A rare Pacific Northwest snow day can be more than just a break from routine—it can be the perfect opportunity for meaningful snow day music practice. For students taking piano lessons, violin lessons, cello lessons, or flute lessons at the Chopin Academy of Music, a quiet winter day at home can become valuable time for listening, reflection, and musical growth.

At the Chopin Academy of Music, we often remind our students that musical progress rarely comes from a single dramatic moment. Instead, it grows from many small sessions of thoughtful practice. A day when schedules slow down can become a gift for musicians who want to deepen their work.

So if you find yourself at home today, consider embracing the moment.

Practice once. Take a break. Have something warm to eat, take a short nap, listen to a recording or two—and then return to practice again.

Whether you study piano, violin, cello, or flute, snow days provide the perfect opportunity to spend extra time with your instrument.

Listening for Inspiration

One of the most powerful ways to improve as a musician is simply to listen to great artists. Hearing master performers interpret the same music you are studying can reveal phrasing, tone, and musical ideas that might not be obvious from the page alone.

For inspiration today, we encourage students to listen to the legendary Martha Argerich performing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with conductor Charles Dutoit. Her electrifying performance is a reminder of how expressive and powerful classical music can be when technique and imagination come together.

After listening, return to your own pieces and experiment. What musical ideas can you bring to your interpretation? How can tone, phrasing, articulation, or timing change the character of a passage?

Snow outside often means quiet inside—perfect conditions for focused listening and thoughtful practice.

Why Consistent Practice Matters

As teachers, we frequently observe that the students who progress most quickly are not necessarily those who practice the longest hours in a single sitting. Instead, the most successful students build consistent habits.

Two thoughtful practice sessions in a day—especially when separated by rest and reflection—can be more effective than one long session.

Snow days offer a natural opportunity to experiment with this rhythm:

• Practice in the morning
• Listen to recordings or study the score
• Rest or enjoy family time
• Return to your instrument in the afternoon

Small adjustments like this can lead to meaningful improvement.

A Reminder for Exam Track Students

For families participating in the Chopin Academy Exam Track, this is also a good moment to review the requirements for the academic year—especially for students hoping to perform in the Honors Recital at Benaroya Hall on June 14.

To be considered for participation, students must complete several program standards under the guidance of their instructor, including:

• Learning representative repertoire from at least three stylistic eras
• Completing the Winter Technical Exam
• Performing from memory in at least three group events (recitals, performance classes, or masterclasses)
• Attending a minimum of two full-length professional CAM anniversary concerts
• Participating in at least two Seattle International Piano Festival (SIPF) festivals

The remaining qualifying festival opportunities this year include:

• April 15 — Classical Viennese Festival International
• June 14 — Virtuoso Artists Festival International

Families are encouraged to check progress regularly with their instructor to ensure students remain on track for spring evaluations.

Upcoming Concerts and Masterclasses

The 20th Anniversary Season of the Chopin Academy of Music continues with several exciting events in the coming months:

• March 29 – Kaminska–Bowlby in Concert – A recital of solo and duo works including music by Schumann.
• April 25 (Afternoon) – Masterclasses at Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart with guest artists, Sean Terada Yang and Cezary Karwowski, distinguished laureates of the Seattle International Piano Competition.
• April 26 (Morning) – Guest Masterclass with Dr. Yi-Yang Chen (University of Kansas)
• April 26 (Afternoon) – Concert with Sean Terada Yang and Cezary Karwowski.

These concerts not only celebrate the Academy’s artistic community but also count toward the concert attendance requirement for Exam Track students.

Making the Most of Winter Practice

Snow days will not last forever. Before long, the sun will return to the Pacific Northwest and it will become much harder to stay indoors to practice.

For now, however, the quiet of winter offers musicians something rare: uninterrupted time to think, listen, and practice.

So enjoy the snow, stay warm, and when the moment feels right—sit down with your piano, violin, cello, or flute and make some music.

Your future self will thank you.

The post A Snow Day for Musicians appeared first on Chopin Academy of Music.

When families search for piano lessons in Issaquah, they often focus on the teacher, the program, or the schedule. And that is to be commended! But there’s another factor just as crucial to a student’s success—the instrument itself.

A piano isn’t simply a tool; it’s a partner in artistry. The touch, tone, and responsiveness of the piano you practice on every day directly influence how a student learns to play, to listen, and ultimately, to express music.

Why Concert Instruments Are So Challenging

Students often discover that performing on a concert grand feels entirely different from practicing at home, and to a parent they can sound very, very different on the stage. Even advanced pianists can be caught off guard by how heavy the action of a fine (or not so fine) concert instrument feels beneath their fingers. There are several reasons for this:

• Even respected halls don’t always have perfect instruments. Many concert pianos have decades of history—what technicians affectionately call “city miles.” Though well-maintained or even rebuilt, time and constant use change how they respond.
• Each concert piano is voiced for its own purpose. Some are bright and penetrating to project over a full orchestra; others are intentionally muted for chamber or vocal work. A pianist must constantly adapt.
• Neglect is common. Many otherwise fine instruments are stored in overly dry halls, exposed to sunlight, or inadequately serviced. Without regular maintenance, even the best pianos lose sensitivity and depth.

So when a young performer finally sits down at one of these instruments, it’s no surprise that it feels foreign—especially if their home piano is light, uneven, or digital. Part of a pianist’s skill set is being able to quickly size up an instrument and adapt on the spot. Still, optimizing a student’s at-home practice situation can be an extremely important part of the equation.

Why Digital Keyboards Don’t Prepare You for the Real Thing

Digital keyboards are convenient, space-saving, and affordable, but they create long-term challenges. In our experience, students who practice exclusively on digital instruments often learn to play with fingers only, never developing the use of arm weight—the fundamental technique that produces tone, color, and contrast on acoustic pianos.

When such students encounter a grand piano, they struggle to project sound or control dynamics. Their tone becomes flat and non-projecting, and no amount of practice on a digital keyboard can replace the tactile feedback of felt hammers, a concert-length lever action, a tension-weighted damper pedal, and soundboard resonance.

A good acoustic piano, on the other hand, trains strength, coordination, and musical sensitivity—skills that carry naturally to the concert stage.

The Problem with Upright Pianos

Even quality vertical pianos can limit a student’s growth. Their actions are inherently lighter and shallower than grands, and with age they lose regulation and tonal balance. The sound grows bright and uneven; keys feel unpredictable; repetition is unwieldy.

This inconsistency forces students to compensate with finger pressure rather than whole-arm motion, resulting in tension and restricted expression. Over time, the instrument itself becomes a barrier to progress.

Building a Better Practice Environment

If you’ve already taken the time and effort to seek out the best piano lessons in Issaquah, you’ve done your research. You’ve found expert faculty, performance opportunities, and an inspiring community. But there’s still one vital question to ask:

Is there more you can do to help your child reach their full potential?

The answer begins at home—with the piano itself.

• Get the best piano you can afford. Reputable brands like Steinway, Yamaha, Kawai, Baldwin, and Mason & Hamlin have earned their names through precision craftsmanship and longevity. These instruments maintain consistent touch and tone over decades of use.
• Keep your piano voiced and regulated.
  • Regulation ensures every key feels uniform and responsive.
  • Voicing adjusts the shape and density of hammer felts where they strike the strings. Over time, these felts harden and deform, producing harsh tone and limited dynamic range. Proper voicing restores balance and allows a pianist to shape sound—from the softest whisper to the fullest fortissimo.
  • Regular tuning is also key to preserving piano longevity and ensuring tone stays pleasing. Twice a year is recommended for students who practice an hour or more per day. Once per year is a minimum, even if a piano sees less use, ensuring the strings are able to move easily between friction points.
• Heavier and slightly muted is better than light and loud. In the home, pianos naturally sound louder than in concert spaces. A slightly “voiced down” instrument encourages healthy arm use and projection, preparing students for the larger halls where sound must travel.

The “Wait and See” Trap

Many parents say,

“We want to wait and see if my child is really interested before investing in a good piano.”

It’s an understandable sentiment—but one that often leads to missed opportunity. The early years of piano study are when the foundation for proper touch, tone, and technique is formed. Waiting too long can have lasting consequences.

Here’s why the “wait and see” approach rarely works:

• It reinforces poor technique. Students practicing on light keyboards or neglected uprights develop “finger-only” playing habits that are extremely difficult to correct later.
• Critical growth years are lost. By the time a parent commits—often when a child is 13 to 15—schoolwork, sports, and other activities limit practice time. The crucial window for technical development has passed.
• A better piano sustains interest. A responsive, rich-sounding instrument rewards effort and keeps motivation alive. Students stay interested because the piano itself feels inspiring.
• Inferior instruments cause frustration. Sticking keys, squeaky pedals, and uneven tones make it hard to enjoy playing. It’s often not the child’s lack of interest—it’s the piano’s lack of cooperation.
• Delaying often costs more. Parents end up buying twice: first an inadequate instrument, then the one the student really needed. Investing early saves money and years of frustration.
• Confidence comes from control. When a young pianist hears beautiful sound emerge from their own playing, it builds pride and emotional connection—fueling long-term commitment to the instrument.

Rather than waiting to see if a child will be interested, providing a proper piano helps create that very interest.

Buying Smart: Why a Reputable Dealer Matters

A piano purchase is both a musical and financial investment—and, like any investment, it requires informed guidance. Unfortunately, online marketplaces and classified ads are full of pianos that appear fine on the surface but hide costly problems beneath.

Common pitfalls include:

• Gray market pianos—instruments built for climates abroad (especially in Asia) that warp or crack in North American conditions.
• Worn or unstable parts, such as compacted felts, cracked soundboards, or loose tuning pins.
• Structural instability, affecting the case, pedals, or action regulation.

Before purchasing any used piano, always consult a Registered Piano Technician (RPT) certified by the Piano Technicians Guild (www.ptg.org).

At the Chopin Academy of Music, your primary instructor can also advise you on reputable local dealers, technicians, and piano models suitable for your level and goals. We’ve learned from experience—sometimes the hard way—that professional advice makes all the difference.

The Long View

A fine piano isn’t a luxury—it’s the foundation for lasting musical growth. The right instrument cultivates control, expression, and confidence in ways that no digital keyboard or aging upright can match. Many of the finest made instruments collect dust in the drawing rooms of many Northwest elite homes. However, they should really be put to use in the home of a young learner who will benefit from a great piano.

In a vibrant musical community like Issaquah—filled with recitals, competitions, and concert opportunities—owning a responsive, well-maintained piano bridges the gap between home practice and the concert stage.

If you’ve already chosen the most exceptional piano lessons in Issaquah here at the Chopin Academy of Music, take the next step: give your student an instrument worthy of their effort. With the right piano, consistent care, and expert instruction, you’ll help unlock a lifetime of musical potential.

The post Keys to Success: Why Your Piano Matters appeared first on Chopin Academy of Music.

First is “practice”. Admittedly, this is not a very descriptive term for the work that a student needs to perform at the keyboard or on an instrument. In French, they do not even use this word to describe what is done daily in the practice booth. In that country, they use the term répétition. Take out l’accent aigu, and you know exactly what that word means.

Let’s break it down a little more.

During a practice session, the bulk of activity when working on etudes and musical works is to break it down into important fragments and repeat, hopefully using a variety of different techniques (rhythms, accents, hands separate, etc.) to help drill and even-out the passages. Usually, we focus on the hardest parts in the piece.

Repeating a whole piece from beginning to end does not constitute practice! We’ll contrast that activity with the term, playing. As implied, playing the piano or the violin is fun! It certainly serves a purpose, especially during certain phases of learning a difficult piece. However, playing is hardly the same thing as practicing. Naturally, a beginner will get some benefit from playing through a piece or song over and over, because generally, those exercises are already short, and therefore ripe for repeating in its form. Breaking pieces up into their most difficult components is something more intermediate students learn how to do. Still, a beginner should get accustomed to the idea of playing fragments, even if the song is only two lines long.

As a general observation, we see that almost always a student will sit down to practice their instrument and will start at the beginning. The practice session almost becomes a hypnotic, yet mindless activity of starting at the beginning and playing through, struggling with the hard parts (usually slowing in those places that give the most challenge), and playing more sloppily at the end, if they make it that far at all. This is inevitable because, unconsciously, the student is really practicing the beginning! Isn’t it, by definition, repeating, when a student encounters a very difficult passage, gets stuck, and goes back to the beginning? That’s why the beginning gets better and the middle and end are much slower to shape up to good form (if they ever do, until a student changes their habits).

For our students in Issaquah and Sammamish, practice needs to be conscious. I always encourage my students to start not by putting their hands over the keys, but first trying to remember what they did the previous day during their practice session and ask questions. What worked? What didn’t? What did I neglect that may need more time today? How might I approach the hard bits in a different way this time? What are the hardest places in this sonata?

Now that we have defined what practice is, we can move on to the next, more difficult term…

Slow seems like a simple enough term. However, when observing students in lessons (and after being told over fifty times that most of the practice should be SLOW), they can’t seem to play slowly. I ask them, “Okay, not too bad! Now, can you play that section again here slower?”.

Inevitably, the student repeats the passage at the same, mostly fast speed. “Slower!” I repeat. Same speed. I then clap to demonstrate the new speed, which happens to be just slightly over 50% of the original speed the student attempted.

The young pupil looks back at me wide-eyed. “You mean, you want me to play that slow?!”

Yes. Slow means slow. In other words, we mean significantly slower than the original attempt. Usually, the student tries, and somehow plays worse than they did when struggling near performance tempo. How is this possible?

In short, it proves the student did not play at any different speed at home over the week. Always the same speed. Always starting from the beginning. Naturally, progress can still be made, but it will be slower. This creates a curious, but verifiable paradigm.

Fast playing = slow improvement.

Slow practice = faster improvement.

And we, as teachers, struggle to painfully try to correct the many mistakes that have been reinforced from weeks of fast playing from the beginning of the piece. Usually the student has not changed the fingering that we, as teachers, noted on the score during the past four weeks. And why would they change those fingerings anyway? That’s because it’s impossible to make measured improvement while addressing little detailed corrections at near-full speed without first breaking down a passage. First, one must identify the issues requiring correction. Then, the student needs to play a small fragment, slowly, carefully observing the issues.

At this point, we must also be wary of the wrong-wrong-wrong-wrong-right-move on! trap. Reduce the number of incorrect repetitions, and maximize the correct ones. Often doing a tricky passage five times perfect in a row (or more!) is the track to conquering difficult spots.

Furthermore, practicing (sorry, I meant playing, here) only at top, or near-top speed results in physical tension. It is only natural that as we play through a piece with musical intension and commitment, like in a performance, we add more muscular tension each time. Also, if anyone asks anything of a student outside of starting from the beginning, such as, I don’t know, “start in measure 17”, or “play left hand only over here at this slow speed”, or any number of permutations, a student finds it nearly impossible on first attempts to do those things. That’s because these are the things one should be doing at home during a practice session. Then how might we deal with the stress and distraction of live performance in front of an audience? Exercising these practice strategies and repeating in a multitude of ways makes us more flexible and resilient under stress. If something goes slightly wrong on stage and we haven’t practiced that particular passage on its own inside and out slowly, then we are most likely going to do what we’ve been trained to do — go back and start from the beginning. Uh-oh.

Now, what benefit does slow playing do for us? Before we can answer this, we must identify one more thing that slow practice is not — it is not sleepy, inattentive, or altering of the musical ideas. Slow means not only aware, but hyper-awareness of what one does at the instrument. That means everything from monitoring one’s posture, to imitating the musical text accurately with good fingering, to listening more carefully to the sound, and many more concepts. When one drives along the freeway at 75 mph, it’s nearly impossible to see the dime on the side of the road. That’s what is required of the young musician. Often, when we get students from Issaquah and Sammamish to play slow, they might be able to do so, but their playing becomes lethargic or lacks the same musical intensity as when they play fast. The same musical things (articulation, fingerings, dynamics, intensity of attack, etc) need to be there, and the awareness needs to be perhaps even higher than fast playing.

Learning the art of slow, fragmented repetition allows us to more immediately correct the issues we have and to better translate our ideas into music effectively. It allows us to reduce physical tension and play more at ease, because we learn how to analyze and use the minimum tension necessary to execute difficult passages.

Fast-only playing induces stress. Stress is a fight-or-flight mechanism we all have. It may not be intense like an actual life-or-death situation, but it is essentially the same physical response. This physical response promotes physical tension. It reduces higher brain function to allow muscles to take over. Aren’t we all amazed when a young learner suddenly realizes that they can play through a piece without the music? Usually that means that passive memory has set in driven by the same stress mechanism, which is rarely good. That further entrenches the student into a beginning-to-end concrete-like execution that means disaster if there is a momentary derailing. (Active memorization is a topic for another time…)

Most students do not know what it is like to play with the minimum necessary tension, because they only have experienced the elevated stress of going fast. Naturally, this feeling is still fun. That’s why we like roller-coasters and watching high-speed chases in movies. Still, those roller-coasters rely on engineers who carefully measure safety and mechanical tolerances, and those films are highly choreographed and require tedious planning and frame-by-frame manipulation.

When we repeat slowly, we can put greater attention into all the aspects of playing a piece of music. We know the piece far more deeply. We learn how to play with more physical ease, and we also learn how to gain greater confidence, poise, and resilience under pressure. It’s not difficult to find lots of discussion about the merits of slow practice (here is an article).

Progress happens at home. During lessons, we point out the areas that need improvement, and remedies for them, while educating on what practice really is. Parents at home can gently reinforce when their child starts from the beginning and plays through a piece three times and calls it done. “Didn’t your teacher ask you to slow down?”

Yes. Yes, we did.

The post Merits of Slow Practice appeared first on Chopin Academy of Music.

As teachers, we spend between 30 minutes to an hour once per week with each student individually. That averages to half a percent of each student’s total weekly time. Parents naturally want us to inspire our students to the best of our capability, but limited by time we can only do so much.

All of us spent many hours weekly as students (and continue to this day) listening carefully to the masterworks we play and love. How else can we glimpse what is possible and grow in understanding? It is no different than asking someone who has never seen a high-rise to build one, even if they have some basic instruction on how to do it. Through carefully listening, sometimes with the musical score in front of us, or just watching a performer, we absorb far more than can be imparted during a weekly lesson, and be inspired to kindle passion we did not know was there.

Live performances are the best, but today we have more access to great recordings (for free!) than at any time in our history. These days, we can do it almost anywhere and at any time. We have YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, and countless other platforms. We only need to look. Ask your primary instructor for some ideas on who to seek out to seek out.

Make a New Year’s Resolution to make listening to classical music something you do each day.

The post Make Listening Part of the Routine appeared first on Chopin Academy of Music.

For those pupils who already have a piece to learn that is at least eight measures long or longer, realize that there are always some spots in the piece that are more difficult than the bulk of the entirety with which the student is struggling (slowing down or playing a bunch of incorrect notes). It is like a broken part in the car―we should fix what is broken, and practice the small trouble spots. Usually we don’t buy entire new car if just one part needs to be fixed, do we? We recommend circling the “trouble” spot and practicing those places even before playing through the entire piece, and trying to fix that “broken” part first. In a longer piece of music, such as a sonata, there might be several difficult spots that should be taken out of the context and worked on in every possible way that the student knows each day, and many more times than the rest of the piece. One may even have a “start up collection” of those trouble spots―and practice them from a purely technical point of view at the beginning of practice. How to practice and how many times to repeat is up to the teacher’s recommendation.

As tiring as it can be, often it does take 10-15 reps a day or more through a difficult spot to smooth it over. If one really takes a good look into a trouble spot―one can even in the most complex pieces of advanced repertoire limit the problem to just such a simple issue as the use of incorrect fingering, or just a few note gestures. Piano students often neglect the fingering suggestions of the teacher (or the editors of the book) who, week after week, have to circle the same fingering with various colored pencils to highlight the problem. Working on fingering seems to be such a big task for a lot of pupils, but yet, without fixing that one problem there can’t be any progress forward. Remember―our fingers were NOT created equal, and often it will happen that with incorrect fingering and even 100 hours of practice, one will not achieve improvement, and with the use of correct and smart fingering, one may not have to practice much at all! So, paying attention to the teacher’s fingering remarks is extremely crucial.

A last word about the repetition of small spots or sections. Often, even by following the teacher’s suggestions and with good fingering, some spots will seem not to improve. This, again, boils down to speed. If something goes wrong during repetition more than three times, then one must change something. Slow it down. Do fewer notes. After successfully repeating those places slower, usually a student can quickly plug it back into the larger passage and gradually bring it back to speed. Without this important change in strategy, one is simply repeating the wrong way.

While the trouble spot is finally starting to sound fluid and is played with ease, the students should start incorporating it into the larger sections and phrases and move on to new tasks, such as phrasing, voicing, memorization, and higher level of artistic interpretation.

It is worth reinforcing the crucial importance of fingering in scales and technical exercises. Often even parents seem to be slightly annoyed with our persistence to reinforce the correct fingering―well, the scale and arpeggio are played correctly not only when the correct notes are played, but only when they are played with absolutely correct fingering, in steady beat, flowingly, without sudden bumps and erratic changes of speed. Later, when students advance to Beethoven’s Sonatas―the students will recognize scale-like patterns within the text and those passages should be then played right away with fluidity due to years of working on scales and arpeggios, and the fingering should basically become automatic at that moment. Correct fingering allows us to play with fluidity and ease. Remember, there are only 24 scales and arpeggios, but every piece of music uses them!

What many should remember is that practicing is work, and work is often monotonous. Repeating and concentrating on short fragments, even just a few notes, passages to be played with just one hand, day by day for weeks… that is what it takes to one day being able to “fly” and enjoy the beauty of the work. The latter is not possible without the former. This is why perhaps the most important talent that we need to have as performers is the talent for diligent work. Also, as this is an acquired skill, this ability is perhaps the most important quality that students can apply to their future, regardless of what career path they choose as adults.

The post Practice Tips—No. 3: Fragments and Fingering appeared first on Chopin Academy of Music.

It is hard to learn, it takes ear/brain/eye coordination. It takes quick wits and physical endurance. It takes monotonous work, which will one day turn into something inspired, beautiful, and ethereal. Because of these reasons and many more, parents should help to create the appropriate condition for productive practicing and concentration. Yes, the grand piano is a beautiful piece of furniture in your living room—but a living room, as it is, often is not the best place to practice due to family traffic and kitchen noise.

Students who have to practice in the living room should expect the family to show the maximum respect for their work…yes, for the WORK. Because practicing is work. It takes lots of energy and concentration. Imagine doing your own most difficult job projects in the middle of the living room: how distracted would you be? Now, imagine that piano practicing is that difficult project…

Ideally, the student  should be surrounded by silence with no distracting activities around him or her (even walking by quietly is distracting). Ideally, the student would have a piano in his or her room, or at least a secondary instrument, such as a good quality keyboard. Violin students have an advantage here—if it’s noisy or distracting, one can just pick up his or her instrument and music stand and find a better location.

Parents differ widely with regard to practice supervision. Generally speaking, we do recommend a high level of supervision for those students who are beginners and really young (4-7 years of age). After this time, many parents continue to practice with their children, follow detailed instructions of the teachers well until the students are 10 or 11. One may wonder, though, when is a good time to stop being like that type of helicopter parent… We might say—the good time is when the student understands the idea of correct practice. As soon as they understand what it means to practice with “rhythms” or “grouping”, “slow” or “small passage repetition” or any other methods, or when they realize they have to practice the most difficult spots first and much more than the entire piece. Often good students get to that level by the age of 10 or 11.

Ideally, piano or violin practice should be treated as part of everyday homework—something that has the same time slot every day of the week, something that is non-negotiable and becomes a constant feature in daily activities, like brushing teeth. It would be best if in your daily planning you choose a block of time and mark it “practice.” Piano and violin practice should never be shorter than the lessons time. That should be a minimum requirement. What is the point of doing a 60-minute lesson if the student practices twenty minutes a day? What a waste of money and the teacher’s work! If there is not enough material assigned to cover that amount of daily practice, then perhaps there needs to be an adjustment to the lesson duration. In a perfect situation, the student should take breaks every thirty minutes, but not more often (unless they have injuries or any other particular conditions), and should refrain from disrupting this time, such as using the phone, texting, internet, or anything else unrelated to music during the scheduled practice time.

Parents should resist making comments such as, “Again you repeat the same old piece?” or, “When will you get it and learn something new? I am sick of hearing this over and over!” or, “Do you have to repeat it all the time like that?”

Practicing means repeating. As we mentioned in the beginning, classical music is not easy—it takes thousands of hours of scales, arpeggios, and repertoire to get to any decent level. It is not a “fast achievement” sort of activity. Please, encourage your children by making positive comments like, “I love the sound of that piece! Can you play it again?” or, “I love the atmosphere at home when I hear you practice,” etc. Best piano keyboards can make this process more enjoyable.

To summarize:

1) practicing of classical music is work: let’s give students a work environment: silence, lack of distraction, and respect

2) if possible, let’s keep the practice area away from family traffic

3) if possible, get a second instrument for practicing in the bedroom or any other secluded room (for such occasions as family visits, guests, parties, etc.)

4) let your children practice on their own as soon as they understand what ‘real’ practicing is: they will enjoy the freedom and trust and will open emotionally in music when it comes from them

5) refrain from negative comments and practice encouragement at all times

The post Practice Tips—No. 2: The Practice Environment appeared first on Chopin Academy of Music.

In this first article about practicing advice, I give you both an easy and time-efficient way to improve the effectiveness of practice; one that will undoubtedly cause students to be better in even less time than before—planning.

What is planning? This simply means taking the smallest fraction of time before sitting down to the piano or picking up the violin…ten or fifteen seconds is usually enough…to ask oneself, what do I really need to get done in this piece today?

As creatures of habit, humans, when we don’t consciously approach a problem, like to sit down and go through the same routine, thereby often neglecting the issues that need the most attention, while wasting time on things that feel familiar or comfortable that really need less practice. We observe this in students when they return for their lesson, having not done the tasks we, as teachers, assigned, such as “left hand alone between measures 8 and 12 slowly at mm=80 to the eighth-note and accenting every two notes. Repeat 3 perfect times, then increase mm to 88 and repeat process.” To be realistic, we would really prefer not to write all that info in the students’ notebooks if the student will not refer to it.

When we, as practicers, don’t ask what we need to improve upon, our unconscious tendency is to avoid what needs attention, because that (again, unconsciously) turns into something we translate into work which translates into difficult, and thereafter associated with unpleasant, and therefore something we wish to avoid. When one takes a few moments before practice begins to re-read notes from the teacher, or simply remember what took place in the lesson, one is then taking a conscious approach to practice. By doing this, one will far more likely increase time efficiency by 70% or more.

Day one of practice this way is usually great. It also directly follows the piano lesson, so the materials will tend to be more present in the students’ minds. However, day two of practice can quickly revert to the old ways. So, each day after, the 15-second planning session must add, in addition to goal setting, what did I do the day before? Was it successful? Do I need more time to review it the same way, or, if unsuccessful, should I try approaching the problem differently?

The other aspect of practice planning is that of goal scope. In fifteen minutes, is it reasonable to practice a whole movement of a sonata? Not at all. Just a section? Sure, if it’s small enough to be effective with repetition, and a variety of practice methods as prescribed by the teacher (such as slowly, hands separate, with metronome, rhythms, tiny chunks). One must remember that less is more, and how true that is with practice!The smaller the goals are, the higher the chance that the student will improve and waste less time. Throughout the week then, when the student approaches practice planning consciously, the focus will shift from goal to goal as needed, covering the assigned material easily and without difficulty. Problems are conquered easily, because they are broken down into the smallest, most easily conquerable goals. This is not hard at all, and the student will be more thrilled that he or she is covering material quickly.

A last warning: avoid the panic of, gosh, I have to do all these things! This will turn into trying to overcome goals that are too large in scope and therefore unrealistic. Panic = wasted time. Small bites handled over the course of the week will result in manyfold greater efficiency.

The post Practice Tips — No. 1: Planning appeared first on Chopin Academy of Music.