5 Secrets for Efficient Practice

Doing less work and having more done is a dream come true…

And a reality when you follow these five easy steps for efficient practice.

Saving Hours of Practice

Sounds too good to be true?

It might be, if you’re not smart about it.

These tactics aren’t magic– they force you to be more efficient with your time and energy.

It’s simple mechanics.

And now you can use that time for other important things.

Like playing piano for people you love…

Here are 5 secrets for efficient practice from my arsenal. There’s more to come!

1. Colour Music

Not only is colour more appealing to look at, but studies have shown that you learn more quickly when you see different colours because your brain processes colour and shape differently.

You notice colour before shape, so outline or highlight noteworthy elements in the music or persistent mistakes for greater improvement in less time!

2. Sing the Melody

Sing or hum the melody every time you practice the piece– memorize the melody.

Singing out loud helps your phrasing and overall expression of music– the melody will be more accurate when you play it– PLUS you’ll be able to fix any errors early on.

3. Warm Up

Always warm up. Hanon, Czerny, scales, arpeggios, combo– whatever warm up works for you and your fingers alone. (See the Ultimate Warm Up Secret.)

Warm ups speed up blood circulation– skipping warm up wastes time because your stiff fingers aren’t prepared; your fingers need to adjust from whatever activity you’ve been doing before.

You’ll will waste more time trying to speed up circulation than just doing daily warm up exercises.

4. Practice Chunks

Section out specific little chunks of trouble spots in the music.

Concentrate on practicing and smoothing out your trouble spots, instead of playing and replaying the whole piece, where you’ll trip up on the exact same spots over and over again.

Concentrating on your mistakes will be more efficient than running through the whole piece endlessly.

5. Concentrate Effort

Instead of trying to spread limited practice time amongst many pieces, concentrate on one or two pieces every session– your brain takes 20 minutes to regain full concentration once interrupted, so don’t interrupt yourself.

Make sure you work on each piece for at least 30-40 minutes before you move on.