The quality of your practice time will largely determine your progress at the piano, or lack of it. Quality is far more important than quantity. Yet people often ask me "How long should I practice" before they ask "How should I practice." Many people still believe that if they just put in the hours, doing endless repetition, that someday it will just all come together and they will play really well. Unfortunately this is never the case. If you are spending many hours at the piano but doing the wrong things, you will certainly not improve, and your frustration level will be so high you will probably lose your desire to play.
With my students, I am always showing them how to practice. There are numerous aspects of practicing, many of which I have discussed in previous posts. The one I want to talk about here is the question of whether you should practice playing through the piece (or at least a large section), start to finish, versus doing what I call "spot work," that is, just practicing a particular measure (or measures) that seem to be more difficult. The answer is that you need both.
Let's say you are a beginner to intermediate-level student. You are starting a brand new piece. What should you do first? I strongly recommend that you outline the piece, start to finish. See my previous posts on outlining for more about this important skill. Essentially you are playing a sketch of the piece, but not all the notes. There is no right or wrong for how much to play and how much to omit; you just do what you are able to do. This way you get "the lay of the land" so to speak, and you hear what the piece sounds like. Continue outlining, gradually putting in more detail. At some point, you will discover that some sections, or particular measures, present more of a challenge, technically. At this point it would be entirely suitable to take those measures and "take them apart." You may need to do some hands separately, or play some of the voices separately, or you may need to do other technical work, to get those measures to improve.
At a recent lesson with a student who came to me having largely taught himself, he played a short piece, and at a measure near the end, he played it suddenly louder and more "aggressively," that is, it just had a different quality of sound than the rest of the piece. I asked him if he was aware of that, and if he knew why. The answer (which I already knew, based on my decades of teaching) was that he had "drilled" that measure because of something in it which he thought he was having trouble with. In his practice at home, he had played that measure over and over, to the point where he had caused it to sound, frankly, somewhat ugly.
This is the problem with spot work. If you overdo it, that part of the piece may take on a different quality, and you probably won't realize it's happening. It eats up a lot of your practice time which might have been better spent in a different way. It also affects you psychologically, because when playing the piece through you are likely to think "uh-oh, here comes that spot." That will cause further problems because you will likely become tight and tense, which will, in turn, cause you to miss more notes, and create more anxiety about that spot. And so on, in a viscious circle.
I recommend a "gentle" approach to spot work. Do some if you think (or your teacher recommends) you need it, but not too much. See if just a little does the trick. Try to employ more creative problem-solving methods such as those in previous posts, rather than just repetition. Then play the piece through again and see what happens.
If you can play a piece through without doing any spot work, that would be wonderful, because you can focus on the musicality and just enjoy the experience of playing. However, it could indicate that this piece doesn't present enough challenge to you, and by choosing more challenging pieces, your skills would progress faster. On the other hand, if all of the piece is so challenging that you feel almost every measure is a "spot" you need to work on separately, then this piece may be too difficult for you at this stage. If it requires technical skills you simply do not have yet, then, with the guidance of a teacher, you can find pieces that will build up those skills.
It is important to strike a balance between playing through (including outlining) and spot work. This way, you don't ignore "problem areas" which need work, but you don't overdo it to the point where you lose musicality and beauty in your playing.
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