3 Ways Practice Has Changed My Life

If you'd asked me 2 years ago if I'd write a post like this, I would have laughed it off. 

I have been a professional keyboard player for 20 years. During my undergrad in music composition, I remember practicing long hard hours until late in the night completing assignments and working on my music.  

It wasn't uncommon for me to work from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. practicing, only to get up at 7 a.m. I would go to class at 8 a.m. and then repeat that cycle. ( Oh, to be young again! )

After my undergrad, I began to be very complacent about my skills. I only practiced when it was necessary for upcoming performances. 

Then everything changed. 

I started getting work with players that were much better than I was. I was recording often, and I wasn't liking what I was hearing. Worse yet, I started to notice my students were refusing to practice. 

I needed to do better and set a better example. 

A fellow teacher posted an article about the 100 days of practice.  This Instagram tag, propagated by Hilary Hahn, encourages musicians to post videos of their practice process. 

I got inspired, and I got to work.

Here's what I got out of it that was really unexpected: 

#1 - Conscientiousness

Conscientiousness is typically defined as the quality of wanting to complete one's work thoroughly. 

 This is definitely not one of my natural personality traits. 

I had the honor of studying with an incredible classical piano teacher.  I remember that he suggested to me that I should complete small tasks unrelated to music to improve my playing. 

Clean your room, and don't stop till everything is in order (that includes no random clutter in your closet.) Dust every shelf in the house.  Put your book collection in alphabetical order. 

This sounded like some kind of waterboarding technique to me. How was that going to help anything? 

Of course, like any good student, I didn't take my teacher's advice. But the 100 days of practice changed my mind. 

I was surprised to find that instead of feelings of torture or pain, it left me with a sense of purpose. A feeling of completion and accomplishment at the end of the day. A high, if you will.

#2 - Habit/Scheduling 

I decided early on in the process of the 100 days of practice that I needed a set daily time for practicing. 

I'm not one for morning routines. Or much routine at all, frankly. 

I have actually found that redundant daily patterns really drove me nuts, so I've avoided them. 

Maybe it's because I'm a creative.  I'm totally into a Nightingale Conant kind of workday. 

However, I was surprised to find that a set practice time was an unexpected joy. 

The day felt more intentional, less random, and chaotic. It also felt more productive and full of purpose. 

This made me rethink scheduling and habits. I've been experimenting with blocking my days, which has been immensely rewarding. I was really inspired by a TED talk about POD to try and combine a scheduled routine with a sense of creative openness. 

Maybe routine and creativity can coexist. 

Maybe I am a creature of habit.....creative habits. 

#3 - Grit

Yet another characteristic I don't really associate with.....

The Angela Duckworth book on the Subject of Grit and outstanding performance was a great read. I'm fascinated by top-flight performance and was intrigued by the ideas the book laid out. 

I really didn't take an opportunity to apply that knowledge until I started my practice journey. 

Showing up, day after day, and working on things you aren't good at doesn't sound like a lot of fun. Certainly, it improves your skill, but it can wear away at your mindset if you allow it to. 

Something interesting happens when you practice that I did not expect. You get used to doing things that you can't do. You get used to tackling a new problem every day and facing things that you're afraid of. It starts to become a game, like a daily Rubik's cube. It becomes fun. 

Daily practice wasn't easy or fun all the time, but it's become part of my life and a joy for me. 

I wish the same for you!  

The Most Important Part Of Your Piano Practice Routine

When we think of musicians, I think a lot of us think of the starving artist. The miserable musician that is suffering for his art. No one understands his genius. He is constantly tormented by those who are better than him, so he puts in absurd hours of practice. It’s the only way to be great.

Then we idolize these people. We put them on a pedestal. And in order to be as great as them, we believe we have to suffer like them.

So we tell ourselves we have to push ourselves harder. We need to reach for perfection to be great. Anything short of perfection is a failure. And failure is not an option.

And so our musical lives begin by committing to all the big principles. Discipline. Perseverance. Consistent practice. Determination. Time. Effort. Blood. Sweat. Tears.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of all those things. Well, maybe not the blood. I mean, if you are bleeding it is definitely time to take a 10-minute break.

But as important as all these things are, there is one thing that is way more important when it comes to practicing the piano…

You have got to be kind to yourself.

I have seen it time and time again in many of my students. The perfectionist syndrome. We all want to be great at something. And we think the way to become great is to push ourselves harder and harder. We all watch Gary Vaynerchuck videos on YouTube telling us that we are slacking off and so we think the only way to improve is to work harder.

Although hard work does pay off, there is a line that you can cross and once you do, you actually begin to impede your progress.

I am totally a perfectionist. I do it too. I tend to think that in order to be respected, I have to be flawless. I have to be the best. No excuses. But that drive turns into self-loathing really fast. And as soon as I start hating myself for not being good enough, I suddenly lose my motivation to practice. I get down on myself. I lose hope and I see no point in trying anymore. In simple terms, I give up.

If you give up, you will never achieve greatness.

That seems like an obvious point, but the reason I make it is because I want you to see that perfectionism leads to giving up. You may start out with great intentions, but the more you beat yourself up, the more you are setting yourself up to fail. And if you don’t stop yourself from going down that road, it is just a matter of time until you give up. I promise you will.

I don’t want you to give up. I want you to succeed. I want you to achieve your goals with the piano. And the only way you are going to do that is by being kind to yourself. You have to let go of those impossible expectations you keep putting on yourself. You will never achieve perfection. It’s never going to happen. Matter of fact, you can’t get better at something without failing a lot and the piano is no different.

You need to make mistakes.

The mistakes we make while playing the piano are exactly the things that make us better. You need to make mistakes to learn. You need to make a lot of them. Every time you mess up, you shouldn’t yell at yourself expecting perfection. You should smile and be glad you have the opportunity to get better.

Think about it. If you never made a mistake, how would you know how to improve? You wouldn’t. You couldn’t. The mistakes show us new techniques. The mistakes help us fix the small things we are doing wrong. The mistakes make us better. There is no way around it.

So if you know you need to make mistakes to improve, can you learn to be kind to yourself when you make them? I admit it is not always easy. Especially in this culture we live in where we are taught to always work harder and longer. Better. Stronger. Faster.

How to achieve greatness.

We place too much importance on hard work and not enough on giving ourselves a break. In order to be great, we need to have a combination of work ethic and kindness. Kindness is something we need to start practicing, just like our scales. It needs to be a regular part of our practice routine.

As a matter of fact, I think it is the most important element of our practice routine. Without kindness, the whole house of cards will crumble fast. Think of kindness as the foundation for all that you do with music. If you can start from a place of grace, then you can allow yourself to make all the mistakes that you need to make to become the player you want to be.

With a little bit of kindness, it’s just a matter of time until you achieve the greatness you have always dreamed of. And this time you won’t give up before you get there.

Why you are practicing the piano too long

We’ve all heard it a million times. To be good at something, you have to practice.

It’s true. There is no way around that.

Matter of fact, the truth is, to be good at something, you have to practice A LOT!

For most people, the piano is an extra-curricular activity. We all have jobs, school, friends, sports, Netflix shows to catch up on, and we’d like to get some sleep in there too if possible.

How are we supposed to fit in piano practice? Even more, how are we supposed to fit in A LOT of piano practice?

Here is the answer.

Stop practicing so long.

So many of us think that in order to get good at the piano, we have to sit there and practice for hours on end. In a perfect world, yes that would be great. But here is what happens in the real world.

You tell yourself that in order to get good at the piano you have to practice at least an hour a day. You start off strong, but then life gets busy. Next thing you know, you have one full day after another and you can’t find an hour anywhere to practice. So instead of practicing a little bit, you blow it all off saying something like “If I can’t get my full hour of practice in then what’s the point?”

After a few weeks of that, you stop trying. Eventually, you don’t even touch the piano anymore. You quit taking lessons because you are frustrated and not making the kind of progress you wanted to.

Sound familiar?

Here is the truth that most people won’t tell you.

You don’t have to practice for an hour for it to count.

You don’t even have to practice for 30 minutes for it to count. Little chunks of practice go a long way.

What if you could practice 10 minutes here and 10 minutes there? Do you think you could find that time? Of course you could.

And you know what else? You would probably enjoy yourself more because you feel way less pressure to sit there for an hour torturing yourself.

And guess what? 10 minutes here and 10 minutes there still adds up to the same amount of practice. Matter of fact, I guarantee you will actually get MORE practice in this way because you are not blowing the whole thing off because you can’t get a full hour of practice in.

So here is your permission to let yourself off the hook. Stop telling yourself you have to practice an hour every day. Stop telling yourself if you don’t, then it’s not even worth practicing at all. It’s not true.

You don’t have to practice as long as you think you do.

You don’t have to be a piano practice superhero. Try getting in 10 minutes before and after work or school. Those 10 minute practices will add up fast and by the time you are sitting at your next lesson, you will see some serious improvement.

And remember, the whole reason you got into this piano thing was to have fun. Let those 10 minute practices be a break from your busy day. A little mini-musical meditation.

I’ll take 10 minutes of peace over 60 minutes of torture any day.

How to trick your brain into thinking you have practiced something longer than you have

Learning to play piano is not just about showing up to your piano lesson and playing some scales. Most of the learning actually happens at home when you practice. And really, the majority of your learning happens in your brain when you are sleeping.

Let me explain.

Have you ever had the experience where you are trying to learn something really hard on the piano. You figure if you just practice long enough, you will be able to do it, right? After an hour or so, you start to hit the wall. You start actually making more mistakes than when you started?

How can you actually be worse at something after practicing it for an hour?

When you practice, you can only practice for so long straight until your brain starts to shut off. We’ve all experienced it. We start getting sloppy, making more mistakes.

It’s because your brain has not had time to process everything you just practiced. Our brains are busy keeping us a live during the day. Telling our lungs to breathe, our heart to pump blood, taking in information, telling our hands and feet to move.

When our brains shut down for the night, that is when they finally have a chance to process all the other information, like all the practicing you did.

Most of our real learning happens in our sleep. Your brain needs some peace and quiet to connect all the dots. To create new nuero-transmitter connections and to solidify into your body and soul all that you practiced.

That is why when you come back to something the next day, you feel refreshed and you can play what you practiced just a little better than the day before.

Yes it does take a lot of repetition to get good at something. But it also takes a lot of downtime. There is no way to rush that process. Well, there is one way.

What is “Spaced Repetition?”

The answer is Spaced Repetition. All this means is having multiple shorter practices spread out over time instead of one long practice. It means doing 10-15 minute practices followed by breaks. These breaks can be minutes, hours or days, but the breaks are crucial. The breaks allow your brain to process all the information and in doing so, they actually speed up your progress.

You could compare this to a HIIT workout. These are all the rage in the fitness world right now because they work great and take a fraction of the time of a “normal” workout.

In a HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training) workout, you do short bursts of high-intensity training followed by short bursts of recovery time. Each burst lasts 30 seconds to a minute. You do this cycle 4 or 5 times and your workout is done in 15-20 minutes.

And here is the best part - these workouts work! They have been proven to do just as much for your fitness if not more than a lower intensity, longer workout.

Practicing piano works the exact same way.

When you do hard cardio for shorter intervals, you are tricking your body into thinking you have worked out longer than you have. When you practice piano in short bursts more often, you are tricking your brain into thinking you have practiced more than you have.

Here is what to do…

Instead of practicing for hours and hours on end, try practicing something for 15 minutes. Then walk away for 15 minutes. Come back and practice it again for 15 minutes. Break. Repeat.

This process over a few days will trick your brain into thinking that more time has gone by than actually has. It will make the connections quicker. And suddenly you will be able to play that thing like you have been playing it for weeks or months. You basically sped up the process by getting your brain to process more in smaller chunks.

Say you are getting ready to play a recital and you only have a few days to get a very hard passage down. Is that even possible?

If you beat your head against the wall with super long practices, you will just get frustrated and you won’t be able to play it that well. But if you practice smart, and give your brain the rest it needs, you can absolutely learn something hard in only a few days.

It totally works.

Give yourself a break.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of hours of practice sometimes. But you just need to know when to walk away and give yourself a break. This is especially true if you are just practicing one little part of a piece or a riff over and over. If you practice for hours, that is fine, just make sure you mix up what you are practicing. Take breaks. And get some sleep.

I am giving you permission to practice less. I am giving you permission to take more breaks. Now it’s up to you to try it and see if it works. I think you are going to like the results.

And your brain will thank you for it.

Why You Should Practice Piano While Watching TV

A few weeks back, we talked about why you should practice piano with your eyes closed. If you haven’t checked it out yet, be sure to give it a read HERE. Now let’s talk about another technique I’m a big fan of.

Practicing the piano while watching TV.

I don’t know how many piano teachers will tell you to practice in front of the TV, but I’m going to go out on a limb and tell you to do it. Maybe not every time, but there are some times it is appropriate. Let me explain.

Repetition is your friend.

A big part of learning any new skill is repetition. With piano, we need to do some things over and over and over again. The reason for this is that we are training our muscle memory to kick in. If we do something enough, it becomes automatic. When it becomes automatic, we don’t have to think as much about what we are doing. Once we are free to think of other things, we can focus more on the other parts we are playing.

Does your family hate you yet?

We see this show up a lot with left-hand techniques. There is a chord progression I teach my students called The Dance Progression. The biggest hurdle to overcome when playing this progression is the syncopation between the left hand and the right hand.

The left hand is just playing a repetitive bass line of constant eighth notes. The key to getting this whole progression down is to practice the left-hand part a lot. I mean a lot a lot. Like obsessively. If your family or your roommate doesn’t hate you yet for playing it so much, you aren’t practicing it enough.

Once you get the left hand down and muscle memory kicks in, then you are free to focus more on the right-hand part and start getting the syncopation down. But that won’t happen until the left hand is on auto-pilot.

TV to the rescue…

A great way to get this left-hand part down is to practice it while watching TV. This does two things.

1. It is a monotonous thing to practice, so the TV distracts you and keeps you entertained as you play this left-hand part over and over again

2. Playing this left-hand part while watching TV trains you to play it consistently while focusing on other things. It helps kickstart your muscle memory. When it’s time to add in the right hand, you will be much more prepared because your mind is already used to keeping the left hand going while you do other things.

I highly recommend this TV technique for super monotonous passages that you are having a hard time getting down. Don’t get me wrong, at first, you need to focus on the part to make sure you are playing it right. But once you have the idea down, turn on the TV and take the repetition train to obsession town!

Repetition is the answer to 90% of the questions I get from my students. If you can’t play something it’s only because you are trying to play it too fast or you haven’t practiced it enough. That’s pretty much it.

I get it, though. Sometimes it’s hard to sit down and practice something over and over and over again. It gets boring and frustrating. It’s definitely not easy and that is why everyone is not a great piano player. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from A League Of Their Own:

“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.”

But there is good news. There are a couple of things we can do to make it a little more manageable. One is to practice in small chunks of time. And the other is to turn on the TV while you practice the most repetitive stuff.

This week in your practice time, try it and see if it helps. And at the very least, you will be able to get caught up on all your favorite shows. If you can get better at the piano at the same time, then it’s a win-win!

Why You Should Practice Piano With Your Eyes Closed

We get a lot of questions from students and parents about piano lessons and how to practice. With so much information out there, it’s hard to know the difference sometimes between what is worth your time and what is a waste of time.

I thought it might be helpful to do some blog posts answering some of our most frequently asked questions about piano and piano lessons.

This is the third blog post in our series of answering these frequently asked questions.

FAQ #3: How do I get a better feel for the piano?

This question comes in many forms. Sometimes it’s “How do I play the piano and keep my eyes on the music?” or “How do I get more confident at playing the piano?” or “How do I play scales and chords without messing up so much.”

There are obviously many answers to these questions. The most obvious is that with more practice comes more confidence. But I want to give you a specific way to practice that will boost your confidence, increase your accuracy and help you keep your eyes on the music at all times.

Practice with your eyes closed.

Here is what I want you to do. Start practicing your scales first with your eyes closed. This teaches you to trust your ears and your fingers instead of your eyes. The key thing to remember when doing this is that it is ok to miss some notes. You are going to for a while. But that is exactly how you learn and get a better feel for the piano.

Just go for it and don’t overthink it. Close your eyes and play your scales. When you miss a note, don’t sweat it, just keep going. Do this every day that you practice. Over the course of a week or two, you will find that you can do it without any mistakes. That means you are learning to trust your fingers and you are getting a good feel for the piano. This will open up so many doors for you while playing!

Once you have mastered your scales, I want you to work on playing arpeggios with your eyes closed. This is the next level because now you are skipping notes whereas a scale has notes in succession. Don’t worry though. Just start doing it and don’t overthink it.

Again you are going to miss a lot of notes. That is the point. But again, over a few weeks, you will notice you are making less mistakes and your arpeggios will be a lot cleaner.

If you want to take it to the next level, try memorizing a simple piece and practice playing that piece with your eyes closed. This will take some more time but you can totally do it. Once you learn to trust your ears and your fingers, you are free. You will play cleaner. You will learn things quicker. You will have so much more confidence at the piano.

If You Ever Doubt That This Will Work, Remember This…

If ever you doubt that any of this is possible, just watch Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles play the piano. Stevie was blind from birth and Ray was blind from a young age. They both learned how to play the piano without any eyesight. And I think we can all agree that they are both exceptional piano players. If they can do it, so can you. They didn’t get good at the piano by some miracle from above. They got good by practicing, never giving up, and building confidence at the piano by trusting their ears and their fingers.

Learning piano is a lifelong journey. It is an ongoing process. You don’t have to be Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles. You just have to be you. If you are better this week than you were last week, then you are succeeding. You are doing it! And that’s huge. You should be really proud of yourself.

Try this technique of playing with your eyes closed and leave us a comment. Let us know how you did!

How Do I Practice Piano?

I get a lot of questions from my students and from parents about piano lessons. Do any of these sound familiar?

How often should I practice?

How long until I am really good?

When should kids start taking piano lessons?

Am I too old to take piano lessons?

How do I practice the piano?

I thought it might be helpful to do some blog posts answering some of our most frequently asked questions about piano and piano lessons. So here we go…

FAQ #1: How do I practice the piano?

You know the joke. “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice. Practice. PRACTICE!”

It’s true. One of the most important things you can do for your piano career is work out a regular time to practice. Really what it comes down to is discipline and building a new habit.

Here are 8 ways to set up a practice routine that will make you a rockstar in no time!

1. Practice at the same time every day. Schedule your practice time. Put it in your calendar. You have to treat your practice time as a sacred time. If you have a job, you have to be there every day at the same time. Piano practice needs to be the same thing. If you want to be a great piano player, then you need to show up. Every day. On time.

2. Warm up. Start with scales and arpeggios. I know these are not the most fun things to practice, but these are the techniques that are going to make everything else come a lot easier. There is so much that happens when we practice scales and arpeggios. It warms us up, sure. But it also makes our fingers stronger, programs muscle memory so recalling this information later happens automatically, helps us learn our key signatures, helps us learn chords and so much more. If you want to be a rockstar piano player, learn how to LOVE practicing your scales and arpeggios.

3. Learn how chords work. The thing that really made music fun for me was learning how chords work. If your teacher is not already teaching you this, ask him or her to. Learning about chords is a game changer. It makes learning songs so much easier. If you want to speed up your progress, then learn how chords work.

4. Work on repertoire. Whether you are learning songs out of a book or you are learning songs by ear, keep learning new material. Each song you learn is performing double duty. First of all, you are building your library of tunes. Next time someone asks you to play something on the piano, you will have that much more to pull from. Secondly, you are learning lots of “mini-lessons” from each song you learn. Fingering technique, chord structure, key signature, rhythms, and more. Never stop learning new songs!

5. A little goes a long way. In a perfect world, you would practice piano for 2-3 hours every day. But let’s be real. You have a life. Even your kids probably have enough of a life to make that a challenge. What a lot of people do is tell themselves that unless they can get in at least an hour of practice, it’s not worth it. This could not be further from the truth. Even ten minutes here and there adds up. Your practice time does not have to happen all at once. Get in ten minutes when you can. I promise if you do that enough, it will add up to amazing results.

6. Be accountable to your teacher. One of the best things about piano lessons is learning discipline. That is why it is so great to start kids young. It gets them into a routine early. It shows them the value of committing to something. And it allows them to feel the pride of a job well done. When you want to blow off your practice time, remember your lesson time is coming. You are going to have to sit down and play for your teacher. Make sure you are ready and it will make your lesson a much more enjoyable experience!

7. Make sure you are learning things that are fun to you. It is super important that your lessons include things that are fun for you to learn. If you are not learning things that are fun for you, tell your teacher. A good teacher will adjust your lesson plan to include music you love. If you are a gamer, ask if you can learn a song from your favorite video game. If you are a movie buff, learn a song from a movie you love. Having these kinds of things added into your practice routine will make it way more fun and motivate you to practice more.

8. Have patience. Learning any new skill takes times. It takes A LOT of time, so be patient. Be kind to yourself. You don’t have to master it in one day. All you have to do is show up every day and over time you will see how far you have come. You are going to get there if you never give up!

You can truly be the piano player you want to be. Just follow these 8 steps and you will be there in no time!

Have any suggestions on how to practice piano? Or do you have any questions about piano practice? Leave us a comment below and let us know!