“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs Learning to play the piano as an adult can be an exciting and rewarding journey. Whether you’ve always wanted to tickle the ivories or are just starting out, it’s never too late to embark on this musical adventure. While…
Some common advice for pianists is that you should never practice a difficult passage by simply repeating things over and over again because it’s mechanical. While I agree that you shouldn’t practice mechanically, not all repetition is bad, and often it’s necessary. A Practice Experiment As an experiment, I took a challenging passage from Mendelssohn’s…
How should I practice? What piece should I learn next? How do I prepare for a recital? How do I help my student who is having trouble with X, Y, and Z? Questions often come up about how to best learn to play the piano that seem to have different answers depending on who you…
Some of these rules might surprise you, maybe. I’m not really sure. But they come out from my 30 years of experience teaching people how to play piano. The first rule should probably be “don’t listen to someone just because they say they have 30 years of experience.” Rule #1: Encourage your students to disobey…
Lately I’ve been doing more composing and more improvising. I haven’t done a lot of composing in the past, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. There is one thing that’s been holding me back, and is that I’ve been afraid I might write music that sucks. I used to tell myself things like…
When you play music for other people, you are afraid that it won’t go as you planned, and you will feel pain and embarrassment. You’re afraid that people will think less of you. That’s a valid fear, because some people WILL think less of you, and that could be bad, especially if you’re a professional…
You get bored. If practicing is boring for you, you may need to find a different way to practice. If you find yourself watching the clock, you’re probably wasting your time. The best way to combat this is to give your brain a challenge. Your brain loves to solve problems. Can you play the passage…
Here are nine ideas off the top of my head you can use to make your practicing more productive and satisfying:
