The Best Way to Learn a New Piano Piece

It’s always exciting to learn a new piano piece!

​Just knowing that we’re going to learn something new awakens in us confidence that we’re able to do something that we weren’t able to yesterday. We can feel a new motivation towards our piano practicing and will even be more alert at the piano when we start a new piece.

​There are some important things to remember when it’s time to start a new piece.

• If you have a teacher, ask her or him to help you pick an appropriate piece for your level of playing. They will also help you pick a piece that will teach you new techniques and grow your piano playing to a new level.
• If you are picking a piece out yourself, look for things that you are already familiar with; such as the key signature, time signature, note values, and chords that you may already know. Then look for a few things that you don’t know under these same categories so you will be learning something new.
• Find a recording or a video of your piece online so you can give a listen before you begin, and then listen again as you go through and learn the piece. This will help you not only to know what it’s supposed to sound like, but also give you a chance to compare what you are playing to what you are hearing and seeing in the professional example. *If you have a private teacher, then she or he can play it for you and even with you at your piano lesson.
• It can be especially helpful in the beginning to pick a piece that you already know and have a desire to learn – as long as it is at the same level that your playing is.

Now once you have picked the exact piece that you want to learn, there are a few specific things to look for and notice in your music that will really help you get started on the right track.

Before you play the piece on the keyboard, do these things:

1. Look at the Key Signature and see how many sharps or flats are there and make sure you identify what each one is.
2. Look through the whole piece and notice any types of ornamentation above or below notes. Most of these will be trills, turns, accents, grace notes, dots – things like that.
3. Look through each measure to see if any accidentals have been written in with the notes. These are sharps or flats that aren’t in the original key signature. They can also include naturals of a note that is either sharp or flat in the original key signature.
4. Notice what chords you are playing and whether the right hand or the left hand is carrying most of the melody line. It can really help to go through each note in the chords verbally before you play them on the piano.

When it’s time to actually play the piece for the first time on your keyboard, try these things:

1. Break down the piece into parts – don’t try to do the whole thing at once. You can even do one hand at a time. Start with one line, or even one measure – whichever you feel most comfortable with. Remember that it’s not going to sound or be perfect…this is essentially when you are sight reading and figuring out the piece on the keyboard.
2. Don’t play any ornaments (trills) for your first several read-throughs… just focus on the melody and chords to start with. Do this a couple of times and when you feel comfortable with the first measure or line, start adding in to what you’ve already played. You can go to the next line or add in another couple of measures – and then play all of that.
3. Make sure that you always review what you’re played through already when you add in something new – and this can be done after you’ve gotten familiar with a new section by simply playing through the old and the new sections together.
4. Use a pencil to mark any problem areas so that you can target them in your practicing the next session.

Take several days to do each one of these bullet points – breaking them down into 1 thing each day. This will prevent overload in your mind which can come from trying to process too much information at one time.

Another part of learning any piano piece is memorizing it. We don’t always have to memorize a piece, but it can be really beneficial if we want to be able to play that piece in public or for friends and family, and don’t want to have to carry the music around all of the time.

The following video goes over these helpful tips and will also give you some great pointers on the best ways to memorize your new piano piece if that’s what you want to do.

If you find yourself getting stuck anytime you are learning a new piece, check back with this video to make sure that you aren’t skipping any of these steps, as that could really slow down your progress. 

If you like my tips and lessons, you will love the courses over on my website. Whether you are a beginner looking to get a solid foundation to build on or you are looking to take you existing skills to that next level, the online music courses on my website - https://www.pianolessonsontheweb.com will help you do just that.