Piano Practice Thoughts & Tips

Tips and secrets that I have acquired from over 10 years of experience of music schooling in Montréal. I teach this regularly to all my students in my Piano Lessons. For more information on practicing, you can book a session with me here.

After years of teaching Piano Lessons in Montréal, I thought to compile some "tips and thoughts" on practicing. I am very passionate about this topic. Most of these are not "things you practice" or "things you do". These are abstract concepts and they have a lot more to do with "how you approach practicing" or "how to think about practicing". To me, I feel that this perspective has not been overtly expressed enough and I thought it would be worth sharing.

Tip #1 - Choice Over Talent

Talent isn't a myth. Everyone is born with certain advantages and disadvantages. But talent isn't everything. The majority of talented musicians still have to put in hard worked hours of practice. Even with all the talent and hard work, there is still the final factor of luck. Does this mean practicing isn't worth it? Not at all. This is to demonstrate that talent isn't a necessary component to success. Most of the time, success is determined by choice. The more choices you make, the more potential outcomes you will accumulate. This will then compel you to make even more choices. Put simply, you have more chances to generate your luck by making more choices and being decisive. And this is my #1 tip for people: to realize that Practice is a choice and to encourage people to constantly make decisions in their practice. By choosing to practice, you believe that this is an investment of skill, luck, with even more potential returns in the future. Here is an example. You have 20 minutes to spare every Saturday morning. You could make the choice to practice a warm-up exercise or you could watch another episode of your favourite show. You decide to practice the warm-up. This has increased your dexterity over time and now you have to decide between practicing scales or arpeggios. You decide on the scales. This has made you very proficient at technical passages in Beethoven and Mozart. This technical mastery has allowed you to play both composers with ease. You are now confronted between two composers to specialize. You choose Beethoven and you now get hired for Beethoven performances and festivals. So on and so forth. While this is exaggerated, it is not too far off from the point. The decision to choose practicing over another task requires no talent. It requires discipline, will, and self-reflection. Good practicing is nothing more than making good choices.

Tip #2 - Opportunity Cost

In the last scenario, we can see how a simple decision to practice can lead to a myriad of choices. It is important to note that this simple decision--and every decision--is an opportunity cost. Had you not practiced, you could've have been doing another task. After you realize this, you can constructively ask: Is there another task I could be doing than practicing? The reverse situation also applies: Should I be practicing instead of my current task? We all know the meme answer is to "always practice". But I want people to take time and critically think about their decisions. Sometimes, practicing is worth it and other times, it is not. Realising that practicing is an opportunity cost allows you to make a healthier schedule that fits you. Practicing is no longer this "thing" that you "have to do". It is now a carefully chosen task that has a purpose, a better opportunity cost.

Tip #3 - Consistency is Everything

Now that you understand how to "choose" practice, it is time to discuss scheduling strategies. There's this dogma that you have to practice a ridiculous number of hours to become a good musician. I can empathise with this belief because it is not different from what we previously discussed. Practicing more means you can potentially get luckier. So why not practice a ridiculous amount? Makes sense, right? Except that this isn't how practicing works. Practicing an enormous amount everyday is the equivalent of brute force. In other words, it's a waste of time. It's been scientifically proven that a person can only work productively for about 2-3 hours. Your returns will be greatly diminished afterwards. So good news, your practice sessions should always be less than 2-3 hours! But then what is the secret? The secret is consistency. Doing something less but more frequently is always a better choice than doing something a lot but less frequently. Let's be honest, most students don't practice everyday. With over ten years of teaching experience, I know that the majority of students practice about 20-30 minutes the day before (or even right before the lesson) because they're scared of embarrassment in their next lesson. Putting it in perspective, had they just spent 5 minutes a day but everyday, they would've accumulated 35 minutes of practice. What's better is that they also had a chance to reinforce what they learn 7 times as opposed to just once. This is significantly better than a one time practice session of 20-30 minutes and makes a profound difference in the long run. When it comes to practicing, less is more and consistency is everything.

Tip #4 - Good Choices & Realistic Goals

So most of you are probably relieved to hear that you don't have to practice a lot to get results. But the catch is what do you do with less time? Practicing is not "doing the same things over and over". Practicing is about doing the correct things over and over. But how do you know what correct is? It's not an easy answer and it comes with experience. An amateur would simply use the brute force approach and hope that progress will eventually happen. But an experienced musician make good choices and realistic goals in their practice, allowing them to practice less but making it count. Remember, time is your most valuable resource and your choices matter drastically. Experienced musicians will always have a clear goal and vision in their practice session. But what is a good goal? A good goal is precise, realistic, and quantifiable. For example, "I'm going to practice the piece" is not a good goal. A good goal is "Today, I am going to practice the first eight bars of the piece. I will play it correctly three times". You may think this is a small task, and you are right. But what happens after? You simply create more tasks, goals and choices! Within 10-20 minutes, you would have more "choices per minute" than someone who simply uses brute force without a plan. This seems simple but most people never make goals or tasks. This prevents them from making additional tasks, thus making them less efficient. Climbing a mountain is hard, but climbing smaller peaks, peak to peak is easy. Before you know it, you're at the top.

Tip #5 - Mind over Body

Piano technique is a big and controversial topic that deserves its own blog post. Most people think that technique is purely a physical aspect. This is false. Biomechanics and physical aspects do play a huge part, but people are missing the point. Technique is the extension of your mind. You are expressing your musical thought through your body, instrument or whatever other device. This means that the mind is an essential part of technique and is often overlooked. How does this apply to practice? In a sense, sort of everything. Making tasks and actually finishing them is part of strengthening your mind, which therefore strengthens your technique. Practicing technical exercises, scales, and arpeggios is not really practicing your technique (You are welcome to disagree). While it is quite hard to believe, making tasks and following through is better for your technique in the long run. This is a big claim but allow me to elaborate further. How many times have you said you practiced something and somehow along the way, you just end up playing the whole piece or end up in a jam session. This is an example of an undisciplined mind. But when you practice making a goal, a task that has a real defined beginning and end, and actually completing it, you are doing wonders for your technique. You have developed a strong mind that is then capable of taking exact and clear information, and performing it. Everybody wants to play fast on the piano. But anybody who has played those fast passages will tell you the same thing, something along the lines of "they took it slow in digestible pieces". But if you don't have the type of mind to break up a fast passage into smaller and slower-paced tasks, then you'll never have true technique. So I cannot stress enough that people strengthen their mind and discipline by 1. Making a task that is clearly defined 2. Actually doing and completing said task. If this fundamental procedure is lacking, then does anything else really matter? Are you really practicing?

Tip #6 - Rest is Part of the Process

The last thing to talk about is resting. Resting is part of the process. This is hard to believe because most of us feel insecure if we miss a few practice sessions. But in any physical discipline, resting plays a major role. Your body and mind needs time to digest the information. Strategically incorporating rest into your practice schedule is important. This could go something along the lines of "practice five days a week, rest two". Resting also serves the purpose of deleting your "cache", so to speak. During a practice session, you are most likely to make as many mistakes as your successful attempts (This is why we make realistic goals, to prevent unwanted mistakes). Your body will not know which is correct or which is wrong. It only knows what was repeated the most. Sometimes you could be practicing the mistake without even realizing it. Let's say your goal was to do something correctly three times. You accomplished it, but you actually had 17 wrong attempts in the process. This means that (1) Your goal was too ambitious and not realistic enough and (2) You've been reinforcing the mistake. Resting is a good way to clear those wrong attempts. After resting, you would have most likely learned, made better goals, and reinforced the correct information. In my experience, resting allows me to feel that "correct thing" I been searching for better. Practicing everyday without rest can sometime lead you into a progress plateau. You don't feel like you're getting better and you don't exactly know why. Most of the time its that you can't tell right from wrong. Without rest, those 17 wrong attempts would "feel right". Resting allows you to refresh and unveil the correct information. Resting can even allow you to see more things you didn't see before.

Closing Statement

To summarize, practicing is not a brute force notion of "doing the same things over and over". Practice is about self-reflection and making good choices. Good results can come from the talented person, the most hard-working person, and the luckiest person. But they can also come from those who make good choices. And I believe that everyone is already born with the ability to make good choices. I strongly believe that small but good habits in practice will reflect everywhere else and have positive effect on the world. If you would like to know about practicing, don't hesitate to contact me.