You're trying to learn a piano piece you love and it's taking months and it's getting dull. In this
video, I want to propose a rule for you to follow when you're practicing piano. That if you really
took to heart and practice with the utmost discipline will help you to learn your songs
and pieces within days, perhaps within hours, rather than weeks or months. On surface level,
this will sound like very common sense talk. But I want to suggest you to stick to the end of the
video to listen to my in-depth explanation and see it in demonstration. I promise this will
be a game changer for you like it is for many of my live students. So here's the rule - when
practicing DO NOT ALLW YOURSELF TO PLAY WRONG NOTES. This rule is so important in my personal
practice. I'm just going to say it one more time, do not allow yourself to play wrong
notes. And I mean this in a relatively strict way. So I want you to imagine you're playing
a game with yourself when you're practicing. And the moment you strike a single wrong note,
it's almost like you'll be electrocuted. Or you that you have to do 100 push-ups
as punishment if you struck even a single wrong note. Let me explain what I mean.
Many of our subscribers or even some of my own students practice in this way. I know
this because I observe them during the lesson and I'm seeing how they work and how they hone their
parts. This is where they're trying a passage for 10th time, trying to kind of nail it on the
11th time. In in my personal opinion this is not the best way to work. It's based on a terrible
but common misconception that as long as you keep playing, keep playing, keep playing you through,
eventually it'll be right and you'll get it. During my college and high school teaching days,
I was required to accompany many soloists I had to learn very complicated piano parts
in short amounts of times to perform or rehearse with these soloists. I would
get the sheet music sometimes just days or maybe even on the day of the performance or
rehearsal. Imagine getting sheet music to a performance 60 minutes prior. How would
you spend that 60 minutes? You could say that through my training, I was forced to really
think about how to spend little time to churn out lots of music. Here's what I found in my
training in my 20 years of piano playing experience. When you're practicing piano,
your hands and your brain will retain whatever you execute on the keyboard. If you practiced like
this... If you did that, for let's say seven times. On the
eighth time of trying to execute this, it's likely your hands will
do the same thing. If you practiced however like this, which is the wrong
way you know if you screw up the notes something like this. If you
allow unmindfulness and allow your hands to execute wrong notes like that, it's very hard
for your brain to understand and know what you want it to retain. As you're practicing,
when you attempt a passage 10 times and you play those 10 times slightly differently each
time,
your brain gets very confused. It is not sure what exactly you want it to learn. It says
to you "Excuse me, Mr. Pianist. Excuse me, Miss Pianist. It seems to me you're wanting me to learn
and retain a certain sequence of finger movements. However you've demonstrated this passage 10 times
but slightly differently each time. Which one do you want me to retain? Imagine going to a dance
class and needing to learn a simple 10-second choreograph. The dance instructor stands in front
of you and goes "Okay this is how you do it." She demonstrates it 10 times for you to watch
and learn. However in each of the 10 times, she does her choreograph slightly differently each
time. Wouldn't that be a little bit confusing for you? Unfortunately, this is how a lot of
people practice piano. They unmindfully practice passages in very different ways. Every time they
strike and their brain gets very confused about what it needs to retain. So here's my method.
PLAY A GAME WITH YOURSELF. I want you to practice in small enough sections that you can guarantee
100% note accuracy. And don't worry about the beat or the rhythm for now. Once you can do 7
times in a row without any note errors, 7 times in a row then you can expand or extend these
sections.
This is a piece I literally just learned this morning it's one of Schubert's impromptu and
there's a lot of passages that help you work on scales if you like the sound of it please go
and try this one so let's play the game the game is to let's say start with four measures a very
small section we're going to try hands together first let me show you what the goal should be
first
100% note accuracy so if you're doing something like this let's say you're
practicing and you're making some errors here and
there let's say if you make errors two or three times in a row we want to know that
there is a reason for that we must put our ego aside and just admit that there
currently is a level of coordination that our brain is not quite getting just yet
it will eventually I promise but not in the this current moment if you're making
mistakes we need to reduce that level of coordination for our brains to prioritize
success we either reduce it to two measures or maybe even one measure or maybe do hand
separately so let's say if we reduce it to one measure it might look something like [Music]
this and we will just hone that we will make sure we can do it 100% correctly it's
not just seven times not just small sections but it's seven times it's small sections and
they have to be 100% correct so as I said before either reduce the number of measures or do hand
separately try to teach your hands exactly what it needs to do and rinse and repeat in
exactly the same way that you executed the last time remember the R do not allow yourself to
play wrong notes give your brain the correct information it needs every single time so it
knows what to remember it knows what to retain in your hands I would practice that passage for seven
times if you play a single wrong note in that seven times it unfortunately means you haven't
quite understood that part enough and you need to restart you need to make sure you play through
seven times in a row correctly before you can move on only when you can do seven times in a
row without a wrong note can you say confidently that you got it not three times not five times not
seven times out of 15 tries but seven times in a row whilst you're doing this forget about Rhythm
for a second so for example one of my sections down here in the E flat minor part sounds like
this when I was practicing this part I actually made eight measures my little
section and I practice in this particular way I did this I paused and I tried to prepare each
transition pause to
think pause to
think pause to think pause to think pause to think you get the idea so it's always prioritizing
success I don't allow myself to play a single wrong note I forgo Rhythm and beats for now in
each difficult part I just give my brain a little bit of a rest to make sure I actually understand
the coordination I need to execute the next Parts because I remember that every single note I strike
on the piano is some of it is getting retained so I don't want to retain anything wrong I want
to retain all the right stuff and if I rinse and repeat like this suddenly I know the parts very
quickly within 5 minutes within 10 minutes because I've done it correctly seven times in a row if you
have the discipline to really do this properly you will find this works like magic you'll magically
learn passages and sections and entire pieces very quickly because for once you're finally
giving your brain always the correct information to retain into your muscle memory rather than just
giving it correct information sometimes if you progressively build on this method Lego piece by
Lego piece you will have a magnificent structure by the end of that practice session compound this
over 7 days you would have learned the entire piece and perfected it I've talked about this
method in another video I called it the a AR method the absolute accuracy rule I advise
you to really try this really take this seriously sometimes people say this is a little bit boring
I personally think you're doing yourself a huge disservice if you don't practice in this way
lots of people practice in that kind of trial and error way practice it 10 times try to nail it by
the 11th time and they compound this over weeks and months and I find they eventually hate their
piece I rather you let's say just suffer for 5 to 10 minutes using this method and actually
retain your love and passion for the piece because you actually get it in your hands pretty quickly
please try this method and let me know in the comments how you go if you have other ways of
practicing that works for you please share in the comments too I would love to learn from you and
our pianists around the world would love to learn from you as well that's it for today's lesson if
you have any other piano questions please let us know in the comments catch you in the next piano
tutorial