Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum So what's YOUR practice routine?

Do you have one? What do you do every time you sit down to practice. Not just if you're sitting down to have a play - actual practice.

I'm interested to know what, if any, your practice routine is. Warm up, stretches, scales, chords etc.

My apologies if this topic/question has already been asked.

Cheers,
Skender.

ok... I'm usually back from work at 3.30 p.m...

5 minutes of scales for warm up.
1 czerny study 3 to 5 times (fluent)
1 czerny study reading through.
little break.

mozart k310 reading through somewhere, perfecting technique somewhere else.
about 30 min...
little break.

chopin prelude op. 28 n.1
one measure a day, slow 20 repetition isolated,
10 slow repetition of all the previous one.
two day every week work on building speed up.
little break.

bach, some 3 voice invention... reading through (doing N.6 right now).
big break...

I go running, have dinner, spend time with the GF....

later after the GF is at sleep or watches tv I go to the digital.

hanon 1 exercise between 21 to 31
alternate days between C mayor and C# major.
use 6 rhythm, and straight. takes about 10 minutes focusing on relaxation and good finger position.

scales, 1 a day, major or minor.
straighth, 5 rhythms, 4 dynamics in legato, 4 dynamics in staccato, repeat all by 3rd, by 6th.

( I will add arpeggios, double thirds and double sixth later this year)

great pishna group of 3 selected studies every night.... about 10 to 15 minutes... depends on complexity.

10 minutes sight reading from shumann album for the young, anna magdalena notebook, rameau, clementi sonatine or something else from my huge pile of music.

next day rinse and repeat.

1 hour practice daily (more if hubby and kid are busy for the day)
This time of year, I play my recital pieces- COLD- right off the bat. I want to get used to it and focus on getting it right from the get-go; trying to simulate recital time.
I then may work on the parts I'm stumbling on, then practice my new assigned pieces. If time permits, I may go over older pieces or I'm beginning to review Christmas songs- that time of year again....

I usually practice scales and various finger exersizes (ie. Hanon) either at the same time, or more likely, later in the day when I have another 15-20 minutes or so. I prefer to seperate the drills from the songs. Works for me! Oh, and I do try to vary the drills month to month- just to keep my fingers guessing

I love it, it's all good ! Speaking of which...poor hubby needs to wake up, I need to practice NOW!

Ideally I get some time in the morning (20 minutes) to do 5-10 minutes of sight reading and reviewing pieces I have previously learnt.

If I do, then my pattern is generally:

1. 10 minutes scales or Hanon
2. 10-15 minutes Czerny (usually have two studies on the go at one time)
3. 35-40 minutes on my pieces. Right now I am finishing a Clementi Sonatina so I usually spend 10 minutes looking at specific sections of that and then 25-30 minutes on the Debussy Arabesque #1 which is 95% memorized but needs a lot more work to get right.


If necessary I have to squeeze sight reading and reviewing previous repertoire which I usually do by only glancing at the Czerny.

whoa

Wow! Some impressive routines and useful tips there!!

Hmmm Hanon, must look into that.

Thanks for sharing.

I will practice whenever I'm done with my homework or fed up with it.

..

I'll go for months with no other practice plan than working on current repertoire or finding new repertoire. When I do that I play thru a piece, notice when I stumble, and then work on that part - what's known as "chunking". I have 4x6 index cards, one for each piece, that I take with me to gigs (because I can't remember which tunes I know by heart), and I keep them near the piano bench, and just leaf thru them. Usually there's 3 or 4 pieces in particular I concentrate on for awhile.

Then, after awhile, I'll have noticed that there's a particular problem that keeps popping up across the board and I'll figure out a way to address that. For the last several months I've been working on finding a way to expand my repertoire more easily, and I think the key is understanding the music itself more readily, so that instead of being "remembered" it flows because that's the way music flows naturally. So, I've been playing really simple songs by ear (I have a book of campfire songs and I find one I know) and transpose them into 5 or 6 different keys, noticing the chord progressions (and they are, from a relative standpoint, the same in each key). I go over the scale, the common chords and their inversions, maybe arps, maybe playing cadences/inversions, for each of those 5 or 6 keys. And I pay much more attention to the harmony of current repertoire, trying to understand exactly what the composer did. Sometimes I play current repertoire using my own version of the harmony.

I've been averaging an hour a day this year (I don't play every day), so it's not as if it's really fast improvement, but nonetheless it's working. I actually spontaneously modulated Tennessee Waltz to several different keys recently, and while *I* didn't know exactly what I did to do that, my fingers did I had to go back and figure it out. So now I'm working to up my piano time to a higher average.

So I have an overall plan of some kind, but not a specific every-time-I-sit-down-at-the-piano plan. Some 15 minutes I work on rep because I have a gig coming up, some 15 minutes I play easy stuff by ear, some 15 minutes I work on faster tempo. Sometimes I play just for the fun of it. Works for me.

Cathy

While I can really appreciate the disciplined approach of someone like Knotty (thanks for sharing your routine), Jotur, you are a woman after my own heart.



This is exactly what I do, except when it is someone else's arrangement or a song I don't know that well, I'll often do my chunking to the recording of a piece on youtube. Listen and repeat, only often more slowly, gradually bringing up the speed to tempo



Ditto everything for me with one exception. I learned to play simple songs at PM with major chord progessions, mostly some order of I IV V and to return to that base to "understand the music itself" because every thing flows from it, all progressions can be heard in relation to this foundation in a certain sense and its easier to hear them in relation to it. For example a relative minor followed by a IV V or I can be seen as a sub for one of them that only differs by one note in triad form from one of these major chords. If you know what the major progression of two of these chords sounds like it becomes easier to hear the subtle differences of not only the minor to major progression, but the extended minor chord and its various voicings. What I didn't learn there was to transcribe them to other keys, but I already basically knew how to do this, although I haven't systematically put it into practice the way you have, Cathy. Mostly I've relied on my digital transposer to do it for me when I need to change the key.




Often my fingers know something and show me something my ears must hear and then I have to go back and figure out what I did, or I do if I'm not being lazy.



Exactly!

Here's my log for yesterday which is running to plan (a must have) and shows 10 study tasks, completed times and duration:



A few comments:

1. Hanon: I do just one a day (and rotate weekly). It's currently Ex.10, at a slow tempo (40), in 1/4, 1/8 and 1/16th notes, in legato stacatto and swing rhythms.

2. A couple of warm-up exercises using triplets and fingers 5,4,3 (but not 1 & 2) as the pinkie doesn't get much of a workout in regular scales.

3. Scales (I rotate around circle of fifths weekly). There's six sets.

4. A couple of pages from a Sight-reading method series

5. Level 1: Sight read a piece at current "fluency" level (I wish!).

6. Level 2: Working on a piece 1 grade above the sight-reading level for 1 week.

7. Level 3: Working on a piece 2 grades above the sight-reading for 3-5 weeks.

I was enjoying practice so much yesterday, I did another set of scales at the end!

The above is my "Mode 1" practice plan (rooted in sight-reading and technique, reviewed and updated regularly).

"Mode 2" is to pick a piece I really like and work on it to the exclusion of everything else for several months or more...

Just sit down and play the few basic things i know and love and hope that it sounds better than yesterday and it did today.......... Great day.
No heavy studying for me....... TOO OLD to be that serious but wishing i took up piano 30 years ago.....
I sooooooo enjoy it

..

I'm with Cathy on this one! ...only I call my method "chunk and repeat" (I hold the patent on this...lol). I predominantly work only on repertoire these days, and maintaining some of my older stuff.

Also, the parts where you stumble...I call them "fractures" (as Charles Cooke does). With the fractures, I actually treat them as a technical exercise, so instead of Hanon (my 8 year old knows more Hanon than I do), I repeat the fractures...many times until I get them right.

I guess the self-directed have this type of freedom. Whenever I've tried to get "methodical" with piano practice, it always fails!! Piano, to me, is such an art that I believe in a free-wheelin' approach. And if I were a student of piano, I'd want a teacher who respects that about me too (see my other thread)...

This is just amazing to see the differences between the analytical "structured" type players as opposed to the people who are not.

Of course, people are built (from the factory) so VERY differently and thus various types of learning methods are to be expected.

No matter how you learn to play piano, it really doesn't matter as long as it is compatible with the way you are able to learn. All that matters really is what you ultimately end up with however you managed to do it.

My "method" is this:

I think of a tune to play and just pound out the most basic simple version of it. (Think 1st grade version of Mary Had A Little Lamb). Once I get the basic one note version of it down, I will experiment by playing this version all over the place until I find the key in which it sounds best.

Next, I will slowly convert the single note version into chords, then slowly add rolling chords and embellishments as I see fit. After playing the tune many times, I will discover even more ways to change and mix it up in an attempt to make the piece even more interesting while keeping the main theme recognizable.

Since I love doing this so much, I find myself doing this all day long (in my head) and then transfering my thoughts to the keyboard many times throughout the day in little 10 minute sessions.

These little 10 minute sessions go on all day long especially when I come inside for potty breaks, snack refills, a quick drink or just checking my friend requests on facebook from "local hotties in my area" I've never heard of!

In addition to the daily 10 minute "mini sessions", I will play very late at night for about an hour straight right before going to bed. It is at this sleepy half dozed off state that I play my best. It seems to be the only time I have delicate control over the keys and can really add gobs of emotion to my playing as opposed to the daytime "whack-a-mole" type pounding the keys usually get.

No lessons, no teacher, no method books, no practicing anything and best of all.........no self imposed stress.

Remember, it is NOT about how hard or how often you practice; just what you ultimately are able to produce however you got there.

The proof really is in the pudding! If you truly enjoy what you are doing the results will definitely come through in your performances.

My routine every morning as soon as the dogs are fed...

20 minutes scales and arpeggios (usually pick one key for a whole week)
10 minutes exercises from doz.-a-day
20-30 minutes sightreading
coffee refil- short break
20-40 minutes work on Piece 1
20-40 minutes work on Piece 2
20-40 minutes work on Piece 3 if I have one going


After I get home in the evening...

20-60 minutes on a self-study jazz standard or just playing around with chords or sightreading something

I keep it simple and tend to use a focused approach. My warmup is often a HS practice of my current piece, or in the case of the past few weeks, I will warm up using a song and then work through my scales for a half hour, then repeat another half hour of this later in the day. Once I'm feeling good on my scales in a few months I'll probably reverse this. My practice journal is pretty methodical, but much of the method is focused on working through a section or rough spot to get it tighter, not a survey of a bunch of pieces and exercises.

When I take little five minute snatches throughout the day that is when I focus on playing repertoire pieces to keep those up. Again, I'd do all these in on big block but I have to break up my practices or my wrists go downhill.

I see very good practice routines over here. Congrats to everybody.

In contrast, my routine is rather poor. I only practice pieces that I’m learning, or play pieces already learned, just for fun.

My daily routine is half hour in the afternoon, and one hour at night. But I can practice until four hours a day at weekend. That’s all.

wow im kind of appalled how everyone else's practice time is so structured and mine is such at leisure

Excellent point. When I restarted piano I was playing the oompah for folk dance music, and much of it was I IV V or subs for that. So, like you, those are the chords/sounds I "hang my hat on" for structure. It's helped a lot.

Cathy