How do you practise?

[ranniks]

Before yesterday I would just repeat as many times as I could and in between exercises/pieces do some random things on the piano. Now I write down what I want to do before a practise session starts:

- 10 times part of this piece (in my case MinG114/115)
- 10 times exercise left handed, 5 times left and right
- 10 times exercise right handed, 5 times left and right
- 10 times Fur Elise first 2 meassures include pedaling
- 3 times Prelude C Major 50% including pedaling

And so on.

It seems to be working for me, but I'm not sure if I'll turn into a robot, I certainly don't hope so. In that regard: How do you fine gentlemen and ladies divide your practise time?

[lloyd_cdb]

-Hold my hands under warm water for ~5 minutes (my piano room is pretty cold).
-Play a random 5 finger chord with both hands, increasing and decreasing in volume.
-A couple slow arpeggios/scales just to loosen my hands a bit, not really as practice.
-Turn the metronome on to the bpm of whichever piece I'm learning.
-I'll look over the pages to find sections I think I should work on, sometimes take notes.
-Once I stop noticing the metronome in the background, I turn it off and just start practicing the sections I looked at.  If I'm practicing multiple pieces at the moment, I'll run through a couple scales in whatever key it is just to readjust to it.

I've always found that I don't practice well to a metronome except for specific purposes, but just zoning out to it for a while gets it ingrained in my head.

[outin]

You won't become a robot, don't worry

I have tried different ways to structure my practice time, but it has never worked. I don't do well with routines and the time I have to practice varies too much. So now I just do whatever I feel is the most useful way to spend the time. I would like to be more consistent, but I guess I am just not made that way...

I have started doing more scales and arpeggios, but not every time. Mostly I work on one piece/section/exercise until I notice my concentration drop and I start getting sloppy. Mostly it's less that 10 times 

With the older pieces I do the whole piece first, then pick sections that I need to work more. Or I try to do the whole piece very slowly. When I start a new piece I try to sight read it once and then go by measures or phrases. I do some HS on parts that are difficult to execute.

Memorizing usually happens at the same as I learn the movements, mostly because the pieces are hard to read. If I can read something, I find it very hard to memorize (I have always hated memorizing anything, so lack of motivation is a big part of it).

[perprocrastinate]

1. Play different broken chords repeatedly usually in C major, C minor, and A minor until either or two of the following is achieved: my fingers feel tired; I get bored and decided to skip to the real practice
2. Think about practicing scales and arpeggios, but decide to skip them because they are not 'music' (and because of this, quite embarrassingly, I currently suck at playing standard scales/arpeggios evenly and legato)
3. Either work on memorizing one piece at a time until I get frustrated and quit practicing or just cycle through sections of pieces that I have currently committed to memory in an incessant manner
4. Waste about fifteen minutes on a pitiful attempt to improvise; play a few bars of Chopin 10/2 slowly to "fix" my double-jointed right hand fingers; nearly sprain my left hand playing octave scales to attempt to make the hand the same span as the right

Yep.

[keypeg]

I was self-taught when young, and then got a piano again decades later.  I've only been able to work with a teacher for a relatively brief time and the number one priority is to replace how I have been doing things physically at the piano with things that are healthier and work better.  So my practising is related to that.  I want to get a handle on the piece (the notes, etc.).  I also want to get a handle on how to do things physically.

I might spend 30 minutes on a piece, but I'm working on different things, maybe 5 - 10 minutes each.  Maybe I'm working on a 2-measure section, getting the right fingering, and how one chord moves to another, and then another measure, and blend them together.   Maybe I get tense at the end of chords, so I may practise dropping into a chord, and releasing in the way I'm taught.  If I am "practising chords", I may shuttle between the chords themselves (G major, Gm, D major, Dm or whatever), and how to play them.

[brogers70]

1. Scales - I don one major and its relative minor every day and work around the cycle of fifths every 12 days. First LH alone, then RH alone, then HT, four octaves in eighths, triplets, and sixteenths. I do three four octave cycles of the triplets so the accent shifts within the scale on each repetition. These scales I do at a moderately fast tempo. Then I do hands separate scales ultrafast, without worrying about errors, just to get the feeling for how the hands have to move; then I slow down a lot and end with one, very slow repetition.
2. Arpeggios - same system as scales.
3. Haydn's first sonata, first movement for working on rapid Alberti bass, along with some very slow, relaxed LH practice of Alberti or similar figures.
4. Trills in both hands all fingers.
5. Excerpts of the technically difficult parts of pieces I want to play in the future, things like the presto at the end of the last movement of the Pastorale Sonata, or the arpeggios at the beginning of the finale of Waldstein, or the RH of the Schubert Gb major Impromptu.

1-5 takes 30-40 minutes.

Then on to pieces. I break each piece into fragments that I can mostly master in 15-20 minutes, and then allocate these time blocks to the 4-5 pieces I work on at any one time. Such a chunk might be "Hands separate for 6 bars of a fugue from the WTC," or the main theme and its repetition in a Brahms Intermezzo," or it might be running through the whole piece once I've memorized the notes. If I'm really keen on a particular piece I give it a couple of 15-20 time blocks on different sections of the piece.

Doing things that way it takes me a couple of months to learn a WTC fugue, Beethoven less difficult sonata movement, or short piece by Schubert or Brahms. Because I overlap pieces, that comes to something like one new piece every 3 weeks or so.

And I do agree that it's very helpful to keep a simple practice journal.

[andreslr6]

Well, if it's a new piece, before starting to practice it I first read it first sight as I can, slow, and I take this opportunity to check the fingering, or sometimes I'll just study the sheet music away from the piano and try to decipher the structure, learn the harmony and that stuff.
 
Next, I'll start to read again; if it's fairly easy, with both hands at the same time, if it's hard I'll start with one hand and then the other one. I'll take the first phrase and practice it changing the rhythm and with different attacks, let's say, 3 times 1 fast 1 slow, then 3 times 1 slow 1 fast, then 3 times 2 slow 2 fast, etc.

NOTE: It's important to be aware of a detail here, the purpose or repeating something is so that your body learns it, not for you to learn the music but for your hand to know the choreography, that's all; you're training your auto-pilot, and because of this it's important that you always repeat playing perfectly, you have permission to have just one mistake and on the beginning, repeat a mistake more than once and you're practicing the mistake, you must start over again. If you are going to repeat something, repeat it 100 times (100 is a metaphor, obviously) but 100 times PERFECT. Practice slow and gradually increase the speed.

Ok, after doing the above, I'll play the passage as it's written, slowly being completely aware of what every finger is doing, watching my position, my elbows, that I'm relaxed, wrist, shoulders, back, etc. Make sure the mechanics of my playing are perfect always, and repeat it that way until my body "thinks it was born that way" . This will give me the tools and physical knowledge that will help me solve what's next, the music.

After learning it that way, my fingers most probably will know the piece by memory, so I just start working on the music, apply every thought I had about the work while I was analyzing it, think, wonder about ideas, try different approaches, find out what works, what's too corny, what's missing power, etc. And now I just make music , or at least that's what I aim for. An idea.

So now I can resume it all to this: teach your body the movements, the positions, the choreography so that you dominate the piece and instrument so well that you can now comfortably transmit your ideas on the music.

PS and time, time doesn't exist while you practice, this might take you 1 hour, or 10 hours, it doesn't matter, the only thing that matters is the quality. Although, it's always better to have quality AND quantity

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Warm up with some Liszt.  Well it depends.  If I'm kinda cold, I warm up with Bach, but if my hands are so cold that they're about to fall off, I warm up with some Liszt or Rachmaninoff.

Then I work on pieces that need to be worked on college auditions .  I DON'T *** AROUND!  If there's something wrong with my playing, I FIX THAT sh*t RIGHT AWAY.  I play NOOOOOOOO games!

Then I work on some Rach 3.  I Learn a little bit every day.  It's like taking vitamins for me.

[blazekenny]

Warm up with some Liszt.  Well it depends.  If I'm kinda cold, I warm up with Bach, but if my hands are so cold that they're about to fall off, I warm up with some Liszt or Rachmaninoff.

Your hands are going to be destroyed in a few years.

[slobone]

I no longer force myself to conform to a set routine. I play for fun, and if it isn't fun, I'm not interested.

But I try to cycle through all my exercises -- Hanon, Schmitt, Dohnanyi, Slonimsky, scales and arpeggios -- every few days. I also do a lot of work with acciaccaturas, although not as much as I should. They're very stressful but very valuable.

As for pieces, I decided to start focusing on just a couple of pieces at a time. Right now it's one by Rachmaninoff and one by Bach. But if I want to sight read, or play some jazz or blues, I always make time for that. Like I said, it's supposed to be fun.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Your hands are going to be destroyed in a few years.

Bach doesn't get the job done fast enough.  

Liszt and Rachmaninoff warms me up faster than you can say Bach's WTC!

I used to warm up with scales and Czerny but they weren't getting the job done at all.

[tdawe]

To start with I play all scales and arpeggios up to 6 flats or sharps, and maybe run through a basic technical exercise or too just to start getting the fingers 'loosened'. Then I may play a piece or two that I have already finished with to properly warm up... something the same vein of what I'm currently learning.

When learning a new piece, my preferred method is just to sight read through it, slowly at first, until I have memorised it, and gradually build up to speed - of course this doesn't work on more technically challenging pieces. For a difficult work I first isolate the hardest parts and start on them... I try to make technical exercises to help with the most difficult parts. Then I will learn the whole piece hands separately, and after put it up to speed. A flaw of mine is I tend to get distracted by trying to get a part I have already learnt as 'musical' as possible (it really pains me when I feel I'm playing something badly!) but this is far less efficient than simply getting all the notes in place first and then concentrating on musicality.

[shazeelawan]

Haha,it depends on the homework given by my teacher,but it usually goes something like this:

10 minutes of playing scales and singing (my music programme includes vocal lessons)
20 minutes of practising the short piece from a workbook (about 15 bars)
20 minutes of my part in an ensemble piece
20 minutes of improvisation and chords
30 minutes on a random full-length piece I happen to be playing on my own

And if there's a recital,about 3 hours on the full-length piece I will be performing...

(but I don't think this sort of practise schedule applies to you)...

[blazekenny]

Bach doesn't get the job done fast enough.  

Liszt and Rachmaninoff warms me up faster than you can say Bach's WTC!

I used to warm up with scales and Czerny but they weren't getting the job done at all.

Anybody can be an effective Liszt/Rachmaninoff piano athlete striking the correct keys right when you come to the piano, but in a few years your carpal tunnels will scream in pain

[j_menz]

Anybody can be an effective Liszt/Rachmaninoff piano athlete striking the correct keys right when you come to the piano, but in a few years your carpal tunnels will scream in pain

Only if you are doing it wrong.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Anybody can be an effective Liszt/Rachmaninoff piano athlete striking the correct keys right when you come to the piano, but in a few years your carpal tunnels will scream in pain

What J Menz said, only if you're doing it wrong.

Incidentally, I don't go about playing at full speed or anything, or worry about playing everything perfect or the musicality. I just screw around with them until my hands warm up. 

[j_menz]

Incidentally