You want to achieve great results on the piano but you find practice tiring slow and boring.
You hear of people practicing four hours a day and you wonder 'how does that even happen?'. Hi
everyone! My name is Jazer. I play the piano and in this video I'm going to share with you 3 ways
that I make my practice less boring and more interesting. When you apply the principles in
this video, you're going to start to have very interesting and engaging practice sessions.
And I promise you time will just fly so quickly when you're practicing. The first tip for today
is rhythmic variations. Now guys, if there's one thing I want you to take away from this video,
it should be this number one thing - rhythmic variations. I love doing this one. It's so
fun. It's so educative. Let's see how it works. I'm gonna use Bach as musical examples today. A
shout out to Bach. He is one of the greatest of all time. He's one of the GOATs. Please
study Bach because studying Bach will turn you from a normal musician to a fantastic
musician.
So, how do dotted rhythms work? Instead of doing this...
...you can do this.
I really love this one. This gives your brain a really fun and interesting challenge. You know it
gives you a new perspective to play the piece. Go and try this one. I'll quickly also show you three
other ways that I used to practice this piece. So the first one I showed you was the dotted.
The other one you can do is called the reverse dotted. The reverse
dotted... so it's literally turned around. So short, long, short, long.
So next one is the long, short, short, short. It sounds like this.
And the final one is the short, short, short, long. This one is very helpful.
Now these variations are not going to work on every single piece you play. But if you
have a piece that has lots of legato (fast notes) this is a very good exercise to do on those parts
to increase security and evenness. You know the reason we do these variations is because we don't
want to practice in a mundane way. Where we you know come to the piano and we just play through
something mindlessly several times, I know what that feels like. You know, you sort of approach
practice with more of a sense of obligation. Like 'Oh I have to do it' as opposed to desire like 'I
want to do it because it's interesting'. Lots of students complain to me about how
practice is boring. And you know when I get the chance to observe how they practice, I tell them
"No wonder. You know because your practice method currently is not very interesting. It's a little
bit routine and mundane and there's no room for experimenting in creativity." It's not your
fault. You just need to be taught some new and interesting ways to practice. And here's a really
good way - rhythmic variations. Go and try this. These variations are not just fun and they're
actually really educative experiences. Because when you practice them, you are doing a great
study on the connection points of each note to the next note. When you practice all these variations,
your connection points between each note to the next note becomes really strong. And when they
become really strong, you start to develop a great sense of security and evenness to your playing.
In the past, I made a PDF of the 10 most useful rhythm variations that I use. I made it for myself
but i want to share this with you, too. So, you can download it for free in the description. Tip
number 2 today is to study different pieces. Now this might sound like generic and simple advice.
But you'll be surprised at how many people don't consider the importance of learning more pieces,
building your repertoire. They go to the piano and they just go on autopilot mode. Days they sit
there and they just whip out the piece they've been playing for nine months and they just do
it mindlessly for half an hour, and they call that practice. You know, it's not a surprise
that it's not long before they start to feel a bit bored. They fail to realize that if they just play
through that one piece, they are not challenging their brains with new music and new concepts. I
generally study between four to six pieces at any one time. I find this works really well for me it
keeps things really interesting. Practicing a few pieces also keeps me really accountable
because I know that if i don't sit on the piano and start practicing, I'm going to start to lose
the mastery of those notes. There's something in psychology called "the Loss Aversion Theory".
And that's this idea that we are more motivated to not want to lose something as opposed to gain
something. So, for example, when someone gives you a thousand dollars, you're pretty happy.
You go, "Wow, thanks dude!" But if I were to tell you someone stole a thousand dollars
from you. You would be pretty sad. In fact, you'd be furious. So Loss Aversion Theory is
all about being more motivated not to lose something, as opposed to gain something.
So I use this to my advantage when I'm practicing piano. If let's say I'm practicing six pieces,
I want to keep practicing so that I learn them properly and keep them in my fingers. I don't
want to lose them. And I fear losing them so that really motivates me to practice. in fact,
it's much easier if I simply just practice it even for five minutes today. As opposed to not doing it
for, let's say, three or four days and then having to recover it later. Last tip I have for you today
is a potentially counter-intuitive one. So, let's see what you think about this. And that
is to limit your practice time. Put a cap on how much you can practice. You might be thinking
'What? Am I supposed to practice more? Jazer, why are you telling me to practice less?"
I want to tell you a story when i was in a conservatory in music school. There were
these available rooms that we could book to practice but they would always be booked out.
Like immediately when the roster comes out, and even when you could book them, it was only
an hour. So when i was a student, i always wanted to book rooms because I needed to practice to get
better. And every time I could actually get one of these rooms and I had that room for an hour.
I felt the time in there was so incredibly valuable that I got my best practice out of those
times. And it made me realize something it made me realize that I was being incredibly efficient
in that one hour, compared to two or three hours in my own home piano. So the reason I want you
to try this challenge is because I want you to challenge and question your efficiency when it
comes to practicing. Are you just playing through the notes mindlessly because you know you need to?
Or are you actually looking at details at dynamics and articulations and structure and individual
notes and what the overall sound sounds like? When you put a cap or a limit on your practice hours,
you shift from just passing time to hardcore essential work mode. I find that very helpful so
I think you should try that, too. this is really good for students to try. So if you are a parent
or a teacher, you might like to try this with your kids. Just tell them 'Hey, you only have half an
hour to practice today. You are not allowed to practice past that half an hour." And just see
what happens. There you go. Those are my 3 tips for how to keep practice interesting. Do you
agree with them? Do you disagree with them? Let me know in the comments. Share with us,
too. Do you have any great tips for how you keep your practice interesting? I would love to learn
from you, too. Remember to LIKE and SUBSCRIBE to this channel. I will catch you in the next video.
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