The key to becoming a successful pianist? what do i need to remember most while

Question:hey everyone i've never been the smartest person in school and i'am certainly no doctor i'am a musican and i just wonted to know what should i start to work on remembering as i begin to learn how to play the piano. should i focus mostly on learning chords first? or maybe memerizing the noted first or what? some advice is much needed:) thx everyone

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: hey everyone i've never been the smartest person in school and i'am certainly no doctor i'am a musican and i just wonted to know what should i start to work on remembering as i begin to learn how to play the piano. should i focus mostly on learning chords first? or maybe memerizing the noted first or what? some advice is much needed:) thx everyone

The most important thing in practicing is conscious thinking! It is that simple... nothing else. Nothing works unless we are 100% involved in our practice. We including myself all say we focus when we practice. Yeah, sure we do.... the truth is we don't. We can practice (play) the piano for an hour and in that hour accomplish nothing! That hour goes by so quickly that we don't remember what we did or in that hour it goes by so slowly because we can't resolve a mistake.

Practice should make us mentally exhausted. If you are fully committed to practicing, you should be exhausted when done! How do we do this? By actively telling ourselves what to practice! We have to vocalize what we are doing. Tell ourselves to slow practice, count out loud, sing the melody... when looking at harmonies, tell yourself the harmony you are playing? This will help you retain it and memorize it. How often do you see a cadence and just play it, never identifying it? Probably lots. I know I use to! But the key is to say V7 to 1 in the key of Eb major... or tell yourself the voicings and resolutions. Now some of you may think this is tedious - ok... it can be if you are not use to it, but how on earth do you remember all those notes and notations? The more you can tell yourself, the better off you will be. The more items in a piece you can identify, the stronger the memory.

Speaking of memory - it should not be the last thing you do! so many teachers ask a student to learn a piece, put it hands together, then dynamics then memory.... what a waste. You do all that at once. Memory begins the day you touch a piece. The first note you learn, memorize it. Tell yourself the finger, tell yourself the dynamic... everything.

Memory = Complete Knowledge and Understanding of a Piece

Memory means you know the entire piece, every inch of it, every fingering, every dynamic, every articulation... go ahead, try it... what ever piece you are playing right now, go to the piano and start on measure 28.... can you do that? If you can't you don't have a piece memorized. We itemize our practicing too much.... combine your practice but do it consciously. Always reminding yourself what you are playing and how to play it.

When you make a mistake... there are 4 steps in correcting it...

1. Identify the mistake
2. figure out why you made the mistake (fingering error? too fast? wrong rhythm? etc...)
3. Identify a method of resolving the mistake (solutions)
4. Practice your solutions.

Now here is the thing... you are allowed to make mistakes! Its okay to screw up a passage... none of us are perfect, and when we learn a piece we can't expect a perfect practice. However once you make the mistake you have to mentally tell yourself never to do it again and to fix it. I tell my students, you can make a mistake once or twice.. after that its not a mistake - in fact the more times you make the same mistake you are practicing it! Your mistake is getting better because you practice it instead of fixing it.

Memory happens while you practice. Every time you practice you are reinforcing memory. Memory is not the last thing you do. Hands separate work is memory. Counting out loud is memory. Using dynamics is memory - but again, I stress the importance of telling yourself what you are doing!

Music is 90% Mental and 10% Physical. Your mind tells your fingers what to do, not the other way around. You are in control, tell yourself to listen to the phrase and react to it. Tell yourself to practice slowly.... Tell Tell Tell... that is the key.

Slow practice, counting, hands separate are useless unless you are consciously telling yourself to do that... Other wise you are wasting time.

When starting a piece
1. Hands Separate Counting Out Loud
2. Determine the best fingering for passages
3. Always practice legato even if it says staccato so your fingers can develop muscle memory and depth in the key.
4. Once the hands are learned separate, put hands together, still counting and add dynamics.
5. Add articulations

Its not this simple but this is a good way to start! If you are conscious the entire time, reminding yourself what to do, telling yourself how to practice, identifying notes, patterns, dynamics, phrases... then by step 5 all will be memorized! Trust me... incorporate your practice with your mind. Its the only way to be successful at this.

Tips to help secure a piece:
You should always know what key you are in.
Practice all passage work slowly, memorizing the fingering.
Memorize in large sections - no patterns, sequences, look out for repeated sections and understand the form of the piece.
Practice without pedal so you clearly hear every note
Be able to sing all parts of the piece by memory out loud
Be able to start any where in the piece.

The mistakes you make when you play, again are because of detail and are usually a mental thing. When you make a mistake you must over come it consciously, not physically. Playing it over and over won't help. You need to tell yourself what the mistake was, why it happened and how to fix it. Mistakes are preventable, they are not accidents. Mistakes are caused by errors in practicing and preparation. Do not be fooled that mistakes are accidents. In music there are never accidents. Mistakes are also the result of a lack of focus and concentration.

Everything leads back to how you prepare for a piece. The first thing is to practice with detail - always do slow practice, practice more hands separate than hands together. Be humble, understand that even when you are done practicing, there is more to do. You never know a piece well enough until you can write it out on staff paper with every single marking and notation on the page. Horowitz would tell students in master class that knowing a score means you can notate the entire score out with every marking and that memory represents complete understanding of the piece.

Often students and teachers think memory is memorizing the notes and being able to play it back. This is wrong. Memory is the complete knowledge of a piece - notes are only 10%. You must know all the articulation marks, all the rests, every phrase marking, every dynamic, every fingering, note values, pedal marks... etc. Everything on the page, including the page numbers should be known.

This type of detail separates those who are great artists and professionals from those who are amateurs. Musicians with concerts, faculty positions, touring dates are those who respect the music and give it every ounce of focus and detail it requires. I suggest you look into the way you prepare. I often get this question when I do guest lectures from students and teachers and the root always comes down to how someone practices.

Please do not underestimate yourself. Being a musician requires REAL TALENT. If it is your desire to become a pianist, it means you already inheritee a real talent; i.e. an innate talent and you should consider yourself a very fortunate person.

What you should concentrate most in piano is TIMING. Timing other makes you or breaks you. It's (if I may make an analogy) the heart and soul of music. Passion and tenacity are other requirements. I wish you good luck and remember that you, in fact, can be even smarter than a doctor. You just don't know it yet. Good luck and perhaps one day I'll attend one of your concert. You'll never know.

start with the basic notes. try playing some beginner songs, and work up from there

Well I'll tell you how I have made leaps and bounds of improvement in my piano playing...
1. If you are trying to impress people, stop.
2. Play the piano because you are passionate about it
3. Pay great attention to detail
4. Fast practice=slow progress, slow practice= fast progress.
You can improve so much on your own however if you need help on what piano pieces to play and on piano playing technique you should get a teacher (if you dont already have one.)