technique

Welcome to the final article in this series, How To Practice Creatively! If you've read all of the previous articles in this series, you may be wondering why I saved "Identifying the Problem" for last.  That's because this is the longest and most involved part of creative practicing. Finding creative solutions is the most

So far in this series I've talked about being very focused on practicing, detailing what specific tasks you should plan for each day, troubleshooting your problems, creative ways you can maximize your time and enjoyment at the piano. But there's one very important part that's missing from the process - what I call "Just

To some of you, the idea of practicing every day seemed fairly obvious when you decided to take up piano. But I know that for others, this is a real struggle. Sometimes, you desire to get to it, but you have so many demands on you during the day that by the time you get

Have you ever been working really hard on a project for a long period of time, and you just needed to get up and walk away from it for a bit? Perhaps when there was a good place to stop, like at the end of a segment, you went to the kitchen grab a

Many times we get so focused on the sound that we want and the desire to get to the point where we can play our piece and just enjoy hearing it, that we ignore the signals our body is trying to tell us when something is not quite right with our technique. Sometimes the technique

Practice S-L-O-W-L-Y I can’t stress this enough. I even typed it slowly for emphasis.  Most people who have studied some piano are aware of the concept of slow practice, but many do not employ this technique to its fullest potential. You may even be wondering why this would be a part of Creative Practicing that is supposed