Among piano students, each has a different practice habit. Some diligent students practice 3 hours a day, while those who have less time may practice only three days a week, or even only once a week. Therefore, the progress of piano skills varies from person to person, and there is no fixed time limit for progress.
The following four points can help you make great progress in piano skills:
When we are practicing piano, we should master the following important aspects:
Slow down the speed to practice
Slow down the speed to practice the piano is to overcome all technical obstacles, especially when practicing a new piece for the first time. By slowing down the practice, the performer will be on the right track at the beginning of the contact with the piece. Slowing down the practice is like a magnifying glass that magnifies all the details in the music, allowing piano students to carefully pay attention to every detail of the music.
Write down the fingerings
When practicing the piano slowly, you should pay attention to the basic issues. First, determine the fingering of your fingers. It is best to memorize the correct fingering at the general stage. Never change the fingering at will. Only when the difficult passage cannot be overcome, study to make it smooth by changing the fingering.
Practice in small sections
One of the most common mistakes students make is to play a piece of music from beginning to end over and over again. This kind of playing from beginning to end is really senseless and it is difficult to benefit from it and make progress. The best way is to break the music into small parts, and overcome the technical difficulties at focusing areas before connecting all the phrases together.
Separate hand practice is very important in piano practice
Many people start by practicing with both hands. You must remember it is important to practice hands separately at the beginning. Even for a simple exercise, the left and right hands have different tasks and functions. In many cases, it is often the least important and easily overlooked thing. The soul of music lies in these small little phrases. Not only in the initial stage of familiarizing with the music, it is necessary to practice the piano with both hands separately, but also in the whole process of preparing for the concert, the performers will be confident to express themselves if they are able to get familiar with hand positions of every small section, and able to cover up smoothly when they have memory laps or finger slips, by moving on to the next phrase without people noticing it, rather than restart the music from beginning of the section.
Speed control is very important in the piano practice process. Once the details of piano practice are taken care of, We can start from a slow speed by practicing with metronome. For example, if we want to quickly run a piece of 16th notes continuously, we need to reach a speed of 132. We can start from 100, pass through 104, 108, 120, 126 and other different speeds, and finally reach 132. Then we can go back to a slower speed. This is very effective in overcoming the difficulty of continuous running of fingers. This method can help us to enhance the muscle memory of our hands and clearly understand what are the chord progression of every phrase and section.
All of the above ways of practicing the piano require great patience and inner strength. It is a manifestation of our will power. Teacher Jenny is very patient and can accompany the students to practice every detail during the lessons. So as long as you follow the teacher’s method to practice closely, I am sure you can achieve very good results for your diploma piano exams.
