Why You Should Practice the Piano Every Day

Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why you should practice the piano every day. Why is it so important? There are a number of reasons. Now, other instruments have their reasons. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m also a French hornist. With the French horn, like many wind instruments, there’s a physiology to the lips which produce the tone. It’s so hard to get back into shape if you miss too many days, because the lips are such tender muscles. The piano doesn’t really have that issue so much. If you miss a day, you’re not going to feel drastically different in your hands. Why is it so important to practice every day, then? Well, there are two reasons, fundamentally.

First, certain aspects of piano practice are extraordinarily difficult and taxing.

Things like memorization can’t easily be crammed into less days. When you’re memorizing music, there’s a certain amount that you can absorb fairly easily. Then it’s an uphill struggle to keep putting more music into your head. You have to really be committed and work extra hard to memorize the third and fourth phrase if you’ve already learned a couple of phrases. It can be done, but it’s harder. So why not take advantage of your fresh mind? Each day, learn something! Even if it’s just a short practice session, it can really help you in the long run if you at least take on some of your score each day.

Second, a lot of times you’ll feel like you’ve made two steps forward and four steps backwards.

When you practice something, then leave it for a day or two, when you come back to it, you might feel like you didn’t even learn anything. It’s so demoralizing! You can’t get that continuity, so you’re just learning the same thing again. Not only is it not as productive, but it kind of drains your soul. You don’t feel excited about practicing when you come back to the same problems over and over again. But if you come back to it the next day, you’ll forget some from the previous day, but it’ll come back pretty quickly. Then you can get right to work learning more music. It’s encouraging. You can keep the momentum going.

Use your mind when it’s fresh, even if it’s for a short practice session.

Keep the continuity of your learning day by day. This is not only a good technique for memorization, but also refinement. You might have an epiphany into your technique with arpeggios, but then you’ll skip a day or two and you come back to it and the same issues persist. So practice every day, even if it’s only a little bit. You might not have much time, but by using any little time you do have each day, you can maintain productive practice. Dinner’s in the oven, you’ve got 10 minutes. Practice! Even those short amounts of time make a big difference if you do it on a regular basis. I do the same thing with exercise, by the way. When I’m waiting for something I’ll do some simple exercises and stretching. Take advantage of every moment with the things that are important in your life. Over time it makes a dramatic difference! That’s the message for today. I hope it works for you! Let me know in the comments on LivingPianos.com and on YouTube. Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com