Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The topic today is about how to motivate yourself to practice. Sometimes things are going well and you can’t wait to get to the piano. But I’m sure you also experience times when you just don’t feel the motivation to practice. You want to be able to learn music. Perhaps you have a lesson coming up, or a performance, or you just want to use the beautiful piano you have sitting at home. Somehow you just can’t muster up the energy to practice. Is there anything you can do about such a thing? The answer is yes!
You are not alone.
Don’t beat yourself up because you are unmotivated. It’s natural. If you practice correctly, it’s hard work. It may be rewarding to have musical scores you can play, but the process of learning music is hard. So of course there are going to be times when you don’t have the energy to practice because of work, health issues, or other conflicts. Just finding the time can be an arduous task! So forgive yourself for feeling this way. There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s normal. There’s an ebb and flow in your energy and your expectations as to what you’re going to achieve. There are times when you can sit at the piano and accomplish amazing things, and other times you’re just hitting your head against the wall.
When you’re hitting a roadblock, you’ve got to change things up.
You don’t want to keep doing the same thing and expect different results. That’s one definition of insanity! Sometimes the best thing to do is to just leave it completely. Go take a walk or a bike ride. Do something invigorating. Physical activity is often the best thing you can do when you’re feeling any kind of a funk. Getting your blood circulating and breathing fresh air really rejuvenates you. It’s important for your health as well as your psyche. You might take a walk around your neighborhood and come back to the piano with renewed energy. That might be all it takes.
What else can you do?
Well, there’s a lot you can do. You can shake up your practice. Maybe you have a routine where you spend some time with scales, you do some memorization, and you do some refinement. But maybe your routine has gotten stale. The whole thing feels like drudgery because you know what you’re going to do next. If that’s the case, that isn’t effective practice anyway. Practicing, as I’ve mentioned so many times before, is a mental activity. You must be engaged in the process or you aren’t really practicing. In fact, you can be away from the piano thinking through your music, and that can be more effective than sitting at the piano when your mind is not engaged!
How do you become engaged with your practice?
Sometimes simply playing through pieces can make you feel good and bring the joy back into the equation. You feel like you should work, so every time you go to the piano, you feel a sick feeling in your stomach. If you think you should be practicing, but all you want to do is play the piano, go ahead and play! What’s all that hard work for if you can’t enjoy playing your instrument? Play for a while! Just the physiological benefit to your fingers is good. It’ll keep you in shape. It’ll keep those review pieces in your memory and in your fingers. Maybe you want to take on some new music. Maybe you just want to read through some popular music that you never normally play because your teacher doesn’t assign it to you. Or maybe you just want to make stuff up. You can explore the sonorities of the piano just for fun too.
Do anything to break away from the rut you find yourself in.
There’s a host of things you can do. You can try practicing piano at a different time of day or night, just to make it feel fresh. Anything that changes the routine can help you. Perhaps just listen to music, whether it’s piano music or orchestral music or anything at all. Check out different styles of music, go to concerts, get together with friends who like music, and play with other musicians. If you have friends who play or sing, invite them over to accompany them. You could even have an informal jam session. Anything that gets your creative energy working again is going to be worthwhile for you.
The big point is, don’t beat yourself up!
If it’s your routine that isn’t working, change it up. You don’t have to be married to your routine. Keep it creative. Keep yourself engaged. If nothing’s working, go outside for a while. Do something different. Go to the gym, take a swim, anything to get your mind relaxed. You don’t want to beat yourself up for not practicing. That’s the worst thing you can do, because then you’ll feel guilty. Even if you practice, if you’re just going through the motions, you’re not really practicing, are you?
So that’s the lesson for today!
I’d love to hear comments from all of you about this! I’m sure all of you have suffered from this at some point. If you haven’t, what is your secret? Share that here at LivingPianos.com and YouTube. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
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6 thoughts on “How to find Motivation to Practice the Piano”
Everything you said I can relate to and more. At times I have just banged on the piano with my fists when I keep making the same mistake even though I tell myself “It’s a sharp, not natural—ARGHHHHHH!!!!!” So there you have it.
PS I like an Estonia piano over a Steinway.
With hand-built pianos, it comes down more to the specific piano than the brand.
Love it! Great advice. I have a routine I use to begin practice that keeps me from getting bored and just “mailing it in”. I focus on a different key signature each day, working through all of its major and minor scales, cadences, arpeggios, and inversions. I also work in ii-V-I jazz patterns and voicings in the same key. Because it is in a different key each day, it always manages to feel fresh and relaxing and puts me in the right frame of mind to go continue on with whatever piece I’ve decided to focus on that day.
I also heartily agree with you when you said, “if you really would rather just play, then play!” to get the juices going.
Thanks as always for useful tips.
The real question is how to get motivated to do anything but play/practice the piano. When I was a conservatory student my teacher asked me to hold it to 8 hrs and no more than 2 of scales and technical studies. Now as a 70 yr old retiree I prefer to compose but still make sure to give myself 3 hrs of piano time. Playing the piano is one of the few activities better than eating donuts or ice cream.
Great suggestions, thanks.
I love the bicycle-piano at 2:45 in the video. Terrific advice!