Are You Listening to This?

We learn every day how to listen in different ways and with more focus when we practice our pianos.

Today, however, we’re going to talk about something else that you need to listen to when it comes to playing your piano that will help you overcome any areas of blockage in your growth that you might be experiencing.

I want you to think about what you hear in terms of words instead of notes and music.

The words that need attention are what you hear most from your piano teacher and/or students that you may play with in some type of group or class experience.

There are usually common themes in what our teachers tell us week to week or class to class. The reason we keep hearing about these same issues even if it is in different ways is because we keep having challenges with them.

Think about some of the things that your piano teacher may have told you several times:

• Slow down
• Practice hands separately
• Keep a steady tempo
• Review your key signatures
• Practice with a metronome
• Just work on certain measures

Once we start focusing on what we keep hearing our teacher keeps talking about, we’ll really have improvement in those areas because we’re putting our own focus on them more.

Now if you don’t have a piano teacher in the “regular” sense but maybe participate in an online group class or session, there are still words that you can start focusing on more to find out your challenge areas; and those are your own words!

Most times, when we participate in an online piano class, the lesson is already planned and presented accordingly. So you aren’t necessarily playing for the teacher but you are still getting a lesson and learning something new on your piano. There is usually a question and answer period and this is where you want to start noticing what questions you typically ask, and especially each time you attend the class.

Watch to see if you ask about things like:

• Rhythm and/or counting issues
• Issues with note reading
• Understanding chords
• Music Theory questions
• Improvisation challenges

Whatever you seem to keep bringing up in your own questions should tell you where you need to put more attention so you can conquer those challenges once and for all.

Words are just as important in our piano playing as the music is and when we start noticing the words that we say and our teacher says more than a couple of times or over a period of time, we can see where we need to dig in and it really will help us grow just by changing the area of our focus.
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