New Year, New Pieces

The New Year is an excellent time to start learning some new pieces and if you’re planning on embarking upon some fresh repertoire, here are some helpful tips to get you started in the right way!

1. Choose Wisely: Pick the Right Pieces

Before you dive in, pay attention to repertoire selection. Choosing pieces that suit your current level, balance technical challenges with musical enjoyment and expand your skills is key to making progress and maintaining enthusiasm.

Tackling repertoire that’s too difficult is one of the most common causes of stagnation. Aim for a sweet spot: works that stretch you slightly beyond your comfort zone without overwhelming you. Include a mix of styles and consider exploring something different e.g. a style or composer you haven’t played before to keep your musical journey fresh.

💡 Get more tips: Sign up for our mailing list and receive a handout from one of our workshops, packed with ideas and resources for finding your perfect piece!

2. Go Beyond the Notes: Create an Artistic Image

Making music is much more than simply playing the right notes in the correct order. To truly engage listeners, you must develop and convey an artistic image of the piece. By starting your learning process with this in mind, you are building towards a performance that goes beyond correctness – conveying meaning, emotion and individuality to bring the music fully to life.

You can form your artistic image by asking yourself: What story does this piece tell? What mood or imagery fits the music? If you’re struggling to come up with anything, a useful exercise is the “blank screen” method: Close your eyes and imagine a movie screen in front of you. There’s a film playing and your piece is the background music. Then use your imagination to describe what you see on the screen!

🖼️Examples and ideas: Click here to watch a video from Graham Fitch’s recent course with further ideas and examples!

3. First Read-Throughs: Play with Purpose

Your first read-through is just a rough sketch. If the piece is near your level, resist the urge to play it repeatedly at full speed. Limit early playthroughs to avoid ingraining wrong notes, careless fingerings or sloppy rhythms. Treat these initial sessions as exploration – identify tricky spots, note rhythms and begin thinking about fingering choices.

4. Build Strong Foundations

A solid foundation is essential for making steady progress and ultimately being able to perform with confidence. The following are a few suggestions to help you build firm foundations from the outset:

Do some analysis: Doing a bit of analysis, even if informal, before diving in can yield significant dividends. Analyse the piece to the best of your ability and in whatever ways are meaningful to you, marking the main sections and other annotations onto a photocopy of your score.

Tracking: Divide the piece up into meaningful and manageable units for the purposes of organising your practice going forward. This helps you structure your practice and ensure that all parts of the piece are equally solid and secure.

Fingering: Choose and stick to consistent fingerings. Optimal fingering supports technical ease, musical expression, and builds muscle memory. Remember: the fingering in the score is just a suggestion – find what works best for your hands.

Slow practice: Start at the “speed of no mistakes” by choosing a practice speed where it is not possible to make any errors at all (in a word, S – L – O – W – L – Y). This helps you avoid baking in errors that take significant time to correct at a later stage.

Q-Spots: Identify the trickiest passages and start your practice sessions with activities designed to tackle them. This simple, yet powerful approach helps ensure that your practising is both efficient and effective.

5. Work Towards a Goal

Setting a goal gives your practising purpose and can help you stay motivated. This could be anything from sharing your piece with friends, preparing for an exam, recording a personal performance or performing in a masterclass. Not only does this help you avoid having a repertoire full of unfinished works, but often the most satisfying and fulfilling experiences playing the piano only come after a certain level of polishing and refinement is achieved!

Further Resources

• Repertoire Library: Get expert insights, guidance and inspiration from video lessons, study editions and other resources for over 300 works from our repertoire library.
• Practice Tools Series: Make every minute you spend practising count with Graham Fitch’s revised Practice Tools video lecture series!
• Making Friends With the Notes: Discover William Westney’s fun, liberating and easy to implement approach to mastering any classical piece.
• Online Workshops: Visit our calendar to sign-up for live sessions or get access to resources and recordings from past events.