Are you tired of feeling like your piano practice sessions are lacking focus and direction? Do distractions constantly creep in, leaving you feeling unmotivated and frustrated? Well, fret no more because I have a phenomenal video that will transform the way you approach your piano practice! Trust me, you won’t want to miss this one!
Introducing my latest YouTube masterpiece: “5 Quick Tips That Make Piano Practice EASY & PRODUCTIVE.” 🚀🎵
In this video, I’ve gathered the most powerful, actionable tips to supercharge your piano practice routine like never before. I dive into the nitty-gritty of setting long-term and short-term goals, ensuring your practice sessions are purposeful and rewarding.
But that’s not all! I’m also bringing you the genius of the Pomodoro technique, a productivity marvel that will keep you laser-focused throughout your entire practice session. I’ve also got expert advice on honing in on those pesky problem areas in your exercises and songs. With my proven strategies, you’ll conquer even the most challenging passages and overcome any stumbling blocks.
Picture this: You, sitting at your piano, armed with newfound knowledge and inspiration, ready to conquer the keys and achieve greatness! 🎹💪
But hey, let’s not stop there! We’re a community, and I want to hear from each and every one of you. Swing by the comments section and share your biggest struggles when it comes to practicing the piano. We’re all in this together, and I’m here to support you!
So, what are you waiting for? Grab your favorite beverage, settle into your piano oasis, and get ready to revolutionize your practice routine like never before!
Remember, greatness awaits those who dare to pursue it. Let’s embark on this incredible journey together!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION:
Listen, there’s a really big difference between playing the piano and practicing the piano, and I have a feeling you love to play the piano, but you don’t love to practice the piano. Listen, it happens to the best of us, and I’m completely guilty of this too. I just want to play and play and play and skip all the boring practice. But if we did that, we would never make any progress, unfortunately. So in this video, I’m going to cover five important tips that I’ve learned over the years on how to be incredibly productive during your practice and how to make it feel so easy and clear. When I was in music school, I had to practice for hours and hours and hours every single day. So over time, I have really figured this thing out and I’m ready to share it with you today. By the way, be sure to stay to the end because I have a really big surprise that you’re going to find extremely helpful, trust me.
And if you’d like to get more videos on how to go from zero to playing your favorite songs in months, not years, be sure to hit the bell and subscribe to be notified every single time I post a video. All right, so let’s get into it. What we’re going to do is set long-term goals and then work backwards. I like to make quarterly goals, then push them into monthly, weekly, and into daily goals. And because of this, I know exactly what to practice every single day. So for example, someone who is taking my online piano course might be wanting to learn Easy On Me by Adele. That might be one of their quarterly goals. Then they might back up and say, actually, I think I can learn that in one month. Of course, they’re going to be adding other songs to their quarterly goals, they’re not only going to learn one song. But they might think they could learn this song in one month.
So let’s say they want to learn that song this month. Then they would break that down into weekly goals until they reach completion of this song. So here’s an example of what I mean by that. In week one, they might just learn the melody with their right hand. In week two, they might start speeding up that right-hand melody and then they might start learning the left-hand notes or the left-hand chords. In week three, they might have a goal to put their hands together, and in week four, they’ll polish the song and make it musical by adding dynamics, the pedal and singing perhaps and so on. Now that they’ve laid out exactly what they want to do each week, we can actually narrow that down even further into what they’re going to do each practice session. So for example, if we’re in week one where we’re back learning just the right hand, we might make it a goal just to learn one page of the right hand.
The next day we might learn page two and also practice page one, and then play them together and so forth. This is an example of breaking it from quarter to month to week to day, and with this, you’ll know exactly what to practice based on your goals, and you won’t waste time doing anything else. Now that you’ve set up all of your goals, I recommend using something called the Pomodoro Technique. Now, you won’t hear this advice very much in the piano world, but I actually use it all the time. So what is this? The Pomodoro technique is really hard to say sometimes, but it helps you resist all of your distractions and just focus on one thing for a certain period of time. The technique has six steps, and here’s what those six steps are.
One, decide what the task is that you want to do. Two, you’re going to set the timer. Typically, this is 25 minutes. Three, you’ll work on the task for those 25 minutes. Four, you’re going to stop all of the work when the timer ends and take a break for five to 10 minutes. Five, if you finish fewer than three Pomodoros, go back to step two and repeat three more times. Or really for piano practice, just do it as much as you want. Number six, after three Pomodoros are done, you’re going to take a really long break, and realistically, for most people, you might not do three of them, but the point of this is to set a timer for 25 minutes or a timer for 10 minutes or however long and focus on that one thing.
I use pomofocus.io all the time. I use it all the time every single day with piano and all kinds of different things. You can also buy one at Amazon or any store has tons of cool ones. Here’s an example, and I’ll link this in the description, and you could have this sitting on your piano. So number three, my third tip is now that you’ve got your goals, you’ve got your timer, here’s some examples of what to do while your timer is going on. So for example, you could be practicing different cord exercises for the 25 minutes or the 10 minutes or whatever you decide to set for your Pomodoro timer. Or during your Pomodoro timer, you could be working on a very small part of a song.
Now, listen carefully. Practicing productively is so important with this tip that I’m about to give you. This is the most important one so you must listen to me right now. Focus in on the problem areas of a song. So playing a song is when you start from the beginning and you just go and go and go and go and keep going and mess up a lot and keep going. But practicing a song is focusing on what you really need to work on. So you might start at the end of the song. You might start in the middle of the song. It doesn’t matter. You’re focusing in on the problem areas. So for example, let’s say I was learning A Thousand Miles by Vanessa Carlton, and I wanted to get that main lick of the song down really good. Here’s an example of what that would look like with my Pomodoro timer on.
All right. As you can see, I slowly added little pieces bit by bit while I was learning this very famous lick of that song. I added one note at a time. I focused on the problem area first because I did not know that part. I did not start at the beginning. What I did was I focused in on that one goal of learning that lick of A Thousand Miles. So again, if you take nothing else from this video, take this. Focus on the problem areas first. Do not start from the beginning over and over. All right, tip number four might be really obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t do this. Listen to the song. Listen to the song that you’re learning. Listen to it at a regular speed, or I recommend also even slowing it down. And here’s an example of how to do that on YouTube.
If you slow it down, you can play along with it. And beginners, this will help you a lot because it will help you keep a steady beat. Then you can work your way up to playing the song at its regular speed. All right, my fifth tip and my surprise is this. Do you love all these tips, but have nowhere to track it all? Insert my Pianoly practice planner. Not only is this a fantastic planner where you can write your long-term, weekly and all the way down to daily goals on the piano, but it tells you exactly what to practice every single day to accelerate your progress, and gives you a cheat sheet on how to learn your favorite songs very quickly within just one week.
So grab that free practice planner at the link in the description below. And before we go, let me know in the comments what do you struggle with about practicing? Let me know. And if you’d like more videos on how to go from zero to playing your favorite songs on the piano in months not years, be sure to hit the bell and subscribe because I post videos every Friday and I will see you next time.
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