Practising a Piano Piece

It was time to learn a new piece of music. On looking at this new piece this young piano learner said it was too hard and wasn’t keen to learn it.

Now a piece such as the example above can be daunting to a 6 or 7 year. At this age they have so much to take in with their developing mind.

When you first learn a piece you need to break it down into sections and play it slowly in order to get the notes accurate and to focus on the requirements of the piece such as dynamics, accents, timing and so on. This is what we did and the student could play it and found it not too hard to play after all.

Anyway I decided to put myself in my student’s shoes and find a piece that was “too hard” to play and Practice It Using The Techniques Here. I am going to practice 30 minutes daily for 30 days. The practice days will be 6 days of a week and then 1 day off to recharge the batteries.

I chose the first movement of the Sonata No. 1 in C major by Mozart.

Here is the first page.

Firstly I will learn the notes of each hand separately.

Here is a section of the first page.

Right Hand

Left Hand

Where there is a harder bar or so I will pull it out and practice it more to make as easy as the other sections. I say to students, play harder sections  at least 3X slowly and accurately.

In the right hand I found a bar with a turn on it, which needs extra work.

Here it is ~ the last bar on the second line.

Here is my Right Hand practice on it.

Here is my Left Hand practice on it.

NB I found I couldn't get a video of my left hand very easily whilst holding the camera with the right hand. So I aimed the camera at the music ...and it was very wobbly.

Once a piece is comfortable with separate hands you can play both hands together.

Here is Take 1. When I was playing this bar, I knew it was not accurate in the last half but had to analyse it after the take to see what I was doing wrong.

I corrected it in Take 2

Now, just to remind you that my first aim is to get the notes correct.

Any incorrect timing can be fixed more easily next, when I don’t have to think of how the notes flow together so much easier.

Dynamics, accents and more will come later.

I will do progress reports at weekly intervals.

And then the performance!!

This piece will undoubtedly need more work than what I am giving it but the idea is prove that practising makes things easier.

To finish up, please enjoy a You Tube version of Mozart's Piano Sonata 1 in C major.

All three movements are given. I am only practicing the first Movement at this stage.

If you like this piece and want to learn and play it then go here .