Are you really practicing, or are you simply playing through a piano piece? What’s the difference and does it matter? What is practice, really?

To many, piano playing is equivalent to piano practicing -- “I've played through the piece, hence I've practiced.” 

But, what did you actually practice? Were you focusing on certain aspects of your piece? Or, were you even focusing on anything at all?

Practice is intentional, it serves a purpose and there’s always an objective behind every practice. What is your intention of your practice, what do you want to achieve at the end of your practice? Accuracy of notes/fingerings, clarity of articulation, rhythmic evenness? What distinguishes Piano Practicing from Piano Playing, is the intention and purpose behind it.

In fact, intentional practice can be found in other professions too. For instance, professional footballers practice free kicks with very specific drills. It’s been said that free kicks drills consist of tying dustbin containers to the top corners of the goalpost for the footballers to aim. The drills are intentionally designed to be very specific and detailed in order to maximise their efficiency, so that the footballers will be able to score free kicks with ease and confidence during official matches.

Have you ever hit a plateau in your piano playing and have no clue how to overcome it? Or wondered how else you can enhance your piano playing?

Firstly, reflect and note on the possible issues that are hindering the quality of your playing, e.g.,:

• Lack of shape

• Lack of direction

• Imbalance of tone

• Inconsistency in articulation

• Lack of contrast in dynamics
  
  

Secondly, make sure your fundamentals (i.e., fingerings, notes, rhythms) are properly sorted out. For this, you might be interested to read up on my previous article ‘Mental Practice’, which has a few tips in increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of your practices, great for tackling problems on fundamentals.

Thirdly, record your playing. In order to improve your playing, you have to critique your playing. 

Record and analyse your playing, jot down parts that require improvements and try to be as specific as possible. For example, staccatos need to be more crisp, melodies need to be more cantabile. Next, isolate those problematic areas and drill them until they are better. Then, record again. Repeat this process until your playing improves.

You do not need to any fancy recording equipment for this, just your iPhone or Android phone will do. If you are able to achieve a pretty decent recording over a iPhone or Android phone, your playing would no doubt be tremendous in real life.

Have you ever find yourself stumbling over certain notes, especially in fast pieces? Try out slow practice. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of slow practice. But, first and foremost, why is slow practice important? What good does it do other than slowing your entire piece down?

During slow practice, you are ensuring that your hand movements are smooth in transition between notes. Once your hands' movements are smooth between the notes (it is almost like doing taiji between notes - yes you've heard it right, taiji), it means you have successfully mastered the spaces between these notes. Thereafter, you will be able to learn up the rest of the notes much more quickly and accurately.

Slow practice is important because it raises awareness and enables you to hit the correct notes with the correct fingerings all the time, instead of 'hit and miss' where you constantly struggle to hit the correct notes on a consistent basis due to your erratic hand and fingers movement between notes.

In order to be a master of the notes, you have to be a master of the SPACES between the notes. 

Mental practice is a form of practice that maximises the efficiency of pianists’ practices using imagination and visualisation of practice.

During mental practices, pianists are able to increase awareness of their practices, which minimises the occurrences of incorrect notes and rhythm. Most importantly, it’s effective in reducing a problematic form of ‘practice’ which is to play through an entire musical piece from beginning to end without any focus or intent to improve the piece. 

Research has found that mental practice is not restricted to music alone, in fact, many sportsmen such as professional basketballers and golfers use mental practice in their practices. For instance, professional basketballers would practice without the ball to perfect their techniques such as jump shots and the effects on their learning curve is almost immediate. There was a study where 144 basketball players were separated into two groups where the first group would physically practice free throws, while the second group would practice the free throws purely by mental imagery and mental practice. At the end of the 2-week study, both groups of basketball players were tested with free throws and both groups scored almost the same number of throws. This case study demonstrated both the importance of effective practice and how mental practice plays a crucial role in it.

So, what does this mean about mental practice in piano? Mental practice can be applied and approached in various ways. 

Here are two of my most effective way of mental practice: 

1. ‘Air-piano practice’, where one moves his/her fingers in the air while mentally practicing with accurate notes and fingerings.

2. Physically fiddling on the piano keys with the accurate notes and fingerings, without pressing the keys. You can sing the melodies in your mind whilst doing this, or you can sing them aloud while fiddling on the keys too.

Do note the importance of mental practicing with accurate notes and fingerings. In mental practice, one is consciously registering information into his/her brain so it is very important to do it with accuracy in the notes and fingerings. Hence, I usually apply 3 fundamental rules towards mental practice for my students: 

1. SLOW tempo. Go as slow as you can, so slow that you have enough time to think about the next note/fingering, how you are going to articulate it (staccato/legato). 

2. 100% correct notes. 

3. 100% correct fingerings.

With these 3 rules, you should be able to correct any mistakes or errors in your practice and with consistent application of mental practice, you will be able to enjoy more effective practice.