Category Archives: How to Practise

July 29, 2011

How to Practise Successfully

By ms-ye

 

 Please note:  The following material was written by Martha Beth Lewis, Ph.D.

 

This is not brain surgery!

First of all, bear in mind that piano study isn’t brain surgery. Your patient isn’t going to die if you make an error. In fact, you can make as many errors as you like: they are gone instantaneously and you can try it again as many times as you wish. Be gentle with yourself. Piano study is not supposed to cause stress; it’s supposed to release it!

Don’t plan to walk on water.

Don’t expect to play perfectly. It very rarely happens, even to concert artists and recording stars who devote their entire lives to the study of piano performance! Even when you know a piece well, you’ll drop at least 5% of the notes. Don’t sweat it! Do the best you can and enjoy!

Divide your time

Divide your practice session into parts. I suggest something like 20% of your time on technique, 60% on literature, and the last 20% on fun. Don’t forget the fun! That’s why you’re taking lessons, right?!

Set practice goals.

Your practice sessions should have a goal. A small goal. If your goal is too large or too unfocused, you won’t reach it. “To improve” or “to play this movement better” are examples of such goals. “To fix measures 17-20” is a reasonable goal and one you can reach. When you set goals which are unobtainable in one practice session, you leave the piano feeling depressed and angry. Avoid this by making your goals small enough that you can reach them easily.

Is it chance or control?

I ask my students to continually ask themselves: is it chance or control? “Was it just good luck that I played that correctly or could I do it again whenever I want to?” Only the student knows the answer. Deep down inside, he cannot lie to himself!

Go for control!

This is especially pertinent when a student is trying to speed up a piece he has moderately well-learned. If he always aims at control, speed will develop naturally.

Build bridges.

Identify the exact place you are having a break-down and work systematically to fix it. Here is a technique I ask my students to use; I call it bridge-building.

The breakdown can be isolated to the elision between two notes. This is where you need to build your bridge. First check the fingering; write in what is missing, after making sure you aren’t breaking any of the basic rules of fingering. Now play between the two notes that are the problem spot, making sure your fingering is perfect each time. Once you have that mastered, add a note on either side of the problem. Next, go one note before and one note beyond. Continue to accrete in this fashion until you have the entire phrase learned. Another technique to use in the bridge-building stage is rhythms.

Now the tough part: putting it back in place.

This is tough because you now have to reduce your speed! Yes, when you put it back into context, you have to play more slowly than you can actually do the problem section. Play the phrase before the problem phrase and the phrase after it. Practice starting at different places in the preceding phrase; don’t become wed to only one starting place. After you are comfortable–is it chance or control?–add the phrases before and after, and so on until the problem phrase is back in the fabric of the piece.

Pick the three worst places.

When hunting for a place that needs work, I often tell my students to play through the piece one time and note the problem spots. *Small* problem spots! They are then to select the three worst ones and focus on those for the day’s practice. If they don’t get to all of them, fine; the other one or two will certainly be waiting there tomorrow!

Don’t Eat Hershey bars!

Ready for another analogy? Playing moderately-well-learned material to the exclusion of working on harder material is like eating Hershey bars. It feels good while you do it, but the effects can be harmful. Your problem is a lack of self-discipline. If you play only the parts you know well, you never get better on the parts you know less well. Then the known parts are even more fun to play and the unknown parts more painful. Train yourself to focus on the more difficult sections. Yeah, I know it’s hard.

Play at a practice tempo.

There’s a big difference between a practice tempo and a performance tempo! And there’s a gigantic temptation to select the latter during home practice, especially when playing a section you know pretty well or one that you’ve just conquered! Beware!

Playing at performance tempo before you can control the piece completely is counter- productive. You end up slopping through the music just to keep the speed up.

A practice tempo–engrave this on your forehead!–is the speed at which you can control the weakest section. It is a comfortable speed, not a frantic one. True, the sections you know better probably will be boring at this speed. This is why you need to focus on the less-well- known sections! Please–I beg you!–do not do this: start at the speed you can play the first part, slowing down when you come to the hard sections and speeding up at the easier parts. You do yourself great harm. You eat Hershey bars *and* you kid yourself that the piece is better-prepared than it really is.

Where to Start a Piece

The way pianists learn is typically the first section first. When they are fairly accomplished, they dive into the second section. The first section is still a lot more satisfying to play, however, so the second section is never learned as well as the first. The third section–save us!–is a disaster! The pianist “practices” by playing through the first section first and enjoying it, easing through the second section, perhaps taking second and third shots at trouble spots, and barely getting through the last section. Does this sound like you?

If so, I advise you to start to learn a new piece someplace other than the opening section. How about the middle section? Or the end? Composers typically pull out all the stops at the end of the piece; it’s harder than the beginning because it’s coming to a grand finale. Which leads us to…

The Lewis Down-Hill Method

This practice strategy says that you learn the most difficult portion of the piece first. Then the rest is down hill. If you can’t pick the most difficult section of a new piece, ask your teacher’s advice. Caution: The Down-Hill Method takes guts! Once you try it and are successful, however, I think you’ll be sold on the idea. It makes learning a new piece so much quicker!

Restarts

Kids do this all the time: if there’s a mistake in measure 8, they start again at the beginning. This is quite ineffective.

Another version: when a mistake is made, the pianist backs up just before the mistake a tries it again.

Don’t!

If necessary, throw your hands over your head to break yourself of this habit.

This reminds me of a colleague from my college days. It was her senior recital, and she made an error. Instead of playing on, she did just what she had done in the practice room: she went back and took another shot at it. Everyone in the audience–music majors and professors, for the most part–knew exactly why she did that: it was exactly the way she had practiced! Short-circuit this impulse to start over or you’ll surely practice in the restart!

Practice Dessert

After you’ve learned all sections of the piece pretty well, try this technique. Work on the worst spot (or three worst spots), and then reward yourself with a single play-through of the whole piece *but at a tempo in which you can completely control the hardest section.*

Why practice?

To learn your music well enough that you can play it to your satisfaction whenever you please!

      

Article taken from:

–  http://www.serve.com/marbeth/practice_techniques.html 

 

Copyright 2011, Martha Beth Lewis, Ph.D.  Used with permission.   marthabeth.com  Please contact her for permission to reproduce this material for your students or your site.  This material is   her property and may not be used without permission.  Thank you for honoring copyright.

Leave a comment | posted in How to Practise, Piano Learning

December 31, 2010

Suggested Practice Techniques

By ms-ye

 

 

Please note:  The following material was taken from –  http://pianoeducation.org/pnotchld.html#Practice%20Techniques .

 

HOW OFTEN AND HOW LONG SHOULD I PRACTICE?

Practicing needs are different for each student, but a good starting goal is 30 minutes a day. You may wish to split the time up into 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon. As you advance, you may wish to set musical goals for yourself instead of a specific time limit. For example, you might decide to practice one day until you have learned the notes of a piece at a slow tempo. Make the most of your practice time by focusing on the hardest things to play.

You can learn faster and easier if you do a few simple things. These suggestions are not time-consuming and easily carried out if you schedule time for them in your day on a regular basis. The most important thing to remember about practice is that it’s not the amount of time you spend, but how well you use the time that counts. If you practice several hours a day and simply repeat the same mistakes each time through, you have not practiced effectively.

  • Take the time to read your assignment book. The specific assignments and practice suggestions are intended to assist in practice.
  • When practicing, make sure that the environment is free from distractions and noise. Turn off the TV, put the answering machine on, and give yourself a quiet environment to work.
  • Make sure the music is legible and well-lit.
  • Set aside a specific time each day for your work at the piano and stick to the schedule. If you are a morning person, practice in the morning. Avoiding or delaying getting to the piano will just make you run out of time.
  • Unlike studying for tests or exams, piano practice cannot be crammed in at the last minute or day before the lesson. Plan the time to do practice every day.
  • Don’t try to learn a piece all at once; take it in sections and practice a section until you can do it without mistakes three times through. Then move on to the next section.
  • Remember the value of taking a section slowly, making sure that you play all the notes correctly and that you count through difficult sections. Worry about playing to tempo when you have the notes and the rhythm right.
  • A very valuable way of knowing whether you’ve learned a piece is to learn it well enough that you can play either hand independently starting at any place in the music. When you can do that, you can begin to work on being musical with the piece.
  • Learning a new piece of music is hard work. Reward yourself after a good practice session by playing a familiar and favorite work just for the fun of it. Think of this as the dessert after meal.
  • Above all, don’t simply repeat mistakes. Use practice to work out mistakes, not to reinforce them by continually repeating them. When you repeat mistakes, they are just that much more difficult to get rid of later.
  • Take the suggestions from your teacher seriously. After long years of training and teaching experience, chances are your teacher’s suggestions will prove successful, if followed.
  • If possible, participate in concerts and recitals at your teacher’s studio, even if only to audit. So much can be learned by performing yourself and listening to others perform.
  • Attend as many recitals and concerts as possible. Given the large number of musical organizations sponsoring concerts there is ample opportunity to hear music. The more music that you hear, the more of an idea of the musical concepts you can get.
  • Read biographies of composers, performing artists and conductors. Also, rent movies that are related to the lives of musicians. There are so many wonderful movies and books readily available, that really no one has the excuse not to know more about the composers, their lives and music. If you can’t find the time to read books, classical CD’s and records usually have useful and interesting information about the composer, the musical structure and ideas expressed, and the performers in the recording.
  • Obtain a musical dictionary. The dictionary will give the meaning of the Italian terms (for example, Allegro vivace or Molto espressivo) which are used in the score to indicate how the piece of music should be played and how it should sound. You’ll find your playing of the music will improve faster if you understand how the composer meant the music to sound in the first place.

      

Article taken from:

–  http://pianoeducation.org/pnotchld.html#Practice%20Techniques

 

Leave a comment | posted in Adult Piano Learning, Frequently Asked Questions, How to Practise, Parental Roles in Music Learning, Piano Learning

December 31, 2010

How to Help Your Child Practice at Home

By ms-ye

 

Please note:  The following material was written by Martha Beth Lewis, Ph.D.

 

The most important part of music study takes place at home, not at the lesson. At home, the student tries out new ideas, plays his assignment as specified, and has fun experimenting.

Note: I am going to use practice here because it’s a more efficient way to write, but at home you’ll be very well served if you call it play piano. Practice is has such an ominous sound!

What Practice Is

Knowing what practice is and why it’s valuable will assist you in helping your child make the most of his time at the instrument. It also will guide you in dealing with the resistance that will happen on occasion, even with the most dedicated child.

Research shows that maximum retention occurs if repetition–that is, practice–takes place within 24 hours or less. The retention rate is approximately 90%. If repetition does not occur until 48 hours later (skip a day of practice), the retention drops off drastically, as the graph is a curve rather than a straight line. By 72 hours (skip two days), retention is virtually zero. (Material that is already learned is retained longer, of course. I speak here of new material, such as a new piece or a new section of piece begun previously.)

Your child will be very frustrated with his inability to carry out the lesson assignment at home the longer he waits between practice sessions. Therefore, daily practice will net your child the most progress for his effort and will keep frustration to a minimum.

Practicing seven days a week is not realistic for every student or every family, however. The student might like “a day off.” If he practices six days a week, his tasks will be well-reinforced and one 48-hour gap will not affect his overall retention significantly. (The day after or before the lesson is never a good choice for the vacation day.)

Home practice is also a time to experiment. After he completes his assignment, encourage your child to explore. Perhaps he can pick out a tune by ear, play a song he already knows but in a different way, or make up his own song. Playing an old song or two is fun; this is also a good way to reinforce your child’s progress and point out that his efforts are bearing fruit: “Do you remember back at Christmas when this song was so hard for you?” Looking ahead in his materials is another productive activity: your child can see how much of the upcoming material he already knows and can challenge himself to figure out some of the rest.

Finally, home practice is a time for the family to participate in the child’s music study. This can take the form of “family concerts” after dinner, playing duets with another family member, or participating in the games the teacher assigns (to drill on note-reading or counting).

Your child’s teacher will have recommendations to make home practice successful, so be sure to follow them. Here are some other ideas you might want to try.

The Secret Weapon

Important: The main reason children want to quit piano study is that the parent assumes the child can carry out the assignment by herself and she can’t. Frustration, confusion, and despair set in. Who’d want to prolong a situation like this? Certainly not a child! A child has virtually no inkling of what will happen a long time from now, much less deferred gratification! All he knows is that right this moment he’s unhappy!

Don’t expect the child to practice her own! (Learning how to practice is a different skill altogether from actually playing the instrument.) Be directly involved. On the bench, if the child is young.

You will never regret this investment of time you make. No parent ever sent his child off to college thinking, “I wish I had spent less time with my son.”

The secret weapon is you and your direct involvement in your child’s home practice!

Help with the Lesson Assignment

Your child’s teacher will let you know exactly what you need to do to assist actively in home practice. The teacher may ask you to watch the student’s hand position as he plays to make sure he maintains the correct one or he may ask you to count out loud for your child. A youngster may have card games or board games or other fun activities to carry out at home with a partner.

Children respond best to a lesson assignment that is very specific (“play lines 3 and 4, hands together, 4 times) rather than general (“work on this). Your child will then pay attention to carrying out the assignment rather than focusing on a specified number of minutes spent at the piano (“clock-watching”). This kind of practice plan allows you to divide home practice into several segments, if necessary. The child also sees precisely what he still has to accomplish and will know when he is finished.

With young children, you may have to be involved directly for the entire practice session at first. Even after some months of study, your help may be needed for most of the practice time. Do not expect your child to carry out his practice entirely by himself until he is about 10 years old. (Yes, piano study is a significant commitment for the family!) With children under that age, plan to sit in the room with the child, even if you are not on the bench with him.

Many children (up through pri 6) like to have a parent keep them company while they practice. Even if the child doesn’t need your sustained participation, he may crave your presence because he’s lonely in the piano room all by himself. Don’t imply by words or body language that you’d rather be (or “should be”) somewhere else. That attitude is an eloquent negative. Use your “keeping company time” to read for pleasure, catch up on professional reading, balance the checkbook, or simply relax and enjoy your child’s accomplishments. Keep suggestions or criticism to yourself, however, unless the child asks for your help. The teacher will work with your child to correct errors. After your child has left home, I promise you will look back on any time you invest in this way and feel that it was more than amply rewarded. Your child will have fond memories, too. And remember that parental involvement and commitment are vital to the child’s continued interest.

Note: At some point, your child will inform you that you are no longer needed. Ask if your daughter would like you to sit in the room while she practices. Even if she answers yes initially, soon she will inform you that she’d rather be by herself. This change is almost instantaeous when the child enters sec sch and finds that she childish ways are not cool – – peers are great agents of change – – and, as you know, sometimes not to the good – – but that’s another topic!

At any rate, the child will let you when you should scale back the amount of direct involvement in home study.

Divide Practice Time

With today’s busy families, it often works well to divide practice session into two or more segments, particularly with a young child who is still developing his attention span. Two 15-minute practices–or even three 10-minute sessions–can be more productive than one 30-minute sitting. Divide the material for variety, too. For example, if there are two songs, two games, and a technique exercise, work at one song the first time and the other song at the second practice time, playing a game each session and working on half the technical material.

At Home Immediately After the Lessons

If students (adults as well as children!) did the following after each lesson, they would find their progress really accelerating.

After you return home, sit down with your child and play through his lesson assignment one time. This should consume 10 minutes at most. For each part of the assignment, ask your child to describe what he is supposed to do and why and then have him play it for you. This will acquaint you with what you should be hearing and how you should be hearing it, and your child will know that you are aware of precisely what the teacher has requested Should there be questions, call the teacher right away for clarification rather than let the child ignore an element of his assignment all week (or worse: do it incorrectly and later have to un-learn!).

Your child reaps several things from this post-lesson review. It is a tangible reminder that you support his efforts and are vitally interested in the content of what he is doing. Another benefit is that the immediate repetition of the assigned material ensures almost 100% retention of what the teacher said at the lesson.

If you like, count this session as a day’s practice, so your child may have “a day off” another time later in the week.

Ideally, both Mother and Father sit down with the child to preview the upcoming week’s activities, but in the real world a consistent commitment from one parent is sufficient. It doesn’t have to be the same parent each time, either.

But remember: you need to be directly involved on the bench with your child. (Until the child tells you with no prompting that he prefers to do it himself.)

A Consistent Practice Time

Most students benefit from a consistent piano practice time. Adults find a routine helps them shoehorn in all they must do; children draw security from routine.

I tell all my students that schoolwork is first priority. If there is a large assignment that evening, there may be no time for practice because schoolwork is most important. After schoolwork comes piano playing, however. When that is complete, then there’s time to play outside, use the telephone, watch TV, or whatever else they’d like to do. It’s important that children know that piano study falls right under schoolwork in the day’s hierarchy. They should understand that some days their homework load and their piano time may preclude most or all of their playtime. Not every day, surely, but sometimes. They should understand and accept this before study begins.

Of course, children may “unwind” by having a snack or changing clothes, but right after that, it’s time to hit the books. No getting sidetracked with a magazine or playing with a friend.

Discuss with your child’s teacher whether this might be a useful philosophy for your family.

At-Home Quiet Zone

It goes without saying that other family members should not be in the piano room during practice time. Nor should they be causing a racket elsewhere in the house. Not only is the noise itself distracting, but your child’s curiosity will be piqued by the possibility that something interesting is going on elsewhere and he will be distracted and restless. Most families find that practice time for one child is a perfect homework time (or story time) for another.

Reminders

Occasionally you may have to remind your child to practice. No matter his level of interest in music study, he is only human and some days he will want to do something else first or skip practice altogether. A regular practice time and at-home quiet zone helps, as does an obvious interest and commitment from the parent(s). Remember that young children can’t be expected to practice on their own.

If you constantly experience trouble inducing your child to practice (tantrums, tears, shouting), something is wrong. Your child may not have thought out the time and effort necessary for learning to play a musical instrument. Or he may have changed his mind when he discovered it’s not like TV: with piano study he is a participant; with TV he is only a spectator. Another possibility is that he has some other problem which is preventing him from feeling his effort is producing a worthwhile result (a sibling is being a pest during practice time, the other parent is making disparaging remarks about piano study). Consult the teacher. If this does not ameliorate the problem, consider changing teachers, changing instruments, or looking to another of the fine arts (dance, theater, painting, etc.).

Piano study isn’t easy. If it were, everyone would be doing it. But it is so satisfying!

Everybody–including children–needs to practice efficiently. When you do this, you feel doubly proud of your effort expended.

First and foremost, -have a goal- for each piece of your assignment for each session. If you have a goal you can evaluate whether or not you reached it. If you don’t reach it, your goal was too large. Your goal wouldn’t be “play the Beethoven sonata better,” it would be “fix fingering in measure 18.”

Second, go to the piano -ready- to practice. Don’t go when you’ve just had a disagreement with your spouse/parents and are still physically/emotionally upset about the altercation. Go when you’re prepared to pay attention to what you’re doing. Don’t go when you’re absolutely brain-dead or physically exhausted. Bring some energy to the piano–or simply go and dabble with something not on your assignment list: something that relaxes you. Your goal for such a session is not meeting a goal!

Third, work in an organized fashion. The rocket scientist says, “Plan the work and work the plan.” Here’s the plan I often suggest to my students: devote 10% of the practice time to technique (Hanon, Czerny), 10% to keyboard harmony (scales, arpeggios), 10% to sight-reading, 60% to literature, and 10% to fun (playing by ear, playing old stuff, poking around for new stuff). Of course, this division is flexible. You may need to spend extra time learning a new scale or more time on literature if a performance is on the horizon. But don’t leave out the fun! That’s the main reason you’re doing this!!

Fourth, if you have an inefficient day, don’t sweat it. Re-focus and try again tomorrow!

 

( Article taken from:  http://www.serve.com/marbeth/helping_kids_practice.html )

 

Copyright 2011, Martha Beth Lewis, Ph.D.  Used with permission.   marthabeth.com  Please contact her for permission to reproduce this material for your students or your site.  This material is   her property and may not be used without permission.  Thank you for honoring copyright.

Leave a comment | posted in Frequently Asked Questions, How to Practise, Parental Roles in Music Learning, Piano Learning