Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Is piano practice supposed to be enjoyable?

I love practice time because It is a time for me. I choose to practice to be a better pianist. I have a sense of accomplishement when I can play my sales or Hannon better then yesterday. I guess I am a perfectionist.
Sometimes I do like to just play the piano but it is rare I have the time to loose at just play what ever I like. I play to progress in my passion and I delay the time I will just play for fun when I will be less in demand with my family.
The practice time is my time and I sometime forget to go to work and I arrive 15 minutes late in the morning....

One of the things I love most about playing piano is that when you make a mistake, you can go over it again and again until you get it right. I can't stand leaving a measure if I know that there's something in it that I can't play well, so I can spend an hour on one piece, easily.
My advice to you would be is that you don't spend 30 minutes on one small measure of music, but alternate around in the piece and practice a few different things at random, which also freshens you up to come back and reply the parts. This can help with the monotony and also make you more aware of the areas that need work. You can give yourself incentives,too, like playing a favorite piece after you've mastered a complicated part.

i am endlessly fascinated with everything about learning how to play..

always have been.

hope that happens for you.

Just wondering...
What if there was a pill that you could take that would instantly make you an extraordinary pianist, where you could sit down and play anything you wanted without much practice or frustration. To make it a little more realistic , let's say the pill cost $10,000. Would you buy it and take it? Would the result be satisfying?

"It's the time you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important". - from "The Little Prince"

That's an interesting question. I was talking to one of my coworkers about taking piano lessons, and he said that he'd always wanted to play guitar. I offered that the studio where I take piano also offers guitar, and that he could take lessons. He then found any number of reasons he shouldn't. All of which were bogus, by the way. I finally decided that what he wanted was to be visited by the guitar skills fairy, that actually working for it wasn't in his plan. He's way too cheap to spring for your pill, though.

I would never buy such a pill.
If I want to listen a good piano performance I can always buy a CD or go to the teather but I don't need to listen to myself playing like a pro after ingesting a pill. What I love about playing the piano is developing a strong relationship with music.

What if there was a guy you could buy whose mind has been programmed to be the perfect boyfriend for you, who likes everything you like and who'll never argue about something. Could buying "him" be as satisfying as having a crash on someone you meet, developing a friendship, knowing each other, discovering what makes you similar and what makes you different and so on?

"The Little Prince" is probably my favorite book! I always find out something new everytime I read it

Though the prospect of a $10,000 magic pill is tempting, I'd rather spend the money to get an acoustic piano as an upgrade to my DP. And isn't if funny how the things we worked long and hard for are ultimately the most satisfying? I find that when I get things the quick and easy way, I soon lose interest.

First off, pianists are lucky that when we practice, we can play and enjoy the music to ourselves unlike an instrumentalist in an orchestra. Imagine practicing some random single line without the harmony or anything for hours!

And mainly, there is nothing more frustrating than sitting down and trying to play something and it sounding awful - your arms tense up, your fingers don't do what they're supposed to, you miss the notes, etc. Then when you slow it down and do every small detail perfectly until it comes out right, that is a good feeling.

Hmm, can I opt for a $1000 pill that would just make me learn faster? Learning things is fun, but I get frustrated with my less-than-absorbent middle-aged brain and general lack of talent...

But back to the original question -- I find that practicing is great fun when I get into a flow state with it, and incredibly frustrating when I find myself unable to focus. And on some days it's just gives the normal satisfaction of disciplining myself to do something challenging.

Since you can't play anything without practicing (unless yoiu play by ear, and even then you've got to work at it) you don't have a choice - you need to get busy practicing, and like it or not.

But, in a larger sense, if you don't naturally like the act of practicing and don't already look forward each day to the sense of adventure and accomplishment and satisfaction derived from the on-going challenge of learning to play, then probably nothing anyone says here is going to make any difference for you or help you. Either you have it or you don't. And if you don't (and more than likely you don't since you have to ask), you're probably wasting your time and energy and might want to consider taking up something less demanding, like stamp collecting or playing video games.

Sorry if this seems hard and cold, but sometimes "reality bites" (as they say).

JF

"It's the time you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important". - from "The Little Prince" [/quote]

Yes I love that book too! I used some of the text for a set of pieces last year so spent ages pouring over the book "harvesting words". The book really got under my skin, so subtle, so perfect....

*Had a cup of tea and a little lie down*

..So now am able to say that practising is ummm more a means to an end for me. I've not often had a consistent daily routine where you get into the zone. I'm pretty sure that i've never managed even 3 weeks of daily practice. Mind you, since i've joined PW I've done heaps of good work so maybe this is the start of something good. Pity I missed the MOYD deadline. I Do enjoy the working and the results tho, I like to focus intensely on something.

I love the feeling of mastering an hard passage, when I think that my hands will never be able to move like that and after practicing I have those notes under my hands. I love the feeling just like as a young child I loved the feeling of pieces matching in legos or in jigsaw puzzles.