Piano Practice Guide

Your Journey: An Introduction

Enjoying the Ride

Navigating the ups and downs of your piano journey

What is a mission statement?

Writing Your Mission Statement

Using Your Mission Statement

The Five-Finger Exercise

The Five-Finger Exercise sounds exactly that: it is an exercise which develops each of the five fingers.

Practicing the Five-Finger Exercise each day will improve your:

1. Speed
2. Accuracy
3. Tone

Who doesn't want to play fast pieces, with the right notes, and with a beautiful sound!

How to Play the Five-Finger Exercise

Hold your right hand in front of you with your palm facing towards you.

Now bunch your fingers into a fist.

Now relax a little and let your fingers gradually loosen.

Notice that your fingers are naturally curved.

Remember this feeling and go to the piano.

With your fingers naturally curved, place your thumb on middle C.

The other fingers will fall onto the surrounding notes.

For example, the thumb will be on C, the second finger on D, the third on E, the fourth on F, and the fifth on G.

Each of the fingers covers a note.

Now play each of the notes very slowly, and keep your other fingers touching the keys.

The Five-Finger Exercise

Finger Independence

By keeping each note on the key — avoid letting any finger lift off the key — you are practicing finger independence.

Finger independence means that each finger moves independently from another.

This is useful since the movement of each finger is made really effective.

Why Practice Finger Independence?

Let's say that every time you play your thumb the fifth finger sticks up into the air.

If the piece of music requires you to play a fifth finger next, your fifth will come down from a great height.

This means you may play the wrong note, you may play slower, and the note may be too loud.

Alternatively, if you have trained your fifth finger to stay on the key, you'll find it already touching the key: it's ready to go.

This means you'll play the correct note, you'll play quicker, and the tone will be easier to control.

This can take a little time to develop, so you'll want to start your practice each day with the Five-Finger Exercise.

Sight Reading: An Introduction

Sight reading means playing a piece of music for the first time.

Since it's the first time you'll have seen the music, you'll be reading it “from sight.”

This is a useful skill to develop since it means you:

1. Can pick up a piece of music and just play it
2. Take less time to learn new music
3. Can play with other musicians with ease

When Should I Practice Sight Reading?

You should practice sight reading each day.

It's usually best to practice it right after your finger exercises.

You'll want to practice on music that you can play easily.

This means playing music that seems easy compared with your pieces.

The music will be short and you'll be able to play it fluently.

Your teacher will suggest a book or two for best progress.

How Do I Practice Sight Reading?

Take 30 seconds to look through the music before playing.

Glance through the main information:

• The title
• The time signature
• The key
• The meter
• The dynamics
• The articulation

This should only take a few seconds.

Then find and play the most challenging measure (or bar).

Spend the rest of the 30 seconds developing this bar for fluency.

When you then play the piece, you'll sight read the easy parts and you'll have developed the challenging parts.

This will allow you to play fluently and expressively.

Dos and Don'ts