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I have recently realised I need to think through how to improve my sessions. I was reading the Pianist Corner: Share your favorite/most useful practice tools! and have come up with a list of points where I think I need to look at to achieve this. I'd be grateful if you give can some thoughts to it or even extra points. Perhaps this can become something useful for others.


Practice tempo. Start slowly and gradually build tempo.

Practice with metronome.

Listen to yourself.

Listen to your recordings.

Practice in sessions and make small breaks.
To increase effectiveness and maintain the focus on what should be practised.

Plan your practice routine

Prioritize your tasks.

Set minor and major goals: per day, per week.

Discipline yourself and practice what you need to practice.
Playing for enjoyment is not practising

Practice a piece in parts.
Don't play a piece from the beginning each time. Usually a piece is played well at the beginning and its quality degrades towards the end.

Work on specific sound.

Have a sense of direction while practising.

I don't have a teacher or any music education, so I only can tell my experience.

>Playing for enjoyment is not practicing
I think playing for enjoyment IS practicing too. There are so many points we can improve (like you described above) that every minute playing piano - even for enjoyment - IS practicing.

>Practice a piece in parts.
Not me. Of course I can insist in a harder session, but I try to see the piece as a whole so playing all the piece is my strategy.

Ziko ...

All good points.

However, I would (and do) leave room for doing what you feel like doing so that you enjoy the journey.

You can put so much discipline into your routine that you begin to dread it.

That would not be good.

If you do not enjoy things, you will not keep doing it long enough to reap the benefits of your efforts.

Don't build tempo. The more you practise it correctly and consistently the faster you'll be able to play it. Practise playing it better, not quicker. Speed will come with facility and familiarity.

Playing what you can already play is not effective practice but it's a great way to end a session.

When we practise from the beginning we practise the start up to the 'hard bit' we play the beginning well and hard bits poorly because we've played the beginning more often. Practise the hard bits more often and the quality will be more uniform.

"But I can't play the hard bits!"

Ah!

Yes. Practicing is "learning, fixing, polishing"....Playing is what you do after you have learned, fixed, and polished. (Hopefully, that is...many people just play and play and play, mistakes and all, usually at high speed, and call it "practicing"...its one of the biggest obstacles piano teachers have in developing good study/practice habits with their students..)



Again, yes.

Sometimes I practice a piece "backwards", i.e. take the last line or two and learn it, then the previous two lines, etc. All the time stitching them together with connecting notes/phrases so there is a learned continuity.

Its a strategy used by concert pianists when learning huge pieces that might take months to learn, so when they finally get to play the piece they are constantly moving forward into that which is the longest learned, which, hopefully, is strongest, rather than moving towards that which is newest, and thus likely to be less familiar/weaker.

This should be combined with identifying the hardest sections, and practicing them separately from the onset as they often require the most work.

There is more to it than this, but in a nutshell, this is a strategy works well.

I think the point is that you should practice what's hard rather than what makes you feel good. Remember that learning occurs at the point of resistance so in order to really learn something you should be doing what is just a little bit too hard and keep practicing it until it's easy.

The best thing that happened to my practice is to focus on results, not on the amount of time I put in. That means a lot of self-directed goals where the "end" of practice is when I achieve my goal, not when the clock runs out.

It's gotten rid of that nagging feeling that I'm not practicing "enough" and turned practice into a fun activity that I look forward to.

The cool thing is, it creates a feedback loop where my lessons are better, because I'm practicing better, and then, practice becomes more effective, because the lessons have become more effective (because I'm practicing better).

The Philip Johnston books really helped with this change in my mindset.

This is something I have been working on. What is a good strategy to play at tempo? Do you play at a slow tempo until it is consistent, then work it at tempo? or do you increment to tempo? I hope you know what I mean.

Currently I am working at a slow tempo until I play consistently. Then I have been slowing increasing tempo. But I am not sure if that is really a good way to go about it.

If you do all of that would be great, but don't forget the most important is doing it while cultivating a joyful attitude. Only that can improve your practice at any point.

I watched this Ted Talk some weeks ago and it's quite interesting if someone want to know a bit more about how important is fun.
http://www.ted.com/talks/stuart_brown_says_play_is_more_than_fun_it_s_vital?language=en

I try to play better and better.

I think I've mentioned Jim Clark before, the motor racing legend. He said when he wanted to go faster he just concentrated more. I find this is the better plan for the piano as well.

I have this in my tips and techniques scrap book but I didn't have a source other than "a concert pianist"; I think the thread was related to Hanon:
"Do not practice for speed! Practice for comfort. If you practice for speed you will always make mistakes. Your fingers will play fast when they are comfortable and in control. One does not practice for speed, you practice for control. Control = Speed. with control, you can then play fast. Your fingers need to know the fingering, develop muscle memory, your ear needs to hear every single note (chords and passages) and you consciously must know every note. When you have all of this, you have control. When you have control you have speed."

My best strategy for playing at tempo is to adapt the dynamics and touch to the speed I can attain. If I play softer I can make slower feel like the right tempo. I imagine an orchestra playing Barber's Adagio for strings and use that sound in my head to play.

I don't use a metronome to speed up but to hold myself back from speeding up. I set up a speed I can play to just with tapping my foot. I don't play along with a metronome. Speed comes from slow careful practise. When I've got the piece in my fingers I can just turn it on for an audience.

Excellent post, Richard. Thank you.