Over the years I’ve made a lot of videos about pianos and practicing piano. Today I’m going to provide a concise list of some areas to focus on during your development as a pianist and give some examples of past lessons you can refer to.
1. Memorize, Memorize, Memorize!
One of the most important aspects to practicing the piano and developing as a musician is to spend time on a regular basis memorizing music. I can’t stress enough how important this is and how it is often neglected. Any pianist specializing in solo classical music must spend a vast amounts of time memorizing music.
The amount of music in the world is endless and nobody can memorize all of it. But if you spend time on a daily basis memorizing music, you will develop security and mastery of performance. Not only will you expand your repertoire, you’ll be giving your brain a workout and you will spend more time focusing on how to play your music rather than what you have to play.
My video on how to memorize music is a great resource for you:
2. Sight Reading
Sight Reading is another crucial element to your development as a pianist and is another topic that is often overlooked. Wouldn’t it be great to explore new repertoire and try it out before you commit a significant amount of time learning it? That’s where sight reading becomes incredibly beneficial.
Developing your sight reading is very important and if you work on it regularly, you will continually improve. The following video has tips to improve your sight reading:
3. Playing With Other Musicians
Playing music with other musicians is not only fun, it’s a necessary experience in developing your own skills. Even if your primary interest is playing solo piano, you should seek out opportunities to play with other musicians and do it as often as possible.
There is no need to be intimidated by playing with musicians who are better than you are. In fact, this is one of the best ways to advance your scope as a musician. Even if they play other instruments, examining their sense of style, phrasing, timing and other aspects of their playing can help you develop a new depth of understanding to music.
Sight reading might be incredibly difficult on your own as you will find yourself starting and stopping when you make mistakes. When you sight read with other musicians, you will be forced to recover and you won’t be able to stop playing. It forces you to become a better at sight reading!
If you need help in learning how to accompany other musicians I highly recommend this video that I produced with my wife Florence Estrin (a concert flutist).
4. Improvise Often and Don’t be Afraid to Explore New Styles of Music
Improvising is so important to understanding your music and gaining a new depth of understanding about how it’s constructed. Many styles of music such as rock and jazz rely on improvisation as a key element to the music and encourages musicians to create something new and interesting every time they perform. Developing your improvisation skills (even with classical music) is a crucial element to becoming a better and more well-rounded musician.
Exploring new styles of music enables you to experience and understand styles you might not have been aware of; it can also be a great deal of fun! I’m a classical pianist but when I’ve been at parties with other musicians and played blues music, it’s been a great deal of fun and an incredible learning experience to improvise with them and learn how they approach music.
Improvising is also a universal language. If you learn how to read a lead sheet for jazz standards, you can take that anywhere in the world, to play with any musicians. Spoken language is not a barrier for musical performance!
Never improvised on the piano before? No problem, check out this video to get some great tips on where to begin:
5. Practice Mentally
This is something that people might not ever think of. Practicing mentally away from your instrument can offer benefits not possible while playing your instrument. Playing music requires a thought process and there are tremendous benefits to thinking through your music.
Let’s say you’re waiting in line at the grocery store. You can practice your music mentally by thinking through a piece with every nuance of performance without any physical restrictions. Going through your music when you are away from your instrument allows you to think about it in a different light. Naturally, practicing with your instrument is essential, but you may rely on motor memory rather than the music. Practicing mentally allows you to think through your music playing it exactly as you want.
This can have tremendous benefits strengthening your memory. Just play through your music in your mind and see how far you get. You can always refer to the score to clarify the comprehension of the score.
I hope this is helpful and if you have any questions about this topic or any other, please email me Robert@LivingPianos.com for more information.