A few weeks back, we talked about why you should practice piano with your eyes closed. If you haven’t checked it out yet, be sure to give it a read HERE. Now let’s talk about another technique I’m a big fan of.
Practicing the piano while watching TV.
I don’t know how many piano teachers will tell you to practice in front of the TV, but I’m going to go out on a limb and tell you to do it. Maybe not every time, but there are some times it is appropriate. Let me explain.
Repetition is your friend.
A big part of learning any new skill is repetition. With piano, we need to do some things over and over and over again. The reason for this is that we are training our muscle memory to kick in. If we do something enough, it becomes automatic. When it becomes automatic, we don’t have to think as much about what we are doing. Once we are free to think of other things, we can focus more on the other parts we are playing.
Does your family hate you yet?
We see this show up a lot with left-hand techniques. There is a chord progression I teach my students called The Dance Progression. The biggest hurdle to overcome when playing this progression is the syncopation between the left hand and the right hand.
The left hand is just playing a repetitive bass line of constant eighth notes. The key to getting this whole progression down is to practice the left-hand part a lot. I mean a lot a lot. Like obsessively. If your family or your roommate doesn’t hate you yet for playing it so much, you aren’t practicing it enough.
Once you get the left hand down and muscle memory kicks in, then you are free to focus more on the right-hand part and start getting the syncopation down. But that won’t happen until the left hand is on auto-pilot.
TV to the rescue…
A great way to get this left-hand part down is to practice it while watching TV. This does two things.
It is a monotonous thing to practice, so the TV distracts you and keeps you entertained as you play this left-hand part over and over again
Playing this left-hand part while watching TV trains you to play it consistently while focusing on other things. It helps kickstart your muscle memory. When it’s time to add in the right hand, you will be much more prepared because your mind is already used to keeping the left hand going while you do other things.
I highly recommend this TV technique for super monotonous passages that you are having a hard time getting down. Don’t get me wrong, at first, you need to focus on the part to make sure you are playing it right. But once you have the idea down, turn on the TV and take the repetition train to obsession town!
Repetition is the answer to 90% of the questions I get from my students. If you can’t play something it’s only because you are trying to play it too fast or you haven’t practiced it enough. That’s pretty much it.
I get it, though. Sometimes it’s hard to sit down and practice something over and over and over again. It gets boring and frustrating. It’s definitely not easy and that is why everyone is not a great piano player. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from A League Of Their Own:
“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.”
But there is good news. There are a couple of things we can do to make it a little more manageable. One is to practice in small chunks of time. And the other is to turn on the TV while you practice the most repetitive stuff.
This week in your practice time, try it and see if it helps. And at the very least, you will be able to get caught up on all your favorite shows. If you can get better at the piano at the same time, then it’s a win-win!