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For me,
It can vary wildly!
But on a good day where I have at least a 2 hour block of time I like to break things down as follows:
1. Establish my goal for the day
Am I memorizing a new piece? Putting fingering into a new piece? Reviewing repertoire for upcoming concerts?
Based on some of those answers I determine how much I can do (memorize 10 pages? fingering for 1st movement? review ALL of the repertoire to get a "status check")
2. After I establish my goal, I make sure I am warmed up! (Literally)
I might take a shower, drink some tea, get the blood flowing. I hate playing cold!
3. Then getting to the piano, I slowly practice a difficult fast passage (that I know, but needs reassurance practice) to just get it in my fingers. I don't necessarily play it at tempo, just half tempo even, before jumping to the new pieces that I need to work on.
4. My priority is ALWAYS memorization first before my brain gets tired.
5. When my brain gets tired (and I do take breaks, usually 20 minutes of practice then 10 minutes off) I will start doing fingering or harmonic analysis which doesn't always require maximum brain power.
6. I like to jump around alot during my practice, attacking my pieces from many different angles. It is an efficient way to practice
Some advice:
Don't start with scales and arpeggios! Those are very demanding. Always start with something slow, like your fast music played slow or just, slow music! THEN get to your scales and arpeggios!-
Dominic Cheli Great advice to start with memorization. I am always scared of memorizing, so I put it off.
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Gail Starr What helped get over the “time to memorize” hurdle was to tell myself that I only had to memorize and mentally visualize 1 note! Ha ha, I immediately replied to self: “You can do better than that!” And so I memorized 2 notes. You get the picture. Memorization gets better with time. It’s brain stretching.
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Adena Ooooh! I absolute adore this. You are brilliant.
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Gail Starr Compliments are always welcome!
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Adena Gail, one more thing I learned about memorizing: the next day when I want to recall what I memorized, it most certainly will have been forgotten. 99% sure it's unavailable. This is not a bad thing, in fact, it is necessary. It's as if, for memory at least, our brains are composed like onion skins. So, the 2nd day, instead of beating myself up, I memorize the same passage. It doesn't take long. On the third day, I may yet again recall fragments, and so I re-memorize. Now it takes seconds. What I'm doing, however, is storing the passage into a deeper and more permanent level of memory. The process boosts confidence. I learned this and much else from Bernhard who posted profusely on the pianostreet.com website.
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Adena Your words will encourage anyone who has memorized one day and forgotten the next! The message here is that even if it takes you five days to memorize a section...well, that's not such a very long time AND your piece is now solidly in place. A little patience with ourselves goes a long way.
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Adena if you don’t already group your music into gestures/patterns for memorization, try that. There’s a pretty hard wall of around 7 objects that can be held in short term memory, while you burn it into the virtually limitless capacity of long term. But those objects can consist of a lot. Walter Geseking talks about this in his book on playing piano.
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Christopher Macy Thank you! I will look that up. Sounds a little like learning by chunking. I usually begin with the parts of the piece which appear the most difficult so they get more practice.
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Adena Fabulous advice. I need to spend more time on PIanoStreet! I loved your idea of learning "one note". Yesterday, if magically morphed into a whole page, but we'll see if anything "stuck" when I go to practice this evening...
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Christopher Macy Thank you! I'll get the Geseking book.
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Dominic Cheli I appreciate the specificity and the clarity! I see the rationale behind the approach that you take and it is quite logical. Thank you, Dominic!
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Monika Tusnady So true. Adena has helped me get over my paralysis. I'm literally doing a measure at at time of my new Bach Prelude. 10 measures down, lots to go but I'm feeling less terrified every day.
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Hi All
I like to not have to think too much about my practice routine so I follow what is on my schedule (shown below). My repertoire consists of original pieces and jazz arrangements expertly crafted by my teacher. My new piece is an original too. I take a rest from the keyboard on Sundays and study theory/watch Tonebase videos. Yesterday I enjoyed watching Dominic’s excellent videos on improving arpeggios. My current goal is to be able to improvise freely (play the changes) over an 8-bar sequence in C - Major II-V-I-IV minor ii-v-1 Major VI. When I have cracked this I plan to move to Db with the same sequence.
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Ken Radford Wow! This is an amazing spreadsheet. Would you mind posting a link so we can modify one for our own practice?
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Gail Starr Here you go. I hope it helps.
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Ken Radford Thank you so much! I’ll modify it to match my own goals and let you know what I come up with.
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Ken Radford I like this, but 151 minutes? That's too much for me. I go for 150 minutes.
I am going to steal your spreadsheet! Thank you!!! -
Roger Ward If you raise your BPM you might be able to get it down to 149 minutes even :)
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Ken Radford You know, I think you are right. I'll adjust my copy of your spreadsheet.
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Ken Radford Thx a lot for this. I am in awe!
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Sedef CANKOCAK You are welcome.
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Interesting take, especially the take on harmonic analysis at moments of fatigue (I waste my time when I get tired). In my case, I do the scales and arpeggios first, but there's a catch : I don't do them in my limit. If, say, my limit of playing three octaves well for quarters is at 100 bpm, I do at 60-80 bpm, to ensure I don't fatigue and keep good form. I'll devote 15-30 min per week to attempt increasing speed of certain scales and arpeggios to get a new record (not much practice time for a father of two), and I can do this straight after the slow warm up. I can do that in 5-10 min chunks, so I don't get too tired for the repertoire. It works well for me.
And I follow this philosophy for the repertoire I study as well : always working slow and build up to a fraction of my personal best time (like 80% of my best time). Then I attempt to increase the speed like 30 min a week per song (maybe more if I nailed down other songs speed, and am working on interpretation). The numbers are a personal choice, but the idea of playing slower than your limit was an advice from my teacher. This advice helped me a lot.
I don't like jumping so much during training. I feel my muscle memory needs a sort of build-up. But I do change occasionally if I'm too tired of certain songs (say, short songs with long tremolos, and I feel my hand gets tired of it). Personal choice.-
My teacher is fond of saying "play it more slowly" :)
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Ken Radford check out this subject in William Westney’s book, The Perfect Wrong Note
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