5 Steps to Ensure Your Success When You Learn to Play the Piano!

​Are you just starting to learn the piano? Wonderful!

So how's it going? Have you learned your notes yet and started working on a piece? 

​There's a lot to learn, isn't there! 

• There's that big keyboard with all of those white and black keys on it; that are all different notes.
• There are those small foot pedals down at the bottom that do something.
• There's a page of music sitting in front of you that you need to know how to understand; with numbers and notes and lines and other markings. 

You might be wondering how you can tackle all of this in the beginning so you can really learn to play the piano well! 

There are 5 important things to remember and apply towards your piano learning that will support and ensure your success. Here they are.

1. Set up a realistic but steady practice schedule! Anything new that we attempt to learn takes effort on our part. If you apply yourself a little bit each day to your piano studies, you can't help but see improvement and grow. The more you do it, the better you will become. It's important to be realistic about how much time you can give each day so you won't get behind; so set up smaller practice times until you get into the habit of doing it, and then you can increase the length of the sessions as you grow in your playing. 
2. Take everything slowly! This might be the most important thing for you to remember in all of your piano studies. If you are just starting out, and are learning where your notes are on the keyboard. Don't try to learn them all in one day. Take  a few and practice finding those notes on the keyboard several times, before you start adding in new ones. The same goes for when you start learning a new piece. Play each measure slowly first, to secure the notes in your fingers, and then start moving your tempo up slowly. 
3. Pay attention to any mistakes! We all make them, especially in the beginning. Mistakes can be great teachers in fact. They tell us to stop, pay attention, and figure out what we're doing wrong. When we fix mistakes early on, we prevent ourselves from forming a habit out of playing something the wrong way. This saves a lot of time later on, too. 
4. Work on the hardest parts first! When we move into working on finger exercises and easy pieces, we often want to keep starting at the beginning when we sit down to practice. What can happen, is that the rest of the piece gets neglected, even though we're feeling pretty good about how well we're starting to play that first part! Balance out your attention and practice so you cover all of your pieces and etudes; start at different places each practice session and save your playing through the whole piece for the end of your practice time, as a review. 
5. Warm up with Scales and Exercises! Remember that we are using our body to play the piano like an athlete uses her/his body to throw a ball, or swim laps. Warming up on scales and then exercises allows your muscles and fingers to limber up and move easier across the keyboard. It's the same when you go out for a power walk or run. You have to stretch before and even afterwards to help your muscles stay lose. You don't have to spend hours doing this either, but a few minutes at the beginning of your practice session will make for a much more successful outcome. 

Establish a good practice time each day, practice slowly, listen to your mistakes, focus on all of the hard parts in your music, and warm up with scales and exercises. That's it in a nutshell! 

If you think about it, you can "transpose" this plan to anything in your life that you want to learn and succeed at! If you approach your piano playing within this framework, you will see a lot of growth and will be playing more and more pieces each week. Good luck!

Stay Tuned to LessonsOnTheWeb to learn much more and achieve your dreams of playing the piano!