Piano Video Lesson: Balancing Work and Fun in Your Piano Practice

Hi, I'm Robert Estrin, this is LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource. The subject today is balancing work and fun in your practice.

Well, you know that I've often said that if you're practicing correctly, it's hard work. And it's true, there are some things that are just really tough in practicing. Memorization comes to mind, refinement, these are all, to do them correctly, you must be present in your practice and focused.

Well, what is this idea of having fun in practice? Well, you know, most of practice can be rewarding, fun isn't exactly the right word. However, you may find that if you're so hard on yourself that every time you practice you're working so diligently that you get to a point where just the thought of going to the piano gives you a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach and you don't even want to practice anymore, that is where you've lost the balance. You have to have some joy.

And how do you get this joy? By playing. And is playing practicing? Well, not usually, but sometimes it can be.

Let's say you've been working on a piece a great deal and you come to a point you don't even know what to do next with it. It's kind of there, it's kind of not there and you don't even know perfect opportunity to play through it. You get a feel for where it's at and it can be fun to do that too because maybe you've been practicing slowly, you've been practicing without the pedal, you've been using the metronome and finally just to play through it can be fun. What else can be fun? Let's say you've been doing all of that, you've been memorizing, you've been refining, you've worked on scales. Well, maybe you just want to make some stuff up and is that practicing? Well, once again, it certainly can be if you're exploring new chord progressions, new textures, new techniques that maybe you don't even have in your music. Maybe you always want to do something with a bunch of trills to see if you can make something up that has a bunch of trills in it that sounds cool.

Just take off and have fun, do something wild and crazy just for fun and you know what? You may just discover something that will help your playing if you let yourself go without any preconceived ideas of what you're doing.

Let yourself have fun periodically to break up your practice and to re -energize your mind so that your practicing doesn't become drudgery. Now, then you can go back fresh, okay, you got it out of your system, you played through your pieces, you made something up, you did whatever you wanted to do. Now back to work and you'll be energized again because you gave yourself a little break. And the other thing is that you won't feel like every time you practice, every second has to be on a regiment of what is productive because sometimes productivity can be found in strange places. You may, for example, take a piece you've always played a million times and just try it really fast just for fun even though maybe it's not even an appropriate tempo for that piece but you may learn something from the experience from having that fun with it.

So break up your practice and have fun from time to time in appropriate proportions to keep your practice productive and to keep yourself engaged. And that's the lesson for today. Let us know here at LivingPianos.com how you like these videos and any subjects you want to see in future videos.

I love the comments you leave here at LivingPianos.com and YouTube. Thanks again for joining me.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/balancing-work-and-fun-in-your-piano-practice/

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