Piano Forum

Topic: Don't know what to do when practicing?  (Read 1551 times)

Offline jwchopin

  • PS Silver Member
  • Newbie
  • ***
  • Posts: 18
Don't know what to do when practicing?
on: November 17, 2013, 03:44:07 PM
I am a RCM Grade 5 piano player and have been playing for two years, but only now am I really ambitious to start playing many songs. When i sit down to practice, I play through my scales and songs, which takes about 45 minutes, but then I have nothing left to do. I know this is kind of a weird question but, what do you do for your one or two hour piano playing session? How do I go about improving my repertoire without just playing them one hundred times? Thanks in advance!

Offline awesom_o

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 2630
Re: Don't know what to do when practicing?
Reply #1 on: November 17, 2013, 04:03:26 PM
How do I go about improving my repertoire without just playing them one hundred times? Thanks in advance!

I'm guessing your repertoire consists of many fine pieces by the great masters. It likely needs no improvement whatsoever. What you need to improve is your own understanding of what it is that you are doing.

Spend less time repeating things over and over at the piano. Follow your ambition and play as many shorter works as you can.  Try to learn how to play pieces without watching your hands all of the time. You should be looking at the music. Once you have a good technique, your hands will be able to think for themselves at the instrument, and the issue of 'how to spend your practice time' will disappear.

Offline outin

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 8211
Re: Don't know what to do when practicing?
Reply #2 on: November 17, 2013, 05:11:32 PM
I am a RCM Grade 5 piano player and have been playing for two years, but only now am I really ambitious to start playing many songs. When i sit down to practice, I play through my scales and songs, which takes about 45 minutes, but then I have nothing left to do. I know this is kind of a weird question but, what do you do for your one or two hour piano playing session? How do I go about improving my repertoire without just playing them one hundred times? Thanks in advance!

Stop just playing them through, try to find more ways to improve them. If there's really nothing to improve and no challenges, just move on and learn something new. Explore music to find new pieces, sight read...
I have the opposite problem, there's so much to do and so little time :(

Offline hfmadopter

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 2272
Re: Don't know what to do when practicing?
Reply #3 on: November 17, 2013, 09:21:44 PM
Back when I was studying 5th and 6th grade level work I had no trouble practicing for 3 hours. I usually had some repertoire to maintain but always new work I was working on as well. I'm back at that level again right now actually, working between levels 5 and 7. Been kind of locked in there for some time now but I'm seeing things I could have improved on when I was younger. Rather than working hard at it I'm enjoying more of it this time and doing the main work between the lines so to speak. Can't say I'm in a hurry to move on.

Another thought is branch out in genre. Break out some pop or do some arranging. Work on some musical style music or what ever interests you. For a while I got into show tunes. Now I get caught up with hymnal new age-ish sort of music. I have a whole new series of Christmas music I've started working on for this year that is probably levels 4- 6. I don't have much trouble putting in a couple of hours per day to make the sound I want.

Put together a recital program. It can be a blast to do. I've done a few, years ago with help from my teacher, complete with programs. To ready for them I put in 5 hours per day during the week, worked my full time job, raised a family. On weekends we put Sunday aside as a family day but I would still manage 2-3 hours for my recital prep. Sat could be anything from 3 hours and the rest all household chores to maybe get in 6 hours practice. People ( family friends etc couldn't believe I had this music in me. Can't say it was but the ability to work hard on the music was and the appreciation for the music was in me).

I get a kick out of some folks who come into the forums and have trouble getting through a half hour of practice. Well now at 63 yo, ya maybe that's all I want to do myself some days. Generally a couple of hours is pretty easy, my full time job is getting more difficult though, some days I come home kind of beat. Retirement is looming down on me fast ( a bunch of people got handed a deal two weeks ago and I hear that deal is on the table till FEB, so mine may be in the works as well. Don't know it's not in my hands). Then I will have all the practice time I want, I believe.
Depressing the pedal on an out of tune acoustic piano and playing does not result in tonal color control or add interest, it's called obnoxious.

Offline bronnestam

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 716
Re: Don't know what to do when practicing?
Reply #4 on: November 18, 2013, 09:19:47 AM
Last week my teacher gave me an assignment that is quite hard to follow: I had to promise that I would play just 4x15 minutes a day ...  :o

Well, that still makes one hour totally a day, and that is not bad. I would say it has been my average practising time for quite a while now, although I some days play 2.5 hours and some days none ... due to my life schedule as a whole.  But the hard thing is to restrict every session to 15 minutes. My teacher's idea was to make my practising and learning even more effective than before (I think I was pretty good even before) and I have to admit that it works! When you know you just have 15 minutes you cannot waste even one minute on doing useless things. So I make a short plan of what I'm going to work with, and then I set a timer, and then I start to play. I really need that timer because otherwise I would get distracted by looking at my watch all the time, or I would get lost in my work and forget about time and wake up 45 minutes later ...

Every session I feel uncomfortable with the timer the first seconds, and then I just focus on the music and after 15 the howl from the timer scares me to death ...  :D And so, regretfully, I stop playing and close the piano lid for a while. And start dreaming about my next session. But this is clear proof that the method works, right? I can focus.

So, back to your question ... What you need to do is to plan your practicing session in advance, to ask yourself what you want to achieve. When I picked up piano playing after decades of nearly silence, I had to spent a lot of time finding the right motivation, and so I found that setting goals, except very very small goals, was not a good thing as I often got disappointed with myself (which does not help you motivation up). BUT when you don't have these problems anymore - and you don't seem to - you can start making more clear goals. Preferably not "I want to master this and that before I finish today" but rather "I want to work with slow practice now" or "I will test my memorizing skills with this piece by making deliberate stops here and there".

If you just play your pieces and scales for the sake of it, you are wasting your time and developing "selective deafness". I know, because I've been there. You simply stop listening to what you play. And you may develop some bad habits, like always hitting the wrong key in this place and that place, WITHOUT EVEN NOTICING IT because you automatically correct the mistakes.

So, you need to be creative. Have you tried to:
- play a piece extremely slow ... or extremely fast?
- switch staccato to legato and the opposite?
- play forte where the notes say piano and the opposite?
- transpose to another key?
- improvise from a simple piece?
- let the right hand play the bass line and the opposite?

... All this is to make you more alert, more aware of what you are doing. You can also start recording your playing more. I made a recording of myself which was very revealing ... painfully revealing.  :-[  But it was good input, of course.
For more information about this topic, click search below!

Piano Street Magazine:
Argerich-Alink’s Piano Competitions Directory – 2025 Edition

In today’s crowded music competition landscape, it’s challenging for young musicians to discern which opportunities are truly worthwhile. The new 2025 edition of the Argerich-Alink Foundation’s comprehensive guide to piano competitions, provides valuable insights and inspiration for those competing or aspiring to compete, but also for anyone who just wants an updated overview of the global piano landscape. Read more
 

Logo light pianostreet.com - the website for classical pianists, piano teachers, students and piano music enthusiasts.

Subscribe for unlimited access

Sign up

Follow us

Piano Street Digicert