Learn to play beautifully

... even if you're a complete beginner

Conservatory-quality online piano lessons from the City of Music, Vienna, Austria

Start Your NEW Piano Journey
 
Effective Piano Practice—a Short Summary piano practice

Practicing piano well is a far cry from just playing through our pieces. To learn effectively, our practice really needs to be systematic. Here are a few rules for effective piano practice.

Focus

Learning music requires our full attention. Practice while your concentration is at its peak. A...

Continue Reading...
 
Drummers' Rhythm Exercises for Pianists piano practice

My music teacher colleague Diego Cardini was kind enough to write this post for Key-Notes readers. Rhythm is something most piano learners struggle with, and percussionists are experts at rhythm, so who better to ask for exercises to help piano students develop their rhythmic skills?

Intro

...

Continue Reading...
 
Play with a Virtual Accompanist piano practice

How do you prepare for rehearsals with fellow musicians? When playing chamber music or concertos, it’s essential to know everyone else’s part well enough to come in on cue and play together. Pianists play from a full score (or at least a piano reduction in the case of concertos),...

Continue Reading...
 
How to Conduct Basic Rhythms piano practice

What do Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt and Bernstein have in common? All were not only composers, they were also pianists and conductors. In our time many famous conductors started their careers as pianists, including André Previn, Daniel Barenboim and Vladimir Ashkenazy.

Why should pianists...

Continue Reading...
Piano Practicing and Phrasing piano practice

Question: Hello Albert,

I read something you wrote under the heading Piano Practice and subheading Accuracy and quote, “we systematically learn our pieces phrase by phrase….”

This is something I have been pondering on for a long time and now question, how long is a phrase,...

Continue Reading...
My Practice Routine piano practice

Question: Hello Albert,

I often read about practicing on your website, and you write a lot about how to practice efficiently, and how you get the best results. But if someone (like me) tries to focus on all the things you tell us on your website, it can be kind of hard to keep everything in...

Continue Reading...
Making Mistakes in Practice piano practice

Learning a piece of music successfully requires avoiding mistakes in practice. How we practice is how we learn, and how we learn is how we perform. If we make mistakes in practice, we teach ourselves to make mistakes in performance. It’s a simple equation.

What exactly is a mistake?...

Continue Reading...
How to Practice Polyrhythms piano practice

Question: What is your advice for playing polyrhythms? For example, simple polyrhythms like triplets against duplets or quadruplets and odd ones (Chopin’s favorite) like 4 notes against 35 or 13 notes.

My approach is lots of practice hands separately with the metronome but the odd ones...

Continue Reading...
How to Learn a Fugue piano practice

With their multiplicity of interweaving, interdependent voices perpetually reacting to one another, deceptively appearing in backwards guise, upside-down, rhythmically lengthened or shortened, migrating amongst unstable keys yet all the while forming a coherent harmonic unity, fugues are far and...

Continue Reading...
Are Editorial Fingerings Compulsory? piano practice

Question: Is it essential to play or to require my students to play all indicated fingerings in early advanced pieces, i.e., Chopin’s Fantasie-Impromptu Op. 66, or Mozart’s Fantasia in D Minor? Although I can play and also teach pupils all of the indicated fingerings, I don’t...

Continue Reading...
Which Hand to Watch? piano practice

Question: I’ve been a guitarist for 30+ years and have always watched my left hand, and rarely my right. And now that I am learning/practicing the major and relative minor scales on piano, I find it easier to watch my left hand when playing the scales with both hands in unison. When I try...

Continue Reading...
Warming Up the Hands piano practice

Question: Hello dear teacher,

I had some problems and sickness and I couldn’t practice at all! I want to start again but my hands are too cold to play after about 3 months, so I try to warm them with Hanon. What’s your idea?

Best regards,

– Sarah

Albert’s reply:...

Continue Reading...
1 2 3 4 5