Category: Make Faster And Better Piano Progress

What Should You Do If You Keep Messing Up At The Piano?

9/3/2019

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by Jenny Leigh Hodgins

If you’ve been following my piano practice blog series, you know my strategy for how to spend time at piano for the most effective progress.

If you missed those, check out: My Best Tips On How To Practice Piano Part 1, My Best Tips On How To Practice Piano Part 2 & My Best Tips On How To Practice Piano Part 3, where I walk you through my effective piano practice strategy in detail.

Continuing in your piano practice routine, you should practice each goal in this manner (as described in previous blogs above) for as long as you are able to muster full effort. Repeat the same practice process with your next goal, aiming to successfully play through several times in a row.

Stop if you make a mistake, or when you lose mental concentration. Remind yourself of your selected goal and reset back to the start. If you’re unable to keep your mind on things after awhile, or continue making the same mistakes, it may be time for a change. This brings us to decide What To Do If You Keep Messing Up At The Piano!

Starting anew without success after multiple attempts means you’re either doing something to block your progress, or you simply need a break to refresh yourself. If you simply didn’t achieve your goal, in addition to stopping and returning to the beginning, you must change your approach.

Take A Closer Look At The Problem
When I’ve chosen a specific practice goal, but continue having problems getting through the music successfully, I take a step back. By that I mean to take a closer look at the problem section. Analyze the trouble spot, looking for clues about what’s tripping you up. This often reveals a less obvious practice goal that you must focus on first, before moving on to your previously selected goal. In other words, you’ve taken on too much at once. Bite off only what you can chew, one morsel at a time.

How do you find the trouble to know what to practice? Ask yourself questions relevant to your music and piano playing level. If you’re a beginner, you may ask;

Can I play through this fingering?
Can I play with a fluent, steady beat?
Can I name the notes as I play?
Can I play this dynamic?
Can I play using both hands?

If you’re more advanced, you must ask questions relative to your level, too.

Am I able to play with proper finger touch, hand and arm motion?
Am I able to play with proper fingering with both hands simultaneously?
Am I using the pedal intentionally?
Am I cognizant of the harmonic progression as I play?
Am I aware of the form as I play?

Troubleshooting As A Target
These are simply examples of questions. You must look at your music specifically to break things down, one issue or item at a time, deducing where, within the music, you are completely confident you’ve mastered each aspect of your analysis. When you find a point where you are struggling to focus or answer a question, you’ve found a trouble spot!

An effective piano practice routine constantly involves this kind of reflection, and then zeroing in to practice only that section or areas that cause any issues. The way to accomplish more at your piano is determined by how much mental energy you’ve spent during your time at the piano. When you push yourself to be more conscientious of each moment and every phrase of your musical assignments, you will reap huge rewards with advancement as a musician.

But what if you’ve gone through this intense effort and you’re still having issues? I know how frustrating that may be, but there are two solutions that usually resolve any trouble areas.

Play It Slower, Sam
Most commonly, the solution to the problem is a slower tempo. Your next best step would be to stay focused on the originally selected goal, but play through your musical section at a much reduced speed. Playing music at a slower than usual tempo is often the most challenging kind of practice. Quite the opposite of most people’s impression that fast is impressive. (Though it can be, often piano players of fast passages easily find themselves relying on physical muscle memory, which, as mentioned earlier, is like a fragile house of cards!)

Sometimes we’ve made the mistake of relying solely on our muscle memory to play through musical passages. When the tempo is slowed down, that kind of false scaffolding is stripped away, leaving us to use our cognitive skills and tune in to refine our kinesthetic senses. This can feel like having the training wheels of a bicycle removed. We start off wobbly and lacking confidence or balance.

But when you slow the tempo, you allow yourself enough space in your brain to be fully mindful of each practice goal, whether it’s the notes, rhythm, fingering, dynamics or all these combined. If you’re able to play slowly enough to completely master each aspect of the music (whichever goals you’ve chosen to practice), you will gradually come away from piano practice with a deeper grasp of the music, both internally and physically.

But playing music that is familiar to us at a deliberately slower tempo can also cause us to trip up. This is even more basis for the argument to slow your playing enough to thoroughly choose and focus on one practice goal at a time until it is mastered.

Underwater Slow Motion Effect
One of the biggest problems with slowing down is that we’ve developed bad habits of playing at a tempo too fast. This tempo is stuck in our aural memory as well as our physical muscles. This makes for a tougher barrier to get through.

What I suggest is to look at your music through a new lens. Go to the extreme with your imagination. Pretend you’re playing through the musical phrase as if you are in an underwater film scene using a slow motion effect. Yes. That slow. Be intentionally and dramatically slower than the slowest tempo you can feel.

If it’s hard to keep the beat at that new tempo, set the metronome at the most ridiculously slowest tempo you can feel. Play the music along with the metronome. If necessary, count aloud before you play, clapping out or tapping the rhythm on your legs first. Then play through with this tempo using the metronome.

Once you’re able to sense the steady beat of this willfully chosen slow speed, go back through the passage following your effective piano practice routine. Stop if you make a mistake or lose mental concentration. Aim again to play at this slow tempo correctly three times in a row.

Discovering Your Musical Weaknesses
Typically, playing slowly in this manner will reveal problem areas you hadn’t discovered while playing at the faster tempo. Even better, playing slowly will allow you to more deeply and clearly master previously chosen practice goals. This kind of practice brings you much more quickly to the kind of cognitive engagement necessary for lasting piano progress.

Why? Because you’re finally going slow enough to allow yourself to fully think consciously and consistently toward your chosen practice goals. You may have thought you’d already surpassed this level of practice at your faster tempo. But the majority of the time, slower practice will take you further and, ironically, faster in piano progress.

What Should You Do If You Keep Messing Up At The Piano?
If you’re unable to keep your mind on things after awhile, it may be time for a break. This kind of prolonged, intensely concentrated effort cannot be sustained for long. Especially if you’ve just begun using this piano practice technique.

It’s perfectly normal and advisable to take a break when you’ve hit a plateau, lost your ability to pay attention to your set goals, or make mistakes repeatedly. Our brains need a moment to refresh.

You could choose to play through something without concentrating, just for the enjoyment of it. Choose something at a much easier sight-reading level, a previously mastered piece, or improvise for the sheer fun of it.

Play It Again, Sam
Once you’ve taken a short break, try again with renewed determination. You may find a burst of energy that helps you continue your intentional, slow tempo practice. You may notice already, a degree of improvement, fluency, muscle recall, or musicality emerging. This is a wonderful experience, bringing a joyful sense of accomplishment and newfound confidence as a piano player.

Enjoy that! It will keep happening again and again, each time you challenge yourself to give your all mentally to your piano practice sessions.

If you’re experiencing the opposite, unable to play without mistakes, or just can no longer focus at the practice goal with a slow tempo, you may need to leave the piano completely for a change of pace, scenery, a meal, drink, or even rest.

Celebrate and acknowledge your efforts no matter what! Each day, each hour, each moment that you’re forging your complete focus on piano practice in the way I’ve described in this series is an incredible accomplishment. You’re making progress step by step, sometimes without realizing it until you look back and see how far you’ve come in your musical skills!

I’d love to hear from you. It means a lot to me that my content is helpful. Please take a moment to join the conversation below to let me know if this blog is helpful to you, or if you have questions or suggestions!

If you’re a piano teacher, feel free to leave one of your favorite piano practice tips in the comment section!

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My Best Tips On How To Practice Piano Part 2

7/30/2019

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infographic of effective piano practice tips with photo of baby grand Baldwin by Jenny Leigh Hodgins

Summary of Effective Piano Practice Strategy

Get My New eBook, "What You Need to know, have & do to start piano right!"

Photo by Jenny Leigh Hodgins

by Jenny Leigh Hodgins

This is the second part of a series offering my best tips on how to practice piano effectively. If you missed Part 1, you can find it here:

My Best Tips On How To Practice Piano Part 1

How To Achieve Your Most Effective Piano Practice
I mentioned the importance of choosing relevant practice goals. Having goals for each piano practice session is crucial for both fast and lasting progress. Surprisingly, many piano students completely neglect this important step! Spending time at the piano without locking down on a goal is just spinning your wheels. It may be pleasurable for a short while, but in the end those who omit goal-setting will eventually stall musical progress.

Let’s begin with the understanding of how influential your goals will be toward your piano progress as we launch into an effective piano practice strategy. You can use this strategy for any piano practice session at any level of musicianship or piano skills!

Practice Piano Using Your Full Focus On Your One Goal
Start with one goal for the current piano practice session. It’s pivotal that you select only one goal to begin your piano practice. Limit yourself to think only about this one goal.

While deeply listening and looking at the musical notation or your hand (s) at the keyboard, place your full mental effort on the one thing you’ve selected as your goal. This is where multi-tasking goes out the window!

Looking Ahead To Be Better Prepared
Let’s say you’ve selected the goal of playing the correct fingering, for the right hand only, through four measures of notated music. Start by visually reading the selected fingering without touching the piano.

Take note of any opportunities for making a mistake. Analyze that situation. Question why it would be a challenge and look for a solution around it. Once you’ve found the solution, decide your course of action (back to setting your first goal).

Looking Before You Leap Prevents Falling
The point is to think about the one goal of playing the right hand’s fingering through the four measures of music. Do not yet play the piano. Think through it first.

Taking the chosen passage, let’s say that while you visually read through the fingering, you discovered one of your fingers would need to stretch to reach its key to accomplish correct fingering. Now that you’re aware of this potential problem, you’re better prepared to adjust your hand, wrist, arm or posture to assure you’ll be able to play the designated fingering.

Play While Focusing On One Goal
After this period of visual and mental preparation, begin toward your one goal of playing the musical passage mistake-free (with correct fingering in the right hand). As you play the passage, listen carefully and pay close attention to achieving the goal (correct fingering).

During this time, do not focus on anything else. Don’t add the left hand. Don’t think about dynamics, the rhythm, or tempo. Just concentrate fully on the one goal (playing correct fingering) for the selected musical passage.

Evaluate Your Performance
Think about whether you either successfully met your goal or not. If not, you must stop. If you didn’t succeed in reaching your goal, you must stop. Do not continue through the passage or beyond it.

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Stop. —If You Make A Mistake Or Lose Your Focus
There are only two reasons to stop practicing. The first is if you make a mistake in regard to your goal. In this case, you weren’t able to play correct right hand fingering through the four measures of music.

The second is if you lost mental concentration. If you have lost your ability to mentally focus on your goal, you must stop. Continuing without a goal in mind is wasted time at the piano.

This is one of the most important aspects of effective piano practice that so many piano players ignore, resulting in lack of progress, repeated mistakes, hitting musical plateaus and boredom.

But if you are proactively and cognitively engaged with your goal, your piano progress will rapidly improve! You must THINK! As simple as that sounds, it is the essence of successful piano progress!

It’s challenging to keep yourself intellectually disciplined. It’s also tiring. You are the best judge of your ability, so when you lose mental focus, the best course of action is to stop.

Reset Back To The Beginning
Once you’ve evaluated yourself to determine if you need to stop due to a mistake or a lack of attention, you must reset. Go back to the start and try again. Recenter your mind on the one goal and make a fresh attempt at it.

How You Can Avoid Wasting Time At The Piano
The point is to prioritize exactly one thing to practice and put your entire attention to that goal. Like walking a balance beam, if you lose your balance, you fall off. There’s no point in continuing. Just go back and start again from the beginning.

When you choose one defined practice goal and create the restriction of not allowing yourself to continue unless you are successful, you will make faster and better piano progress.

Repeat Your Effort To Focus On Your One Goal
& Do It 3 Times In A Row!
Once you are able to successfully reach your specific goal as you play the musical passage, go back to the beginning and try again to complete your goal. Stop each time you lose focus or make a mistake on your goal.

Start again. Repeat this process until you’re able to successfully play through your passage with your appointed goal three times in a row. If you play successfully through twice but make a mistake or lose focus the third time, you must start completely over from the beginning! Do not move forward until you are able to succeed three times consecutively.

When you’re able to play through your selected goal successfully and consecutively several times, your correct habit is solidified. This confirms you are ready to move on to the next goal!

The Benefits of Attending To One Goal At A Time
You will find that honing in on a specific task in this manner will get you much further in piano skills that mindlessly repeating your music multiple times. Using your entire effort to think about what you are trying to accomplish makes a huge impact on piano progress.

If you apply yourself to this kind of full-on thinking strategy while at the piano, your piano skills will improve more quickly. Your improvement will boost your confidence in your piano playing abilities.

This will motivate you to continue building your skills. The fluency you will gain from attending to each practice goal will give you an edge of greater musicianship. This leads to greater enjoyment and inspiration at the piano.

When It’s Ok To Play Piano For Enjoyment
Many piano players waste time by playing music without thinking about any particular goal. Or they lose their focus on the goal while playing. Or they become distracted by other musical aspects (like dynamics, rhythm, tempo, expression). This leads to wasted time at the piano and leads to little or no improvement of piano skills.

There will be plenty of opportunity to play piano for enjoyment, and you absolutely should do this. But your piano practice session is not the right time for that.

Reward yourself with playing piano mindlessly only after you've dedicated time to effective piano practice. First, give your all to reaching the goals you’ve chosen for your practice session!

After you work hard in your practice session, treat yourself to the fun of playing through previous assignments, or improvising on the keys. You’ll feel a difference in your mastery of the music after having worked consistently within your practice routine.

The key is to balance your practice between great concentrated effort, followed by the reward of relaxation and enjoyment of piano playing for fun.

I’d love to hear from you. It means a lot to me that my content is helpful and empowers you. Please take a moment to join the conversation below to let me know if this blog is helpful to you, or if you have questions or suggestions!

If you’re a piano teacher, feel free to leave one of your favorite piano practice tips in the comment section!

Read My Best Tips On How To Practice Piano Part 3 for more details on how to evaluate your piano practice...

Annnnnd...if you loved this blog don't forget to show your awesome support by Liking the link, Subscribing for more updates and adding your comment below!

What You Need To Know, Have & Do To Start Piano Right! Ebook

$11.98

A practical, down-to-earth, all-in-one resource and easy-to-read guide for anyone interested in getting started or returning to piano lessons.

BONUS GIFT:

As my gift to you, with every purchase of my ebook, you'll automatically receive a FREE download of my original photo with a self-care affirmation.

Yes! I want to start piano right!

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What Should You Do If You Keep Messing Up At The Piano?

What You Need To Know, Have & Do To Start Piano Right! Ebook

My Best Tips On How To Practice Piano Part 2

What You Need To Know, Have & Do To Start Piano Right! Ebook

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