New Year’s Resolutions
How Much Piano Will You Practice In 2010?
The new year (or new decade , rather) is only a couple of days away. Do you have your New Year’s resolutions set and ready to go?
Sometimes I think it’s kind of funny how most people mark January 1st as the beginning of a “new and better year.” You don’t really need a new year to achieve any certain goals, but I guess it gives a lot of people a clean-and-fresh-start type of feeling.
The problem with New Year’s resolutions is that people make ridiculously huge goals to achieve, but don’t make any real plan or mini goals to get there. Quitting smoking, getting into shape, and improving school grades are great goals, but they also take a lot of work and lot of time. Most end up falling off the wagon and never getting back up again.
I’ve done this. Since I stopped musical conservatory training, I’ve been not-so-great with making time for piano practice. After all, playing the piano is really just a hobby I do now. My worst habit is learning one or two pages of a piece without learning the rest. I probably have 10-15 pieces that I could play without their ending because I never stuck around to learn the rest. I always get bored and move onto another piece or get side-tracked and distracted by something else that reduces my practice time.
It’s time to set things straight. Here a few guidelines that you and I can both take to make it a better year for piano practice.
Make time to practice. There are only 24 hours in a day and almost everyone struggles to get everything done before the day is over. You don’t have to spend hours practicing the piano. In fact, you don’t even have to spend one hour, or half an hour. Spaced repetition is the best practice method. Long periods of practice are unproductive because the brain starts to tire and get bored after a while, thus resulting in less effective practicing. Try spending at least 15 – 20 minutes a day practicing. Maybe break that down into 5-minute sections of three or four pieces that you are working on.
Start off small. So, you want to tackle a piece that is 27 pages long? You’ll get there, passage by passage. Don’t rush it. Make it your goal to play one entire line within one week. Make a second goal to learn one an entire page by the end of the month. Mini goals like this will make the task seem less daunting.
Play it 10 times repeatedly. As Chopin once said, “Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.” Take one bar or one passage, and play it 10 to 15 times. Repetition forces your hands and fingers to get used to the positioning and forces your brain to memorize the passage. By the 10th repetition, you’ll probably notice that you can play the passage faster and more easily. Yes, it can be tedious, but it is necessary.
Use the metronome. Ah yes, the dreaded metronome. We all love that terrible little device that sends a piercing clicking noise through our ears and literally forces us to know the truth about our playing in conjunction with timing. Don’t avoid it. Use it. Lucky for you, practicing with a metronome for long periods of time messes up your personal sense of timing, so remember to keep metronome practice short. Read my post about how to effectively practice with a metronome here.
YouTube It. If you want to learn a specific piece, do a search on YouTube and you can listen to various interpretations. There are even thousands of tutorials that people make to help you learn. You can watch a person play and study the hand and finger movements as often as you want. Listening to a certain piece repeatedly is very helpful when you practice because your brain automatically develops a framework for what the finished piece should sound like, and then you can add your own artistic components to make the performance your very own.
Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:
2010 is going to be a big year for everyone. I know how hard it is to force yourself to sit down and groan through the repetitive and tedious movements of a certain passage, but it must be done to achieve what you want. Take these tips with a grain of salt and remember how good it feels once you’ve completed and mastered a piece.
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Tags: 2010, Chopin, Metronome, New Year, Practice, Repetition, Time, YouTube
