How to create a practice plan

Tips & Tricks

4 min read

One of the biggest areas for improvement when it comes to playing the piano is how to practice effectively. There are many different strategies that you can apply. In this blog, I am going to present to you how you can make an effective practice plan using the template that I've created.

The planner is divided into a couple of categories.

It will help you:

• Define what you want to work on

• Define what is your due date (if you don’t have it, I urge you to define it).

• Define long-term goals

• Define short-term goals

• Remind yourself of important overall goals

• Motivate yourself to keep practicing

How to use the template:

1. The picture at the top of the page

   It is meant to give you some inspiration through motivational quotes. However, you can always switch it up to whatever you find inspirational for yourself, whether it’s a quote from your famous composer, a picture of yourself when you participated in some concert, or you simply enjoyed playing for yourself and your loved ones.

   

2. Overall assignment and due date

   It is highly important that you define which pieces you want to put focus on in the next period. This depends on the amount of time you have to dedicate to practice sessions. If you have up to one hour I suggest that you work on one to two pieces. If you have something between one and three hours a day you can work on three pieces. Anything more than that (which falls into the category of professional musician you can work on more pieces. Also, make adjustments based on the difficulty and length of the pieces. If it’s more difficult work on fewer pieces and vice versa if the pieces are easy you can include more than suggested. Apply the same strategy for the length of the pieces.

   Due date is gonna help you avoid wasting time and being more goal-oriented.

3. Assignment details

   In this section try to focus on the long-term goals that you want to achieve with the selected pieces. It can be to enhance your technique through some etude, work on developing your memory skills, learn more about phrasing, etc. Then, put some time into defining how are you going to achieve those goals. If it’s too challenging you can always ask your teacher to help you out, or some more experienced musician/amateur than yourself.

   Here are some examples: If your goal is to learn how to memorize faster, you can focus on analyzing and memorizing patterns in the piece, which are going to help you memorize faster.

4. Always ask yourself

   This section is highly important and is meant to remind you of overall things that you need to improve in your playing abilities. It could be something like:

   • Am I focused?

   • Do I practice with the intent?

   • Is my hand relaxed and supple?

5. Notes

   In this section, you want to write down short-term goals that you want to achieve in one or two practice sessions. Play through the piece and define what you need to improve right away. It can be something like: work on the fingering, improve the arpeggio in bar 9, work on the octaves in bars 10-12. Apply staccato exercise on the passage in bar 50 etc. Try to decide how much time you want to dedicate to each problem. And remember, always try to be realistic. You don’t have to work on the entire piece every day. You can pick out the parts that are the most critical ones, or parts that you simply feel inspired to practice that day.

6. Results

   Last, but not least are the practicing results. When you finish practicing for that day, play through the pieces and write down the results. Include both what is improved and what needs more work. That way you’ll be able to track your progress and stay motivated to achieve your long-term goals.

Good luck!

If you’re interested in this topic, I wrote some other blogs about practice sessions that you can check out here.

If you have some additional questions don’t hesitate to email me.