10 Minute Practice Routine for BUSY Adults – Beginner Piano Lesson

Being busy is the number one reason why most people never learn the piano. Today, I’m going to show you exactly what to practice if you only had 10 minutes. If you only have 10 minutes a day, you can still learn the piano. Trust me. And if you’d like to get more videos on how to go from zero to learning your favorite songs on the piano fast, be sure to hit the bell and subscribe because I post new videos every week. And if you feel lost and you don’t have a roadmap for how to learn the piano, I highly recommend watching my free training. In this training, I’m going to show you the exact steps that I take my students through that helps them learn their favorite songs fast. The link is in the description below.

All right. Let’s get into it. Why is 10 minutes still effective when you’re trying to learn the piano? Imagine this. Every time you practice the piano, your brain is forming a map, and in that map is the movements required to play the piano. It’s like creating a musical blueprint in your mind. This is where the magic of daily practice comes in. When you practice every day, you reinforce those neural connections in your brain. Your muscles remember the movements, and then it becomes second nature. So it’s better to practice even 10 minutes a day than once a week for five hours because your brain really needs to process everything you are learning while you’re sleeping. That way it can really build the muscle memory needed to learn how to play the piano. So whether you’re working on scales, arpeggios, or a beautiful song, it’s really important to practice every single day, even for just 10 minutes. Trust me on this.

So let’s say you only have 10 minutes a day. This is what I’m going to show you in this video exactly what I would practice if I only had 10 minutes. The first thing I would do is practice some warm-ups like scales. Scales are so important because scales help you basically get good at everything. Just practice a few scales a day. You don’t need to practice a ton. And I do have a really helpful scales video already that you can watch, so I would definitely check that out.

But really quickly, here’s an example of what you could do with scales in just 10 minutes. Just go over a few, like I said. I always tell my students to learn the D flat major scale first because your fingers curve around at the same time. So as you notice, my thumbs are landing on F together, and then we’ve got fingers two, three, and four, they’re both doing the same thing at the same time. But if you learned C major first, for example, your hands are going to be curving at different times, which is really hard for beginners. So you can see me doing that right now.

All right. So let’s work on some scales. I’m going to do D flat first. And you’re going to want to keep a good steady beat. So today I’m going to go over D flat, like I just did, and then maybe I could go over D major. And then I could do one more. I’ll add C major. Now, of course, you could get more advanced with your scales and you could play two octaves, you could play three octaves, you could play four octaves. You could use the metronome and keep getting faster and faster with your scales. But if you’re a beginner, just try one octave. That’s enough.

All right. Right after you play your scales, you want to practice your arpeggios as well. So I’m going to do some arpeggios in the keys that I just showed you. So I’m going to do D flat. These are the correct fingerings for D flat. And then I’m going to do D major because I did that one as well. And C major. Now, I recommend this scale book all the time and I’m going to recommend it again. It’s going to give you all the correct fingerings for your scales and arpeggios. And if you’re starting to get bored with scales and arpeggios, then I also recommend checking out this video. I made you guys some really fun warm-ups that you could also try.

All right. Once you’re done going over two or three arpeggios, let’s practice some chords. This is so important. Do not skip it. If I only had 10 minutes, I would just jump straight into practicing the chords and all of their inversions. So for example, if I was playing the C major chord and practicing that one, I’m going to practice C major and every single inversion. So this is root position. Then I would do first inversion, second inversion, back to root, then come back down. So watch that again. So just like with the scales and arpeggios, I’d go over some cords with all of their inversions, just maybe two or three. And another really great video on inversions is this one.

So all of what we just did might only take a few minutes. So then we’re going to try to squeeze in a little bit of music. I recommend that my students learn about two to four songs at a time. But let’s say you only have 10 minutes a day, seriously, then I would maybe learn one or two songs at a time. Before I show you how to practice your songs, let me know in the comments, do you feel like being busy prevents you from learning the piano? Let me know in the comments and let me know if you have found any solutions to that.

All right. So of course, when we learn the piano, we want to learn some songs that we love, right? So I actually have my students learn music from lead sheets. So I’m going to show you what a lead sheet is right now. Here is an example of a lead sheet. And you might notice that there’s actually only the treble clef or the right hand notes. We do not have a bass clef or the left hand when you’re playing a lead sheet, but we do have the chords. So basically with a lead sheet, your right hand plays the melody and your left hand’s going to play these chords right here. So most jazz pianists and pop pianists play from lead sheets. I teach my students how to play from lead sheets because, one, it’s a lot easier and you can be a lot more creative with it. You can make your own arrangement of the song.

So when you’re learning a brand new song and say you only have 10 minutes, try to read through the whole song just one time when you’re reading through the first time. So I’m going to read through All of Me by John Legend, and I’m just going to do my right hand first. And then it starts getting into more of the melody here. Then I would keep going, and I’d keep reading that right hand melody. And then I would practice my left hand separately. So again, the left hand is just playing the chords. And to make it a little bit more simple, I’m just going to play the fifths of the chord because, one, John Legend does this a lot in the song and you can see it in the music, and if I’m just reading it through the first time, that’s a little bit easier. And so on.

Then I’m going to try it hands together, but I’m only going to do it in small chunks. I’m not going to try to do the whole song. And that might be the small chunk that I focus on. And then I would keep practicing it and make that little chunk better. So in a 10-minute practice session, you might get through a few little small chunks, which is actually a lot because a lot of popular music repeats a lot. So actually, even if you just learn a verse in one 10-minute practice session, guess what? All the verses are usually the same, the exact same. So then actually you’ve probably learned several minutes of that song. And then say the next day you only learn the chorus of All of Me by John Legend. Well, guess what? Now you know the verse and the chorus.

So that is what I would do if I only had 10 minutes to practice. Like I said, it’s better to practice for 10 minutes a day than five hours on Sunday or one day of the week because you really need to get that muscle memory built in your brain. Sometimes when I’m practicing and I’m having trouble with something, I will just be like, “Okay. This is all I can learn today. I’ll sleep on it.” My brain processes everything I practice while I’m sleeping, and then the next day I’m actually a lot better at it. The brain is amazing.

So like I said, if all of this sounds really cool, but you need more of a roadmap on how to learn the piano, I highly recommend watching my free training. I show you the exact steps that I take my students through that helps them go from zero to playing their favorite songs on the piano in months, not years. The link is in the description below. Before you head out, be sure to subscribe and like this video if it helped you, and I will see you next time.