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It is important when practicing any type of music to have a strategy when you begin. There are certain things that anyone must do in order to maintain progress in a musical study. First of all, you must make sure you practice every day to maintain steady progress.

Every time you sit down to practice, you want to accomplish something and be better at some aspect of your learning that you were yesterday. In order to accomplish this, there are a few things you can do to ensure progress. I have been taking piano for almost 9 years and something my teacher and I devised to help when practicing a piece was an acronym, "MRS. RV". It stood for the following things:

Metronome
Repetition
Sect ions
Rhythmic Variation.
One should use a metronome as often as possible. It is a very useful tool in terms of keeping exact time and developing proper muscle memory. Although you may be able to feel the beat, very few people can keep an exact beat in their head. While practicing, one should begin with a slow tempo that they feel comfortable with, and gradually increase the speed until you can comfortably play the piece "Allegro" or whatever may be marked as the ideal tempo for your piece. Once you practice this way, you will most likely develop the proper muscle memory to effectively maintain this ideal tempo subconsciously and no longer need to rely on this tool. It is always a good idea, however, to check with the metronome at points in your development of a piece.

Repetition is the most important thing to do when your practice. Period. You have to repeat and repeat and repeat your material to the point where you could literally play what you have practiced in your sleep. And also, it is OK to make mistakes while your practice! In fact, it is GOOD to make mistakes while you practice! That means you are improving by choosing challenging material that you MUST repeat and repeat in order to perfect. You should always choose a piece that challenges you.

While you are repeating this piece and using the metronome, it is a good idea to divide your piece into small sections, especially in areas that trouble you and are difficult. Slow down and go over a couple bars until you feel comfortable with it. Then, you can add a bar before or after one or two at a time so you have bigger and bigger sections, until you can comfortably play the entire thing.

If you really have a difficult run or line of 16ths or 32nds, you can apply RV, rhythmic variation, meaning instead of playing the written rhythm (bada bada bada bada) you could practice holding out one of the notes in a sequence or putting an accent on a specific one (baaaaada bada baaaaada bada or baDA baDA baDA baDA).

Another thing I do when I practice is record what I accomplished on that day of practice, to make sure that you are achieving positive things while using all these strategies at a steady rate.

Some final things to make sure you always have when you practice are a quiet environment with no distractions, a lot of focus and concentration, enough time to warm up your fingers and play through everything you intend to practice, and a warm room. (Often I find it hard to freely move my fingers in a cold room because my fingers get stiff and less flexible.)

I hope this has been an effective guide to your practicing.

Learn more about this author, Bob Monty.
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