December 1, 2010
Intermediate Piano Lessons
It can be very irritating when you are starting to learn any instrument to advance onto intermediate levels of playing. This is especially true with the piano as the learning curve can be fairly steep even for the most musically talented people. It can take a long time to become confident enough to know precisely what you are going to do with the two hands at any given moment. Here are a few suggestions to help make that time between beginner and intermediate a little shorter and bit more comfortable. For up to date and detailed video reviews on the best home study piano courses see the Learn Piano website
Probably the most significant factor next to not giving up is to set up a firm practice schedule .Firstly you need to practice daily… on the days when you don’t have time you should at least sit down and play for just a couple of minutes so as to not lose the coordination that you have gone building up over a period of time. You ought to persist with this even when it appears that you are going weeks without making progress. Your progress will at times appear to be very slow but rest assured that you will be advancing and one day it will all start to come together. Stick with it as it will be worthwhile in the long run. Perseverance in your practice is the answer.
It is not sufficient to just sit down and play what ever you fancy whenever you want in your practice sessions. It will be a lot more constructive if you can construct your practice sessions a little.
Sooner or later you will need to know all of your scales and arpeggios. You will find that even though this can be quite a haul, that once you get these learned then your playing will get a great deal easier. For those who are learning to read music you will need to learn all of the major and minor scales to start with. If you are learning to play by ear or by using chord charts then it would still be prudent to learn the scales and what’s more to learn the jazz and blues pentatonic scales and modal scales too. For improvisation there is nothing better. You could also look at the following site for extra information on learning piano in your own home: Piano For Beginners
Scales should take up a good portion of your practice time, even if you have got them all learned. Following this you can then go onto playing your pieces. Don’t simply play them through from the beginning until the finish time and again. You have to be more constructive than that. Start off by going right to the tricky passages and practice them first. Play the hard bits slowly, with separate hands initially…and once mastered you then move onto a different difficult passage. Finally you can play the piece from start to finish a few times without stopping.
Try and keep your learning repertoire down to just a few pieces at a time. It is better to teach yourself just a few pieces than to have a variety that you never have the time and energy to perfect.
Get used to playing with a metronome. This is main to get your timing correct. You can employ the metronome for your scales just as you can for your pieces. Stay in control and lower the tempo when you are practicing in order that you can play correctly. Once you can play something slower then you can start to slowly notch up the tempo until after a few weeks you are playing your pieces or scales at a decent speed. You also might want to try a few moments of playing at a much faster tempo than needed and then slowing back down to a regular speed. You will be surprised at how simple the normal speed seems after having done this.
Playing along with people is great practice and you need to try to do this whenever you can. Even if you can ‘t get together with other people then you can always play along to your music collection. Even if you do not have the music or the chords then this is superb practice for you.
Finally, on occasion it is a good idea to let go, put on your best pianist face and just fake that you know how to play and that you are very versatile. Relax and play your pieces or better still improvise or play along to music or with others. {You will without doubt make mistakes but this doesn’t matter.It doesn’t matter if you make mistakes (you will)}. The purpose of this exercise is to allow you to know what it would be like to be an accomplished pianist and play with confidence. The outcome of this silly little experiment will undoubtedly surprise you. There is a video review of the best piano course available here: Rocket Piano Review
It is my wish that these simple ideas and tricks will help you to persist in the moment that you consider giving up in the difficult transition that is between beginners piano and intermediate level piano.
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