How to Change Your Piano Playing and Your Life

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I'm Robert Estrin. Today I'm going to show you how you can change your piano playing and your life. You know that one definition of insanity is doing the same things and expecting different results. Many of you may have heard that before. And there's a lot of truth to that in your piano playing and yes, in your life. You know, it's the things that you do every day that make the difference, once again, in your piano playing and in your whole life. So what are some things in your piano playing specifically that can really make a difference for you? Well, to choose realistic repertoire.

There might be a piece you really want to play and you work at it for months, maybe years and you never are able to really get it the way you want it. Maybe it's not the ideal piece to focus most of your energies on. There's no harm in working on it some, but think of the satisfaction you can gain by mastering pieces that are within your grasp.

Amassing a repertoire of pieces you can play on a high level, progressing, adding to the variety and scope of the music you study, the techniques that you develop. It can be far more beneficial and yes, you'll get to that piece, that dream piece, sooner by working in that manner instead of putting all of your time into something that maybe is just not the right piece to really grow as a pianist. You'll get there sooner by taking step after step with progressively more difficult and challenging repertoire.

Another thing and it falls under the same kind of headline is when you sit down to practice, the temptation sometimes is to try to get through as much music as you possibly can, not realizing that by taking much smaller sections you can focus your attention on something that's digestible, thereby really hearing it and improving it instead of a large section that's hard to even concentrate for that long.

And bringing back to the idea of the things you do every day that make the difference in your life, practicing consistently.

It's the consistency of your practice that makes a huge difference. In fact, when people ask me how much they should practice every day, well, that's what I tell them. It's practicing every day. It's not how much you practice, it really is how often you practice. A lot of people find they have even more success getting to the piano several times during the day and taking breaks because you can assimilate the information when you're doing other things. Take a walk in the middle of your practice session, the music is still percolating and you're digesting things.

So if you think that you can cram a bunch of practice and not practice for several days, you're going to forget so much and you lose the motivation because when you lose what you learned earlier, it's kind of deflating, isn't it? So try to practice on a regular basis. It can make a huge difference in your progress. Another thing I see so many people fall into is they learn a piece and then they're so excited about a new piece that they never play the piece they just learned and as a result they never have anything they can play on a high level because the new pieces aren't quite there yet and the old pieces are getting kind of rusty.

So spend some of your time reviewing pieces you previously learned. Naturally, you have to strike a balance because if you spend so much time with so many review pieces you don't give yourself enough time to learn new repertoire but you owe it to yourself to always have a handful of pieces that you can just play effortlessly.

How does this happen? By playing them every day and practicing them from time to time, taking out the score, playing slowly, get the foot off the pedal, use the metronome, solidify your pieces that you've already learned and just playing them on a regular basis is going to make a huge difference. So remember, it's the things you do every day that make the difference in your piano playing and in your life. So consider that every time you sit down on the piano what you do, choosing the right repertoire, not taking huge sections all the time but working and focusing your attention. Practice your review pieces, keep your practicing interesting and most importantly keep it consistent and you will grow tremendously and it's the same thing with anything else in your life like if you exercise on a regular basis you'll feel better and you'll stay trim, if you have donuts every night before you go to bed you're probably going to put on more and more weight over time. It's the things you do every day in your practice and in your life that make the difference. That's the message for today. I hope this is helpful for you. Again, I'm Robert Estrin, this is LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource. So glad to have all of you here, we'll see you next time.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/how-to-change-your-piano-playing-and-your-life/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

Thank you for your comment, question or request!

Comment/Question deleted successfully.

Post a comment, question or special request:

Comments or questions must be between 3 and 10,000 characters long.

You may: Login  or  

Otherwise, fill out the form below to post your comment:

Add your name below:


Add your email below: (to receive replies, will not be displayed or shared)


For verification purposes, please enter the word MUSIC in the field below

---