicing only the difficult bits, or start the practice session from the end of the piece and work your way to the beginning (because most people only ever practice the other way around and this means they never learn the end properly); be creative and invent your own little exercises based on the piece you are working on..... etc, etc

Also, it's perfectly natural that you start playing wrong notes again  after having perfected a particular piece. Perfection needs to be maintained, and if you want to keep a piece on your repertoire, you need to keep practising it.

[debmel]

In addition to what has been said here, you may be using too much pressure. With tension in your hands fingers slipping is bound to happen. Probably the tension in your hands is increasing as you play faster and louder. Your fingers should be imitating the movement of the hammers in the piano: after one intensive hit on the string the hammer draws back and waits for the next hit.

More tips for piano students on www.pianoways.com

[adodd81802]

This may or may not help.

But what is your level of proficiency on scales / broken chords and arpeggios? Missing notes is common, I think due to being lacking in this particular area.

Some people will tell you they're a waste of time or how do they relate to the pieces, why not just learn the pieces bla bla.

It seems cheesy but (explanation if you haven't seen it) In the film the karate kid, the famous line "Wax on, Wax off" in which a kid trying to learn karate not understanding why he is spending hours every day waxing cars.

Then one day his teacher confronts him with an attack and he defends it with with the same motion he has been using to wax the cars without even realizing.

I think on some degree that's a big point of learning scales, arpeggios etc it's to cover 90% of the motions required to accurately hit notes without too much concentration.

If we learn piece by piece without these fundamentals, I don't think we are truly covering the technique enough and so what you will find is every piece you learn will suffer from the same symptoms.

If you feel at this stage you cannot invest the time into hardcore scales and arpeggios, at the very least you should start spending a small section of your practice in scales etc in the keys of the pieces that you are learning.

Lastly, in response to your comment. Slow practice should not be the main focus to ensure you hit the right notes. Slow practice helps you ensure you mindfully know what notes you're playing now and playing next, and sometimes required if you cannot at all play the piece at full speed.

realistically you need to be practicing close to your final speed on the problem areas to fix them, and further more make sure you do so by taking the problem section out of the piece and just focusing on that over and over until you're confident you cannot miss the notes.

[mjames]

It also depends on what you are playing. When I play a long difficult piece for a recital, I have the entire piece in my hands - completely confident about every section, and yet I still miss a few notes. It honestly it can't be helped. I mean think about it, even genius virtuosos can't do it. : ]

[indianajo]

I find slow practice is how I learn to play the right notes.  If I make more than one mistake in a "practice" of a piece, then I slow down.  
It takes 3 to 5 perfect sessions on a piece at any given speed before the learning moves from the cortex into the inner motor circuits.  I mean perfect, NO mistakes.  After that I can speed up a little. Usually 10% or less. 
My teacher taught me this starting 1958 and it has served me well. Even when I go back to pieces I learned 50 years ago, a few stumbles to figure out what fingering I was using, then the inner brain kicks in and I have the piece down nearly perfectly again.  I should have written down more fingering numbers, the ones in the book never worked for my ethnically different hands.
I mean it.  Practicing while making mistakes just sinks them into the brain, just like the correct movements should have.  Going too fast too soon, means IMHO, no progress at all.  I don't know how students in conservatories do it, the breakneck pace, but I've never wanted to be a professional.  If you do, you had better have more innate talent than I do. I play things correctly, but it takes a while, usually starting one hand alone for weeks and weeks.  
Teachers won't tell you this IMHO because they don't want to discourage you, and want their money.  Stumbling around making mistakes keeps you going back.  Since I restarted piano and organ about 2000, I've had three lessons.  One was about emotion and interpretations, not the correct notes.  The other two, one was about organ bench posture, and another about the names of the sounds of the pipe organ.  
As far as scales, I did those early plus Schmitt, then Edna Mae Berman exercises, follows by Czerny School of Velocity.  I did exercises about 10-15 minutes every practice session back when.  this IMHO will give you mastery of nearly all the physical tricks required to play the piano.  If you have a teacher to point out the secret lesson of each exercise.  Grinding though the exercises without a guide IMHO is useless.  the physical tricks are not explained on the printed page.  
Hoping for faster progress for you.  

[debussychopin]

You haven't perfected it then.

[timothy42b]

In addition to what has been said here, you may be using too much pressure. With tension in your hands fingers slipping is bound to happen.

This.  You have to feel the keys.  Tension is the enemy of feeling.  As soon as you lose key feel stop and release tension. 

Well, that's what happens to me, anyway.  Once I get tense the first symptom is loss of feeling the keys, and then it's anybody's guess where my finger is going to land. 

[bernadette60614]

Not a teacher, but what I find helps me:


Practice LOUD.

I find that my fingers will "skim" over notes when I play at less than maximum volume and when I take the piece up to speed, that skimming results in missing notes.

Loud means I'm hearing and playing every note, which enables me to catch the blips in the piece.

Take care, enjoy!

[adodd81802]

Not a teacher, but what I find helps me:


Practice LOUD.

I find that my fingers will "skim" over notes when I play at less than maximum volume and when I take the piece up to speed, that skimming results in missing notes.

Loud means I'm hearing and playing every note, which enables me to catch the blips in the piece.

Take care, enjoy!

I think Josh Wright has advised something similar to this.

Along the lines of grab a piece or section, practice it at 25% speed at FF, 50% speed at F, 75% at P and so fourth.

[timothy42b]

Loud means I'm hearing and playing every note, which enables me to catch the blips in the piece.

Take care, enjoy!

Loud means being forced to make a choice, and then getting feedback on the results.  There is research on the effects of forced choice learning.

It can be done soft as well.  But sometimes playing soft we skip over something we're not sure of. 

[xdjuicebox]

I used to have a similar problem, and here's what I did to fix it.

It is VERY taxing on the brain though, but I feel it is essential (and could speed up the process of learning a piece).

Imagine your hands playing the piece a SPLIT SECOND before you play it. It becomes kind of weird; playing is no longer a simultaneous haphazard experience, but it becomes one of weird stretched time where you're experiencing the notes you just played, as well as the notes you're playing, and in your head you're thinking about the notes you're about to play, all at the same time.

Before you play a note, any note, you have to:

-See the "shape" of the keys. For me, I see them light up in my head.
-Imagine your hands playing them
-Imagine exactly how your hands will fit on those keys
-Imagine exactly what your hands look like on the keys
-Imagine exactly how much pressure each key gets, and what that feels like on your hands
-If you know the piece/are a good sight singer, imagine what it will sound like. If you don't know what the piece sounds like, DON'T DO THIS as if it's different to what you think it will actually mess you up because if the sound is different you get confused
-Imagine how you're going to move from those keys to the next

Now, you should be able to do this even when you're not playing the piano. Before you play it, imagine yourself playing it without your hands actually doing it. Can you do it?

If you can't play it in your head, how on Earth are you going to play it on the piano?

If you can't play it in your head, that's ALL muscle memory, which isn't the best in the world when it comes to fine motor actions.

Let me know how it goes!

P.S...if you've "perfected" it...you wouldn't slip off XD

[louispodesta]

I could never play pieces at my level perfectly. And that's because my fingers always slip and miss keys, at least one or two....or at worst seven. Even after employing slow practise. Or am I not employing slow practise enough?

And once I have gotten it down pat perfectly, after 2-3 plays, my fingers start missing the keys again. Need help!

Your OP has several gaps.  Therefore, if you can, please post a very simple video showing your problem.  There is absolutely no shame or embarrassment associated with this illustration.

So, just play a piece, recording it on a simple hand-made video (don't worry about the sound quality).  And then, maybe we can help you.

[marlinspike]

I have this problem too especially if my hands are tense. I agree with the advise given so far about slow and deliberate practice. Someone also suggested playing loud and I am definitely going to try that one. I have noticed I play much more quietly when I am not confident and I do make more slips. One piece of advice that was given to me that seems to work is to isolate the area you slip up on and play it over and over until you have played it 5 times in a row perfectly. Stop on the note immediately after the problem area. Ideally the bit you play over and over again should be quite short. You can then extend it.I find eventually this way you can iron out all the slips - something to do with motor memory. Hope that helps.

[mrcreosote]

A few things I've discovered: 

*)  Keep Your Eye On The Ball:  carefully look at the key(s) you have trouble with before you hit them - even a glance will improve accuracy.

*)  Very Slow and as Soft As Possible:  Slow and Strong can easily degenerate into excessive Finger Piston form and Tension - However, if done with heavy arm weight and zero tension, it is a great method. 

*) Slow and Soft has a bizarre effect, it tends to restore timing precision to the brain firing the signal to move the finger.  At first your play will be very uneven, but then it will smooth out.

*) It is possible you may be lacking in concentration.  How do you practice this?  It is a Catch 22.  If you repeat something continuously (like a mantra), you will find your mind wanders and you lose comprehension of what you are repeating - or you find that you've completely forgotten what you're repeating. 

NOTE:  I wrote this in 2nd person, should have done it in 1st person since what works for me may not for you.  Everyone is different:  Yuja Wang said something mind-blowing:  if she practices a piece she already knows, she actually damages it - so she doesn't practice them!  But she said she is trying to develop a method to re-learn a piece she already knows.  My guess it interferes with her memory/recall process - she holds an amazing count of 20 concertos in memory .

[tenk]

*)  Very Slow and as Soft As Possible:  Slow and Strong can easily degenerate into excessive Finger Piston form and Tension - However, if done with heavy arm weight and zero tension, it is a great method. 

*) Slow and Soft has a bizarre effect, it tends to restore timing precision to the brain firing the signal to move the finger.  At first your play will be very uneven, but then it will smooth out.

I (and by extension my teacher) disagree with this.

I have found that playing softly while practicing a piece lets the fingers "get away" with slips because you are not training yourself to hit the key with full confidence and volume. Now don't go straining yourself to do this; it should be done with a free motion and arm weight.

Note that this can still be down with SLOW practice, but you should aim to play at least at forte until you have it note-perfect memorized.

[bernadette60614]

Also, something I learned recently: Concentrate on "feeling" the keys.  Very frequently, I miss keys not because I don't know the notes, but because my mind is anxiously racing ahead.  If I feel the keys, it focuses my mind in a way which I find very calming.

Secondly, I will be playing four, relatively simple pages at an adult student recital and one tip my teacher gave me:  Play your pieces first thing in the morning, before coffee, before so much as washing your face.  If you can play your piece perfectly then, you're nailed it.