How to Practice When You’re Playing Catch Up
Practicing at Steinway’s LA selection room.
It’s been a while since I’ve seriously practiced the piano. I have been away from the keyboard for almost 2 years: my fingers lost their dexterity.
A lot of people have encouraged me that playing the piano again shouldn’t be a problem, that it’s like riding a bicycle.
Let’s imagine you were a marathon runner. You were running 5 miles a day to stay in shape. Suddenly, you stop and start eating nuggets and fries every day. The most physical activity you do now is get up from the bed and brush your teeth.
That was what my fingers were like. They were lazy, coma induced, and sluggish.
To jump back into the game, I had to retrain my fingers. If I didn’t get them back into shape, it would have been impossible to restart my piano career. So how did you do it?
Well, it’s not easy. But if you have Mamba Mentality, patience, and a propensity to ignore an ass with pins and needles, you can get back into marathon shape.
Here are just a few of the steps I took to turn my fingers from overweight sausages into lean, mean, playing machines.
1. Cry
No joke. The first step is to cry. All that hard work you did before? Well, it’s gone and you have to accept the current state you’re in. Just cry, it’s going to be ok. But after wiping away the waterworks, you’re ready to get to work.
2. Play slow
This step is really important. It’s been a while since I played 2-7 hours a day. If I jump back in at 100% velocity, my muscles, ligaments, and tendons couldn’t keep up with the sudden acceleration. Hand injuries were a real possibility and could lead to long-term tendinitis. Play at a grueling slow tempo to get the fingers moving and used to the motions. How slow? Imagine playing each note to the beat of Amazing Grace.
3. Start with scales and etudes
It all goes back to the basics. I went through every single scale on the keyboard for weeks. Hanon and Czerny resurfaced and I also went through some of Chopin’s etudes just so I can knock some life back into my lifeless hands.
After a month of practicing like this, my fingers went from total beginner to a 12-year-old prodigy (not a bad place to be, to be completely honest). Now it was time to learn some real piano music.
What’s real piano music? Well, let’s just say something like Fur Elise is like playing basketball with second graders. A more substantial piece, like a Chopin Sonata, is like playing in the NBA.
Another challenge I faced was the amount of music I needed to learn. I needed to build up to 2 recital programs worth of music (that’s about 3-4 hours of real piano music). On top of that, I needed to learn concertos so that I could play with an orchestra.
Practicing some improvising on the piano.
To learn all this music in a short amount of time, I had to review my notes from my past teachers on how to practice. This is what I did:
1. Pick 5 core pieces a day to work on
If you try to learn everything in one day, you’ll be overwhelmed. Just pick 5 pieces to work on. Then on the next day of practice, switch to another 5. You’ll also be surprised to know that if you don’t play a piece for a day, your brain subconsciously puts things together. When you go back to that piece you played two days ago, it magically becomes easier to play.
2. Only practice in 45-minute stints
You sometimes hear that people can practice hours on end. However, if you ask any great concert musician how much they practice, most of them practice in spurts. For me, I practice for 45 minutes without stopping, then take a 10-minute break. Rinse and repeat (and yes, I play Call of Duty in between each stint).
3. Never play a whole piece through
One thing we love to do as musicians is noodle all day long. Well, if you’re noodling, you aren’t practicing anything. To prevent myself from noodling, I select specific measures, systems, and pages to work on. Sometimes for one piece, I may only work on 4 measures. It’s only after a week that I will put all the fragments together.
4. Try to memorize as fast as possible
If you can memorize your piece immediately, that would be the best way to learn it quickly. Forcing yourself to memorize will prevent you from relying on your score, speeding up the learning process. It also alleviates your eyes from watching the music to watching your fingers move. For the visually impaired, this skill is only amplified compared to seeing pianists. Almost every blind pianist I know memorizes pieces with blazing speed.
5. Always play musically
A lot of teachers believe you should learn the “technique” of a piece first, then play it musically. However, the point of technique is to play musically: technique is the study of how your fingers move to express. So, when you’re practicing slowly, everything should be musical. Otherwise, what’s the point?
As you can see, picking piano back up is not at all like riding a bicycle. There are a ton of steps you have to diligently apply. I’m still working on all these steps every day, but at least I know my playing from 2 months ago is a far cry from what it is now.
What’s your practicing experience and what tips have you picked up? Do you have any questions about practicing? Feel free to DM me on Instagram.
From my most recent practice session at Steinway.