Piano Practice Tips

With recitals coming up, it’s time to start memorizing music. Many children often end up memorizing just by repetition. This means your child is consistently at the piano 5 days a week. Playing games with your child will also help.

Memorization Games:

Cover Up #1 – Take a 3×5 card and cover up a small portion of the music. He’ll be able to read most of the music and is “forced” to have only a small part memorized.

Cover Up #2 – Take a 3×5 card and cover up the section of music being played. Keep sliding the card over actual notes your child’s reading. This will force her to not only read ahead, but improve memory.

Floating Music – Hold the music away from the piano. If possible, point along to the music while your child’s playing. If she needs to look, she can, but the goal is to look at the music as little as possible.

Let’s Make A Deal – For every one time your child plays with the music, you get one time to close the book. This is great for playing 4-8 measures at a time and really solidifying his memorization.

When selecting piano lesson books for beginner players it’s important to think of piano music as a language. When starting out with piano you will continually improve upon your musical vocabulary and add additional compositions and technical exercises as you become more advanced.

As you begin to excel in your practice you will notice many improvements from instrumental training on the piano. some of these benefits include increased hand eye coordination, the ability to see the difference between notes while simultaneously playing notes, and the gradual improvement of your fine motor skills. Many people have noticed that piano instruction contributes to a sharper mentally acuity that can increase with each lesson.

Piano Method Books

There are many great piano method books on the market today. Some have been used for years and have been proven effective. Here are my top picks and recommendations for beginner piano learners.

Bastien Piano for the Young Beginner – Primer B

Written especially for the young piano student this book uses a multi key approach to teach children how to play the piano.

The book is fully illustrated and includes a variety of music styles. The books learning sequence is carefully graded to foster steady learning progression.

The Bastien Piano for the Young Beginner – Primer B is 48 pages and includes Introductory text, instructional text, simple piano notation, fingerings, lyrics, harmony part (for the teacher) and illustrations.

Click Here to Buy Bastien Piano for the Young Beginner – Primer B (sponsored link)

The metronome isn’t just a cool think that ticks. It’s actually the best tool the pianist has available! Here are some tips to use the metronome.

• Work slow to fast.
• Start slow enough that the music can be played absolutely perfectly. I suggest using the “tick” of the metronome as eighth notes.
• You should hear the same small section played over and over. The trick is repeating the same section slow to fast. This means over a few minutes, the metronome clicks will start out slow, and get increasingly faster.

This is the sure-fire method of learning pieces quickly, and as perfectly as humanly possible.