Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner What is your practice routine?

I'm curious, do you guys have a certain routine you (by and large) fall into when practicing. Now, I play for my own leisure so I just work on pieces when I have some time. But when I was practicing growing up, I remember my practice sessions usually proceeded like so: scales/arpeggios, then Hanon, then Czerny/Moskowski type etudes, then working on pieces. I read another post about the importance of warming up and warming down, which got me thinking about adding some structure to my practice routine. What's yours?

I will frequently use sight-reading as a warm-up as it gets my fingers moving AND helps me learn. I don't usually have time to practice both scales and Hanon, so I choose one or the other (usually Hanon... I know, I'm terrible).
Then I move onto whatever piece I'm most nervous about/needs the most work and work until I'm satisfied. I don't move on unless I feel there's nothing else I can accomplish in that piece that day.

My piano practice routine is:
Starting with scales/chords/arpeggios and hannon exercise(in different keys). Then I start playing some piano cover that I choose to play and after that I go for some classical piece.
Sometimes I also practice blues and boogie because its so fun to play it. About 2-4h per a day(sometimes even more when I have more free time).

I normally just do about a 10-minute warmup (the time for this could vary based on conditions) and then get right into pieces.

Warm up: Scales and arpeggios and reading/playing through Bach. I dumped Hanon and things of that sort. They're a waste of time, at least for me.

Then into pieces, improv, or whatever it is I'm working on.

I do all the major and some minor scales, then run through from memory (trying to be as musical as possible) a short list of pieces in my rep; then I do a little sight-reading practice well below my playing grade. (I'm a terrible sight-reader!)

Then I do the hard work on the 3 or so pieces I'm working on with my teacher.

I cool down by trying to play from memory the couple of pieces most recently "finished" with my teacher, but not yet musically internalized and reliably memorized. When that happens, they'll move to the rep list I play earlier in my normal routine.

I use Mozart's K545 (I) as a warm-up. Plenty of scales and arpeggios there, and you can't go wrong with Mozart. Then I go on to other pieces like Schumann's Arabeske (good for stretching, and the 'weak' fingers), and Chopin's 'Minute' Waltz, which I play fast if I'm ready. Then his Op.10/12. Once I can play that smoothly, I know I'm warmed up and ready for anything.

Well, almost .

This reply was wondrous.

I have very limited practice time because I have a full time job and a family and house to take care of. I've never had the discipline or time to practice exercises.When I practice, I have identified ahead of time where I need to work and I dive right in. I don't spend precious time playing what I know. I work and save the playing for an end-of-practice session treat.

Ah, I have not thought about sight reading as a warm up but it makes sense.

Yes, I also use Chopin's 10/12 for left hand exercise from time to time. I'm working on 10/4 as a corollary for the right hand.

I play all 12 of Liszt's Transcendental Etudes first as a warm up and that gets me pretty pumped and ready for anything. Then afterwards I remove the CD and put it back in the case

I used to warm up by playing through all the pieces I knew at the time one by one but at a slower pace. It helped me memorize my entire repertoire and guess what, I was warming up with the very pieces I needed to perfect. These days I improvise on the piano and see where my fingers are in terms of dexterity then I follow up with playing through some etudes or sections of some and slow stretching chords.

This is the best one by far .

Nowadays slow forte hannon (MM 72ish per semiquaver) on 5 exercises, slow practice on some chopin etudes, and slow metronome practice on pieces I need to memorize to warm up. Afterwards I usually take a break for an hour and come back to start doing the real work.

Mine is usually scales/chords/arpeggios, etudes, hour of work per piece for as many working pieces as there's time for, run-through of everything else that needs to be played that day (often includes previously learned repertoire that's being prepared for performance).

Sometimes I add sight-reading (right now I'm sight-reading my way through the Bach Little Preludes and Fugues) or a play-through of one of the Suzuki books.

How do you generally use scales in your practice? I never really understood the point of scales growing up--but the Guild auditions required them. If they were meant for teaching us theory, wouldn't it make more sense to transpose Hanon or simpler pieces on the spot? If they were meant for technique exercise, there were more technically demanding technical exercises out there to work through.

I think I should start adding some sight reading to my warm ups going forward.

Scales, chords and arpeggios are the building blocks of much of the music we play, so practicing them make it easier to have efficient fingering when we encounter them in a piece, even if the scale isn't exactly from tonic to tonic. The principles you learn in fingering, the technical work, and the pattern recognition are all benefits of practicing these. I didn't get it when I was little either. At this point, I don't spend much time on scales these days. Probably should though.

As for what I do, usually my practice time is in between lessons or a 45-minute chunk here and there. So I usually do slow practice on passages as my "warm-up". Then I gradually increase the tempo or work elsewhere in pieces as I am able to. Once I do this in a day, I'm pretty much warmed up for the rest of the day since I do some playing throughout teaching. Not much of a routine, but I do what time I can afford to do.

On a good day, I will listen to what I am playing and enjoy it. On a bad day, I will listen to how I am playing and quit.

Four octave Scales (major: octaves, minor: octaves in three modes), block chords, and chromatics, then parallel/contrary/parallel/contrary/parallel. If major, scales in thirds, sixths, Overlapping arpeggios, cadences.

Then etudes (right now, Schumann's Album for the Young is in there)

Then repertoire, as you see below.

Takes me between 1.5 and 2 hours.

I like scales because they allow you to simply concentrate on mechanics. Yes, everything we play should be musical and scales are no exception, but for some reason I feel less pressure when I play scales and consequently can focus on minutiae that otherwise I might not focus on as much. I experiment more with hand shapes and movement for some reason, where in my pieces I rarely want to take the chance that I'd have to go back to the drawing board on a particular phrase.

I switch keys a week, and in March will start again with c, but this time two keys a week (a major and its relative minor).