All too often (for my liking), when people ask for advice on piano practice, they are given a ‘strategy’ to use without any regard for the ‘goal’ they are trying to achieve.
What is a piano practice strategy
By piano practice strategy, I mean the way your are going to practice. Now, this could be one of the traditional three S strategies
- Slowly
- Separately
- Sections
It could equally be something more advanced such as symmetric inversion or, indeed, anything in between. Simply put, the strategy is the ‘how’ we will practice.
What is a piano practice goal
A goal, on the other hand, is the precise thing that you are trying to achieve. This could be anything from attaining a given speed, eliminating tension in a passage or simply memorising a set of notes. Simply put, the goal is the ‘what’ we expect to gain.
Why separate the two?
It is key to know what we want to achieve before deciding how we can achieve it. Let’s take the example of Slowly. I’m sure many of you will have read that account of Rachmaninov practising a Chopin Etude so slowly that the listener could barely recognise the piece. This is often quoted by people as the reason why you should practice slowly. If Rachmaninov did it, then so should we!
However, what few people will then go on to analyse is ‘why’ was Rachmaninov practising in this way? I can’t imagine that a pianist of his calibre would be practising something so slowly just because ‘slow practice is good’. Rather, he must have had a very clear goal in mind and determined that the way to achieve that goal was to practice at a very slow pace.
I’d even go further to say that for him, a Chopin Etude would present no real technical difficulty. Therefore, he must have been working on some kind of incremental improvement that would likely be imperceptible to most of us. Hence, choosing such an extreme end of the slowness scale.
What ‘what’ will help define the ‘how’
So, before thinking about ‘how’ to practice something, we need to first consider the goal we wish to achieve (the ‘what’). This might sound patently obvious, however, frequently I’m convinced that we can embark on a practice strategy without having given due consideration to any end goal other than ‘learn the piece’.
Before starting to practice a new piece, we should therefore clearly define our goals. This might (I’d say almost certainly will in reality) include breaking things down into a whole subset of intermediate goals. Then for each goal, we need to consider the most appropriate strategy to apply in order to achieve that goal. This principle of breaking things down into intermediate goals was the subject of my post on tackling the second cadenza in Liszt’s Liebestraum No. 3.
One size does not fit all
This process becomes even more important when tackling things that present a number of technical difficulties for us. Sitting and practising through something ‘slowly’ almost certainly won’t overcome every type of technical challenge. Equally, not every strategy will work equally well for every person. Someone with smaller hands will almost certainly need to approach practising some passages differently to larger handed colleagues.
If you watch any of my tutorial videos, you’ll see that I like to approach things by identifying what is likely going to be a challenge for me. Then I work out how to overcome that challenge. If necessary, I work out a set of intermediate steps to use to get me there. You can, if you’d like an example, download my study notes for Liszt’s Consolation No. 3.
What will bring the greatest benefit
For me, the major thing is to get the maximum benefit from the time I have available at the piano. Playing through a 10 minute piece at one quarter speed would take me 40 minutes. Most days this would represent more than half of my available practice time. The question then has to be, is that 40 minutes well spent? Without knowing what that 40 minutes was meant to achieve (so what precise goal was I aiming for), then how to ever know?
This is why I’ve come to the firm conclusion that starting our Practice Plan from a set of Goals is the best way to go about it! If you need expert advice on different ways to practice, then I highly recommend Graham Fitch’s eBook Series on Practising Piano. I also have a detailed review you can read to learn more about them.
