Why you are practicing the piano too long

We’ve all heard it a million times. To be good at something, you have to practice.

It’s true. There is no way around that.

Matter of fact, the truth is, to be good at something, you have to practice A LOT!

For most people, the piano is an extra-curricular activity. We all have jobs, school, friends, sports, Netflix shows to catch up on, and we’d like to get some sleep in there too if possible.

How are we supposed to fit in piano practice? Even more, how are we supposed to fit in A LOT of piano practice?

Here is the answer.

Stop practicing so long.

So many of us think that in order to get good at the piano, we have to sit there and practice for hours on end. In a perfect world, yes that would be great. But here is what happens in the real world.

You tell yourself that in order to get good at the piano you have to practice at least an hour a day. You start off strong, but then life gets busy. Next thing you know, you have one full day after another and you can’t find an hour anywhere to practice. So instead of practicing a little bit, you blow it all off saying something like “If I can’t get my full hour of practice in then what’s the point?”

After a few weeks of that, you stop trying. Eventually, you don’t even touch the piano anymore. You quit taking lessons because you are frustrated and not making the kind of progress you wanted to.

Sound familiar?

Here is the truth that most people won’t tell you.

You don’t have to practice for an hour for it to count.

You don’t even have to practice for 30 minutes for it to count. Little chunks of practice go a long way.

What if you could practice 10 minutes here and 10 minutes there? Do you think you could find that time? Of course you could.

And you know what else? You would probably enjoy yourself more because you feel way less pressure to sit there for an hour torturing yourself.

And guess what? 10 minutes here and 10 minutes there still adds up to the same amount of practice. Matter of fact, I guarantee you will actually get MORE practice in this way because you are not blowing the whole thing off because you can’t get a full hour of practice in.

So here is your permission to let yourself off the hook. Stop telling yourself you have to practice an hour every day. Stop telling yourself if you don’t, then it’s not even worth practicing at all. It’s not true.

You don’t have to practice as long as you think you do.

You don’t have to be a piano practice superhero. Try getting in 10 minutes before and after work or school. Those 10 minute practices will add up fast and by the time you are sitting at your next lesson, you will see some serious improvement.

And remember, the whole reason you got into this piano thing was to have fun. Let those 10 minute practices be a break from your busy day. A little mini-musical meditation.

I’ll take 10 minutes of peace over 60 minutes of torture any day.

Why You Should Practice Piano With Your Eyes Closed

We get a lot of questions from students and parents about piano lessons and how to practice. With so much information out there, it’s hard to know the difference sometimes between what is worth your time and what is a waste of time.

I thought it might be helpful to do some blog posts answering some of our most frequently asked questions about piano and piano lessons.

This is the third blog post in our series of answering these frequently asked questions.

FAQ #3: How do I get a better feel for the piano?

This question comes in many forms. Sometimes it’s “How do I play the piano and keep my eyes on the music?” or “How do I get more confident at playing the piano?” or “How do I play scales and chords without messing up so much.”

There are obviously many answers to these questions. The most obvious is that with more practice comes more confidence. But I want to give you a specific way to practice that will boost your confidence, increase your accuracy and help you keep your eyes on the music at all times.

Practice with your eyes closed.

Here is what I want you to do. Start practicing your scales first with your eyes closed. This teaches you to trust your ears and your fingers instead of your eyes. The key thing to remember when doing this is that it is ok to miss some notes. You are going to for a while. But that is exactly how you learn and get a better feel for the piano.

Just go for it and don’t overthink it. Close your eyes and play your scales. When you miss a note, don’t sweat it, just keep going. Do this every day that you practice. Over the course of a week or two, you will find that you can do it without any mistakes. That means you are learning to trust your fingers and you are getting a good feel for the piano. This will open up so many doors for you while playing!

Once you have mastered your scales, I want you to work on playing arpeggios with your eyes closed. This is the next level because now you are skipping notes whereas a scale has notes in succession. Don’t worry though. Just start doing it and don’t overthink it.

Again you are going to miss a lot of notes. That is the point. But again, over a few weeks, you will notice you are making less mistakes and your arpeggios will be a lot cleaner.

If you want to take it to the next level, try memorizing a simple piece and practice playing that piece with your eyes closed. This will take some more time but you can totally do it. Once you learn to trust your ears and your fingers, you are free. You will play cleaner. You will learn things quicker. You will have so much more confidence at the piano.

If You Ever Doubt That This Will Work, Remember This…

If ever you doubt that any of this is possible, just watch Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles play the piano. Stevie was blind from birth and Ray was blind from a young age. They both learned how to play the piano without any eyesight. And I think we can all agree that they are both exceptional piano players. If they can do it, so can you. They didn’t get good at the piano by some miracle from above. They got good by practicing, never giving up, and building confidence at the piano by trusting their ears and their fingers.

Learning piano is a lifelong journey. It is an ongoing process. You don’t have to be Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles. You just have to be you. If you are better this week than you were last week, then you are succeeding. You are doing it! And that’s huge. You should be really proud of yourself.

Try this technique of playing with your eyes closed and leave us a comment. Let us know how you did!

How Do I Practice Piano?

I get a lot of questions from my students and from parents about piano lessons. Do any of these sound familiar?

How often should I practice?

How long until I am really good?

When should kids start taking piano lessons?

Am I too old to take piano lessons?

How do I practice the piano?

I thought it might be helpful to do some blog posts answering some of our most frequently asked questions about piano and piano lessons. So here we go…

FAQ #1: How do I practice the piano?

You know the joke. “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice. Practice. PRACTICE!”

It’s true. One of the most important things you can do for your piano career is work out a regular time to practice. Really what it comes down to is discipline and building a new habit.

Here are 8 ways to set up a practice routine that will make you a rockstar in no time!

1. Practice at the same time every day. Schedule your practice time. Put it in your calendar. You have to treat your practice time as a sacred time. If you have a job, you have to be there every day at the same time. Piano practice needs to be the same thing. If you want to be a great piano player, then you need to show up. Every day. On time.

2. Warm up. Start with scales and arpeggios. I know these are not the most fun things to practice, but these are the techniques that are going to make everything else come a lot easier. There is so much that happens when we practice scales and arpeggios. It warms us up, sure. But it also makes our fingers stronger, programs muscle memory so recalling this information later happens automatically, helps us learn our key signatures, helps us learn chords and so much more. If you want to be a rockstar piano player, learn how to LOVE practicing your scales and arpeggios.

3. Learn how chords work. The thing that really made music fun for me was learning how chords work. If your teacher is not already teaching you this, ask him or her to. Learning about chords is a game changer. It makes learning songs so much easier. If you want to speed up your progress, then learn how chords work.

4. Work on repertoire. Whether you are learning songs out of a book or you are learning songs by ear, keep learning new material. Each song you learn is performing double duty. First of all, you are building your library of tunes. Next time someone asks you to play something on the piano, you will have that much more to pull from. Secondly, you are learning lots of “mini-lessons” from each song you learn. Fingering technique, chord structure, key signature, rhythms, and more. Never stop learning new songs!

5. A little goes a long way. In a perfect world, you would practice piano for 2-3 hours every day. But let’s be real. You have a life. Even your kids probably have enough of a life to make that a challenge. What a lot of people do is tell themselves that unless they can get in at least an hour of practice, it’s not worth it. This could not be further from the truth. Even ten minutes here and there adds up. Your practice time does not have to happen all at once. Get in ten minutes when you can. I promise if you do that enough, it will add up to amazing results.

6. Be accountable to your teacher. One of the best things about piano lessons is learning discipline. That is why it is so great to start kids young. It gets them into a routine early. It shows them the value of committing to something. And it allows them to feel the pride of a job well done. When you want to blow off your practice time, remember your lesson time is coming. You are going to have to sit down and play for your teacher. Make sure you are ready and it will make your lesson a much more enjoyable experience!

7. Make sure you are learning things that are fun to you. It is super important that your lessons include things that are fun for you to learn. If you are not learning things that are fun for you, tell your teacher. A good teacher will adjust your lesson plan to include music you love. If you are a gamer, ask if you can learn a song from your favorite video game. If you are a movie buff, learn a song from a movie you love. Having these kinds of things added into your practice routine will make it way more fun and motivate you to practice more.

8. Have patience. Learning any new skill takes times. It takes A LOT of time, so be patient. Be kind to yourself. You don’t have to master it in one day. All you have to do is show up every day and over time you will see how far you have come. You are going to get there if you never give up!

You can truly be the piano player you want to be. Just follow these 8 steps and you will be there in no time!

Have any suggestions on how to practice piano? Or do you have any questions about piano practice? Leave us a comment below and let us know!

Piano Lessons For Kids

You are never too young to start learning about music. And when your kids get to 5 or 6, it is definitely time to start piano lessons!

When I was 5, my parents made me take piano lessons. It was the last thing I wanted to do. All I wanted to do was play outside with my friends. Every day my parents would make me practice before I got to go play or watch TV. How dare they?!

But then something strange started to happen. I started to like it. And once I got a little older, around 7 or 8, I started figuring out how to play the songs I liked on the piano. I would record songs off the radio onto my little cassette player (yea, remember cassettes?). Then I would sit at the piano, play the tape, figure out one note of a song. Then rewind the tape and figure out the next note. I did this over and over again until I figured out the whole thing. I was playing Bon Jovi songs on the piano and that is when it became a whole lot of fun!

I can’t imagine where I would be now if my parents didn’t make me take piano lessons. I am a full-time musician as well as piano instructor. I run a record company called Soul Motivation Records and produce inspirational hip-hop music. I talk music. I breathe music.

Music is my life. And I owe it all to my parents. :)

I always tell parents that you should MAKE your kids take piano lessons. At least for a couple of years. Once they have been at it for a while, if they still don’t like it, then let them pursue other things.

Sometimes when we are kids, we don’t know what we want. Our interests can change daily. But I have talked to enough adults who tell me they really wish they stuck to the piano when they were a kid to know that most kids will grow up to regret giving it up so quickly.

Now is the time to get them started. Music can change their life, you just have to give them a head start!

A New Year's Resolution Worth Making

This is the time of year that I like to talk to my students about their goals for the upcoming year.  It’s fun to talk out loud about what we want to accomplish.  It reminds of why we are putting all this work into something.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the day to day things of life, and piano is no different.  We (hopefully) have a practice routine that we stick to.  We sit down a couple times a week, play some scales and arpeggios, work on playing chords and then play through some songs.  It’s easy to forget why we are doing it?

So every once in a while it’s important to stop and think about what we are trying to accomplish.  And the beginning of a new year is a great time to do that!

Many of the people I talk to like to say they don’t make new year’s resolutions because it is a waste of time.  And although I understand the sentiment, I couldn’t disagree more.  I think the word “resolution” has been so overused that it is meaningless to us now.  So many of us have promised to make big changes in January and then by February have given up.  If you do this enough years in a row, you get bitter and you stop believing in “resolutions.”

But “resolution” is just a word.  What if we changed it to “goals?”  Would you be willing to make some New Year’s goals?  I think everyone would agree that in order to be successful, we need to set goals.  It just so happens that the beginning of a new year is a good time to do it, since it gives us the feeling of a fresh start.

Don’t be afraid to make some big goals this year.  This is the time to get healthy, to make more money, spend more time with family, or take piano lessons.  These are resolutions worth making, and we should never be afraid to set new goals.  No matter how many times we have failed in the past, this is a new year.  A new chance.  It’s okay if we didn’t follow through in the past.  It’s only because we are human beings with busy lives.  We need to let that guilt go and start again.  And a new year is the perfect time to start again!

So what are your New Year’s goals going to be?

Piano Lessons For Adults In St. Louis

It’s never too late to pursue a new skill. We all have untapped passions inside us. And it’s important we let them out!

Remember when you were a kid and you wanted to be a fire fighter? What ever happened to that dream? Or maybe you wanted to be a rock star? That was always my dream as a kid. Maybe you wanted to be a great musician. Why did you give up on that one? It’s not too late, ya know.

Quite often adults will ask me “Am I too old to take piano lessons?” And my answer is always the same: “NO!”

It’s funny how we view piano lessons as something only kids do. But the truth is most of my students are adults.

Some are younger adults who are settling into a life of working for a living and they need a hobby. They need something fun to pursue on the side.

Some of my adult students took lessons as a kid but then got busy with life. And as they have gotten older, they realize how much they wish they had stuck with piano when they were a kid. The good news is that it’s never too late to pick it back up. And almost always, once they start lessons, most of the stuff they learned years ago comes back. Just like riding a bike.

And then I have some retired adults who are done with their working life and have more time on their hands. They have always wanted to learn an instrument and now they finally have the time. Or maybe they played a long time ago, but got lost in the hustle and bustle of life and had to let the piano go for a while. It’s so great to be there when they pick it back up again!

It’s so fun to watch folks of all ages get excited about music. Life is too short to not pursue the things that will truly bring joy into your life. And if you love music, piano lessons is a great way to do just that.

I help my students learn what they want to learn. Most of my adult students learn songs off the radio that they love. Or they want to learn some classic sing-a-long songs so they can entertain their guests at their next dinner party.

I think when you are an adult, you know better what you want. You can choose what you want to learn. There is a lot of excitement that comes from that. Sometimes when we take lessons as a kid, we are just doing it because our parents make us. We may grow to like it, but most of the time we are just doing what we are told.

When you are an adult, you get to pick how you spend your time. And if you choose piano lessons, you may just find that you have a passion for music that you didn’t even know was there.

Now is the time.

So what are you waiting for? You’re an adult who gets to make their own decisions. So if you decide you want to pursue piano lessons, hit the button below and we will set up your first lesson!

Jazz Piano Lessons In St. Louis

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

Jazz music is still one of the most powerful forms of music in the world and it all starts with that swing. Swing is that feel that makes you tap your foot or jump up and dance. It’s the sound that makes you want to snap your fingers. Swing is what drives the emotion behind a great jazz performance. It just feels so good.

Have you always wanted to learn how to play jazz piano? Do you want to learn how to swing like the best of them? I got you covered. I have been a jazz pianist my entire adult life and it is by far my favorite style of music to play. But it is also my favorite style of music to teach!

Jazz music is freedom. Sure there are some rules. But once you learn the rules, you are free to break them! All the musical ideas floating around in your head get to finally come out when you play jazz. It’s all about creating on the spot. Art in it’s purest form. And even if you are a total beginner on the piano, you can start learning how to play jazz today!

I have been teaching jazz piano in St. Louis since 2009 and have had a lot of fun seeing my students learn about this whole new musical world! If you are a beginner, I can teach you all the basic piano fundamentals that piano players need to have. I can teach you about scales, key signatures and proper finger technique. Then, I can teach you how to play chords and show you some common musical forms. Finally, we’ll add the extension notes that make jazz chords so cool, maybe a little rhythm, and look out — your’e playing jazz!

“Look out- you’re playing jazz!”

Yes jazz is a complex form of expression, but don’t let that scare you. The right teacher can walk you through all the ins and outs and get you started on the right foot. The right teacher can also help you figure out what the best songs are to learn. Which one’s are easiest for a beginner? Which ones do I need to know to play with other musicians?

Whether you are a total beginner on the piano or already have some skills, I can help answer all these questions for you and more. You’ll be swingin’ in no time!

For more information about piano lessons, just hit the button below!

Best Piano Teachers In St. Louis

St. Louis is an amazing city for music. Whether you want to hear jazz, blues, rock, country, or rap, St. Louis has it all. No wonder the city has so many amazing music teachers. If you want to learn to play an instrument in St. Louis, you have your pick of the finest instructors in the country!

Today, I want to talk about some of the best piano teachers in St. Louis. There are many music schools to choose from. My personal favorite is Shock City School Of Music. Yes, it’s true I have friends who work there. But more than that, it offers a really cool atmosphere to learn your instrument in. You can take your lesson right down the hall from a top quality studio. Who knows who might be recording there on the day of your lesson?

I think when I was a kid I would have loved to take lessons in a recording studio. How exciting and motivating for kids to see where they could be headed if they stick to their instrument.

St. Louis is also home to a large number of private instructors. There are too many to list here, but TakeLessons.com or Lessons.com are both great resources to explore all the wonderful teachers in St. Louis.

STL Piano Lessons is my piano instruction company. I have been teaching piano since 2009 and have had the opportunity to work with so many great students. I teach students of all ages and all skill levels and I specialize in teaching how to play by ear. It’s something that not too many teachers offer to teach and it’s a lot of fun to learn!

“I love the big ah-ha moments my students have when something clicks for the first time. Seeing them start to understand a big concept is truly exciting and is why I do what I do!” — Chris Swan, Founder of STL Piano Lessons

You are not as far away from playing your favorite song as you might think. I can teach you the system that all professional musicians use to learn songs. After a while, you can be the person at the party who hears a song on the radio for the first time and then sits down and plays it! How cool would that be?

If you are looking to take piano lessons in St. Louis, I would love to chat with you, learn what your musical goals are and see if we can’t just get you playing your favorite tune quicker than you might think!

If you are interested in piano lessons, just hit the button below for more info!

How To Play Piano By Ear

I love the piano. I’ve been playing since I was a little kid. And yes, it’s true, my parents had to make me take lessons for a few years, but once I was around 10 or 11 I started to really love it. And what made me love it was figuring out how to play songs on the radio by ear!

I think the first one I learned was Jump by Van Halen. You were really cool if you could play that back in the 1980’s. And I wanted to be cool. My friend Jeff showed me how to do it. Once I got it, I played it over and over and over again, surely driving my parents crazy. But I was so excited that I could play something on the piano and have it sound exactly like what I heard on the radio. I knew right then I wanted more of that.

So I learned Axel F from Beverly Hills Cop. Then it was the theme to Rocky and the theme to Chariots Of Fire. Now that I think about it, a lot of those songs were from movies and TV shows I loved. It was so fun to be able to watch my favorite show and then go over to the piano and play the theme song!

Now as a piano teacher in St. Louis, MO, I get to help my students accomplish that very same feat every day! And it is so fun to watch them start to understand how to learn these songs by ear.

See, there is an actual system that all professional musicians use to learn songs. Once you understand your basic major scales, you can start to learn how to build chords from those scales. And then you put those chords into chord progressions which make up all the songs we know. This is by far my favorite thing to teach. A student can go from no knowledge of music at all to playing one of their favorite songs in a matter of weeks. How fun is that!?

If you’d like to experience these magical moments for yourself, I would love to chat about piano lessons for your kids or for you! It’s never too late to start learning this stuff. And the joy my students get from being able to sit down and play music for the people they love, is really what it’s all about.

Playing the piano by ear is a learnable skill that just about anyone can do. You don’t have to be blessed with amazing musical talent. You just have to love music and be willing to sit down and practice a few times a week. Believe me, the pay off is worth it!

If you’d like more information on piano lessons, just hit the button below!