EFFECTIVELY STRUCTURE YOUR PIANO PRACTICE TIME // Divide Up Your Practice Sessions! - Piano Tutorial

[@richardforshaw8479]

We are very lucky to have your wealth of experience to explain how to structure our piano practice into clearly defined sections. I do reward myself with chocolate at the needed rests! This is a brilliant video, and so many thanks for sharing it. It’s got to make us better pianists. 😊

Haha I love the chocolate reward. :) Thank you!

[@deanmorton1494]

"Practice should be connected to progress." Great quote. I have been focusing more this year on practicing how to practice, so this video is very helpful. I try to make sure the process is optimum, i.e using slow practice when called for, more than anything else. How do you incorporate memorization into your practice?

I like to train my mental knowledge of the piece by playing it by heart very slowly. That way, you are somewhat “deactivating” the muscle memory and focusing on that 2nd layer of security when it comes to memorizing a piece. Hope this helps! :)

[@manuelamarsili331]

I discovered you because another pianist (Josh Wright) quoted an exercise you described in "play fast and even scales on the piano" video. I will follow your tutorials, they are very interesting and useful! Thank you. Greetings from Italy! :D

Thanks so much and that’s so nice that Josh Wright quoted that exercise, I have been following his videos since I started my youtube channel and really love them! All the best to beautiful Italy :)

[@kennyhollidayjr5206]

Thank you, I am starting again. Last lesson was in 1979 and your videos are excellent. You are the total package; articulate, technical, expressive and very disciplined!

Thanks so much!

[@batboy242]

Thank You, Danae, the info in your videos is priceless, and you always have insight on what your You Tube fans are looking for! This video once again has given me some insight on how to set up my daily routine of 2 hours! AWESOME!

Very glad to hear this :)

[@Sokolovpianist249]

What a great topic, thanks once again for a very helpful video!!!

Thank you :)

[@leighachristine7989]

You have been such an inspiration to me in my studies and I just wanted to say thank you for all that you do and everything that you share with us. You are amazing! 💛

Thank you so much, it makes me so happy to read this. :)

[@williamkircher1430]

Thanks for your inspiration and varied structure rotation weakly. 💛💛💛

🙏🏻

[@murielkhelifa5587]

Merci beaucoup vidéo très utile pour tous les niveaux de pianiste

Merci beaucoup!

[@marmer1038]

Perfect tutorial again Danaë!! Thank you so much:-) I have only one thing - In my opinion the touch of the keys in lower sound is not slow, but only a little bit slower than in big sound. Because my students have sometimes by pressing the keys slowly, lazy fingers without active fingertips. So I think that the idea to think about when playing softer is, we need to have even more active fingers or fingertips and not to touch the keys slowly.

You are right that piano playing definitely doesn‘t mean to press the keys with „less activity“ or lazy fingers. For me, the slow touch is a helpful mental image but of course, there are many other ones as well. Thanks for watching :)

[@nickhodson358]

Thank you

[@levjea]

Merci!

Thank you 🙏🏻🙏🏻

[@sebastianstern4752]

Great video! Can you maybe make a video on four hands repertoire for pianists. That would be great! thanks

The four hand rep video just went up yesterday :)

[@liellavi5722]

Great video! How long do you train every day? What to start sight reading with? How do you combine memorization during practice? Do you have ideas on how to make the practice more interesting?

I try to practice between 3-4 hours every day on average, but depending on the situation, some days have only 45 minutes of practice and others 7-8 hours. Start sight reading with pieces that you know fairly well because you have heard them often, that will make the sight reading process a bit easier in the beginning. A strong exercise for memorization is playing the piece by heart slowly. That way, you deactivate your muscle memory and train your mental knowledge of the piece directly. Try to change up the exercises in order to make the practice more interesting, try to avoid doing the exact same thing every single day. Hope this helped! :)

[@Gian-Lino]

Merci Danae

🙏🏻

[@TheSonsofHorusx]

Sheeet I gotta step up my game xP

[@numberoneeditss]

Thanks

🙏🏻

[@semperreg]

Because I am learning, I start with one hour Hanon (the complete book), one page czeny end of 802 (to read fast complexe structure) chromatic scales (x5) + some exercices of your warm up - pause : it takes 1h 30; Then 1h 30 of technical work, with chopin (except of grande polonaise brillante op 22) and Liszt and some of op 53 chopin + scales (as fast as possible as Martha, then slowly to prepare for the next note). Pause. Then (if I have the time) one hour of the piece I did the night before. Then a cool piece in sieht reading (actually mendelssohn concerto n°1 but it was Haydn before. Pause. Then the piece of the day for one hour. Wednesday, saturday and sunday are lighter days (Tausig, Brahms 51, 7e dominante). It is very structured.

Wow, that’s very impressive and sounds like a really great routine! 💪💪💪 Keep it up :)

[@semperreg]

@ You help a lot with your videos. It depends of what I need, and of course for the sound it is my own way( like exercice n°1 of hanon sound like Debussy -- I don't know how I do it ), but your experience is valuable and there is no one like you.

[@Lucacarrara3173]

Thanks for this very helpful video! I'm wondering what's your take about using timers and to-do lists on the phone? Greetings!

I love them and use them a lot myself! :)

[@KeysOfClassics]

PRACTICE TIME TECHNIQUE =================== "EVERYTHING" | WARM UP, SCALES, EXERCISES, ARPEGGIOS, CHROMATIC SCALES... CHOPIN ÉTUDES (1 OR 2 DAILY) REPERTOIRE PRACTICE =================== OLD PIECES (THAT YOU REPEAT) AND NEW PIECES TO LEARN LEARNING NEW PIECES SHOULD BE THE BIGGEST PART OF THE TIME SIGHT READING PRACTICE ===================

[@rafaelguardiabalcazar4461]

My rule of practising is start in a "karate kid" mood, and finish in Richter mood, I explain. If you see the movie karate kid, the boy start doing very mechanical exercises in order to make some especific movements authomatic. In the piano It means to work on some especific part with rithms fórmulas and so on to create muscle memory, but It could not be enough, then I aply what Richter said once: If you want to have a boiled egg, you have to boil an egg during 20 minutes, what It is different than boiled an egg ,1 minute 20 times. So I work on the especific pasage until I manage It.

Yes, I love these comparisons and the also the Richter boiled egg story!

[@moredatesmorefiber3526]

can you apply this to guitar?

[@johanssoncisneros1489]

Hi Danae! I have 1 question. "If I practice just 1 hand of any piano etude (liszt, czerny, chopin, rachmaninoff etc...) that I am interested to improve regarding an specific technique will that help? or I'll be just wasting my time? (Take in consideration that I already have experience with 8vs, 3rds, 6ths, trills, repeated notes, scales, arpeggios, etc...) but I want to take it to the next step. Practicing isolated hands of an etude that you like would be smart? Thank you and great video as always :D

Yes, I am a big fan of separated hands practice and use it a lot myself as well. The only important thing is to not only do that, but once you have practiced your hand separately for a bit and have mastered a certain passage, to then put it together with the other hand - even if it is at a slower tempo at first. But it is important to start familiarizing yourself with the feeling of that passage with both hands early on. :) Hope this helps!

[@andreaswinterhalter]

Ja ja, der gute Altenmüller...😉

Genau! :) So eine Bereicherung in meiner Studienzeit! :)

[@Karin-ee1ft]

Wenn 2,5h Repertoire angesagt ist, wie viele Takte lernt man da? Mein Kopf ist nach 2-4 Takten bereits voll, ich arbeite leider auch hauptberuflich nur mit dem Kopf und bin kein Pianist... Hast Du Videos über Studien, was man warum trainiert? Z. B. Chopin oder Czerny?

Das kommt natürlich ganz auf den Schwierigkeitsgrad der Takte an. ;) aber ich habe auch ein Video mit „Technikrepertoire“, das ich empfehlen würde. Vielleicht ist das ja interessant: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jnjLlmV_qKt_n80

[@riaa3218]

Super useful, thank you! I started recently making each practice about very small, achievable goals (from another of your videos) and I feel like I've been progressing, so this really works for me and nice to see it re-iterated in this video.

That’s great, all the best for your further piano journey!

[@steviefrancois5851]

Why do I have the feeling everyone think beginners need to learn classical

[@RolandHuettmann]

Mmh, referring to your last recommendations, picked from the latest big studies, any amount of alcohol destroys the brain activity, no matter how little it is, and more harmful to younger people. That is difficult to accept for many. What about food and other drinks? We are mostly not aware of all the influences of daily food, and all impressions on our body. What are we aware about anyway with our limited senses and the flood of inner thoughts and emotions? How can someone even think of playing an instrument very well being disturbed all the time by him- or herself from the inside?

Yes, that is such an important point and I couldn’t agree more. Also with the effects of alcohol, which is why I personally basically never drink any alcohol, only on very rare occasions. There is a lot that we still have to learn about what goes into our bodies and how that in turn affects us and our abilities to do, think and feel certain things.

[@andrewmorton3344]

I was with you until you advised us not to drink alcohol. Just to point out that there is a "Chopin" brand of vodka, scientifically unproven to help you remember your Chopin.

😅😂👌🏻