how do you keep practice interesting?

[crazy for ivan moravec]

we can't deny that while music making and performance is a wonderful experience, practising can sometimes become like work! i'm sure there are times that you may feel this no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves that practising should be fun too. but realistically speaking, sometimes we have to drag ourselves to the piano just for the sake that we keep those pieces in shape for an upcoming performance.

besides variations on practising certain passages in a piece, what are your other "techniques" in making a practice session interesting? do you have any tips on how to make your mind on a practice mode? or attitude? environment and surroundings? secquence of practising a set of recital/audition program? if you're in a bad mood, is there a kind of practice approach that may be less of a mental or emotional drain, just so we can work on the piano (even for just an hour or 2 for the day)?

i know mental practice away from the piano is one. but so far, that's all i know. please help. i need advice especially from those who work on the piano like a dog, but nevertheless, from anyone who has good insights on this.

thank you.

[quasimodo]

Practicing is not fun, forget about that, if you have pleasure practicing it means you don't stretch yourself enough.
It's the goal that drives me, the willingness to play the pieces to a decent rendition, otherwise there would be no reason to accept all the mental exhaustion and the frustration that practice involves.

[thalbergmad]

What i always try to do is vary as much as possible the time i start to practice.

One day i practice early morning, the next early evening and maybe during the night over the weekend. This way, it never seems to be a chore that must be done.

Thal

[zheer]

, practising can sometimes become like work!

   " What i do is'nt work, if it was work then half of what i do is too much"  by Daniel BARENBOIM. 

[crazy for ivan moravec]

oh god, barenboim is a workaholic, did you know that?

[quasimodo]

A lady virtuoso, I don't remember which, said something along the lines of "I play the piano, I don't practice it." I suppose it's a nice state of mind but I guess it's only applicable when the person has reached a certain level of experience and technicity. To get there, I believe it's necessary to go through a period of moral/mental suffering.

[lostinidlewonder]

To tell you the truth when I am studying pieces I do not like then the practice is ALWAYS uninteresting. When I play pieces I love and want to learn the practice never feels like practice. It is exciting to learn new passages of music you like, it is a drawn out process learning stuff you don't like. So number 1 tip for me is to practice things which excite you!

Sometimes I think about performance, do I want to play well for people or do I want to stuff it up! This scares the hell out of me because I hate playing badly in public so I practice my ass off so I don't stuff it up when im on stage! So then fear is a good motivator too

[Bob]

It just is work sometimes. 

I find something to focus on, some new area of improvement, something where I can see things getting better.  That makes it more tolerable.

[nick]

we can't deny that while music making and performance is a wonderful experience, practising can sometimes become like work! i'm sure there are times that you may feel this no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves that practising should be fun too. but realistically speaking, sometimes we have to drag ourselves to the piano just for the sake that we keep those pieces in shape for an upcoming performance.

besides variations on practising certain passages in a piece, what are your other "techniques" in making a practice session interesting? do you have any tips on how to make your mind on a practice mode? or attitude? environment and surroundings? secquence of practising a set of recital/audition program? if you're in a bad mood, is there a kind of practice approach that may be less of a mental or emotional drain, just so we can work on the piano (even for just an hour or 2 for the day)?

i know mental practice away from the piano is one. but so far, that's all i know. please help. i need advice especially from those who work on the piano like a dog, but nevertheless, from anyone who has good insights on this.

thank you.

First, I only practice pieces I love. Second, I subscribe to the gradually increasing tempo method of practice, so the more I practice, the more up to speed it sounds and the more I enjoy hearing it, even without pedal. Third, since I practice and play with raised fingers and love the feeling and sound of clarity, I just love hearing anything I play just about. I like the sound and how it feels to play it. Just having my hand poised over the keys without even playing anything, my lifting muscles, or extensors, are being worked, and I like that as well. It is work to practice up to ones current ability, but I enjoy the workout since I see the results. It was very discouraging some time ago when I used to think practicing at a moderate tempo would eventually lead to performance speed. Then it was just "doing my time" and the worst part was after weeks or months, my goal was not reached. The good news is I learned something.

Nick 

[lagin]

I play games - for example:  My teacher wants me to be able to have a "memory point" every other bar in my pieces.  Right now I'm just starting with Bartok and have the numbers 1 - 30 written throughout the first part of the music (usually every 2nd bar depending on the content as I don't want to ackwardly break up a motive).  Then I draw the numbers out of a container or whatever and see if I can play it and then check to see if I'm right.  (Same thing when I was learning scales, ect.)

Also, I have several pieces on the go and once and continually switch whenever I get bored.

I have goals to meet each week which are also broken into daily goals which keep me focused because if I'm not paying attention to what I'm doing, I put in the hours but the goals are not then always met.

I have set practice times and breaks, and when I'm done, I'M DONE, even if goals are not met - hence the added focus to meet them before my time runs out.  (This doesn't work for everyone, but I like it - racing the clock adds drama as well as focusing power).

I also allow myself to sit cross-legged on the bench when memorizing single lines of music (voices of a Bach fugue for instance).  This "rebel - ness" is a welcome change of position to my usual practice and makes it more fun in a wierd way.

My teacher also asks me to play voices separately (though not memorize them) in my other pieces as well, so if a sonata has a section with approximately 3 notes at a time in each hand then we have a "soprano line," an "alto line" of two notes at time, and "tenor line" of two notes at a time, and a "bass."  Then she has me play the different combinations eg. tenor and bass, or soprano and tenor, ect.  You really get an "ear" for what each voice is doing and find cool things this way.  Like there was a e# in the bass which didn't resolve, but then we saw it resolved in the tenor, so now I bring out that in the bass, then for the next couple beats bring it out in the tenor along with the f# in resolves to.

Also, I analyse the music - highlight repeated material, find key changes, break it into 4 bar phrases (or however many bars makes a phrase) and find the climax of each phrase, decide which phrase is the climax of the piece, write finger numbers in.

I use various other memory games such as dropping the pinky in octave passages and seeing if my thumbs still know their way around because if they do then the pinky will always follow.  I'm trying to learn a tricky left hand, single line bass part with my eyes closed and also with looking only at the right hand which is harder to do than not looking at all!  I memory stuff in "positions" (that is, instead of learning just individual notes, I group them into clusters or solid chords which don't always sound pretty, and memorize what those clusters or hand positions look like).  I play stuff in "rhythms" (meaning I play runs in the music accenting every 4th note or 2nd or 3rd - you get the picture.  Then I do the same thing, but start my accents on the second note of the run.  In the end you can play the run accenting any combination of notes).  Sometimes I play my chords in a piece broken up to better instill them in the memory - so C E G G B D instead of just 2 triads. 

And on top of it all, I have weekly lessons with an inspiring teacher who keeps coming up with new random things like this and says things like, "I want such and such done by next week."  This week I have to memorize the first 10 "memory points" in Bartok, memorize the 2nd page of Chopin which I was avoiding like the plague,  be able to start in any bar of the first page (with the music) of my sonata's 3rd movement, and make sure that my Bach, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff sound somewhat presentable because those are the pieces she wants to look at next week.  Then I have my own private goals like, finish memorizing the Bach prelude this week (need to do 6 bars a day to accomplish this), memorize one page of Liszt per day (this is "memorized" already, but I mean make one page a day "fluently" memorized, plus a few other memory tasks.  Oh, and form some sort of dynamic plan for my 2 1/2 page middle movement of my sonata.

Anyways, it keeps practice interesting to say the least!  But the main thing for me was the last point - having a teacher to be accountable to in regards to meeting your/their goals.

[arensky]

A lady virtuoso, I don't remember which, said something along the lines of "I play the piano, I don't practice it." I suppose it's a nice state of mind but I guess it's only applicable when the person has reached a certain level of experience and technicity. To get there, I believe it's necessary to go through a period of moral/mental suffering.

why

must

we
 
suffer

it's

just

piano

it's

not

really

suffering

[violinist]

Practicing is always interesting for me.

It's a great reward for me to spend time at the piano, since I don't get that much time at it.

It probably seems like studying for me for those who have/ get to practice many hours a day.  I have a hard time these days picking up a book to study... such a chore

One of the things I did to keep my practicing interesting was that I practice phrases at a time in a backwards fashion.  Not that I played the notes or music backwords, but I worked on , for example, the last measure, then played the second to last measure playing that into the last measure, and worked backwards that way learning new stuff as the first measure and then rewarding myself with playing more familiar territory.  Is this making any sense?  It has worked for me on the violin and I've tried it recently on the piano and it seems to work as well.

Just something I came up with when I was younger, locked up in a room playing violin for hours at a time

[quasimodo]

why

must

we
 
suffer

it's

just

piano

it's

not

really

suffering

Alright, Suffering is not a good choice of word, but you won't deny that every musician undergoes moments of deep frustration when things don't want to go right.

[invictious]

Hmm, usually I clip a few porn pics around my score.

[quasimodo]

Hmm, usually I clip a few porn pics around my score.

We're talking about practicing piano here 

[barnowl]

I have the perfect formula: I stop.