Practicing Archives

Maintaining Motivation During Quarantine

It can be difficult to stay engaged in practice when the sun is shining and the world is on pause–and it’s not just an issue among young musicians; it’s something much of the music world is dealing with. What’s the point of practicing right now, when the world seems stagnant? Here are a few ways […]

We Don’t WORK Piano … We PLAY Piano!

A seven-year-old sits down, plods straight through his five-line song three times, and jumps up, shouting “Done!” To his best knowledge, he’s practiced. He forgot a fun element of playing piano: the playing part! Sometimes it seems faster or more fun to simply glide through each piece, but in doing so, we leave true improvement, […]

Practice Pro Tip: Using the Metronome

Looking for a way to improve your piano practice? Here’s this week’s pro tip for you: use the metronome more often! Sometimes the metronome seems so annoying to practice with. Why listen to endless beeping when we’re trying to play beautiful music? Metronomes actually have a few benefits to them, and that is why we […]

Piano Practice vs. Piano Performance

When many people start off, they treat piano practice and piano performance the same way: we run through the piece trying to hit all the notes and rhythms. While there is a place for this, we can make a clearer distinction between our regular practice and our performance mindset. Performance can be improved the same […]

Overcoming Obstacles in Piano Practice

Sometimes students feel, validly, that they simply cannot practice. This can be for a number of reasons. Not having time is a huge one. Others are losing books or being apart from our home piano. Overcoming obstacles like this can seem impossible! But you might have more options than you think when it comes to […]

Tips for Practice: Focus and Positivity

There’s a reason we practice piano: none of us learn playing pieces we can do perfectly the first time. The practice itself, however, can be tricky. Does just running through the piece work? When do we stop and fix harder spots? What counts as a “mistake” in the first place? Here are some suggestions about […]

A Great Example of Persistence… Vivian F.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of the thing itself is changed, but that our power to do is increased.” This month’s Virtue for Virtuosos is persistence. The dictionary defines persistence as “continuing in a course of action despite difficulty […]

The Secret Life of Practicing Music

by faculty member Camille Strahl When I was a teenager, I went to a workshop on effective practice. They told me that practicing music did not have to be something I loved or hated, it was just something that had to be done. I followed this philosophy well enough, but sometimes I would be so […]

How Piano Students Become Historians

How do piano students become historians? Well, that answer takes a little bit of background. Since graduating from BYU almost a year ago, I have felt something of a void in my life. I miss the learning and growth that was such a part of school. I miss the challenge of understanding complex subjects. I […]

Brigham L. Wins an iPad!

We recently posted about our students who competed in and were chosen as finalists for the Piano Marvel YouTube Competition. In addition to the monetary prizes awarded to the winners in each age group category, each contestant in the competition was also entered into a drawing for an iPad. One of our students to be […]

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