How to Practice a New Piece

New music can be intimidating. You look at the page and see millions of notes and are tempted to give up before you even begin. But don't be scared! There are lots of ways to approach the study of a new piece, but I will give you some of my favorites in a nutshell.

• Look at the music away from the piano. 
• Notice things about the overall structure/form.
• Are you a new music-reader? Use this as an opportunity to practice naming notes. I honestly do not have a problem with students penciling in note names as long as they are reading the notes on their own. I used to worry about it, but I have seen many students who did this subsequently become very proficient readers, so I'm good with it now. Just make sure you're:
• using a pencil
• calling notes what they really are. 
• Don't call a B-flat a B. Those are two different notes.
• not penciling in superfluously. Only write what you need to write.
• If you want to pencil in every note, make a photocopy first and use it as a worksheet for note-naming.
• Look at the key signature. 
• If there are sharps or flats, feel free to go through and circle the affected notes with a pencil. 
• Does the key change somewhere along the way? Make a mental note of it.
• Look at the tempo marking.
• Get an idea of how fast you're going to go when you know the music.
• Practice at half of that speed or slower in the beginning
• Listen to a recording or two of the piece if available. YouTube is an amazing resource for this. Yes, you may find bad performances as well as good ones. It's helpful to discern what makes a good or bad performance, so look and/or listen to several recordings when you can. Get comfy and follow along on your music as you listen.
• Do an initial read-through.
• This is the most challenging step. 
• Remember, it will never be as difficult as it was the first time you played it, so hang in there.
• Have a notebook and pencil handy so you can circle or make note of areas that you know will require extra work.
• Make a plan.
• How much do you want to learn the first week?
• Break your weekly goal down into daily goals.
• Break it down in several ways:
• One measure, phrase, or line at a time. Repeat.
• One hand at a time. Repeat.
• Mrs. Todenhoft used to write RH 5x, LH 5x, Together 5x on my Bach Inventions. 

Mrs. Todenhoft wrote this instruction
on my music, especially when I studied Bach.
And she always wrote with a felt-tip pen.

• Sometimes a student will tell me that she "can't play it right unless she uses both hands." Even more reason to practice with one hand at a time. You don't really know a piece unless you can play it one hand at a time. The opposite is also true, of course.
• Cut the tempo way back.
• Use a metronome if you need to.
• Free metronomes are everywhere: online and in app stores. My favorite one is the free Steinway metronome in the Apple App Store.
• You used to have to pay $25 just to get a terrible-sounding, super-annoying pocket-size metronome. Be grateful for new technology. And volume controls.
• Every great pianist practices slowly. Really slowly. No...slower than that.
• "The highest artistry and achievement in playing any piano work lies in being able to play it excellently at the slowest possible tempo." John Cobb, 1969 semi-finalist in the Van Cliburn Competition.
• Use correct fingering from Day 1. It's really not fun to have to relearn something later with the correct fingering. Do it right the first time.
• Make it easy. I always fall back on this one. You have to make your practicing sort of easy. If you have broken the task down into the smallest possible denominator, it will be easy, and you will learn the music more thoroughly.