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Topic: Practice Schedule for Self-Teaching?  (Read 1698 times)

Offline 23chrischen

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Practice Schedule for Self-Teaching?
on: December 18, 2013, 06:47:06 PM
Hello Pianostreet!

A bit of my musical background: I'm a college student who used take piano lessons ages ago and now I want to pick it up again and actually seriously play it. I recently bought a decent weighted 88-key keyboard and I am a somewhat accomplished classical and jazz saxophonist, so I have a fairly advanced knowledge of music theory. Right now I can play Chopin's Prelude in E minor and the first couple pages of Claire de Lune fairly proficiently as an example of my level of pianistic prowess.

What kinds of things should I be practicing to to reach this goal? Is there some sort of standard levels of literature that a teacher would have me go through? What do need to practice in terms of scales, arpeggios, cadences, etc.? Is there a commonly used book geared towards students like me?

Thanks for your time!
Chris

Offline bronnestam

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Re: Practice Schedule for Self-Teaching?
Reply #1 on: December 19, 2013, 07:43:27 PM
Hi there!  :D  First: what goal do you refer to, really?

Well ... not that it matters much. My major suggestion is simply: keep the fire burning. That is, spend your time doing things you enjoy. You need to work up a routine with daily (or weekly ...) practice, and if you get bored or if it is too heavy, the risk of abandoning the project is very big until playing and practicing has become a second nature of yours, an established habit.

When you are motivated enough, you will happily undergo every boring finger exercise there is, and find them useful as well, but I strongly advice you NOT TO do more of them right now than you like. While I don't say "avoid them at any cost", I think you should focus on playing nice pieces instead. Don't be afraid of challenges, but also beware of overpracticing too difficult pieces - if you start to feel any pain, fatigue or even cramps, STOP immediately. You can get injuries that take forever to get rid of. 

There are plenty of lists with suggested pieces on elementary/intermediate level so I will not give any more suggestions here.  But you should not only work with learning how to play certain pieces and exercises. You must also spend a lot of time working with your posture (relax, relax, relax!)  and for this you might have good use of a video camera or a good observer. And you must also train your ear! Listen to lots of piano music of course, and record yourself very often, and if you have the opportunity to playback both faster and slower than you recorded, you will hear many, many things that you probably missed while you were playing ... Take notes, think of your mistakes and plan how to fix them. Practicing is more about thinking and analyzing than you might believe at first - we all tend to think that the major point is to produce sounds all the time, but that is not true. 

You must beware of the pitfall of mechanical playing. It is better not to play at all, actually. I have heard too many pianist students who have worked up rather fluent skills with their fingers, and so they think they play well. But playing well means you create MUSIC and music is a feeling and an idea in the musician's head, not a "play fast and accurate" competition.

Two sources on the net which I strongly recommend are
https://www.pianofundamentals.com/    (a book, and it is for free!)

and

https://practisingthepiano.com/ebooks/  (the blog is for free, the eBooks series is excellent and not very expensive)

There are many other sources as well, but these are the two I have tried the most and I have found them very, very useful.
 

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