You might be wondering, "what's the fastest way to become a better pianist?" After all, in the modern age, everyone has multiple things going on in their lives, jobs, hobbies, family, church, sports, etc.

You may hear teachers online or other e-courses say something like "practice at least 30 minutes a day, optimally 1-2 hours". But mindlessly practicing leads nowhere. In fact, it's actually very possible to become worse if you are not practicing correctly. You develop bad habits that take even longer to fix, which means you end up going around in circles as opposed to improving.

Over my 30+ years of playing the piano, I have practiced in countless different ways. I have studied with top conservatory professors at elite music schools like Juilliard, Peabody and NYU. I have learned with some of the highest caliber piano teachers in the world.

Throughout this journey, I have learned that high quality practice can leapfrog you ahead of poor quality practicing-pianists by an order of years, or even decades. A pianist who plays and practices well, can reach a level in 3 years, that takes another pianist 13 years.

And it's not like they are spending 8 hours in the practice room every day either. Instead, with the right instruction, they are learning very intentionally and efficiently what proper finger technique, relaxation of the muscles, and nuanced, precise musical control looks like, sometimes only spending 15 minutes a day practicing.

What is a "good practice session?"

To answer this question, let's start off by first answering the question, "what is a bad practice session?"

1. Playing a piece through mindlessly without correcting mistakes or problem sections

2. Practice a piece without rhythmic structure (such as counting or a metronome)

3. Playing a piece "emotionally" or "expressively" (which usually consists of moving one's body excessively to feel the music). "Emotional playing" is also a misnomer. A good pianist feels the emotions, a great pianist creates the emotions through technically proficient playing.

4. Practicing exercises like Hanon or scales/arpeggios excessively. Musicality/artistry is the source of finger technique. True finger technique will come as you learn and master pieces in a serious and musical manner. It will not come from mindlessly drilling Hanon exercises.

5. Playing a piece quickly in order to see "how fast can my fingers move." This also leads to bad habits and one bad session can undo weeks of progress.

6. Playing pieces that are too difficult. This is common for some of my ambitious students, who want to play famous pieces like Moonlight Sonata 3rd movement or La Campanella without developing the proper finger technique and musicality to approach these very technical pieces.

7. Playing pieces from memory without looking at the sheet music. While I fully support memorizing one's pieces, if you play a piece from memory too many times, your muscle memory takes over and the mental vision will start deteriorating and your performance will suffer. Instead, keep the sheet music close-by and study it when you practice.

As you can see, it is very easy to have a bad practice session - certainly much easier than it is to have a good practice session. This is why the common advice to "sit at the piano and practice 30 minutes a day, no matter what" is misguided.

Now that we've gone over what a bad practice session looks like, let's look at what a good practice session looks like:

1. Playing a piece through with counting or with metronome, where every single note is played with intention and clarity.
2. Marking in the sheet music the problem notes or measures that are difficult and diving into these problem measures to fix. Note: if you are marking more than 25% of your piece as "difficult", you should NOT be playing this piece.
3. Slow-practicing, hands-alone deep-diving into problem measures. This means playing every note and noting the interaction between the notes to each other, as well as between the left and right hands.
4. Making adjustments and optimizations to fingerings and dynamics, by making markings to yourself via a red pen. Red is the most attention-grabbing of the colors, and a red note that you write for yourself will remind your brain everytime to play something in a more nuanced or musical manner.
5. Taking real efforts to coordinate the hands and fingers together, so that they are 100% in sync with each other and 100% in sync with your count or the metronome. This is probably the most important thing you can do during practicing.
6. Not rushing or losing your count. This leads to your fingers pulling ahead of your mind's ability to "understand" what you are playing - leading to loss of control and bad habits.
7. Understanding the music theory, rhythmic structure, and overall piece storytelling to create a cohesive, coherent narrative in one's mind.

When you are playing a piece, you are telling a story, a musical story. All of the classical pieces worth playing, and even most of the pop and rock songs, have a beginning, middle, climax, rest moment, buildup, transition periods, and conclusion. The rise and fall of energy, tension and release, drama and intensity, consonance vs dissonance, dark vs light - these contrasts is what gives life to your musical expression.

As you can see, playing & practicing the piano correctly is an all-body, all-brain activity. There can be no distraction, no obstacles in your mind that prevents you from fully concentrating on piano playing. Because of this, it's important to also cover the circumstances in which you should avoid practicing:

1. Practicing when sick. If you are sick, you simply don't have the mental energy to properly visualize the music and move your fingers in a way that helps. Just don't even bother.
2. Practicing when tired. Same thing as being sick. If you are tired, you might be able to get through the piece based purely on your finger's muscle memory, but this leads to a breakdown in connection between your fingers and your mind, which leads to a regression in your piano skills.
3. Practicing when mind is occupied with something else. Similar to the above 2 scenarios, when you are feeling anxious, worried, or simply focused on something else, this leads to suboptimal and in many cases destructive practicing. If you mindlessly drill a measure of difficult music hoping it will fix itself, while thinking about something else - you will only make things worse.
4. Practicing when there are distractions happening near you. Whether it's family members talking to you, or your dog barking, or the repairman hanging up the TV, any circumstance that leads you to not be able to focus 100% on practicing is suboptimal and potentially destructive.
5. Practicing when you have already played a lot. It's sometimes difficult to know when you have reached the point of "overpractice" and it's very important to stop when you have reached that point.

Regarding point #5, I actually rest on days after a great practice session, choosing to avoid the piano altogether, and simply listen to recordings or write music or something that's not actually me playing the piano. When you have reached your "practice" threshold, your mind is busy setting up the new mental connections that makes your fingers more independent and capable. Much like how bodybuilders need to rest their muscles after a strenuous workout, us pianists need to rest our minds after a rigorous practice session.

Taking into account these situations in which you shouldn't practice, it is quite easy to see that there should be at least 1-2 days a week when you shouldn't practice at all.

Of course, not practicing enough and only touching the piano 1-2 times a week is also not going to lead to growth, especially if those practice sessions themselves are inefficient.

Therefore, aiming for 3-5 rigorous, fully-concentrated practice sessions a week is the optimal strategy.

What should your goal be during your practice sessions?

During practice sessions, your biggest goal should be to aim for a cleaner, more precise sound that is coherent and clear to the listener. Almost like aiming to be a robot, but a robot who is capable of producing dynamic and expressive music.

Now, you may say "but wait! I'm not a robot. I'm a human, and I have emotions that I want to bring out in the music."

My years of wasted time

This was my thinking for well over 2 decades of my life. I prided myself on being able to "feel" the music, getting lost in the melody and harmony, and feeling like some kind of Byronic hero when playing the piano.

While this did lead to occasional moments of brilliance, looking back now, I now see it as years of wasted potential. Had I been more humble, more methodical, more studious with my approach, I would be a far better pianist & musician today.

After studying with some of the greatest living pianists and learning myself, I realized that in order to produce a spellbinding performance, one must first understand their music, inside and out. And that means being able to play it at a high level, with 100% accuracy and precision.

Developing Finger Intelligence

When you improve your precision in playing your pieces, your fingers learn technique. They become more intelligent. They are capable of producing a whisper-quiet pianissimo, or a quick, spritely staccato. They are capable of forming an expressive, dynamic phrase which builds upon the previous music, and climaxing and sighing in moments of tension and release.

But it's important to note that these musical moments are not spur-of-the-moment decisions. Instead, they are preplanned far in advance - much like how a conductor's work is 95% behind the scenes. When you watch a conductor at a concert, you are seeing the final result of a person who has spent countless hours working with the orchestra on every single painstaking detail in the music - getting the different instruments to interact together, bouncing off ideas, providing harmonic and rhythmic support, and ultimately producing a vibrant and captivating version of the symphony.

Similarly, a pianist must spend their practice hours diving into the deep details of the sheet music. Every note, every phrase, every dynamic, every rest, should be given consideration, and planning should be given to as many details as possible.

Why You Need A Teacher

Of course, there will be many details you might overlook in your study of a piece. After all, most students are concerned with learning the notes - and rightfully so. But the notes is just 50% of the music. The other 50% of the music is in the dynamics, the expression, the phrasing, the rhythm, the structure, the energy.

Therefore, it is imperative you have a piano teacher to guide you while learning. I recommend all my students of this e-course to get a piano teacher, at a budget that you can afford. Then, use this e-course to study and brush up on musical and theoretical concepts that you don't have time during your lessons to cover - after all, you should be spending most of your lesson playing for your teacher and getting feedback on the different measures. You should not be wasting precious lesson time learning what a C-minor scale is - concepts which you can learn from a course such as this.

Performing & Recording

And now, once you have studied all the details in your sheet music extensively, and figured out the most precise, most rhythmic, most clear, and least tension way of playing each measure - now, you are ready to perform or record.

When you are performing or recording, you shouldn't be worried about mistakes. You should instead be worried about giving a convincing, powerful performance. Everyone makes mistakes, especially at the heat of the moment. But as Beethoven said:

"To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable"

Passion however, is a finite resource. It's the same as if you are watching a movie for the first time. Your first few times watching it, you might feel a lot of emotions. But after the 10th time watching it, you might feel less emotions. Same with performing a piece - save this passion for when you get onstage or when you are recording the piece. The rest of the time when practicing, don't think about passion, instead think about precision.