Play Piano - How to Learn to Play Piano
How to Practice to Play Piano!
Whether you are practicing an exercise or a tune, it is important to always make it sound musical and to give it a sense of "flow."
Flow means that you can play it smoothly and without hesitation - the HANDS and BRAIN are calm and unhurried as you move from measure to measure in the song.
Perhaps the most useful skill in practicing music is the ability to sense when the music is not flowing, to isolate the problem area, and to FIX it!
Fixing the problem usually involves two strategies:
- slowing the tempo; and/or
- simplifying the problem (i.e. practicing a smaller piece of material and separating the hands.)
This all goes against our natural instinct, which is to try to play something as we imagine it should sound, even though there is NO flow!
Here is an important guideline which I call the Rule of Flow:
Never increase the practice tempo on a piece of material until you can play it perfectly!
Practicing something much faster than you can play it perfectly may be gratifying to your ego, but you are not really learning it.
The truth is that you cannot play something fast until you can play it slowly!
To learn more, I invite you to visit the following resources:
posted by Ron Worthy at
12:41 PM
