3 Tips to Make Piano Practice Less Boring

3 tips to make piano practice less boring | Piano motivation tutorial

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🎥 You want to get great results on the piano, but you find practicing piano difficult, tiring and boring. Today we discuss how to make piano practice more interesting and engaging. Follow these 3 unique ways and you will begin to see incredible improvements! The piece played in this video was Bach Prelude and Fugue in D Major BWV 850.

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🕘 Timestamps
0:00 Intro
0:30 Tip 1: Rhythm Variations
1:38 Extra rhythm variations you can try
3:40 ''Connection Points''
4:12 Tip 2: Practice a few pieces
5:03 Loss Aversion Theory
6:00 Tip 3: Limit Your Practice Time

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[jazerleepiano]

What are your tips on making piano practice interesting? 😄😄😄

[ushayadava]

Hey! I am 66year old retired eye doc learning piano for the first time..Jazer, you are beyond teaching piano...you teach life..love your practice philosophy!!

[shortpianolessons]

Yes, finally seeing someone doing and teaching that.
As a piano teacher, I especially agree with practising in rhythms as what I would suggest my students to do.
Keep it up Jazer. 😊

[darcysalmon]

Love your videos, Jazer! I am a retired Computer Scientist. I took up piano at age 57 and have been playing for the past 6 years. When I practice, I include at least one piece that I can play very well, just so I can play and hear something beautiful... to round out my struggles with new piano adventures... 🙂🎶🎵l

[poisoned_durian]

the rhythmic one actually helps me memorise pieces

[gregginlahabra]

I am a 63 yr old amateur pianist. I was always frustrated that I took lessons for years as a kid and never got very good. I am getting better now mostly because I am more thoughtful about practicing. Efficiency is key. What I learned in returning to the piano as an adult can be applied to all of life. That is that LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO KEEP REPEATING MISTAKES. I did a lot of that when I practiced in my youth. You made a point of this, Jazer, in another video on practicing.

Having said that, I want to agree with you that rhythmic variations is a terrific practice technique. The muscle memory and coordination that it builds is tremendous. I also have an additional thought. I find my brain gets flummoxed by fast running passages because there is too much for it to process and I panic in the middle of the passage. Practicing rhythmic variations allows you break up the passage into shorter bits. By creating brief pauses the brain has time process the next set of fast notes. I am much less anxious practicing this way and it is sort of a fun challenge. When you mix up where the pauses occur your brain can process the patterns deeply and when that combines with muscle memory you have a really firm command of the passage. I could not learn to play many of the long running passages so common in Bach's music without this technique.

One other thing I do as an adult that I wish I did as a kid is I focus on the measure (or even less) that I always mess up and take it apart to really solve the problem. But I often do this for only 5 or 10 minutes at a time. Then I may go do something else. Maybe I have ADD, who knows. But this way I never get too frustrated working out the problem which often occurred as a kid. I just come back to the problem section and look at it afresh. Sometimes I have an epiphany and realize what the problem is. It may be a fingering that just is not right, or my wrist or arm needs to shift a bit to facilitate playing it better, or the choreography of the two hands together needs work. I just keep at that small tricky bit and eventually I have mastered the problem. I always tell myself that I have to make sure that problem passage has to become EASY and BEAUTIFUL. With those two key concepts in mind my playing starts to become more fluid and accurate.

[teresabankston]

Great videos! Applicable for every age or proficiency level. I find that I tend to spend my practice time playing all the songs I know and love and spend very little time learning new pieces. Glad I'm not the only one. Thank you for the advice.

[darrendaypiano]

Easy to watch! Thanks J
My tip is to have a fun piece or a piece you really enjoy to start and/or end your practice session. Or start with something creative like improvising over a chord sequence. Thanks again
Really enjoying your videos!

[shishu-v]

Thanks very much, gonna get into the rhythm again

[verabb]

Thanks for all these tips! Such an interesting video! I new about the rythmic changes as a way to increase evenness in your playing from another piano teacher who showed it on scales but your explanation of how it works was really helpful and I had wondered what the explanation was. Moreover, I had never thought of using it on the pieces I learn, I always practice them as they are written. I will try that on parts of Rondo alla turca where I still have trouble with evenness. Thanks! The second tip on loss theory really spoke to me because it's one of my main fears since I started the piano last September... Given the time it takes me to learn a new piece, I am afraid to forget them. So just playing through them as often as I can is a great motivation to get back to the piano! I have not started piano long ago so I never experienced any boredom at the piano yet. I am always eager to get back to it and I enjoy practice sessions very much. Love learning new things, but when I am too tired for that I just play through my repertoire 😊

[sota]

Thanks for everything and the free source
Can you make a video about your daily practice routine? And how you practice each of skills
Practice piece - Scale - Sight Read - Rhythm - Aural... I don't know, and I can't find any video like that online, hope to see your video soon :')

[drunio]

I play the C scale, note by note building Legato smoothness every day, a few minutes does it. Skipping every other note works as well, across 2 octaves, up and down. Arpeggiating 5 notes in thirds with each hand keeps the mind and fingers connected (intervals). Doing 3rds, 5ths, 7ths helps, not mindlessly, a few minutes before doing more serious work like Moonlight Sonata. Work slowly & patiently. Satie me helps a lot.

[marshal-d-]

The tip for putting a cap on practice time would be very helpful for me so I will try to use that tip! I get distracted and can't focus very well sometimes which causes my practice times to be twice as long as I want them to be (but only with having seriously practiced for like half that time during those practices). I've noticed that when there is a time limit on anything I'm doing I typically work faster and more efficiently so I'm sure it would work for piano too.

[patrickwall]

I agree with all of these tips, especially with putting a cap on practice time. I started doing that many years ago not only with piano but with golf as well. I've found that I'm more focused and efficient. This is important because if you practice for a long time and start to lose focus your technique will suffer which leads not only to diminishing returns but can also cause you to engrain bad habits. It's important to remember that practice makes permanent. Only good practice makes perfect.

[michaelcrisp]

Hi, I really appreciate and enjoy your good method of piano lessons.
I personally use drum beats to keep from getting bored when I practice for a long period of time. This gives me a since of playing with another person, or like having a good jam session.
Thanks again,
Mike C.

[vegaslola]

Playing exercises are not my favorite but my worse habit is getting bored with a piece so I move on to something new without mastering any. The mindset that I’m playing only for myself, does not help.

As for loss aversion theory, that’s what made me relearn piano at retirement to recover something learned in youth. I’m happy to be able to play pop tunes/ oldies from my younger days and even newer ones like simplified Yiruma. What’s great is the way technology is helping us, like your vlogs. Thanks!

[gregfam]

Excellent as always! But I'm worried about combining the rhythmic variation with short practice times. How would I ensure I don't subconsciously make the rhythm variations the default when it's time to present the piece?

[actie-reactie]

Started two years back at the age of 56.
Allways practice difficult parts of pieces above my level.... than when I am shifting down to my current level, its much easier to master a piece.... maybe stupid.... but it works for me! Thanks for the vid! Gave me some new insights....

[ReaPiano]

Thank you for sharing such a great tips!

[sharkzy]

Great work sir, keep it up. I can’t wait to see when you blow up all over the internet, your work is amazing