Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Would you like to add your description of what practicing is?

"Practicing is not doing something over and over until you get it right....Practicing is doing something right over and over ."

Quote from "Piano Excellence"

Practicing is problem solving to me.
It is that time which allows you to say "okay, I have a problem here, and here, and here and there ... let's work on solving them"

Practicing is isolating technical and musical issues and work with the body but mostly with the mind on realizing how to solve them. Practicing mindlessly is not just useless but it's dangerous.

Hi Betty,

I like the quote stressing the importance of accuracy over sheer repetition. Something that I certainly found out the hard way by rushing at things too fast.

Roughly speaking though, I'd define my own 'practice' as any time spent physically operating the keyboard, as opposed to thinking through theory. Of course, there's a difference between the various elements of practice - old material, new pieces, specific technique etc. But I'm always practising something, even if it's only finger movement and accuracy, or memory for a score (use it or lose it at my age! )

I'm currently working on a formula for the ideal amount of daily practice. It's not yet quite ready to present to the Nobel Prize jury, but it's provisionally looking like this:

IDP = CDPT + Convert(DDT + STWAPON +TWOG +YAPP) +1hour + X

Where:

• IDP = Ideal Daily Practice (how much time I need to spend working the keys in order to progress)
  
  CDPT = Current Daily Practice Time.
  Convert (All elements within the brackets need to be converted into CDP)
  DDT = Day Dreaming Time. (Time spent fantasizing about the skills I haven't got yet, the future pleasure, the applause, the satisfaction, all still ahead...)
  STWAPON = Serious Time Wasted At Posting Online Nonsense (can include posting my own nonsense, like this, or reading far too many pages about popcorn and pizza... :rolleyes: )
  TWOG = Time Wasted on Googling (drooling over new instruments that I don't need and can't afford)
  YAPP = Yacking About Playing Piano. (Less Tales - More Scales....)
  
  X = The difference between me and the masters.

When completed, it may just revolutionise Piano as we know it...

Cheers,

Chris

EDIT: New Improved Formula. Now with added TWOG

LOL Chris - I like...

Betty, I've typed out 4 or 5 answers to your simple question, and end up not liking what I typed....

So, with KISS in mind...

Practice is the fun stuff you get to do while learning/playing the piano. Some days the only things I play well are scales, patterns, trouble measures, etc. I allow myself to take pleasure in doing those drills well. It is a slow process to "bring it with you" when playing pieces, so some days when I am frustrated, I revert to something I do well so I always end on success. Of course, there are days when nothing works. That's when I "back-up" and play old pieces to "center" myself again.

Well, I don't like this one either, but I am tired of re-writing it.

In a nutshell, I suppose I do something like this, but in a far more erratic and eccentric manner than I've written:-

General development: thirds, octaves, legato etc...

and

Piece development: memorise, {{perform, evaluate, problem-solve}, hit wall, get lesson}.

and

Study (with a G+T) to support the above...

I don't have a definition or a philosopy about practicing yet, but here's what I do when I practice:

1. Play previous 3 or 4 pages in lesson book 2x each for warmup (lessons are mostly pretty short).

2. Work on new page or pages in lesson book slowly, working on accuracy and timing.

3. When needed, study new concept from theory book.

4. Work on accuracy and speed in technique book.

5. Work on new song from sheet music.

6. Play songs for enjoyment (right now from primer level Christmas book)

Some days I do all of this in one sitting, some days it is scattered throughout the day because I have places to go and things to do. I've only been at this for a month, so my routine will probably change as I get into more advanced material.

For me, practice is playing songs or improvising but with a specific new technique I'm trying to master, such as a walking bass line. This opposed to regular playing when I don't really focus on adding in the new techniques.

Practice is getting it right, and understanding what you're doing to make it right.

There are a few quotes / anecdotes that I find appropriate to this topic. Hopefully, I can remember them correctly.

"Amateurs practice until they get it right, professionals practice until they can't get it wrong."

I have the book here for this one.
"The escence of wasted practice time is crystalized in the much used admonition 'That was wrong - do it again.' If something is wrong, the worst possible course of action is to do it again." (From Improve Your Piano Playing.)

I also remember reading about an author who was practicing very slowly while someone made the comment about how fast everyone in the other practice rooms was practicing. He commented that all the other students were practicing for important things like exams and juries. He was only practing for Carnagie Hall.

Another way that I like to think about practicing is that we are craftspeople trying to complete a project. We have a huge workroom filled with many different tools. When we practice we have to choose the right tool for the particular job in front of us. The tools will change depending on the job and how far along we are on it. This is a lot of why you will hear contradictory suggestions about how to practice. It is not that one is wrong and the other is right, but rather that it depends on the piece and your immediate (or even long term) goal.

Rich

Practicing is focused and patient.

I love all the quotes - if we could remember them each time we sit down to practice, think what progress we would make.

WOW , you’re hitting a little too close to home for me!! Add the possibility of a little Adult ADD to the DDT and replace the YAPP with VC (Video Crack, aka youtube) and the equation is custom fit for me. I have a real problem with the TWOG which usually causes GAS.

For me practice is a constant struggle to remain focused on my plan. If I remain focused the practice pays out dividends, if not, I lose interest and end up just noodling around.

My piano practice has changed very dramatically for the better these past couple weeks.

The change for me is that I'm " really listening" to what I'm playing. I think the reason for this is that I've finally memorized a few pieces (4 that I got from here, and another I found in Piano Life magazine). Although I've been playing for many years now, memorizing music is very new to me. What a major difference it has made in my personal piano practice!

To me practice is a conscious, methodical attempt to improve. I divide my practice into categories with different objectives.

Scales and drills (SD). I do scales, arps, Hannon, Czerny, and some finger exercises to improve dexterity and build knowledge of keys and fingering.

Old Pieces (OP). I usually pick a few memorized pieces to work on every day to maintain and improve them. Some days I do what I call a cold concert where I just play all my memorized songs once (about 20).

New Pieces (NP). I'm always working on 1 to 3 new pieces and they each get practice every day.

Sight Reading (SR). This is either drills from Howard Richman's Super Sight Reading Secrets book or random playing from easy books. Lately I've also been sight reading from easy Czerny drills, and I'm planning to buy a book of Bach Chorals.

Jazz and Blues (JB). I have two blues books I'm working through (Mark Harrison and Tim Richards). Also I'm doing the Autumn Leaves jazz thread. Plus I do a little noodling that usually comes out jazzy or bluesy.

Ear Training (ET). I spend a few minutes most days using a computer program that generates pitches which I then try to identify.

I try spend about half an hour on all but ET which just gets about 10 minutes. Usually I go over rather than under on time. Throughout all of it accuracy is my main objective, but creativity, style development, non-stress technique, and fun are also important.

There have been a number of interesting quotes and ideas presented in this thread regarding practicing, and it is all interesting to read.

For me, practicing right now is simply working through the Duane Shinn 52 week course, a day at a time, a lesson at a time. I am keeping it really simple so I don't have to be concerned with whether I need to do this or that, instead trusting the teacher and lesson plan that I chose to work through. I naturally tend to make things too complicated and end up just letting it all go, so this time with the piano, I am just taking a day at a time. My practice consists of mastering the current lesson by playing through the various lesson assignments until I can play them all in one sitting. It seems to me that these lessons are each covering a nice balance so that I am focused on playing music while developing finger dexterity.

I believe that it will take me about two years to finish this one year course. After that, I can choose another of his courses and continue on to more advanced material. Maybe then I will have enough familiarity with the piano to begin to pick and choose what I work on.

Tony

Hi Betty:

Practicing: is mostly playing and having fun for me


Lee

Practicing is programming nerves and muscles. Garbage in garbage out.

When I posted this topic last night around midnight my time, I was hoping to see some response when I sat down this morning at 9:00 AM.

You have amazed me with the number of postings already, and the wonderful impact of your words. I feel your progress and commitment to practice through what you are saying here. Good and thoughtful posting here, ladies and gentlemen!
Actually very valuable and contributing posts!



Regards,

Betty

Practicing for me is my alone time from the rest of the world.

It seems to me that the word "practice" implies the existence of something else which is "the real thing". For a performer, "the real thing" might presumably be a concert or a recording. I question whether it is meaningful to "practise" improvisation. Surely one either does it or does not.

Many highly disciplined players appear to spend close to their entire time at the instrument diligently "practising" to the extent that they are very rarely, if ever, in contact with "real" musical experience. I would sooner not play at all than arrive at this stage.

So aside from a few minutes on the practice clavier each morning to preserve and expand my purely technical equipment, and the occasional process of memorising a piece, I hardly do anything which could be called "practice". Once I am at the instrument everything is "real".

1) Take piece and choose small segment ( but still a complete musical phrase, usually like 8 bars ).

2) Devise correct fingering/motions ( may need teacher for this, may not ).

3) Learn HS up to speed.

4) Put hands together.

5) Memorize.

6) Go over it a few times adding in musical interpretation.

6.5) Go through once very slowly, making sure all notes and motions are correct. This is the last run through done of this section today.

7) Write down what bars were learned in practice journal.

8) Repeat above process for next piece at a later time in the day.

*) Always check the next day to make sure the previous day's work is learned. If it is not, repeat the learning process until it's back to where it was the day before, then move on to the new segment.

**) If you have two consecutive segments learned earlier written down in your practice journal, devote a session to joining those two segments.

Divide the piece into big overall sections (ex. in a sonata, exposition, development, recapitulation ) and use above process over and over until each section is learned, then join one segment to another until you have the whole piece.

Interesting point Ted2.

The word "practice" - and others such as "Scales" - have build up something of an overtone of dutiful slogging. Necessary but rather dull and mechanical. But I don't think that it has to be that way. It's all making music to me. and I strive to make every note I play as musical and as enjoyable as possible.

I have a natural tendency to spice up whatever I do when learning any instrument. So it's never just mechanical, and I always add a bit of a swing to it, and an element of fun or exploration.

For instance, in the same way that crayons could be seen as just "potential pictures in a box", I see scales as "potential music in a line". So I never just plod up and down them for the sake of it. While my fingers are learning which keys are in the team today, and what position they're playing in, I'm always looking out (and listening) for possible 'plays' once the game starts. More often than not I'll end up making a mini game out of the practice anway. Fiddle around with the note order, tempo and rhythm whilst still returning to the business of learning what's where. .

Drilling sportsmen and women may be good for fitness and discipline, but the real business of team members is done during the games, not clumping up and down the training ground. So my fingers are constantly checking out the territory and anticipating what they can do once the fireworks start, and making every bit of practice a small game in itself.

I really don't make any distinction between practice and playing - there's always an element of both in whatever I'm doing.

Cheers,

Chris

Betty,

I don't use the word "practice". I'm simply "playing my piano". Period, regardless of what I'm accomplishing.

Dave

Sounds right to me--and to my teacher, thank heavens. I've only been at this a few months so the concept of "doing something right over and over" is largely thoretical. :rolleyes:

Here are my thoughts on practice...

Practice is where you make mistakes.
Mistakes are our friend and the vehicle that enables us to learn.
If you don't learn from your mistakes, there is little to be gained from practicing.
Practice is like putting money in the bank -- the more you give, the more you'll eventually get.
Practice can be either effective, ineffective or somewhere in between, be smart about the way you do it.
I wish there was a magic bullet, but alas, I don't think there is one.
I guess I'll just have to practice instead.

Excellent thread, Betty. This subject is a common ground that binds us all.

thePianist2008,

Good luck at Potsdam! Enjoy the experience!



Betty

I'm still trying to get it right once.

Practicing for me starts an finishes (every time) by hitting the the first "A" above middle C.

I do this because this is the very first note that I ever hit on my piano and I like to relive the incredible first sound that I made on it. Goofy?, sure. It's just something I do.

I'm a huge believer in quality as opposed to quantity. I can play many tunes but can only *perform* a select few. Instead of learning more new pieces, I tend to play the same repertoire of about 6-7 tunes and try to add more expression and feeling into them every time.

I also try VERY hard to play them every time as if I were performing them. This way, when or if I were to ever perform them in front of others, this would be the only way I knew how. Also, since I have become so very familiar with these pieces, I end up memorizing them which comes in really handy when you lose your place!.

I like to divide my time up between sightreading, improvising existing scores and spending time on ear training by just playing anything and figuring it out. I also like to play along with the stereo like a jazz pianist doing add lib sections.

My wife is so familiar with my music selection that she hums along and occassionally smacks my hands when she hears a mistake. If she's upstairs and does'nt want to come downstairs to hit me, she just blurts out some snooty comment from over the railing!

I used to keep a water pistol handy just for such occasions (powerful enough to reach the second story!), but now our hard wood floors are down and I can't risk the water damage.

Maybe I'll shop for one of those rubber suction cup dart guns. Hmmm!

Practice: A process to manage expectation.

(drat - I pressed the enter key)

Continuing:

Practice: Working out wishes.
Practice: Ironing wrinkles.
Practice: ...makes perfect

l's dad

I want to elaborate on my reply.
I'm afraid it might seems like I'm suggesting that no repetition is involved in practice. But actually repetition is important to ingrain patterns but repetition isn't the most important aspect of practicing but above all it can't be the beginning of practicing.

Okay let's say you have a new sonata to practice.
What you do? You go at the keyboard, makes a lot of mistakes in the process of sight-reading it and then keep repeating it from beginning to end believing that this will magical improve the sonata?

My approach is to get accostumed with the sonata by tapping the rhythm, checking the key, reading the note and paying attention to the pattern.

The I just sight-read it once at a moderate speed not in order to practiced it but in order to understand what chucks give me the biggest problems. Once I have detected those chucks/bars/phrases I mark them with a pencil and just practice them till they're as good as the rest (and it alone may take days)

When I'm done I play again the whole piece to notice (now that those chucks are okay and easy as the rest) and notice what new chucks are most problematic. Again I mark those chuncks and practice just them.

I go on like this till there are no more chuck harder than others. The ideas is that the piece must be levelled. If 80% of the piece is rather easy (for you) but 20% presents certain technical issue, those 20% will always sabotage your ability to play the piece problems and there'll be lot of uneveness between the easier parts and the harder part. So the goal is to make the 20% as solid and sure as the 80% BEFORE attempting to ingrain repetitions.

When the piece is levelled and each bar is solid and easy I start to focus on interpretation, dynamic and emotional rendition. When those aspects will be a bit solid I will add speed to the mix.

Eventually when the piece is 100% solid with no mistakes, good dynamic and interpretation and at full speed I start the repetition phase of practicing in order to ingrain the correct playing of the piece.

So to summarize there are two phase for practicing

1) Problems solving
2) Repetition

The first phase takes longer than the second and in my opinion attempting or fooling with the latter without having mastered the first is just a waste of time and unpracticing.

I like that. Also "Practice makes permanent". In other words if you practice struggle you'll play like that too.

Current strategy:

1. Make offerings of wine and oil to Apollo - God of Music. Make prostrations in the general direction of Delphi.

2. Warm up: 3 scales, executed with phrases of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and then 7 notes; Hanon 11 - 30; 3 Bach inventions; 1 prelude and fugue from WTC

3. Sight reading: currently Handel suites and Johann Christoph Bach sonatas.

4. Record current repertoire and listen/analyze

5. Work on 'sore' points.

6. Play each piece in full paying attention to phrasing and larger structures - I tend to lose the forest for the trees when working on a piece, getting caught up in individual notes and smaller structures while losing sight of the melody. My teacher recommends singing the melody - something which sounds good in theory but something, like counting aloud, I rarely do but always benefit from when I do.

7. Memorize as much as tolerable.

8 If time, return to pieces learned earlier, or play for enjoyment.

9. COmpletely close up piano so cats do not crawl around inside the strings - as they so desperately want to do. That's where the dancing little hammers live - hammers that beg to be caught with your talons and chewed until dead.

Ever shut a cat up in the piano???

Your current strategy is similiar to mine except of the libation to Apollo - perhaps I should try that or light a candle to St Cecelia instead.

(Make that St Jude)

I'd like to add to Danny Niklas's system:

1) Problem solving
2) Achieving Accuracy of things notational
3) Intentions and Nuances toward Interpretation
4) Repetition for Mastery, Memorization and Security
5) Review of the piece over time to make it a "keeper".

Betty

-Frycek
No, and it's not going to happen - I out-smart them every time.

I printed a lot of these and had the sheet in my binder when I went for my lesson today. We discussed some of them.

I played a Chopin piece that I have been working on since mid November but hadn't played for a while for my teacher. Well..... I am a good example of practicing it wrong..over and over.. Back to the drawing board with parts of this piece but I'm welcoming the critique and the chance to break it down and 'do it right'!! Thank heavens for teachers.....

Thanks Betty for starting this thread. My sheet of 'what practice' is is in front of me when I start a session.

Gee, at this point (seven months in since starting lessons for the first time) everything I do is practice. :0

Hi Betty, practice for me is a chance to relax doing something I enjoy. I am gradually getting better at switching off the internal chatter and developing a better focus on what is before me. I don't really qualify it as practice, more as 'just for me' time.

I have found this site useful as to how I spend that time, one of those excellent links another has posted on the forum.
http://brenthugh.com/piano/piano-practice.html#techniques

Sundew,

Thanks for the nifty site you are sharing with us!

Betty

Practicing to me is discovering.
It might be a new piece, or a piece I have put away and taken up again, or parts of the piece I work on.

I like the way you always can discover new things; how to make a nice hand movement to make a passage sound good, how you can emphasize an inner voice (or choose not to), how to pay attention to the different voices in a fugue, how to memorize a part(I really struggle with that one...).

The part of practicing I don't like is the "repeat to preserve", then I always end up thinking about shopping lists. I need to focus on some details to keep my concentration when practicing a piece over and over.

R

Bravo! Ice maiden ... beautifully said.

For me my practice time takes me away from all my stress of the days work. It takes me 10 minutes to get there and then I have the focus to learn. Effort=Results

It was a link I came across from a PWforum posting made a few years ago. I gather Mr Hugh's forum was still active at that time.

Next time go back and edit the original post

My teacher says if I practice more, and prove that I can do it....


he'll let me have strings on my piano... ;-)