Train Your Brain: Piano Practice Strategies from Spencer Myer

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. Today I want to introduce you to Spencer Myer. Spencer is on the piano faculty at Indiana University Bloomington, at the Jacobs School of Music—one of the largest and most respected music conservatories in the country. I earned my degree in piano performance there. I’ve known Spencer for many years. He studied with my sister, Coren Estrin-Mino, from the time he was a child until after high school, before continuing on to conservatory. He’s gone on to have an impressive career.

A Career of Distinction

Spencer has performed as a soloist with orchestras around the world, including the Cleveland Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony, and Phoenix Symphony. He’s won several major international piano competitions, including the gold medal at the 2008 New Orleans International Piano Competition and top prizes at the 2007 William Kapell, the 2005 Cleveland, and the Bösendorfer Competitions. He also has a close musical partnership with the Miami String Quartet and is a recording artist with the Steinway & Sons label.

How Much of Piano Playing Is Muscle Memory?

In a recent video on piano practice, Spencer shared some insights that really stood out to me. One of the most striking things Spencer said in his video is that about 80% of piano playing is muscle memory. That may sound surprising—many concert pianists wouldn’t readily admit it. But when you think about playing an entire recital program, lasting an hour or more, it’s not realistic to expect 100% focused mental control the entire time. Unless you’re some kind of mental guru, it’s just not possible.

That’s where muscle memory comes in. Your fingers know where to go, and that’s what helps carry you through. I like to compare it to piloting a sailboat. The wind is like your muscle memory, which propels you forward. But your focus and concentration steer the boat, adjusting the sail and rudder. It’s a balance. And when you’re playing fast passages, it becomes even clearer. You can’t consciously think of every note in real time. Muscle memory fills in the gaps.

How Do You Develop That Kind of Security?

Spencer shared several techniques to help build reliable muscle memory. One of them is especially unusual but incredibly effective: practicing with inconsistent tempos. You might think inconsistent tempos are something to avoid, but as a practice technique, they’re extremely useful. The idea is to speed up and slow down randomly while playing a passage. If you can keep your place while doing that, then when something throws you off during a performance, you’ll know how to recover without falling apart.

It helps you simulate those real-life performance situations—like if your hand slips or your attention momentarily lapses. Practicing this way gets you used to instability, so you can stay grounded even under pressure.

Rhythmic Alteration: Make Your Own Etudes!

Another effective method Spencer talks about is rhythmic alteration. You can take a passage and apply dotted rhythms or other rhythmic groupings. For example, playing a pattern long-short, then reversing it. This forces your hands to work together differently and builds control and clarity. It’s especially good for fast passages where one hand might tend to rush or lag. And it turns any difficult section into an etude without needing to learn separate technical exercises. You can experiment with random rhythmic groupings to challenge your brain and fingers in new ways. The possibilities are endless, and it’s a great way to gain precision and deepen your understanding of passages.

Know Exactly Where Your Hands Play Together

Another tip Spencer gives is to identify exactly where the hands play together. This seems simple, but it’s incredibly powerful. When your technique is clean, it’s usually because your hands are synchronized. Isolating those points of contact can give you greater rhythmic security and better control.

Practice Skipping Around

Do you have pieces with repeated material that’s slightly different the second time—maybe in another key or with small changes? Spencer suggests jumping back and forth quickly between those sections to gain clarity and prevent mix-ups. He gives the example of Chopin’s Ballade in G minor, where similar material comes back in different forms. Or Mozart’s Sonata in G Major, K. 283—the end of the exposition is in D major, and the end of the recapitulation is in G major. The passages look and sound similar but aren’t identical. Practicing by skipping quickly between those two spots trains your fingers and memory to differentiate them clearly. This can be applied to almost any piece with similar structures—sonatas, ballades, even simple binary forms.

Don’t Let Your Pieces Decay: The Power of Slow Practice

One of the most important ideas Spencer shares is how to maintain a piece after it’s learned. Have you ever had a piece you once played confidently, only to find it slipping away over time? It’s like the game of telephone: small changes creep in each time you play, and eventually it’s not quite the piece you started with. The solution? Go back to the score and play it slowly and mindfully. This kind of slow practice is something every great pianist does. My teacher, Ruth Slenczynska, used to tell the story of hearing what she thought was a beginner student of Rachmaninoff while waiting outside of his home—only to find out it was Rachmaninoff himself, practicing at a snail’s pace.

I saw this same habit in my father, Morton Estrin, and in other top pianists like John Ogdon and Constance Keene. They all practiced playing very slowly. It’s not just for beginners—it’s how professionals keep pieces in peak condition.

To sum it all up, here are the strategies Spencer outlines:

Slow, mindful practice – essential for reinforcing memory and maintaining pieces over time

Inconsistent tempo practice – helps prepare for real-world performance instability

Rhythmic alteration – turns difficult passages into targeted technical studies

Identifying hand coordination – builds clean, synchronized technique

Skipping between repeated sections – sharpens memory and clarity between similar material

You can find more from Spencer through his website. And be sure to watch the original video, where he goes into even more detail. If you’re considering studying music at the college level, he teaches private lessons at Indiana University, and working with him could be an outstanding opportunity.

Thanks to Spencer for making these insights available! They’re practical, effective, and well worth trying in your own practice.