Tips for Making Piano Practice More Fun

While it is important to establish as much of a routine with your practicing as possible to really grow and advance in your playing, it’s also important to stay engaged with your practicing and enjoy your time at the piano.

Once we get too settled in a certain habit of practicing we can lose some of the enthusiasm and joy we had at an earlier time. This is normal and there actually several ways that you can combat the doldrums in your practicing without taking away from the daily steady work that you’re doing.

Tip #1:

• Change the order of what you would normally practice on. We usually set up a particular order of what we practice on each day. Maybe you start with some scales and then move on to an exercise or etude and then on to your piece. It is important to warm up your fingers before really starting to play, but try doing a few scales to start and then heading straight into your piece; or leave your piece out one day and really focus on the technical work in your exercises one day. There are a lot of different ways you can change things around to make it fresher and allow you to focus more.

Tip #2:

• Add something new to your repertoire and your daily practicing. Playing something brand new will engage your brain in a stronger way a lot of times by really honing in on you being very much focused on what you’re playing. You can even choose to add in sight reading something new each day, or one day a week. Sight reading is simply where you play all the way through a brand new piece that you’ve played before. It can also be an etude or exercise. Sight reading new pieces can help you pick out ones that you really enjoy and would like to learn to play well. Either way, learning something new and/or sight reading will definitely bring a different aspect that is fun and challenging to your practice routine.

Tip #3:

• Go for something fun. When we apply Tip #2 we can sometimes go too far and get a little overwhelmed with so many new things that we’re trying to process at one time. If you feel that way…just pull back a little. Think back to something that you learned already that was fun to play and that you really enjoyed playing. Incorporating pieces like this into our daily schedule can really alleviate any anxiety we have from the new information and help us to remember what we can do already on the keyboard. Make sure that it’s a bit easy for you to play.
  • Think back to how hard that piece seemed when you first started learning it compared to how much easier it is to play now. These are the things that help build our confidence and give us the encouragement to keep learning new things!

Tip #4:

• Play a new style of music. Just as sight reading music makes you use all of your knowledge to get through a new piece for the first time, reading or playing a different genre of music does the same. If you are used to playing classical piano pieces, try playing some jazz or blues music in addition to your classical studies. Try improvising – where you play just out of your head with no music at all. If you’re not used to playing classical pieces, try learning a Bach piece, or something that will challenge you but still be easy enough for you to get through it pretty well. Growing your style of piano playing will really lead to a lot more growth because you will be versatile in your performance options and you can have so much fun with that! Don’t eliminate musical styles that you don’t particularly like either. You may not think you’d like to play blues, but once you try it you just might change your mind!

Tip #5:

• Maintain a good selection of pieces that you already know how to play so that you can pull them out of the library when you need to just sit down and play your piano. Building a good repertoire of music that you enjoy playing will come in handy when someone asks you to play for them or even just when you want to play and not practice.

All of these tips will help you to stay passionate about your piano practicing and playing. Have a good balance of all of them to keep you attentive and open while you increase your ability at the keyboard.

​Enjoy the following video that will clarify these tips with examples and additional helpful suggestions. 

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 your existing skills to that next level, the online music courses on my website https://www.pianolessonsontheweb.com will help you do just that.