After being a piano teacher for over 20 years–the main thing that I’ve noticed is that unless the piano student has a dedicated parent that makes them practice–it usually doesn’t happen. Even though they may love playing a song they get to choose, when it comes to getting themselves to the piano bench for consistent practice–they usually don’t have the self discipline or time management skills.
I can’t blame piano students as I was not a super consistent practicer either until I became an adult.
I would dabble here and there and everywhere–which I believe is what made me become such a good sight reader. Even though I wasn’t mastering everything my teacher gave me to perfection I was practicing a variety of music from pop to church hymns.
I remember my dad giving me some advice such as …”you need to master one piece before you move on.” He was probably right but being a young girl of 12 when I started piano lessons, I didn’t really listen to him. I just loved playing different music. I got pretty good at my songs but would I call them polished? No. They were just average.
As adults we have I believe much more self awareness than children or even young teens. We know and understand that learning to play the piano takes time, commitment and consistent practice. However, we can fall into the routine of not intentionally creating time each day to practice.
One thing that can really help all piano students become more consistent practicers is to write down their goal to practice each day. It has been researched that if you write a daily task down to accomplish on a regular basis, there is a 42% increase in likelihood that you will complete that task and ultimately your goal. This may sound a little cliche…ya ya we’ve all heard it before, but this is huge! I’m sure we’ve also heard the statement …”a goal not written down is just a wish.”
Why is it such a big deal to write down our daily tasks we want to accomplish. Well it has to do with our brains. Our brains don’t like to figure out a lot of things–probably because there is so much to figure out in our modern 21st century society. When we write our goals down, we are engaging both sides of the brain, the imaginative side, the right hemisphere and the logic based side or the left hemisphere.
As human beings, we tend to be better learners if we can visualize something. Our brain processes visual images 60,000 times faster than if we have to think up and imagine it on our own. When we write down our goals they become visual and this is super powerful in helping us to achieve them.
So piano players if you want to increase your practice time at the piano, do this one thing. Write your goal down to practice the piano however many days a week you would like–I recommend 5 days of practice-but 4 will yield some pretty good results. Post it where you can see it! Get really specific and write down the time of day you would like to set aside and how long your practice session will be. If practicing the piano 30 minutes is too long, you could break it up into two 15 minute sessions or two 20 or 30 minutes sessions. Even 10 minutes a day can produce some really good results.
If you haven’t been practicing–I would start small so the brain can adjust to a new routine. This will set you up for success and you will want to try again the next day.
Please check out NotablePianoLessons.com where I teach piano lessons from the very beginning which you can enjoy from the comfort of your own home via my online video tutorials. Please check out this free tutorial here.
