I’m pleased to announce my new course, Introducing the Practice Tools, which is taking place on Saturday, 13th of July 2019 at the Victoria Park Plaza Hotel in central London. Aimed at teachers and pianists at an intermediate level or above, this one-day course is based on my eBook Series and blog. It will introduce highly effective strategies which will assist you and your students in getting the most out of time spent practising the piano.
The course will be delivered in an innovative, interactive format with introductory presentations followed by breakout sessions. Each participant will have their own private digital piano with headphones to test out a particular practice skill. There will be plenty of opportunity for feedback with question and answer sessions forming the backbone of the day. The following topics will be covered:
Introduction: An overview of the practice tools
Using the feedback loop: How to plan and focus your practice session for maximum benefit in every area.
Slow practice: How to use ultra-slow speeds for learning notes, correcting errors and finessing sound, and when not to use it!
Gaining speed: We explore two methods of taking a piece from the slow stages to performance speed, developing fluency and accuracy as well as ease and grace.
Repetition in practice: We form habits by repetition, but only perfect practice makes perfect. In this session we learn how to manage repetition in our practice mindfully and creatively to achieve tangible, lasting results.
Preparatory materials for breakout sessions will be provided in advance and all participants will receive handouts and complimentary online access to my video lecture series on the Practice Tools (valued at £20). Please note that participants will not be required to play in front of others, unless they wish to.
The full price of the course is £125. Book now to secure your place for what promises to be a highly informative workshop!
Course details
Date and time: Saturday, 13th July, 10:00 until 17:30
Venue: Victoria Park Plaza Hotel, SW1V 1EQ, London
Participants: maximum 15 places
Participant profile: Piano teachers and intermediate pianists (+/- Grade 5 upwards)
This event has been made possible with the support of Casio and will include a brief presentation by Chris Stanbury from Casio on the Grand Hybrid and benefits of the Casio Teacher Network.
I am very pleased to announce a new video lecture series on the practice tools available now on the Online Academy.
The Practice Tools
What are the practice tools?
There are some instances where in a lesson a word of instruction can cause the playing to change immediately, but there are plenty of other occasions when we need to go through a process in our practice room to achieve a certain intended result – learning notes, finessing and polishing, and correcting sloppiness. This is rather like a course of medication, one pill will probably not make that much difference – it is the cumulative effect of the whole course that counts.
Another analogy is that of a gardener. If I am planning a new garden, I will first need to have a vision of how I want the garden to look when it is finished. Then I will need to prepare the soil, which will probably involve a bit of spade work and some hard graft. Now, the real gardener will tell you that all this is part and parcel of it, taking pleasure in all the stages from start to finish. There is a certain amount of patience needed to delay gratification and not to skimp on the first stages. If I don’t fertilise my soil, aerate it, add worms to it or whatever else gardeners must do, I can’t expect my plants and flowers to blossom, grow and withstand the frosts and hardships of winter.
So when I outline a specific practising activity, I also underscore the importance of doing this type of work daily with full concentration, resisting the overwhelming temptation to finish off the practice session by playing the piece at full speed. This can immediately wipe out the benefits of the careful practising, in one fell swoop. Have other pieces to play through.
Having put my seedlings in the soil, I will need to feed and water them daily, and protect the ground from pests, trusting that if I do this patiently, they will have the best chance to sprout and grow. Once the garden is in full bloom, it will take regular weeding and pruning to keep it that way. So it is with our playing of a particular piece, no matter how long we have known it or how many times we have performed it.
In this series of video lectures, I describe and illustrate the various practice tools one by one. As with any tool, you have to know how and when to use it. You will be able to apply the tools to every piece you undertake, no matter what age, level or standard you have reached in your piano playing. If you use the tools correctly, you will be practising with consummate skill, efficiency and effectiveness, and will notice significant progress.
It is said that success breeds success; because your progress will be tangible, practising will become infinitely more satisfying and enjoyable!
Introductory Video
In the introductory video, I stress the importance of a certain amount of background work on a new piece away from the piano. When we look at the score, we find patterns, designs and shapes both on the macro and on the macro levels (the piece as a whole, and the piece in its details). Analysing music like this is creative and individual, there is no one correct way of doing it. In this video snippet of the introduction to the series, I illustrate two ways of analysing the subject from Bach’s F major Invention – one text-book style, the other much less formal, and more imaginative.
Other videos in this lecture series include time management in the practice room, the importance of forming habits and reflexes from the very start that we are going to use in the finished performance, how to use The Three S’s (slowly, separately, sections), how to develop speed, quarantining spots from your pieces that cause problems, and the importance of the feedback loop in all that we do.
The complete Practice Tools Lecture Series which includes a further ten videos is available for once-off purchase here or with an Online Academy subscription. Please click here to find out more about subscription options, or click here to view the series index if you are already a subscriber.
Further Information & Resources
The Practice Tools Lecture Series (click here to view the series index)
Practising the Piano multimedia eBook series – Part 1: Practice Strategies and Approaches (click here for more information)
This past Saturday, I embarked on a brand new venture – an interactive workshop on The Practice Tools, using technology to maximum advantage.
Sponsored by Casio Music UK, we hired a large conference room at the Victoria Park Plaza Hotel in London, which was set up with 15 Casio CDP-S100 digital pianos – and a Grand Hybrid GP-500 on the stage. Delegates were easily able to get to this central location and arrived not only from the UK but also from Europe to take part in the day.
We met at 9:30 for welcome tea and coffee and started with an introduction to Casio’s range of pianos by Chris Stanbury, and then moved on to our introductory session – a demonstration of how to use The Feedback Loop as the basis for all we do in piano practice.
There followed four sessions, aimed at the intermediate to advanced player as well as piano teachers. Each 60-minute session was divided up into three segments – a presentation from me on a particular topic, a breakout session where each delegate was able to plug their headphones (provided by Casio) into their own piano and try out the practice techniques I had just demonstrated, then a Q&A session where people could ask questions or give feedback. I provided practice worksheets for each topic, but the practice during the breakout session was not restricted to the repertoire extracts I had suggested – people brought their own music and practised what they wanted.
There were many benefits to this format.
People got to try out very specific practice tools immediately after an explanation and demonstration, so that they could experiment with them while they were still fresh in the memory
Questions and further explanation or demonstration could be offered immediately, so there was no confusion
Nobody needed to play in front of the group unless they chose to, so there was no performance anxiety or nerves whatever associated with the workshop
The first session was all about slow practice, how to use ultra-slow practice speeds to hear and feel every single atom and molecule of the phrase so that nothing slips by our radar. Practising slowly is really quite challenging, and the mind and ear need to be fully engaged to derive the benefit. The second session was all about various ways to bring a piece up to speed (when not to use slow practice) with a special focus on up-to-speed chaining (using The Feedback Loop to correct errors and to refine and finesse). I had the feeling this was an especially important session for those who had struggled with fluency and coordination when playing at fast tempos.
After an elegant lunch, when we were able to chat and socialise a bit, we had a session on controlled stops – how to use the Floating Fermata in our practice to plan ahead and digest the music in our heads before laying our hands on the keyboard.
The final session was all about managing repetition in practice. I demonstrated many different ideas to the group who seemed very keen to try some of these out in the breakout session.
After tea, we ended with a 60-minute wrap-up where we gathered around a piano and had a mini-masterclass on aspects of practice as well as technique. By that time, everyone seemed well and truly nourished and probably slept very well that night!
We are planning more workshops along these lines, not only in London but also in other main UK cities. If you would like to hear about this, make sure you are on my mailing list and you will receive notification well in advance of general publicity.
Further information & resources
Some of the practice techniques we covered in the workshop can be found in the free Grand Hybrid taster e-book and in our video lecture series on the Practice Tools (click here to view the series index)
For news of more workshops, offers and resources it’s worth joining Casio’s Piano Teacher Network.
Due to the popularity of our online workshop on the Practice Tools, we are pleased to announce a new follow-on workshop. This second workshop builds on the concepts introduced in the first and introduces additional practice tools, including:
How to deconstruct the score to learn pieces more efficiently
Using transposition to solve technical problems
Inventing exercises from within pieces
Using shadow practice for tonal and motor control
Deep learning with memory tools such as visualisation and mental practice for deep learning.
As with all of our online workshops, the workshop will include opportunities for questions and answers, along with practice worksheets and resources. The session will also be recorded, and all participants will receive a link to download the video.
We will also be running a repeat of the initial workshop (Part 1) if you missed one of the sessions in April / May and would like to attend (We recommend attending the first workshop before attending the second).
Tickets can be purchased for each workshop individually for £25 or together for both workshops for £40 (please select “Combined Ticket” when purchasing your tickets). Online Academy subscribers get a further 40% off individual or combined tickets. Please use one of the following links to book your place:
Part 1 (Saturday 6th June @ 15:00 BST) – Click here for more information or to book tickets.
Part 2 (Saturday 13th June @ 15:00 BST) – Click here for more information or to book tickets.
Frequently asked questions
How do your online workshops work?
We use Zoom, a widely used platform to deliver the workshops which is free for participants and easy to use and install. The workshops are presented over video using a combination of camera angles (including a close-up for specific hand and finger movements) and slides. There is a comments / chat function which allows participants to submit questions which are answered at various stages throughout the sessions.
What do I if I book but can’t attend on the day?
We record all the sessions and participants receive an email shortly afterwards with links to the video recording and any other resources e.g. slides and worksheets.
I’m an Online Academy subscriber – how do I obtain my subscriber discount?
Details for how to purchase discount tickets will be emailed to you but please make sure that you have joined our mailing list for updates on events and any applicable offers!
Other event details and notifications?
We publish updates and notifications for future events by email (please click here to sign-up for our mailing list), our courses and events page on our website and our events listing on Facebook.
Do I have to have camera and / or microphone?
No, you do not have to use video or your microphone if you don’t want to. Questions can also be submitted via the comments / text chat function.
Online workshop feedback
We are delighted to have welcomed participants from literally all corners of the globe to our online events. Here’s what some of them have had to say about our previous events:
“Excellent format and content, appropriate number of people and expertly demonstrated – I thoroughly enjoyed the session.”
“I had ready Graham’s books on practice, but it was great to be reminded of the key principles in a way that was focused, allowed questions and made me feel like a member of an engaged community of piano learners.”
“I enjoyed this workshop very much even though I had to be up at 6 AM! I am a member of Practising the Piano Online Academy and I have the eBooks but I always learn a bit more each time I review the materials or view a presentation!”
“The practical advice and very specific examples regarding effective practice. It’s great to not only hear about the principles but to be guided through sample applications.”
“I’ve watched Mr. Fitch on YouTube and read his Pianist Magazine articles for years. Recently I have subscribed to his Online Academy website. I was thrilled to participate in a live interactive session that was beyond any opportunity I had ever dreamed of! Thank you to all who made it possible.”
“Graham’s pedagogy is thorough and the scope of the content is as wide as it is deep.”
“I am very grateful for these events. That way, people who are not able to travel can benefit from the knowledge of a great teacher as well!”
“I thoroughly enjoyed it and I’m looking forward to using these newly gained tools in my piano practice.”
“I am very glad I have attended the Practice Tools workshop. I really liked the fact that Graham was going through any questions that we were posting in the chat in between his presentation slides.”
“The best part of the workshops was where Graham answered our questions when we needed clarification.”
“The clarity of Graham’s teaching and being able to watch his demonstrations so clearly and in such detail was fantastic.”
“I loved the personal account of when you (Graham) first learned rotation and the initial fog!”
“I found the demonstration of movements, using different cameras to be very useful. Also the demonstration on the arm as well as on the keyboard.”
“I hope there will be more events like this in the future. I also found the combination with the materials on the Online Academy to be very beneficial.”
If you would like to lay foundations for much more productive and effective practising in the year ahead, you might want to join my upcoming interactive practising workshop. The workshop takes place on Saturday, January 16th from 14:00 – 17:30 GMT and in it I will demonstrate some of the important practice tools and show you how to apply them to learning a new piece, as well as keeping old pieces in good shape. The material will be useful to players from lower intermediate up to advanced levels, and of special interest to piano teachers.
Background to the Workshop
In the summer of 2019, I was invited by Casio to present a day’s course on piano practice at a central London hotel. I felt we could add huge value to the event if everyone had their own piano to practise on during the frequent breakout sessions. Casio arranged for each participant to have a digital piano and headphones, enabling them to try out the ideas I had just demonstrated using worksheets provided without being overheard.
This attracted visitors from all over the UK as well as Europe, and was a great success. we were considering doing this event again when COVID struck. My team and I realised we could adapt this workshop format and present it online and ran a pilot of the format in December last year.
From the feedback received, this turned out to be one of our best received events. The format actually worked better online as it made the event more accessible. Having microphones muted during the break-out allowed participants to practise in the comfort of their homes. The only thing missing was the sumptuous lunch and delicious cakes during the refreshment breaks!
“I loved the well-constructed sessions with a balanced approach of information provided combined with a chance to try out ideas at my own piano in private!”
Workshop Participant
Workshop format and content
Following from the initial pilot, we’ve decided to develop this format further and will be running an event featuring new worksheets and examples on Sat 16th January @ 14:00 GMT.
The workshop will be divided into two parts with a short break in-between. Each part features presentations on specific practice tools interlaced with short breakout sessions where you get to try out the ideas presented in the privacy of your own space.
With plenty of opportunity for Q&A throughout the afternoon, we will explore the following topics:
Using the feedback loop: How to plan and focus your practice session for maximum benefit in every area and to develop your inner “quality control” inspector.
Slow practice: How to use ultra-slow speeds for learning notes, correcting errors and finessing sound – and when not to use it!
Gaining speed: We explore two methods of taking a piece from the slow stages to performance speed, developing fluency and accuracy as well as ease and grace.
Repetition in practice: We form habits by repetition, but only perfect practice makes perfect. In this session we learn how to manage repetition in our practice mindfully and creatively to achieve tangible, lasting results.
Deep learning and memorisation techniques: Thorough practice habits lead to security in performance. When we practise using deep learning techniques, we develop not only our muscular memory and physical technique but also musicianly skills such aural and analytic awareness.
Although similar topics are covered, the content of each of my workshops is different! I will also be using new examples in the worksheets and presentations which will be provided in advance of the event. Therefore if you have attended one of my practice workshops before, you will discover new things the second time around and have opportunities to ask any questions that may have arisen following previous workshops.
Tickets cost £50 (£30 for Online Academy subscribers) and include access to the workshop resources, presentations and recordings of the event. Click here to book your place or click here and further information on how our online events work is available here.
Save 40% on Online Events!
Online Academy subscribers get 40% off all of our online workshops. Please sign-in to your account and the discount will be automatically added at the check-out.
If you are not an Online Academy subscriber and would like to find out more about subscription options then please click here for further information.
What people have said about this workshop format:
“I enjoyed the “hands on” format, instantly putting into practice the topic of discussion is very beneficial. I would almost like to have this format all the time!”
“The interlaced 10 min practice sessions were excellent. They helped cement more what Graham was addressing.”
“This workshop was so good! Graham has the gift of making everything seem possible and is able to explain and demonstrate how to practise at all levels of piano playing – from beginners to advanced. I feel inspired and encouraged by what I learned in this workshop.”
“Even though I have attended other workshops on these topics before, I found this more practical format to be incredibly useful and engaging!”
“I loved the well-constructed sessions with a balanced approach of information provided combined with a chance to try out ideas at my own piano in private.”
“The materials were well designed and inclusive. The host and presenter were very positive and encouraging – not easy to achieve in an online format!”
When learning a new piece from scratch, there are a number of tools we can use to get the maximum benefit from our practice time and to lay the foundations for a secure and successful performance.
Photo by energepic.com from Pexels
I shall be presenting a workshop on this topic next week using examples of different levels from the new ABRSM syllabus. The following are some of the tips and tools that I will be covering:
Limit Yourself to One Read-Through
Many people attempt to learn a new piece by repeatedly reading it through at the piano. Unless the piece is well below your current level this approach tends to be superficial and unsatisfactory; how frustrating to end a practice session sensing the beginnings of fluency only to discover the next day that nothing has stuck and you’re back at square one.
Be like the third of the Three Little Pigs, who takes the time and effort to lay solid foundations for his house so that no amount of huffing and puffing from the Big Bad Wolf can topple it! Deep learning is a truly satisfying and absorbing process that leads to intimate knowledge of your piece and a level of security in performance that will enable you to play confidently and expressively.
One (or two) read-throughs is enough to get the gist of the piece – aim for a rough sketch at this stage, leaving out surface detail you cannot manage.
The Three S’s (Slowly, Separately, Sections)
The Three S’s are the most rudimentary practice tools for thorough learning, but they are easily overlooked or skimmed over in an attempt to play through the piece. Working on a fast piece in small sections at the “Speed of No Mistakes” ensures note, rhythm and fingering accuracy from the outset, thereby avoiding embedding careless errors that may be hard to fix later on.
Taking the time to practise hands separately is incredibly valuable, not only in the note learning stage but regularly thereafter. Handel’s Gavotte in G (Grade 3, A:3) is a duet between the hands, the left hand equally important and active as the right. Unless the teacher hears the left hand by itself, working on fingering, phrasing and articulation, there is little incentive for the student to practise like this. As teachers, we model in the lesson how we want our student to practise between lessons.
Picking out one element for the whole piece offers a broader overview than chipping away at phrase by phrase with all the notes. For David Blackwell’s atmospheric arrangement of Down by the salley gardens (Grade 1, B:3) it would be a good plan to work on the melodic line (the right hand by itself) from beginning to end before even looking at the left hand. Singing the melody with the given words helps to understand the meaning of the poem, as well as where to breathe and how to shape each phrase.
The “separately” practice tool does not only apply to hands alone, but also to strands. The left hand in the opening section of Tchaikovsky’s Douce rêverie (Grade 5, B:3) consists of two elements, a countermelody and an off-beat chordal accompaniment above it. Deconstructing the score is a helpful first stage. We might play the right hand’s main melody together with the left hand’s lower line, omitting the chords until we have heard and felt how these two lines work together.
Q-Spots
Most pieces contain spots that are trickier than others. By identifying and marking these spots into the score we are able to begin each practice session with a step-by-step sequence of activities designed to solve the problems, for several days in a row. Only after working on the Q-spots may we play the piece from the start.
The concept of Q-Spots is a very helpful teaching tool and a powerful aid to effective practice at any level. A good example is to the found in Kabalevsky’s Etude in A minor (Grade 4, A:2) from the second half of bar 10 to the end of bar 11. By quarantining this small fragment, we can apply chaining techniques – playing just the first group of notes until we feel the beginnings of automation and then adding the next group, and so on.
There is an especially awkward moment from bar 65-69 in Bartók’s Rondo (Grade 8, C:1) that will respond well to similar treatment. In this example, metronome practice would help fluency and control. Begin at around 60 bpm (or even slower) and increase the metronome speed in increments of your choice until you can exceed the intended speed.
Tracking
Dividing the piece into manageable, meaningful sections (like tracks on a CD) not only helps us structure our practice by ensuring that all parts of the piece are equally solid and secure, but also gives us anchor points in performance.
For example, I have divided up Fauré’s Andante moderato (Grade 7, B:1) into five sections, making it easy for the teacher to specify the week’s assignment. When we have learned the piece thoroughly, we might track backwards for added security in performance. We play track 5 and then tracks 4 and 5 together, working backwards track by track until we reach the beginning.
For a more detailed, practical demonstration of how to apply these tools when starting work on learning a new piece, please join me for an online workshop on Wednesday 24th Feb @ 13:30 GMT (click here for more information and booking details).
Further Information & Resources
The tips and tools mentioned in this article are covered in in more detail in Part 1 of my multimedia eBook series and in my Practice Tools Video Lecture Series.
The Online Academy’s repertoire library also has an extensive collection of video walk-throughs, annotated study editions and resources for learning new pieces, including:
Video walk-throughs of popular works such as Burgmuller’s 25 Easy and Progressive Etudes, Chopin’s Fantasie-Impromptu, Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata and Rachmaninoffs Prelude in C# Minor (Op. 3 No. 2)
From the Ground Up – A series which uses reduced scores and outlines to help you learn new pieces faster, featuring works by Bach, Chopin, Grieg, Schumann and Beethoven
Annotated study editions and walk-throughs for works by Debussy, Chopin, Brahms, Schubert, Beethoven and Ravel
Please click here to find out more about the Online Academy or click here to subscribe.
Last week I launched a free email course on how to start learning a new piece and lay solid foundations from the outset (click here to find out more). The following is a summary of some of the tips and practice tools from my course which will help you get started on the right track:
One (or two) read-throughs is enough to get the gist of the piece – aim for a rough sketch at this stage, leaving out surface detail you cannot manage.
Taking the time to practise hands separately is incredibly valuable, not only in the note learning stage but regularly thereafter.
Practising separately doesn’t only apply to hands alone, but also to strands. It can be useful to deconstruct a score and play voices separately and then together in different combinations.
Working on a piece in small sections at the Speed of No Mistakes ensures accuracy from the start and helps you avoid embedding careless errors that may be hard to fix later.
By identifying and marking tricky spots in a piece upfront, you can begin each practice session with a step-by-step sequence of activities designed to solve the problems.
Dividing the piece into manageable, meaningful sections helps us structure our practice and ensure that all parts of the piece are equally solid and secure.
If you would like a more detailed explanation of these tips and tools, plus examples and other resources then please do sign up for my email course! The course is entirely free, featuring seven video lessons ranging from three to twelve minutes in length. The videos are accompanied by downloads, notes and exercises to help you follow and implement each stage of the process.
Do you often find that no matter how much you practise, you don’t feel confident or secure playing your pieces from start to finish? It might be specific spots that consistently trip you up or different places at different times, but with so many things, it’s not a case of how much you practise but rather how you do it. In many cases, unstructured practise can actually be detrimental, causing you to learn bad habits and practise in mistakes!
Practice Tools & Tips
In this blog post I share some tips and practice tools that can be used to build firm foundations when learning a new piece or for tackling problematic passages in pieces you can already play. These tools allow for greater accuracy in the early stages and therefore more efficient learning by avoiding overloading the working memory. For the purposes of demonstration, I’ll be using the opening bars of CPE Bach’s Solfeggietto in C Minor as an example:
1. Fingering
The first step is to organise a suitable fingering for your hand (use IMSLP or similar as a reference source for different editions if necessary). The sooner you do this, the better because it can be very difficult to change fingerings once you have already learnt them!
2. The Speed of No Mistakes
Start working on a piece (or a section thereof) very slowly and firmly (a quarter or half the performance speed, or even slower) beat by beat, or in half- or whole-bar units, stopping on the first note of the next unit. This facilitates greater accuracy from the outset by reducing the chances of learning incorrect notes or fingerings.
Make sure to articulate cleanly and accurately, using the same fingering each time. Use a metronome if this helps, and/or try counting aloud as you play. Repeat each section three times correctly in a row before moving on, resisting the temptation to increase the speed.
You can start by playing hands separately, then when you’re ready you can repeat this process hands together. For further variation, you can also alternate hands separately and hands together.
The following is a demonstration of this concept applied to the Solfegietto from a recording of one of my interactive practising workshops:
3. Little Bits Fast
Chaining or “little bits fast” is a very useful way to build speed once you’ve learnt the piece using the “Speed of No Mistakes”. There are three steps to using this tool:
Note-by-note chaining – Start with an impulse of one or two notes. Add a note, repeating until automatic before going back to the start of the chain and adding another note, etc. The chain will get longer and longer, so you might want to make a series of shorter chains before joining them together.
Beat-by-beat chaining – Instead of chaining by notes, chain by beats. One beat plus one note and repeat three times correctly in a row – the note you stop on is the note you start on when you practise the next beat.
Bar-by-bar chaining – One bar plus one note, repeat until automatic. The note you stop on is the note you start on when you practise the next bar.
Basically, you’re building up larger passages from smaller segments and developing the reflexes for speed without overloading the working memory.
4. Controlled stops
In the early stages of learning a piece, it can still be difficult to process everything fluently. The tool I call the “Floating Fermata” is a very useful way to build fluency whilst maintaining accuracy. How it works is you deliberately add a pause at difference appropriate places within a piece. Therefore it’s a controlled stop rather than an accidental one and by varying it’s placement, you do not end up learning the stops in.
When you’re pausing, you take as much time as you need to focus and prepare yourself for the next segment. In the Solfegietto example, you might consider adding a fermata after groups of 2, 4, 8, etc as necessary, or wherever feels appropriate.
More Practice Tools & Tips!
If you’d like a more detailed demonstration of these practice tools and several others, please do join me for my interactive workshop on Saturday 10th June. In this workshop, I’ll be introducing a selection of practice tools and will then give you an opportunity to try them out using examples selected from the repertoire or your own pieces. We’re also recording the workshop therefore if you’re unable to join us live then you can sign-up to watch the recording and work with the various exercises at your convenience thereafter. Click here to find out more or to book your place!
