Music Video Lesson: How to find Motivation to Practice the Piano (or any other instrument)

Go outside for a while, do something different, go to the gym, take a swim, anything just to get your mind relaxed and not to be beating yourself up for not practicing. That's the worst thing you can do because then you'll feel guilty and even if you're practicing, you're going through the motions but you're not really practicing, are you? Hi, I'm Robert Estrin, you're watching LivingPianos .com, your online piano resource. Today the question is how to motivate yourself to practice.

Sometimes things are going well and you just can't get enough, you can't wait to get to the piano and it's just going well but you know what? I'm sure all of you have experienced times when you just don't feel the motivation and you feel like you should and you want to be able to learn music and perhaps you have a lesson coming up or a recital or some performance or you just want to be able to get to it. You have a beautiful piano sitting at home and somehow you just can't get the energy, you can't muster it up to practice and you don't even know what happened because maybe earlier you were gung -ho and things are going great and you can't even figure out why, you just can't get yourself to work at the piano. Is there anything you can do about such a thing? The answer is yes.

Number one, you are not alone.

Don't beat yourself up because of this. It's natural. You know what? If you practice correctly, it's hard work. It may be rewarding to have musical scores you can play but the process of learning music is hard. So of course there are going to be times with work, with health issues, with schedules that even fitting in the time is an arduous task. So forgive yourself right out of the gate for feeling this way. There's nothing wrong with you. It's normal. There's an ebb and flow in your energy and your expectations as to what you're going to achieve.

And indeed there are times that you consider the piano and accomplish amazing things and other times it's just hitting your head against the wall. So should you keep pounding away at it? Well, yes and no. I would say that when you're hitting a roadblock like this, you've got to change things up. You don't want to keep doing the same thing and expect different results. One definition of insanity.

Sometimes the best thing to do is to just leave it completely. Go take a walk or a bike ride. Do something invigorating. Physical activity is often the best thing you can do when you're feeling any kind of funk. It really rejuvenates you. Getting the blood circulating, breathing fresh air. It's really important for your health as well as your psyche. And you might just take a walk for a while around your neighborhood or if you have a scenic place nearby, come back to it with renewed energy. That might be all it takes. But what else can you do? Well, there's a lot you can do really. You can kind of shake it up in your practice. Maybe you have a routine you always do. You spend some time with scales. You do some memorization. You do some refinement. And maybe it's gotten stale. The whole routine feels like drudgery because you know what you're going to do next. And you know what? If that's the case, that isn't effective practice anyway.

Practicing, as I mentioned so many times before, is a mental activity. You must be engaged in the process or it really isn't practicing. In fact, you can be away from the piano thinking through your music and that can be more effective than sitting at the piano where your mind is not engaged.

So how do you become engaged? Doing different things. Sometimes simply playing through pieces you know can kind of make you feel good and bring the joy back into the experience. Bring the joy back into the equation. You feel like you should work. So every time you go to the piano, you feel a sick feeling in your stomach because you think, oh, I should be practicing now, but all I want to do is play. Well, play the piano. What's all that hard work for anyway? If you can't enjoy playing your instrument, play for a while. You know what? Just the physiological benefit to your fingers is good. It'll keep you in shape. It'll keep those review pieces in your memory and in your fingers. So it's all good.

Maybe you want to take some new music and approach it. Maybe you just want to read through some popular music or different idioms that you never ever do because your teacher doesn't give it to you and you're not supposed to do it. Well, maybe you just want to do it for something different. Or maybe you just want to make stuff up. Just kind of explore the sonorities of the piano just for fun to break away from the rut you find yourself in. There's a host of things you can do.

Maybe you can play the piano or practice piano at a different time of day or night just to make it feel different. Anything that changes the routine can help you. Perhaps just listening to music. If you have some favorite pieces or favorite performers, listen to music, whether it's piano music or orchestral music or anything at all, different styles of music.

Go to concerts. Get together with friends who like music. Play with other musicians. If you have friends who play or sing, maybe invite them over to either a company or even a jam session, something informal. Anything that gets the juices flowing and the creative energies working again is going to be worthwhile for you. So the big point is don't beat yourself up. If it's a routine that isn't working, change it up. You don't have to be married to your routine. Only if it's working for you. Keep it creative. Keep yourself engaged. And if nothing's working, go outside for a while. Do something different. Go to the gym. Take a swim. Anything just to get your mind relaxed and not to be beating yourself up for not practicing. That's the worst thing you can do because then you'll feel guilty and even if you're practiced, you're going through the motions but you're not really practicing, are you? So that's the lesson for today and boy I'd love to hear comments from all of you. I'm sure all of you have suffered from this. If some of you haven't, what is your secret? Share that here at livingpianos .com and YouTube. Again, I'm Robert Estrin. This is livingpianos .com, your online piano resource with thousands of videos and articles on livingpianos .com where you can leave comments for other people and read their comments. It's a rich treasure trove of everything piano. Thanks again for joining me. We'll see you next time.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/how-to-find-motivation-to-practice-the-piano/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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