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Lately I've been really interested in the art of practicing. As a college pianist I kind of have to learn pieces quickly and pretty much perfectly so I want to be able to do that as efficiently as possible.

Please leave tips, thoughts, and advice for us to all share and learn from!

1. Learn the notes securely first. Then worry about speed (with the caveat that if it is a fast piece make sure your fingerings work faster)
2. If something seems to be harder than it should be, double check the fingering.

There's also been a study done that shows what top practicers do differently. Here's the link to a blog post about the study.

This is a huge subject. Some snippets:

1. Good practising has a plan.

Read though a new piece and get a good global musical idea of it. In your mind, define your goal: how should it sound when you've learnt it?

Now look at the technical side: where are the hardest passages? These are the passages you should learn first!

Is there a passage with a particular technical difficulty, a real challenge? You might want to derive a technical exercise from this passage, something that you can work on several times a day.

2. Good practising uses hands separately or together as necessary.

You start working on a new passage. The first thing you want to do is to take it apart, put in a fingering for the right hand and a fingering for the left hand. As soon as you have fingerings that work, try both hands together: do the fingerings still make sense, or should you change something to facilitate the coordination between the hands? If necessary, try a new fingering.

If you are constantly and consciously alternating between hands together and hands separately, it's a good sign.

3. Good practising uses both slow and fast speeds.

Slow practice is essential, but you need to play at speed as well, to make sure that your movements are suitable for the final speed. Practice a short passage slowly, then try it at the correct speed. Does it simply work to speed up the slow movements, or do you need to review your hand choreography? When it's clear how the hands should be moving at speed, go back to slow practice. Make sure you are really doing a slowed down version of how the passage should be played up to speed.

I would add that, besides the overall practice plan that MRC has wisely suggested, you also have a plan for each practice session, with very specific goals in mind before you begin.

Make notes on the score. Not just fingerings, but dynamic indications, articulations, phrasing, etc.

If time is limited, do not waste time playing what you already know. Work on the problems areas.

Using both slow and fast practice is key, as noted above. Another thing that fast practice accomplishes, besides exposing errors in fingering, improper hand position and other mechanical functions, it also tells the brain "this is how fast this is supposed to be played." You have to think and hear fast to be able to play fast.

Do everything all the time. That means if you're working on say, sound, don't neglect other things like phrasing/intention, etc. If you're working memory, don't NOT do everything else. If you're working on, I don't know.. evenness of a passage, don't turn it into a mechanical exercise. Do everything all the time.

Make sure your brain doesn't wander - focus. (also important to take breaks - for me, I take one 5-7 min break every hour) It's important to know WHY a mistake keeps happening in order to find a way to fix it. When you do that, it will not become a persistent problem.

So many people practice by repeating repeating repeating, and there's no intelligent approach or experimenting. A practice room should be like a lab, not like a gym.

This is all very general though. Practicing differs depending on which stage you're at with a work. Whether you just started it, or you're just getting to memorizing, or you have a performance/recording/whatever in two weeks. Your practice sessions shouldn't be the same for all of these, but they should have similar contents - the focus, listening, etc.

I also always try to remember that when you perform, your brain is instantly somehow more focused and tuned in - so why don't we do that when we practice too?

YES. I noticed a huge jump in learning speed when I started doing this. It takes more minutes to learn each page, but it takes fewer days to get to the point where you can play through competently.


Perfectly put!

>I want to be able to do that (practicing) as efficiently as possible.

Maybe this is old hat, but here is a video on exactly that concept.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th5ljgUP9lg

Best wishes-

That's good advice.

I think it also depends on the level of the student. For example, your idea of focusing on everything at once might not be appropriate for a less advanced student.
Maybe because the effort required is so great for most people. Although I don't practice much anymore, it was always very exhausting for me, and I wasn't even concentrating that hard.

Wasn't performing exhausting too?

Also, for the level - if the student had a good teacher, it shouldn't be overwhelming for him. A good teacher will not overload a student with too many things at once and will know what is appropriate.