Structuring Your Piano Practice Time

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If you’re anything like me, you’re probably pretty busy, right? It can be pretty hard to find time to practice the piano, so when you do you want to make sure you’re getting the most out of your practice time. And that means one thing: structure.

Structuring out your practice time will help motivate you to sit down on the bench every day and will guarantee consistent results.  

So how do you set up your time to practice anyway? Well, I like to break my practice time down into 4 sections.  

• Warm Up With Technique. This includes anything that pertains to developing finger strength, coordination, hand dexterity…stuff like that. Practice your scales, triads and inversions, arpeggios, hand independence exercises to get yourself warmed up and ready to dive into the core of your practice time. Depending on your skill level you might spend anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour on this portion of your practice.

Proper technique will keep your hands sharp and your playing accurate.

• Exercise Your Sight Reading. A well-structured practice is well balanced, so you want to take some time to build your sight-reading skills as well. So what you can do is pick a piece of music that’s really simple and a little easier than your level of skill and use that as a tool to keep those skills sharp. After this, you can push your skills further by singling out a particularly challenging set of bars that really push your abilities.

Studying site reading can be surprisingly relaxing  

• Develop Your Ears. Next up is ear training! A good practice session has to include some time dedicated to developing your ears. For this portion, I like to work on my chording or listen to a song and try to pick out the melody. 

This guy’s got the right idea!   

• Have Fun! Ok, this one should be obvious but it can be surprisingly easy to forget! You need your practice sessions to end in a way that inspires you to play and just enjoy your instrument. For some, that could be working on a piece of classical music, for others that could be working on blues scales or writing a song of their own. Every musician is different, so ask yourself what do you enjoy doing the most at the piano and do that!

See how happy playing the piano can make you?

So that’s how I structure my practice time! How do you structure yours?

Happy playing,

Lisa

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Lisa Witt has been teaching piano for more than 20 years and in that time has helped hundreds of students learn to play the songs they love. Lisa received classical piano training through the Royal Conservatory of Music, but she has since embraced popular music and playing by ear in order to accompany herself and others. Learn more about Lisa.