Piano Practice
This provides the complete guide index of all content on Tommy’s Piano Corner, categorised for ease of understanding.
Step by Step Guide for Analytical Learners
Within my Piano Practice for Analytical Learners step by step guide, I feature many of these articles to explain my overall philosophy.
đź”´ Why we get stuck
Many of us find ourselves at the point we seem to hit a ceiling and realise that simply ‘working harder’ is not helping us. These articles explore some of the reasons this happens.
- Am I talented enough to learn piano
- Lies to Pianists
- Why aren’t I improving on piano
- Zombie Pianists
- Insane Pianist
- Emergency Exit for Pianists
- Don’t try to learn piano music that is too difficult
- Why we should NOT memorize piano music
- Must you memorise your piano pieces
- What exactly is Muscle Memory
- Are Hanon exercises good bang for your buck
- Supplement slow piano practice
- Can you teach yourself piano
- Can a classical pianist learn on a digital piano
- How difficult is this piece (Henle)
- Piano facts or mere opinions
- Learning Music that is too difficult?
🟢 What Actually Works
In these articles I explore ideas that genuinely do help us make tangible progress. They all move away from the simple ‘practice more slowly’ principle.
- Four Step Piano Process
- The Three Stages of Learning a Piece
- Goal based piano practice
- Essential Piano Practice Strategy – keep it simple
- Piano Practice: A Layer Cake Approach
- Piano Practice: Choosing the ideal tempo
- Should we plan our piano practice
- Let the water boil
- What 2022 has taught me about practising
- Variety is the spice of piano playing life
- To become a better musician
- Tone production at the piano
- When to move on in piano practice
- How to maintain old repertoire
- Is listening to recordings good
- Add colour with inner voices
- Online Performance Workshops
🔵 Fixing Problems
The following articles explore how we might go about fixing the types of issues that we encounter as we move into more and more complex music.
- Piano speed building ideas
- Fix technical problems with the in and out movement
- Practising problem passages in context
- Become more accurate at the piano
- Problem areas – work harder or smarter
- A possible relationship between tension and speed
- How to practice piano without tension
- Will staccato practice make me faster
- Piano practice game changer – record yourself
- Do we know what the right note should be
- The Piano Performance Account (keep it in credit)
🟡 Learning Real Music
These articles show how we can apply these principles to real musical examples.
- Learning Debussy’s Clair de Lune
- Ideas for practising Chopin C# minor Waltz
- How to practice something impossible (Liebestraum)
- Learning The Swan (Siloti)
- FĂĽr Elise as featured in Play It Again Piano
- Air on a G String
- Song Without Words
- Saint Saëns The Swan (play along)
🎼 Understanding Music
Its important that we start to develop a greater understanding of music and here are a few ideas of how we can actively go about doing it.
Chords and Harmony
Developing an understanding of chords and harmony becomes indispensable as we progress – allowing us to link many notes into a single recognisable pattern. These articles explore that idea
- Mastering chords for classical pianists
- Converting dots into chords quickly
- Improve sight reading and memorising
Sight Reading
Sight reading is about far more than simply being able to play ‘on sight’. It also helps us speed up the basic learning process of any new piece.
- Sight reading – an additional view
- The hidden benefit of sight reading
- Celebrating 200 hours of sight reading
🎙️ Recording and Technology
Not only is recording a fantastically useful tool in piano practice, it is also great fun to do. We can upload these recording to share with family and friends or, indeed, to promote ourselves for those seeking professional opportunities.
I have created a complete step by step guide to recording piano at home for you which features many of the following articles.
- Shure MV88 – a great smartphone microphone
- Detailed Shure MV88 settings
- Adding Equalisation (EQ) the easy way
- Adding Reverberation the easy way
- Improving your piano visuals
- How to edit out mistakes
- Recording on Android/Windows
- Teach piano virtually
- Perfect Equipment (more advanced) for recording your piano
- Streaming services
- iPad for pianists
- Gift Ideas for the Pianist in your life (or yourself)
Once we have learned how to use a DAW, there are other extremely fun things we can do. This all starts with something called MIDI which allows us to create other instruments in our computer. These articles give more detail on how you might do that.
đź“š It’s always good to read
I have also reviewed a number of great piano related books that I do highly recommend.
- Play It Again Piano
- The Perfect Wrong Note
- Rami Bar Niv The Art of Piano Fingering
- Neuhaus The Art of Piano Playing
- An Amateur against the impossible
Online Courses
In addition to all of these articles, I have a number of Online Courses that you can discover here.