Practice Techniques
Train your mind instead of your fingers.
Transform the music you are playing and find interesting accidental combinations.
Your initial formula for navigating practice will be:
C!TY
- C - Count Ouloud
- ! - !nverting
- T - Transposing
- Y - You time
1. Counting Out Loud
Fast and Slow
- Getting a good grasp of the rhythm slowly is crucial
- Use the metronome to push yourself to a higher pace
- Slow practice is good, but you also have to be able to play fast. (See how fast you can play, and increase the tempo on your next practice session)
2. Transpose
Travelling Near, traveling Far
- Starting with easy pieces, transpose your piece to other key signatures
- Imagine a Tonality (a.k.a., a key like C Major) is like a country or a family with different people. Some countries or families have overlapping individuals (Chords). See more on Music Theory on our Resources page.
- On the white keys:
- C major - All white keys
- D major - has F# and C# (This is near)
- E major - has F#, G#, and C#, D#
- F major - has Bb (Flat)
- G major - has F#
- A major - has F#, G# and C#
- B major- has C#, D#, and F#, G#, A# (This is Far)
3. !nverting
Right over left, left over right
- This is an incredible exercise that will make you smarter and more aware.
- Inverting hands - Play with your left what you would with your right, and viceversa.
4. YOU time
Building Up, Building Down
- Have fun making patterns from your own music transforming them to create interesting combinations.
- Never repeat mindlessly the same passage the same way.
- Find little building blocks in your music and make a pattern out of them that can be repeated using a different starting key.
- Change the pattern slightly. Have fun changing the notes around, inverting them, changing the rhythm, playing it backwards. E.g. just like a word can be inverted — breakfast to tsafkaerb- you can invert the notes in a melody and hear something very interesting.
- Repeat rhythmical and melodic patters starting on different keys.
- Use both hands- first with identical notes, then mirrored.
- Invert the melody or the rhythm. If the notes go up, down, up, up. You play down, up, down, down.
- Overlapping patterns- start a pattern with the right and enter in the middle of if with the left hand (more advanced)
5. Memorize (Extra step to make yourself more alert and smarter)
You'll never play to your maximum potential until you can detach yourself from what you are looking at.
Memorizing is the ultimate step towards internalizing a piece of music, or anything else.
- Start by memorizing small passages every day.
- Set a target of memorizing one small piece every day. Doesn't matter how well. The more you do it, the better it'll get.
- The beauty of memorizing music is that, there's no argument on whether you know the piece perfectly or not.
- We'll have another section on how to prepare for performance. Sometimes, unexpected things happen and you must be ready.
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