HOW TO PRACTICE

Build A Foundation

• Learn the right hand pattern
• Learn the left hand pattern
• Put hands together in parallel motion and contrary motion
• Play the Scale of Chords ascending and descending with each hand
• Practice chord inversions for each chord in the scale with each hand

Set Goals & Challenge Yourself

Don’t wait for your teacher or a resource like this to tell you what to play.

Experiment, ask questions, challenge yourself and have fun. Here is a non-exhaustive list of some things you can try. Be creative and come up with your own exercises!

• Play a scale, exercise or passage without looking at your hands.

Some of the best pianists that ever lived were blind -- Art Tatum, Lennie Tristano, Stevie Wonder, George Shearing, Ray Charles. Others like Bud Powell and Erroll Garner almost never looked at their hands while playing. Teach your fingers the way.

• Change your articulation, dynamics, phrasing and tempo.

Play staccato, legato, fast, slow, loud, soft. Crescendo and decrescendo as you play. Play like an elephant wandering the savannah. Play like a leaf falling from a tree. Play any way you can think of.

• Meander around the scale in a non-linear way.

Don’t just play up and down. Switch directions casually. Skip notes. Create patterns.

• Play from the root up to the 7th and back down.

This keeps chord tones of the tonic chord on the beat. Try starting from other chord tones.