I Didnt Practice Piano at all this week because... Best excuses ever for not practicing the piano!

Once one of my students, Clara, came to a lesson with the black, ebony fingerboard hanging, the strings dangling, and flaccid. Looking very sad Clara proffered her hand to show me four cello pegs. The strings must be wound through the pegs to hold the strings at the right pitch.

The 5 Biggest Piano Practice Excuses… and How to Make Them Go Away | Teach Piano Today

On a blistering summer day she had left her cello in the car for several hours. When she went to retrieve her cello the fingerboard had come unglued, the bridge, which supports the strings, had toppled over, and the pegs had fallen out.

Then I wrestled my cello into the backseat. My mom was in a hurry so I quickly hopped in. I remembered the music when we were almost home! My mother was so annoyed. She turned around right away and we raced back to your street. Do you remember that it was such a windy day last week? Well the music was scattered all over the place. The page was covered with muddy tire tracks. Lessons were never cancelled. My music teacher used these lessons as an opportunity to practice with me, to isolate the difficult spots, to play slowly, to play hands separately as in the case for piano lessons. We would carefully analyze issues— Was the fingering tripping me up?

Did it need to be changed? Is it just me, or do piano teachers receive a whole host of incredible reasons for missed piano practice? So now, no matter what my students throw at me, I can look at the big picture and fix it. And while it may seem true for those kids who are enrolled in extracurricular activities every day of the week, there is always time for piano practice.

This often means getting out of bed 30 minutes earlier or not watching cartoons in the morning. It may take some getting used to in this regard, but having piano practice completed before the craziness of after school play dates, sports, dance class, dinner, homework etc. The piano is quite possibly the largest piece of furniture in their house and yet they forgot it was there! Can you gloss over mistakes without being bothered by them? Another way to practice performing is to introduce youngsters, who have never had piano lessons, to the piano.

Teach them how to play the C major scale, or Chopsticks or Happy Birthday. Playing snippets has one interesting advantage which is that most audiences are very impressed by your ability to stop and start anywhere in the middle of a piece. Most people assume that all amateur pianists learn pieces by finger memory from beginning to end, and that the ability to play snippets requires special talent. Start with short snippets, then gradually try longer ones. Once you have done this type of casual snippet performance on 4 or 5 different occasions, you will have a good idea of your performance capabilities.

There are a few rules for preparing for snippet performances. Let it stew for at least 6 months; preferably one year practicing snipets during that time.

2. “I Forgot.”

Practicing them very slowly will help. Can you still play them HS? You can break a lot of these rules for very short snippets. Above all, make sure that you can mentally play them away from the piano — that is the ultimate test of your readiness. Sections that you thought were simple may turn out to be difficult to perform, and vice versa. Thus the first order of business is to lower your expectations and start planning on how you are going to play this piece, especially when unexpected things happen.

It is certainly not going to be like the best run you made during practice. Without this mental preparation, you can end up very disappointed after every attempt at performing and develop psychological problems. A few mistakes or missed notes goes unnoticed in practice, and your assessment of how they sound during practice is probably much more optimistic than your own assessment if you had played exactly the same way for an audience. After a practice, you tend to remember only the good parts, but after a performance, you tend to remember only the mistakes.

Usually, you are your worst critic; every slip sounds far worse to you than to the audience. Most audiences will miss half of the mistakes and forget most of what they do catch after a short period of time. Casual performances are more relaxed, and they provide an avenue for easing gradually into formal performing, in preparation for recitals. Classical music is not always the best venue for casual performances.

Thus every pianist should learn popular music, jazz, cocktail music, music from fake books, and improvisation. They provide some of the best ways to practice for formal recitals. Jazz, Fake Books, and Improvisation.

• About pianomistress.
• Farewell the Dragon.
• 15 Kids’ Best Excuses for NOT Practicing Their Piano | pianomistress.
• The American Constitution.
• For Love of Music!.
• 15 Kids’ Best Excuses for NOT Practicing Their Piano.

Most students intuitively practice hard and at full speed during the week preceding the recital, and especially on the day of the recital. In order to simulate the recital, they imagine an audience listening nearby and play their hearts out, playing the entire piece from beginning to end, many times. This practice method is the single biggest cause of mistakes and poor performance.

• The Dog Ate My Music — Excuses For Not Practicing : www.newyorkethnicfood.com.
• The 5 Biggest Piano Practice Excuses… and How to Make Them Go Away;
• Dissolution.

Teachers who hold those recitals in which the students perform wonderfully keep a tight leash on their students and control their practice routines closely. Why all this fuss? Because during a recital, the most stressed element is the brain, not the playing mechanism. And this stress cannot be replicated in any kind of simulated performance. Thus the brain must be rested and fully charged for a one-time performance; it cannot be drained by playing your heart out.

All mistakes originate in the brain. All the necessary information must be stored in an orderly manner in the brain, with no confusion. This is why improperly prepared students always play worse in a recital than during practice. When you practice at full speed, a large amount of confusion is introduced into the memory. The environment of the recital is different from that of the practice piano, and can be very distracting. Therefore, you must have a simple, mistake-free memory of the piece that can be retrieved in spite of all the added distractions.

This is why it is difficult to perform the same piece twice on the same day, or even on successive days. The second performance is invariably worse than the first, although intuitively, you would expect the second performance to be better because you had one extra experience performing it. As elsewhere in this section, these types of remarks apply only to students. Professional musicians should be able to perform anything any number of times at any time; this skill comes from continuous exposure to performing, and honing the proper rules of preparation.

Through trial and error, experienced teachers have found practice routines that work. The most important rule is to limit the amount of practice on recital day, so as to keep the mind fresh. The brain is totally unreceptive on recital day. It can only become confused. By the way, this also applies to tests and exams at school. Most of the time, you will score better in an exam by going to a movie the night before the exam than by cramming. A typical recommended piano practice routine for the recital day is to play nearly full speed once, then medium speed once and finally once slowly.

Never play faster than recital speed. Notice how counter intuitive this is. Since parents and friends will always use intuitive methods, it is important for the teacher to make sure that any person associated with the student also knows these rules, especially for the younger students.

Otherwise, in spite of anything the teacher says, the students will come to the recital having practiced all day at full speed, because their parents made them do it. Of course, this is only the starting point.

1. “I Didn’t Have Any Time.”

It can be altered to fit the circumstances. This routine is for the typical student and is not for professional performers who will have much more detailed routines that depend not only on the type of music being played, but also on the particular composer or particular piece to be played.

Clearly, for this routine to work, the piece will have had to be ready for performance way ahead of time. However, even if the piece has not been perfected and can be improved with more practice, this is still the best routine for the recital day. If you make a mistake that is stubborn and which will almost certainly recur during the recital, fish out the few bars containing the mistake and practice those at the appropriate speeds always ending with slow play , staying away from fast playing as much as possible.

If you are not sure that the piece is completely memorized, play it very slowly several times. Again, the importance of secure MP must be emphasized — it is the ultimate test of memory and readiness to perform. Practice MP at any speed and as often as you want; it can also calm any nervous jitters. Also, avoid extreme exertion, such as playing a football game or lifting or pushing something heavy such as a concert grand!

This can suddenly change the response of your muscles to a signal from the brain and you can end up making totally unexpected mistakes when you play. Of course, mild warm-up exercises, stretching, calisthenics, Tai Chi, Yoga, etc. For the week preceding the recital, always play at medium speed, then slow speed, before quitting practice. You can substitute medium speed for slow speed if you are short of time, or the piece is particularly easy, or if you are a more experienced performer. Actually, this rule applies to any practice session, but is particularly critical before a recital. The slow play erases any bad habits that you might have picked up, and re-establishes relaxed playing.

There is no fixed number such as half speed, etc. More generally, medium speed is the speed at which you can play comfortably, relaxed, and with plenty of time to spare. Slow is the speed at which you need to pay attention to each note separately. Up to the last day before the recital, you can work on improving the piece, especially musically. But within the last week, adding new material or making changes in the piece such as fingering is not recommended, although you might try it as a training experiment to see how far you can push yourself.

Being able to add something new during the last week is a sign that you are a strong performer; in fact, purposely changing something at the last minute is good performance training. For working on long pieces such as Beethoven Sonatas , avoid playing the entire composition many times. It is best to chop it into short segments of a few pages at most and practice the segments.

Send us a message

Practicing HS is also an excellent idea because no matter who you are, you can always improve technically. Although playing too fast is not recommended in the last week, you can practice at any speed HS. Avoid learning new pieces during this last week. That does not mean that you are limited to the recital pieces; you can still practice any piece that was previously learned. New pieces will often cause you to learn new skills that affect or alter how you play the recital piece.

In general, you will not be aware that this happened until you play the recital piece and wonder how some new mistakes crept in.

The hands will warm up after one or two pieces, so you may have to rotate the recital pieces with each practice session, if you are playing many pieces. If the fingers are totally sluggish from inaction, you cannot, and should not try to, play difficult material at full speed; it will lead to stress and even injury.

Some pieces can only be played after the hands are completely limbered up, especially if you want to play it musically.