Efficient practice Vs Mindless practice

I have written a blogpost on mindless practice earlier. Here is the link to that post, 

How to avoid mindless practice at the piano 🎹?

Here I will elaborate further on steps to avoid mindless practice, what efficient practice is and so on. 

While efficient practice at the piano yields great results, mindless practice can be detrimental to your progress at the piano. Let’s first understand what does mindless practice mean.

Mindless practice would include practicing in auto-pilot mode, repeating a section of a piece a few times without being able to rectify errors, always practicing playing through the piece and never working on trouble spots, only focussing on the time spent at the piano rather than thinking of specific work needed and practicing without any goal in mind. 

It is very easy to get into the rut of mindless practice if you are not reflecting on your practice sessions. The following steps can help you practice better:

1. Have a practice goal before you begin your practice session. Be specific of your goals. It can be as specific as-  “I need to bring out the melody of this piece.” or “I need to feel the pulse of 2/2 in this piece by exaggerating the beats”.

2. Depending on the time you have to practice, take a few minutes to map out as to what you would like to achieve in your practice session for each technical exercise, etude, repertoire, and musicianship that you are working on. 

3. Do not always start from the beginning of the piece. Practice in small sections (measures or phrases), hands separate, hands together, increasing number of  repetitions and so on.

5. Identify the trouble spots. Whenever you are practicing a small section, identify and mark all the measures on the score that is giving you trouble. This will also help in goal setting for the next practice session.

6. Lastly, record your practice session in a journal. This is basically reflecting on your practice. You can write what worked in your favor and what did not, record on any ideas on improving your next practice session such as exaggerate on dynamics to make more contrasts. For example, if you are trying to speed up a piece, write down the tempo you were able to efficiently handle the piece.

The above steps can be applied at any level of proficiency, whether you are a beginner, intermediate or advanced. 

To conclude, piano playing involves numerous technical challenges. These techniques cannot develop overnight. It needs consistency, discipline, motivation, positive attitude, a musical mindset, and efficient practice strategies.