Practice Tip of the Month

If I had a dollar for every time I made a suggestion to a student of practicing their piece in small sections, I would be pretty wealthy by now! Students, listen carefully here... The best way to improve (and improve quickly) is to practice one small section at a time. You may want to ask your piano instructor to help you divide up the piece you're working on into manageable sections. Then, if you really want to improve quickly, don't move on from the first section until it is absolutely perfect. You don't even have to get through the entire piece in one day; it is completely acceptable to only get a few sections down each day of practice. If you don't get the whole piece down by the time of your lesson, I can guarantee you that your teacher would rather hear part of your piece as mistake-free as possible than the whole piece with quite a few slip-ups and hiccups.

Along these same lines, once you have your piece down, instead of playing through the entire song a few times a day, isolate your "problem sections" until you can play that section five times in a row perfectly. After this is accomplished, play through the whole piece and listen to how you have improved!