The Counterintuitive Art of Practice
The quality of your practice largely determines the quality of your playing. But what constitutes “good-quality” practice? Well, let’s first examine some not-so-helpful misconceptions and mindset around practice that lead to poor results, which I’ve often encountered in my students as well as my own practice over the years. I’ve also suggested alternative mindsets and approaches that can help make practice more productive, enjoyable, and purposeful.
Misconception #1 - You need to sound good during practice.
Everyone wants to sound good playing a piece. But usually it doesn’t happen right away, even for the most talented people. There is a whole lot of sounding bad (a.k.a. mistakes) you have to go through, before you can get closer to the polished “final product.” The practice room is our laboratory, a workshop where we need to make a mess, experiment, and fix things before we get to something that actually works. I once heard a colleague say that, while in music school, all the people whom he had overheard sounding good in the practice room, did not end up growing as musicians as much as those who sounded bad during their practice. Why should this be? When you’re willing to sound “bad” during practice, that means you’re willing to look at your mistakes and improve on them. On the other hand, if you’re always just sounding “good” in practice, it either means you are not challenging yourself enough, or you are covering up your mistakes instead of fixing them. I have encountered students who are so uncomfortable with mistakes that they tend to opt for the easiest pieces, and/or they give up if they cannot get something right in their first few tries. Regardless of actual ability and potential, this unfortunately is a major blocker for making real progress.
A more helpful mindset: Expect to sound bad during at least some portion of your practice. Seek out and welcome mistakes, then put on your thinking cap: How can I solve this problem? How do I not make this mistake again? There is great joy in coming up with solutions to your problems. Seek a teacher’s guidance if you’re not sure how to approach it.
Misconception #2 - Quantity equals quality.
We tend to measure practice in quantitative terms: do this 5 times or 10 times, practice for 30 minutes or 1 hour, etc. These can be really helpful markers, but the quantity of practice does not tell you much about the quality of practice, which is at least as important. One hour of practice with frequent distractions and an absent mind is not necessarily better than twenty minutes of laser-focused practice, and might even be worse. For better quality in practice, you first need to show up fully and be present throughout the whole process, constantly asking questions, exploring, and reflecting. Good practice is an active dialogue between you and the instrument or the piece, and if you’re not showing up fully, no matter how much time you’ve “spent,” it doesn’t amount to much. Just doing something X number of times or for X number of minutes as prescribed by your teacher will only get you so far. You reap what you invest, and the unit of that investment is your attention.
A more helpful approach: Turn off your Apple watch, put your phone somewhere else, make arrangements with your family if needed, and be fully present during your practice with no distractions. Even if it’s just a few minutes you can spare, make it count toward something.
Misconception #3 - What you see/hear is how you should practice.
This is probably the most counter-intuitive one for a lot of people. What you see on the page of the music or what you hear in a professional recording reflects what the final product will be like, but there are a lot of steps you need to take in order to arrive there. Just like in building a house, you have to start with the foundations, which usually look nothing like the final product. A common mistake I see is that a student would try to learn a piece right at the tempo they hear in the recordings, and when asked to slow down, they don’t have the grasp of the underlying rhythm to be able to do so. Another common issue is that they try to learn broken chords and arpeggios note-by-note, but when asked to block the chords, they are not able to do so. In both cases, they have tried to put the roof on the house before the foundations were ready, and the whole structure is not stable (even though the student might not realize it) and will not hold up in the long run.
A more helpful approach: Be like a craftsman or artisan when you learn a piece, thoroughly taking it apart to understand how it works, and putting it back together slowly and carefully. Analyze the piece to understand the structure, melody, harmony, and how the main ideas evolve over time. Then, practice to put together all those components, bit by bit. Be creative; come up with your own ways to perfect each little part or technique. Some general tips:
Select a small section to focus on at one time. Don’t just run the piece from beginning to end all the time.
Learn one hand at a time (or one “voice” at a time for polyphonic parts) and hear what’s going on in each part.
Play as slowly as you need to in order to achieve smoothness. Slow and smooth is way better than fast and sloppy.
Pay attention to the details such as articulation and dynamics.
Use methods such as blocking for chords and altered rhythms for fast passages that require great control in the fingers.
Gradually increase the size of the sections you work on, but continue smaller spot practice as you need.
Be able to play the piece at multiple tempos, not just the final performance tempo.
Sometimes work backwards, and/or jump around different parts. Be able to start from any measure, without having to run the piece from the beginning every time.
The more intimately you know every nook and cranny of your piece, the more secure your final performance will be.
Misconception #4 - Practice can only be done at the piano.
It’s common to think that playing the piano is all about training the fingers on the keys. But it’s a process that involves multiple senses (primarily vision, hearing, and touch) as well as the whole body and mind. One area of practice that is often overlooked is listening. Listening to the piece that you are learning, even passively, helps you to absorb the melodies, rhythms, articulations, dynamics, and character of the piece. When you engage in active listening, though, really paying attention to the details of the piece and how the particular performer is delivering them, it is even more effective, especially when combined with recording and listening to your own performance on a regular basis. This forms a positive feedback loop that can help you really refine your playing. Another aspect that is often overlooked is mental practice, which can be done anywhere, any time. Top performers such as musicians and athletes regularly use mental practice to their advantage. For piano, it helps to visualize the keys, hear the notes, and feel the motions of the fingers and the whole body, which will deepen your understanding of a piece, solidify your memory, and help you rehearse and execute difficult passages with more finesse and less possibility of injury from repeated physical motion. So don’t limit yourself to practicing only in front of the piano and only working your fingers, especially when you don’t have access to a piano or don’t have time to do a full practice session.
A more helpful approach: Look for the space and time in your daily life where you can incorporate your musical practice. Listen to the piece you’re learning while driving or when you have a few minutes in between things. Do mental practice while you’re in line at the grocery store or waiting for someone. If you don’t have access to a piano for some time, work on your other skills such as music theory. When you hear your washing machine or an ice cream truck play a tune, see if you can sing it back and figure out how to play it—this is ear training. The possibilities are endless if you look for them.
Misconception #5 - Mindless repetition is enough.
To be fair, I don’t think anyone sits down at the piano and says, “Let me do some mindless repetitions today.” And yet this is what we often default to without a clear goal and method. Sometimes you might just want to sit down and play something to unwind and relax, and that’s perfectly fine, but to make progress, you need a goal. Most people do have a higher-level goal such as “I want to get better at playing piano,” “I want to master this piece,” or “I want to improve my ability to play by ear.” But for each practice session, there should also be a smaller goal that is achievable within that session, and a slightly larger goal that is achievable over multiple sessions (say, in a week or a month). If you have a dream of going to Disneyland, it’s great to say “I want to go to Disneyland someday,” but it is not enough. You need smaller actionable goals such as “I need to save $1000 to pay for the trip,” and “I need to book the flights to get to L.A.” and then even smaller goals to achieve those, such as “I need to work one extra hour each day for three months to earn extra money,” and “I need to search for flights on Google.” Practice is just like that. The more clear you can chart out a path to get to where you want, the more satisfying result you will get.
A more helpful approach: Set small achievable, tangible goals (no more than 5) for each practice session. Be as specific as you can, with a way to assess whether you achieved it or not (e.g. “measures 1-8, play right hand smoothly with the metronome at 80, making sure the rhythm and articulation are accurate.”). On a regular basis, check how the daily goals fit into larger weekly or monthly goals and adjust as needed (e.g. “I want to perform this piece in 2 months, but at the pace I’m learning it right now, it will be too tight. So I need to learn two more measures per day which means allotting at least 10 more minutes.”). Use quantitative measures to your advantage, but again focus on the quality as well, as discussed above. Consult your teacher for guidance on your overall goals and approaches, but more importantly, be your own coach and guide and learn from your own active participation in the process.
Practice itself is a skill and an art that needs practice. As you do more of it, you will learn more about your own tendencies, preferences, strengths, and weaknesses, and you will become more proficient in designing the most effective practice routine for you. I hope that these tips can help guide that journey.
Happy journeying!