Practice

[ravelfan07]

What is a good practice regiment?
Like what should an ideal practice session look like?
Let’s say you have 1 1/2 hours to practice
How much should be dedicated to technique, whatever song you are learning and dynamics and the such?

[brogers70]

What is a good practice regiment?
Like what should an ideal practice session look like?
Let’s say you have 1 1/2 hours to practice
How much should be dedicated to technique, whatever song you are learning and dynamics and the such?

If you are training for a sport, it's important to have a consistent regimen, so much time on sprinting, so much on endurance training, so much on weights. If you just devise it well and stick with it you will make progress. It's mostly muscles and cardio/respiratory fitness that you are building and all it takes is consistent effort.

I don't think piano is much like that at all. There is no ideal regimen that you can set up and carry out consistently and guarantee progress. Mostly you are training the brain, not building muscle, so it's very important to concentrate, and nothing kills concentration like doing the same things over and over in the same order - scales, arpeggios, sight reading, learning new pieces, polishing old ones, for so many minutes a day, in that order, for months or yeas at a stretch. It may be helpful to set up such a regimen and use it for a little while, but once it's become a routine, your brain will be more focused and you'll make more progress if you change it.

I'd say that you warm up a few minutes, if your body requires a warm up, and then do whatever you feel requires the greatest mental effort, whether that's learning a new piece, working out the voicing and phrasing for one where you know the notes but are not satisfied with how it sounds, memorizing a piece, figuring out why your f# harmonic minor scales feel awkward, whatever it is that's bugging and interesting you, and then move on to whatever is mentally a bit easier. Keep going till you run out of time.

Obviously the most mentally challenging thing will change week to week if not day to day, so you change your regimen as often as you need to. The main thing is not to think that you can make a great plan and then turn on the autopilot and get optimal results. You have to keep changing the regimen so that your brain stays alert.

[pianistavt]

What is a good practice regiment?
Like what should an ideal practice session look like?
Let’s say you have 1 1/2 hours to practice
How much should be dedicated to technique, whatever song you are learning and dynamics and the such?

Good question.  Probably not the first time it's been asked - did you do a search for prior posts on this topic?  Here's one I randomly chose from a search on "practice routine":
https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=46290

I base it on interest - which ones from an evolving set of 10 pieces is calling me.  If I approached it from a strict routine/regimen standpoint, I would loose motivation quickly.  I get my technical challenges from the pieces and etudes, I feel I mastered scales and arpeggios years ago.   

I recommend you be creative about it, and change your routine often.  They key is that you manage your practice routine, not vice versa.

Feel free to message me to get more details about my overall practice approach, it's very organized on a high level.

[lelle]

I think it depends on who you are and what your goals are. Different teachers will also have different opinions on this. Some teachers recommend dedicating an hour to technique, but if you are absolutely miserable doing that, it ruins the whole point of playing, no? So it depends on what works for you and makes you as productive as you can be.

but generally:
- if you can get into a flow state that's good
- spend some time working on mechanical skills and refining your craft. whether it works best for you to do that via pieces, exercises, small etudes or long etudes or a mix depends on who you are.
- spend some time on reading skills
- work carefully and deliberately. spend a lot of time practicing slowly enough that you don't make errors. don't practice faster than you can think. the more mistakes you make when practicing due to sloppiness the harder it'll be to master the piece with as few mistakes as possible.

Someone who has more teaching experience than me should probably chime in.

[jamienc]

The trick is to not fall into the trap of “practice playing.” This is the inevitable result of getting to a point in a piece that is able to be played well, but overlooking the intricate mental and physical mechanisms that will allow one to reach a higher level by focusing on smaller groups of notes/passages that require more attention to detail. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t “play” your pieces once in a while to ensure that the overall scope of the performance can be achieved, but the majority of the time spent “practicing” should be the attention to minute details that enable the music to flow in a way that truly feels as if the mental and physical demands are in agreement.

As pianists we want to play those pieces as quickly as possible, and I have found in my years of teaching that students reach a point where they feel it is “good enough.” I have learned that if you say that to yourself, it probably isn’t! That is why I always monitor how often I perform the piece as opposed to the amount of time I take to slow practice passages and really analyze the way I am gesturing, or the theory behind the musical passage, so I may ensure that I have as full an understanding of what I must feel physically and what I must think mentally to keep control.

In a few weeks, I’ll be performing the last three Beethoven Sonatas Opp. 109, 110, and 111. You can bet that every day starts with a slow practice regimen of all the “problem areas” of the movements that give me a bit of concern. That process takes about 2 to 3 hours just to keep everything nice and tidy. If I have time to play through them, I will. However, that time is often reserved for the weekends when I can sit and just try them out and see what happens. There is a lot to be gained from the time and effort it takes to avoid “playing” much more than the actual time that should be spent doing the dirty work. Hope this helps!

[blackbird]

"I’m not saying that you shouldn’t “play” your pieces once in a while to ensure that the overall scope of the performance can be achieved, but the majority of the time spent “practicing” should be the attention to minute details that enable the music to flow in a way that truly feels as if the mental and physical demands are in agreement."

This is such good advice. It is so tempting to play a thing through, once it's learned and fun to play. I'm finally learning that this is what kills a piece, for me. It slowly drains all the life out of it, doesn't it?

[pianistavt]

"I’m not saying that you shouldn’t “play” your pieces once in a while to ensure that the overall scope of the performance can be achieved, but the majority of the time spent “practicing” should be the attention to minute details that enable the music to flow in a way that truly feels as if the mental and physical demands are in agreement."

This is such good advice. It is so tempting to play a thing through, once it's learned and fun to play. I'm finally learning that this is what kills a piece, for me. It slowly drains all the life out of it, doesn't it?

If you only play a piece and never “work on it” - the details, yes it gets boring to play and possibly sounds boring, though probably not if you worked on the details with some depth, in the past. If you only "work on" a piece, and rarely play it through start to finish, you won’t be able to perform it. You'll find you are thrown off by playing it straight through in a performance setting. 

I tend to err on emphasizing the detail work and neglect the once through performance.

This happened just last week - I was to perform a piece from a while ago - I worked on the tricky spots, but played it through only once.  In the performance setting, with a new piano and an audience, I found I didn't have of the "complete piece" as crystallized in my mind as I needed it to be.  It's important to play pieces straight through frequently.

[jamienc]

This is such good advice. It is so tempting to play a thing through, once it's learned and fun to play. I'm finally learning that this is what kills a piece, for me. It slowly drains all the life out of it, doesn't it?

Yes, it does. Moreover, it fosters the inevitable deterioration of the “peak” or “freshness” of the mind/body connection that always needs to be maintained. It is always amazing to me how rusty some spots can get quickly, especially when one focuses on the overall ability to play the piece as written as opposed to having the discipline to stop when something didn’t work properly. The worst thing to do is mentally tell yourself, “I’ll take care of that later.” Or to just glaze over the incident and “hope” it doesn’t happen next time. When it comes to playing in front of people, the word “hope” exits my vocabulary completely.

For example, today I was working on the really tricky 2nd movement of Op. 110. Of all the movements in the last three sonatas of Beethoven, I truly believe this movement is the most ripe for disaster since it seems so visually innocuous amidst all of the other mammoth movements that are present in those works. I noticed that in mm. 17 through 20, I was tending to hiccup the last note of m. 18 in anticipation of the next two-bar segment. It was really bothering me! Looking at the score, I wrote a note that it is NOT staccato and should be played gracefully upon exit. I decided that (with a cheating split-hand fingering) I should hold that last note for the full value alone and connect it physically to the next bar. Beethoven indicates a rest in the LH which allows for this to be done without the need to fail in finishing that note value before going on to m. 19. It took about 10 minutes to get the feel for the gesture that would enable this to happen. Once I applied it to the other measures where something similar happens, it was good.

The reason I am explaining this one small portion of a 67-page span of sonata movements from Late- Beethoven is because that is what it takes to really say you “practiced” the works as fully as possible to understand how the mechanics and mindfulness will lead to success on stage. It is super easy to overlook things like that, but in this day and age, it isn’t exactly acceptable to overlook such things. That’s why they are called “life pieces.”

[brogers70]

If you only play a piece and never “work on it” - the details, yes it gets boring to play and possibly sounds boring, though probably not if you worked on the details with some depth, in the past. If you only "work on" a piece, and rarely play it through start to finish, you won’t be able to perform it. You'll find you are thrown off by playing it straight through in a performance setting. 

I tend to err on emphasizing the detail work and neglect the once through performance.

This happened just last week - I was to perform a piece from a while ago - I worked on the tricky spots, but played it through only once.  In the performance setting, with a new piano and an audience, I found I didn't have of the "complete idea" in my head.  It's important to play pieces straight through frequently.

I agree. It is a balance. I, too, like to focus on the details and work at perfecting bits that have been causing me trouble or just not sounding right. And it's easy and enjoyable for me to concentrate on a short phrase, imagine how I want it to sound, try it out, listen, compare what I did to what I wanted to do, make adjustments, then go through that cycle as many times as it takes to get the sound I want.

But if I only do that, then I don't train myself to maintain a focused concentration through the length of the piece, my mind risks wandering, and I make stupid mistakes on bits that are not inherently difficult. So I'm always experimenting to try to find the right balance between practicing the tiny details and practicing concentrating through the whole arc of a piece.

[anacrusis]

I think when LEARNING a piece, it's good to take small chunks at a time and focusing on perfecting those than to play everything through in an unfinished, sloppy way. So I'd take one bar, or one phrase, and work on that carefully and slowly and not rushing beyond a tempo where I get everything right.

Once you have done that preparatory work, you should focus more on playing through longer sections or the entire piece and thinking about your overall conception. You can return to working on small chunks to clean up any issues you have when playing longer sections.