Structuring the Perfect Practice Session
1. The Holistic Player 🤲
One of the most common reasons that those new to learning an instrument often feel like they aren’t progressing as fast as they could be, is because being able to practice well is a skill within itself. Not only that, but there are many practicing traps that a new learner can fall into and it can become difficult to start changing your routine and the way that you approach practicing.
So how could you actually practice in order to get better as efficiently as possible? What needs to be included in a practice session and why?
Well, to start with this largely depends on what your particular goals are. It’s very understandable that not everyone is interested in acquiring all of the various skills that make up being a holistic, well rounded musician. However, if you are learning with the intention of learning holistically then you are going to want to train these skills: technique and your ability to get your hands to do what you want them to do, sight reading and instant recognition of notes, interpretation and understanding of music and listening (aural) skills. Each of these skills work together to produce “the well rounded musician”.
2. The Fingers 🖐️
So let’s get into the details! The first thing I suggest is to practice scales and/or technical exercises.
The reason why scales are a good idea is because not only are you able to improve your technique using scales so that your fingers will do what you want them to do, but you also get to practice very common finger patterns that are seen in music AND you are also improving your understanding of music. This is because almost all pieces of music will use those scales to form the piece of music and your hands will already be familiar with those notes.
I also suggest either occasionally swapping out scales for technical exercises or adding them in as well as scales. Technical exercises give you a chance to practice specific techniques that you find challenging. For example, if you find a “trill” in a piece of music and your hand just wont do it with out tensing up; then you can find a technical exercises based around trills and add it into this section of your practice session so that you start training your hands to be able to do it.
Scales and technical exercises are a great way of starting a practice session because they will help to get your fingers moving and ready to play pieces of music while also improving so many important skills such as; theory and understanding, general control and specific techniques. Practicing scales and technical exercises doesn’t need to take up too much time during your practice session, if you get into the habit of doing it at the start of every practice session then you can do this for a long time regardless of what pieces or other things you are learning on the piano.
3. The Mind 🤯
The next part of a perfect practice session would be to practice sight reading!
Many learners mistake “reading” music with “sight reading” music and this often becomes a major issue. Sight reading music is all about improving your instant recognition of notes and patterns. You are asking the question; “if I have never seen the piece of music before, how well can I play it?”
Practicing sight reading as a separate exercise allows you to focus some time on specifically reading pieces of music that you have never seen before. Generally, your sight reading ability will be at a lower level than the types of pieces that you would be learning over a longer period of time.
Getting into the habit of practicing sight reading in each practice session will mean that your ability to read will be far superior to most other musicians and you don’t really need to try that hard, you just need to attempt to play something new regularly.
If you are completely new to the piano then I would suggest using my sight reading book (cheeky plug - Beginners Sight Reading Exercises Book), and to try 5 new exercises per day. This will take less than 5 minutes to complete. If you are a bit further with your playing, then I would recommend finding a new piece and trying to play through it without replaying any sections or playing it more than once.
4. The Meat and Potatoes 🥔
The final section is the reason that you actually sat down to play the piano in the first place; learning pieces.
Although so far it sounds like there is a lot to do, scales/technical exercises and sight reading should only take around 10 minutes in total. Learning pieces will take up most of your practice and will be the most effective way to improve your listening skills, interpretation, understanding of music and technique all at the same time.
You may want to learn between 1-3 pieces at the same time and so you will need to be efficient with how you approach learning your pieces of music to make sure you get the most out of each of them.
Firstly, it is very common for students to start by playing through the piece of music - this is a complete waste of time (unless there is a specific reason for it). Not only that, but many students will then sit for a moment before playing through the music again in the hope that mistakes will magically fix themselves. While mistakes can be fixed with this kind of repetition, it is really not the best way of improving.
So, before you play anything, make a note (a list or a mental list) of the places in the music that you found challenging in your last practice - then get straight into fixing those issues. For example, you might keep forgetting to play quietly in bar 4 or you might find a scale difficult in bar 6, you may need to learn some more notes from bar 12-14. By getting straight into it, you are actively getting better at the pieces of music rather than wasting time playing parts that you can already play and reinforcing mistakes.
At the end of your work on the piece, that is a good time to play it through to see what has stuck and what might need to be on the list for your next practice session!
5. Listen… 👂
Spending time working through 1-3 pieces of music is great listening practice, because you are listening for mistakes and specific things that you are trying to bring out in the music and why - which is great ear training.
However if you really want to train your ears more intentionally then you could add some fun to the end of your practice. That could be; trying to work a song out by ear, improvising, writing your own music or playing around with chords. All of these are great training for both your understanding of music and your listening skills.
Matthew Cawood
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