How To Improve Your Playing As A Beginner Pianist

How To Improve Your Playing As A Beginner Pianist

Try to think of an instrument that’s associated strongly with virtuosity and prestige. Nine times out of ten, you’re likely to land on the piano. 

That’s because this 300-year-old instrument has seen everything from being a solo instrument to providing accompaniment, enriching harmony, serenading melodies, and acting as a textural element in the background. 

It’s no secret then that pianists are often left to bear the responsibilities of fulfilling multiple roles. Not only can it be a bit of a mental load, but it also requires you to know your instrument physically and musically.  

So, how do you get close to getting better if you’re just a beginner? Well, luckily, you don’t have to fret too much about that. Down yonder, we’ll be listing some of the best ways to improve your piano playing. These will help you get into the right mindset with your practice and ultimately elevate your playing skills. 

Look Up to a Role Model

With such a long and decorated history, the piano has had several maestros enter its ranks. You can have your pick from the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, or Modern period of pianists. And they can help inspire you on the way to your very own piano mastery.

Even if you limit yourself to one era in history, you can usually find plenty of pianists to gain insight from. If you have your heart set on the Romantic period, you can learn from Liszt’s finger-tangling expressionism. If classical is your jam, consider the dramatic hammerings of Beethoven. And if you’re in search of something modern, you have the feather-light dynamic control of Debussy. 

Looking up to a role model isn’t just about admiring their work; it’s also about learning their craft. After all, the western scale only has twelve notes. It’s not about which of those twelve notes you play, but how you play them that makes the difference. 

Getting immersed in someone’s playing habits and techniques can act as a gateway to your own playing. You’ll start to learn what kind of sound you’re drawn to and what form of articulation favors your artistic expression. Do that with enough of a handful of influences, and you’re on your way to having a confident playing style of your own. 

Work on Chord Analysis

Playing chords is a big part of being a piano player. When you have the theoretical ability to play ten different notes at once, that can only mean having the densest and richest combinations of sounds to work with. 

Not only is chord analysis helpful to those studying in conservatories, but it can also benefit a beginner pianist. Even knowing some basic chord progressions can help you track the emotional flow of a song and pinpoint which chords are about to follow. 

You can do some beginner level harmonic analysis by listening to your favorite songs and trying to recognize their progressions. Genres like country, pop, and rock will give you enough ease to start getting comfortable before you move on to something complicated.

It helps to have a good repertoire of chord knowledge to take advantage of your analysis. Start with your basic diatonic triads, then your 7ths, extended chords, and some modal chords to cap it all off. The more chords you know by heart, the better you’ll be at eventually recognizing them play out in real-time. 

Play Arrangements of Popular Songs

Sitting on your practice bench and staring at an 18th century piano score can become a habitual rote after a while. Sometimes it helps to break out of that headspace and go for practice material that’s a little more up to date. 

Understanding the modern conventions of music happen to be just as crucial to your progress as studying classical works. It’s especially useful if you want to get used to playing modern harmony that’s fit for contemporary piano. 

You can find scores to plenty of popular songs both online and in music stores. It’s a good idea to run through them at least once in your practice routine. And if you progress enough, you could even start arranging them yourself by ear.

Whether it’s a classic Christmas carol or a new hit single, diversifying your song choices helps build your note vocabulary. On top of that, it’s a helpful way to understand modern arrangement techniques. As a bonus, it’ll also give you a varied music selection that you can play for others.

Be Conservative with Your Pedal Dependence

The three S pedals (Soft, Sostenuto, and Sustain) play a significant role in articulating piano passages. However, relying on them too much can be detrimental to your playing in the long run. And it’s something that every beginner has to come to accept. 

Out of the big three, the sustain pedal tends to get most of the limelight. It just so happens that this is the pedal that ends up getting used as a crutch when playing the piano. It’s to the piano what a capo is to a guitar or a falsetto to vocals; an essential tool but one that you can habitually lean back on too much. 

Nothing screams beginner quite like playing with too much sustain to make up for lack of note delivery. It’s an easy pitfall to get into and one that can turn into a habit very quickly. That’s why avoiding it for purposes other than sonic ornamenting is so essential. 

It’s always best to practice things like sustain without the safety of the sustain pedal. In fact, it’s better to leave it out of your foundational playing unless a piece specifically calls for it. 

Instead, you’ll benefit more from using it at a later stage when you’re more equipped to realize its articulative potential. And you’ll thank yourself for it in the long run. 

Practice Sight Reading

Musical notation is an essential language that any pianist has had to get fluent in. Playing or practicing piano means being in front of sheet music on a daily basis. Your improvement can often hinge on being able to accurately translate those lines and dots from the paper. 

Make sure you spend at least a third of your practice time getting your sight-reading down. It’s easy to gloss over notation if you’ve already heard the piece being played. But the real challenge is playing pieces that have only existed on paper for you. 

Like anything else, the best way to go about sight-reading is to get immersed in it more and more. Try gathering a variety of scores from famous pieces to movie soundtracks, modern hits, and even Jazz standards. Getting a songbook or a Real Book is really helpful for this purpose. 

There will be a lot of information packed into scores, so you want to go step by step. Start by learning how to read basic sheets and work your way from there. Make sure you have a metronome handy, so you’re always able to play in time with the tempo on the score. 

You can also incorporate beginner practice books into your sessions. These let you get used to moving around the staff with different exercises and practice drills. With consistent enough practice, you’ll immediately start seeing a drop in the time it takes you to parse a score and translate it into play. 

Feel free to head over and join our brand new private facebook group where we will be giving you weekly tips, tricks, feedback and answering all of your songwriting questions.

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Set Time Aside for Polishing Your Theory

Out of all the instruments available, the piano has some of the fewest mental shortcuts you can use to get around the instrument. That’s why theory is a significant aspect of a pianist’s life.

Unlike a stringed instrument, you don’t have the relative symmetry to always find your notes. Each key leaves you having to play a different pattern of notes. That’s why you’re required to know precisely where each and every note of your piano is. 

But piano’s necessity for music theory goes much beyond that. Any time you’re accompanying yourself with your left hand, you need to know chord and interval relations. Every time you play an elaborate arrangement, you have to pay attention to things like inversions, modal interchange, compound meters, nested harmonies, and more. 

As a beginner, there’s no faster path to piano mastery than getting your music theory cemented to memory. After all, you’re going to be playing a lot of notes together. You might as well understand how they all relate to and affect one another. 

During any play session, ensure that you’ve set aside enough time to work on theory. You can either buy yourself a textbook, watch a video, or just look for sources online. But as long as you’re putting in work to polish your theory, you’re bound to see good results. 

Use Fun Learning Outlets to Enjoy Practice

Believe it or not, playing an instrument isn’t all about working on your skills. Sometimes you’re encouraged to have fun with your music. And if you can combine the two? Well, then you have a good thing going. 

Combining fun and practice can be as simple as experimenting with a different style of music. Maybe you want to try playing some ragtime, saloon music, or some off-kilter campfire sing along? It may not seem like it, but you can do that while meshing in some rhythmic or melodic exercises that were too dull on their own. 

Another path to take would be to use programs like Synthesia. Simply plug in a midi keyboard to a computer, load up a song, and let the guitar-hero style interface let you have fun while learning a new piece. 

You’d be surprised at the effect something as simple as alerting your mental framing can have. You get to have fun playing your instrument while unconsciously building your chops in the background. It’s a win-win for everyone. 

Train Yourself with the Hanon Exercises

When the famed pianist Charles-Louis Hanon wanted to develop the ultimate practice routine, he conceptualized Le Pianiste Virtuose or The Virtuoso Pianist. Since then, this set of sixty exercises has become synonymous with building piano mastery. This makes it an excellent resource for beginners looking to sharpen their skills. 

The great thing about the Hanon exercises is that they’re good all-rounders for your technique. All sixty of the exercises were designed to increase finger strength, build speed, enhance agility, and maintain precision. It’s the kind of skill-building buffet that you’d need to get your playing fine tuned. 

Conveniently, all the exercises are designed to go up in complexity the further you go. They start with a set of preparatory techniques to get you warmed up, progress to virtuoso techniques, and finally end up on complete technical mastery.

This makes it extremely easy to start at a relative point of ease and only progress as much as you comfortably can. You’re not forced to push yourself unless you can execute the preceding exercises properly. You only need to move up once you feel like you’ve practiced all you can with a Hanon exercise set.

Any pianist will tell you how much of a rite of passage getting the Hanon exercises under your belt can be. It’s one of the penultimate ways to bump your playing proficiency up a few levels. 

Exercise Dynamic Playing 

When all you need to do is press a key to get sound from your instrument, dynamics become a big part of the equation. In fact, they’re the distinguishing factor that differentiates the piano greats. And they’re a necessary component to your success. 

Adding dynamics to playing your practice pieces is an excellent way to start. Try to use techniques like chunking to break bigger pieces into smaller sections. Then, play through each chunk multiple times while varying your dynamics. 

Your primary focus with this exercise is to alternate your note delivery each time. Instead of playing your notes straight, try experimenting with increasing your attack or lowering your release. You can even run through all the dynamic markings that you find on your sheets. 

Building dynamics not only helps you achieve the right skill set, but it’s also a window into building interest with your playing. As a beginner, there’s no better finesse than being able to play a note a few accents softer or louder than the last. 

Final Thoughts

Your progress on the piano can hinge on many different factors. But the one universal truth is that you can always work towards the path of improving your skills. It might seem like a handful if you’re just starting out. Hopefully, the tips above will give you enough insight into how to start being a better pianist in a short amount of time.