Piano Structural Practice Routine.

We've been asked to show our structured practice routine. So I might as well post about my habits about practicing before presenting how I do it during the actual assessment itself.

FIRST INSTRUMENT: Piano

The first Instrument I will make reference to is the Piano.

ISSUES I FACED

Being a Solo, Full-Fledged Classical Music, I do come across some issues even as a professional. Where Pieces are meant to be in strict time, I sometimes have the tendency to throw off my timing accidentally. Everytime I come for Performance class, What I do is to Tap my foot along while playing with the metronome. As I progress further, that tapping is gradually less used as I can play in time.

In the past, I also faced problems on Postures. Which I'll discuss it later.

FINGER EXERCISE AND POSTURES

Before starting warm ups on a real piano, Get a Flat Surface like a Table Or Desk in your room something like that. The first thing to do or your fingers will get stiff and tired is to stretch 'em. To play good, your posture also needs to good, comfortable for you to play.

With your Fingers tipped and your base of your palm flat on the surface, run by tapping 1,2,3,4,5,4,3,2,1 fingers while keeping the base flat. Tap strongly so you can hear the obvious volume, showing that your fingers have strength.

But, keep your fingers curved. You don't play with flat hands. Most players will find this an issue when they first start learning.

Caution: Whenever it hurts anywhere, STOP!

SCALES AND APPEGGIOS

Throughout my entire course as a musician, scales were part of the examinations in ABRSM although I didn't need to be tested in the Trinity Guildhall Exams on LTCL and FTCL. The thing about scales and appeggios that in some scenarios, it really helps when there are fast passages involving both of them. In classical and romantic music, especially, there ARE PLENTY of these passages! Once you get the hang of all the notes and the relatively comfortable fingering, you can handle these without too much trouble.

OK! How do you go about Scales and Appeggios:

The Most Obvious thing is to recognize the notes in that scale or appeggio, memorizing it inside your head and keep it in check. Go through each one a couple of times on getting the notes then you can attempt to play it. Some ABRSM Books will come in handy, depending on your grade.

For a start, after recognizing the notes, you should run through the scale or appeggio slowly with separate hands while keeping time with the metronome. Have the metronome on with you, preferbly electronic one. At the same time, find a suitable Fingering which is comfortable for you where you will not slip. Refer to the scales and appeggio ABRSM books. They have a standard, set fingering you need to follow, especially when taking exams.

General Fingering:
Black Key Scales except G-Flat/F-Sharp you'll start on a 3rd Finger on LH, 2 on Right. Land on 1 on the first white keys in that scale.
Whites except B you'll start on your end fingers(Pinky for LH, Thumb for RH).

Choromatics:
As the saying goes: 3 on black, 1 on white, 1 and 2 on adjacent whites. Nothing too hard about it.

Test and experiment with the fingering SLOWLY with seperate Hands. Once you have a fingering that's comfy and easy to use, you can slowly speed it up while still keeping the beat.

When you are comfy enough with seperate hands, go ahead, try and see whether you can coordinate with both hands on the keyboard. Not easy right? If you cannot handle it, slow down, slow down, slow down. Get it used to, then speed up once you are satisfied with it.

If you wanna modify these, you can Go up/down the scales in different keys, same as appeggios, change the tempo, etc.

You should make a habit to practice the scales at least 3 times a week. More is definitely much better. You just need only about 20 minutes to half an hour each time. As examinations draw near however, it makes more obvious sense to increase the frequency of practices.

Here are several types of Scales you can always try apart from your Normal Major and Minor scales:
Jazz Minor (All 12 Keys for you to try!)
Blues Scale (all 12 Keys for you to try!)
Whole Tone (all 12 keys for you to try!)
Scales on thirds on C (Standard in Grade 7 and 8)
Church Modes (all if you can!)
Contrary Motion Scales* - (Standard in most intermediate and higher grades)

Contrary Motion Scales basically start from the middle note. While your Right Hand goes up, your left goes down. This is one of the standard scale types on Grade 8. Not just Diatonically, there's even Chromatics on Contrary Motions. If you play contemperary music involving playing solos on top, you can utilise them.

Appeggios:
Dominant 7ths Appeggios (Standard Scales and Appeggios Syllabus)
Diminish Sevenths Appeggios (Standard Scales and Appeggios Syllabus)
Contrary Appeggios in 2 octaves(try all 12 keys!)

STUDIES

To be able to play standard repetiore, you need some particular pieces and other resources you can use as a base for your exercise. Say you are some advanced player. You can always try on some studies to practice articulation. Like me, Chopin's Etudes (Another name for Study) like Black Key Study ior "Ocean" s one that you can use for practice which for this purpose, will be Demo-ed for the class. Some Short but manageable pieces for your level.

Beginners can use these booklet exercise like Czerny, J Hanon, Burgmuller, etc. Likewise, pick songs and tunes that are short but manageable but also helps you to practice Timing, Articulation, Accuracy and where possible.

How to get through when playing these pieces for the first time???? Well, read on the Standard Repetiore.

STANDARD REPETIORE

Your graded exams will definitely have set pieces you can pick. But this practice method I'm going to share not just apply to them, it also applies to songs that you really want to learn.

Scan through the score and look through for all the various Patterns, Repetitions, scales and appeggio passages that you can find. There's bound to be some similarity in some parts of the song. This part's like sight reading, so for sight reading, this also applies here.

If you are learning the piece for the first time, after scanning through, Sight read (analysing Patterns, and how you should interpret the piece) , say, the first 8 bars or so. Bar by bar, run through with that bar with the right hand followed by the left hand SLOWLY(cannot emphasize enough) then after that both hands. Once you learn 8 Bars, Try to piece it up first with 2 bars, then 4 then 8. Then do the next 8 bars and do the same thing. After piecing the next 8 bars, start from the top and see whether you can make the piece flow smoothly. Do the same for the rest. If you find any scales and appeggios, apply the notes and fingering to use. That is why you've practiced your scales and appeggios, no?

Take the time you need to practice section by section then piece it up till you're ready to tackle the entire score.

Once you play through the entire piece the first or second time, identify where are the places you can handle, and places you feel it needs work. For the sections that need work, go to that section and practice that, couple bars at the time for a multiple number of times, expanding more as you get the hang of it, then piece it up again.

Once you know that one section is consistently fine and the other's not, reserve more time of practice for the weaker section than the former. Polish slowly then increase speed as you get more confident.


Updated as at 1st February 2009.