Practicing Piano Effectively
Find time to practice every day. It is much easier to learn piano if you practice every single day, building off your prior successes and lessons. Even practicing for 20-30 minutes each day is better than only practicing once a week for a few hours. Everyday practice helps cement what you are learning. Create a practice chart with the time during the day you will practice and mark off each day you do. Place on a wall you pass often to remind you and don't forget to add a reward onto it when you have completed a certain amount of days. The more frequently you practice, the faster you will improve so don't take weekends off. Any practice everyday is better than no practice.
Prior to starting clarify the goal of each practice session. Start with a warm-up. Just like athletic practices, your body and brain need 10 minutes to get going and reach their full potential. Some ideas for warm-ups include: Run up and down your scales 3-4 times. Play 2-3 songs that you already know well, focusing on making them perfect. Play along to a song you know, or improvise some notes while listening to another instrument.
Practice with a metronome. Metronomes keep a constant rhythm for you, helping you stay in time as you practice. Most musicians will unconsciously play parts they know faster and slow down for parts they don’t like. This may seem fine when you are on your own, but if you try to do this with a band the entire group will fall out of sync. Start slow, around 60 BPM (beats per minute) if you are not used to using a metronome. Some music charts will list a BPM on the top, so set your metronome to this number to practice the song correctly.
Don’t try to learn new songs all at once. Instead, focus on learning one section at a time, anywhere from 10-15 seconds, and perfecting it before moving on. This allows you to confidently play the entire song well, as opposed to rushing though it and missing your mistakes. If you come across a difficult section, stop and work on it before moving on. It is difficult to lose bad habits once they are engrained.
Focus on your technique as you play. Your goal should not be to get through a piece, it should be to play it perfectly. Practicing is the time to make mistakes, not take shortcuts, so try to find your mistakes and work on ways to fix them. If you struggle with a particular scale, make that a part of your daily practice until you have it. If you can’t play a fast piece completely, play it slow and add speed over time until you nail it.
Learning Piano Skills
Hire a teacher for personalized, hands-on lessons. Usually, the fastest way to learn how to play the piano is with a teacher. They not only know the scales, songs, and chords that you need to practice, but they can give you specific advice on how to improve your playing. Make sure you like the teacher to a fixed term. When looking for a teacher, be sure to discuss the following: Your goals in playing the piano (songs, bands, career, etc.) What genres of music you want to practice The teacher’s qualifications and experience The teacher’s cost and availability
Learn to read music. Most piano music is written on charts in musical notation, and it is rare to find a piano player who cannot read music. Purchase a book, watch videos online, get a music learning app or ask your teacher to help you learn so that you can play any music you can get your hands on. Practice reading music each day so that it becomes second nature. You can try to play pieces by sight, bring charts with you on the bus, play songs frequently or play musical games online.
Learn the basics of music theory. Music is built on a set of rules and relationships between notes, and knowing music theory allows you to see the patterns in your favorite songs and learn them more quickly. You can always take a course, but there are also a variety of books and online tutorials meant to teach people music theory, from the basics to complex arrangements.
Buy a chord and scale book. Available at every music store, these books are relatively cheap glossaries of every piano chord you could play. They are usually grouped together by note, but frequently they come with sections detailing which chords sound good together and the right scale to play for each note.
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