When sight reading or maybe just playing a piece that you know from music, always look ahead. You should be looking at least one bar ahead all the time to anticipate what is coming, the fingering that will be needed, and seeing the structure of the music.
It’s a tough disciple to follow at first but looking ahead will pay huge dividends.
This is a good one.
When practicing you sometimes come to a difficult section which slows you down or stops you. Instead of starting from the beginning take the difficult section and play it slowly 3 times without making a mistake. Should you make a mistake during any of the 3 times then start the 3 times again. Continue until you can play it the 3 times without making a mistake. The next day try again, and if you complete the 3 times successfully then increase the pace until you can play the section at the same speed as the rest of the piece.
The ‘game of threes’ is an excellent way to improve your concentration and accuracy. Remember that good pianists always go straight to the tricky parts of a piece and practice those first.
If you are going to perform the piece eventually then try playing the game of threes for the whole piece.
The BBC and James Rhodes, what you can do with 20 minutes a day!
We all suffer to a greater or lesser extent with anxiety about performance. Here is some tried and tested advice:
Think about dealing with performance nerves as an ongoing strategy. It’s no good procrastinating and hoping that it will be ‘all right on the night’. You must practice performing regularly as well as practicing the piano. However this is not as tricky as it sounds.
When preparing a piece for performance in public or preparing for an exam, practice it to a level where you can play it comfortably. Then arrange to play it to members of the family or to friends. Do this a few times before the live performance will take place.
Another good strategy if friends/family are unavailable is to video yourself playing the piece.
When playing to your audience, adopt some or all of these ideas:
1. You do not care about making mistakes in performance.
2. In the mood of not caring about making mistakes, why not relax and even take a few risks?
3. You and the piano are in a bubble. You cannot see/hear outside the bubble.
4. If you make a mistake, instead of thinking ‘oh dear’ (or some more inflammatory phrase!) as quickly as possible focus on the positive act you were trying to accomplish, e.g. you may have been shaping a phrase, playing a rhythm, staying on the beat. Making a mistake is a ‘negative’ so get back to the ‘positive’ fast. Implement this idea when practicing, and refocus quickly onto a positive idea whenever you make a mistake. Concentrate on the here and now.
5. Listen more to the piano. Listen to the actual sound.
6. Play every note as if you mean it. Play from the heart.
If you are learning a new piece and have tried some of it on the piano, how about this for a recipe for success:
Take the music and find a comfortable chair away from the piano. Browse through the music bar by bar taking in the notation, hand positions, fingering, dynamics … just generally ‘read’ through it. You’ll be surprised by how much you’ve taken in when you return to the piano.
Let’s learn pieces quickly and accurately!
Sometimes you ask yourself, why am I practicing, why am I doing this? The answer is that no matter how you feel right now you still like the piano and like music – that feeling will stay with you for a lifetime. However, today you find it an uphill struggle to learn a new piece or just to sit and play.
The answer could be to put the new piece aside for a while and play some old favourites. They don’t need the same effort and you like them. Perhaps you’ve got your own private list of 3 or 4 that you can always turn to and enjoy. Taking part in this activity stills the mind and removes the stress of learning something new. And hey, you’re enjoying your music again!
Don’t give up. Just play something you like. The need to learn and practice a new piece will return soon.
As we progress and learn new and sometimes more complicated pieces, we practice the piano and unintentionally ‘ignore the tune’. Music can often be made up of not just one melody. When you look at the phrasing in the right hand and left hand you can often see that a musical piece has multiple ‘songs’ within it. Faced with all this complication we get taken up with the technical challenges of learning a piece and omit to make the melodies sing out.
Chopin is reputed to have taken great pains to teach his pupils a legato, cantabile style, or playing that is singing, melodious, smooth, expressive and graceful. See the Style paragraph here.
The melody will usually be identified with phrase marks. Here are some tips to produce a good singing style:
1. Break the piece into sections. Mark the sections with a pencil and practice each section hands separately.
2. Pay attention to the finger numbers, it will help you to play fluently.
3. When you have practiced hands separately and feel comfortable, start playing hands together phrase by phrase.
4. Play the sections of the piece ‘andante’ (at a walking pace) and don’t try and play quickly.
5. Pay attention to any special markings such as staccato, and dynamics.
5. If you hit problems then reduce the speed by at least one third, or better still by one half.
6. When you have learnt the whole piece, keep playing it at a walking pace to consolidate learning.
7. If the piece is for an exam you should play it at a walking pace until a month before the exam, then gradually increase the tempo until you can comfortably play it at exam speed.