Thursday, 25 August 2011

Easy Ways To Practice The Piano

By Andy Penbram


To learn piano or keyboards can be a little depressing when you concentrate on your playing for days on end to find that you do not appear to be getting anywhere. The reason the majority students give up the piano, particularly in children is a highly regarded lack of advancement. Here are a handfull of tips to help you with your own personal practice sessions which ought to help you to progress faster.

Organize your practice time - Build a little routine for your practice periods. The details of the routine will be very different from person to person dependent on the of music they are learning to play.

The very first thing to do when you sit down to practice is to warm up. A great way to do this is by practicing your scales for some time, this will loosen your fingers and in the long term will help you to learn pieces in various keys.

As soon as you've finished the warm-up you can then go on to working on your pieces. You should know after the initial few times of practicing a new piece where the tricky sections are. Begin with these sections right before you attempt to play the entire piece. Play the section with separate hands. Keep swapping hands though in order not to let the other hand get cold. Now play the tricky passage with both hands together.

You are now able to try the whole piece from start to finish with a confidence that you will be more comfortable when it comes to the tough parts.

Always utilise a metronome when you play your scales and arpeggios and use it for your pieces too if they permit it. Set the metronome to a reduced speed than is needed initially which will help you to play the piece easily. Over the space of a couple of days you can slowly start to increment the rate of the metronome until you are playing it at speed. You could even benefit from playing the piece more speedily than it should be just to get your fingers really working and used to the piece.

You've got to learn how to relax while you are playing. Relax your fingers, your back and in reality your entire posture. If you are tense while you play then you'll find it far more difficult to control your fingers and for your playing to flow. This is a little like studying how to ride a bike or drive a vehicle. To start with there are so many things to remember and coordinate but at some specific point it all of a sudden clicks and it all slots into place.

Daily practice by itself isn't really enough to learn to play the piano correctly but a steady and structured practice routine will give you an advantage.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment