5 Piano Practice Mistakes Nearly Everyone Makes

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I'm Robert Estrin with such an important show today.

Five piano practice mistakes nearly everyone makes and how you can fix them. All right, what are these mistakes? They're such classic mistakes. I've seen it countless times. And if you can just get your head around these and mitigate these mistakes, it can transform your playing.

Number one, you correct something and then you wonder, why am I still having trouble with it? You corrected it already.

Well, it's much more than correcting. You have to solidify your corrections. How do you do this? Well, first of all, be able to play something many times in a row, not just perfectly, but with relaxation and with ease. You know, if you're just kind of the edge of your seat and you're getting at a few times, that's not good enough. Be able to just sit comfortably, take a deep breath, make sure your shoulders are relaxed and play it until you can play it just with ease. Is that enough? Sadly, no, it takes more than that. Because then you have to put it into context by going back the phrase or two before that. And then you get that solid. Are you done yet? No, not by a long shot. Because you have to go back even further than that again. Because the strangest thing about making corrections in your playing is that you'll make the correction, but when you get to the correction, you forget where you are that you made the correction and the old way of playing will rear its ugly head. So you must systematically, first of all, solidify, then go back a little, go back more, then go back to the whole beginning of the section or the beginning of the piece.

All right, what else can you do? Well, a big mistake people make. It's just taking two large sections of music. You're working on a phrase and, you know, by the time you get done with the phrase, you know you had some things along the way that weren't quite right, but it was so long you can't even articulate what it was. Where are you supposed to go back to? It's too much to digest, too much to really master and gain the confidence. You could always put smaller sections together. But remember, when you're really trying to refine your playing, zero in on exactly what needs a refinement first. You can always enlarge to bigger sections.

Big mistake people make is simply going too fast. I've talked about the importance of slow practice. Choosing the right tempo when you're trying to refine your music is critical. And be sure you find that sweet spot, that total relaxed playing, even if it's ridiculously slow and you think, oh, you should be able to play faster than that. Oh man, what this is so slow. Can I do this? Well, you know what? Accept your limitations. If you go slowly enough where you gain the confidence, the relaxation you're playing, speeding it up becomes a seamless experience. But if you never give yourself that opportunity by always going just a little bit faster than your comfort tempo, you'll never gain that security in your playing.

Another big mistake is not having clear objectives. You know, you're practicing, but what are you trying to achieve specifically? Are you trying to bring out the melody more? Are you trying to clean up the left hand? Are you trying to remember a fingering? Are you trying to do all of this? Are you trying to develop your reading? Are you trying to memorize? Are you trying to review? You must know exactly what you want to achieve or you have zero chance of achieving it. So have a clear objectives. It doesn't mean your whole practice session has to be mapped out in advance, but at any one moment know exactly what you're going for. Then you can achieve it. You can find the right tools for solving your objectives.

Unless this one you might not have thought of, but one big mistake people make is not practicing performing.

That's right, because even you practice, you practice, you practice, you think you got it, well, at some point you have to make a mock performance and psych yourself into pretending it's a performance. I've talked about, you know, put your phone up and press record and don't stop making a performance. Imagine there are people there because it always feels different when you're performing.

So those are things you can do to solidify your playing. Remember, correcting something but not solidifying, that's a big problem. Make sure you always solidify your corrections.

Take small enough sections of your music so that you can really refine them.

Make sure you take a tempo that's not too fast and you can gain security and comfort.

Always have clear objectives of what you're trying to do and finally practice your performing. Take these five tips and let me know how they work for you. And if you like this type of thinking, consider a free consultation for my Living Piano Mastermind Club. Check out the description. Again, I'm Robert Estrin. This is LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource. We'll see you next time.

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