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
We come to the last component of dealing with performance anxiety: self-assessment. This part comes after a performance is over usually, although one can do this anywhere in the process (EXCEPT during a performance! that’s a no-no!). This is where you reflect on first what went well, and when you’re ready to think about
When you play in front of an audience, it can appear that they are against you. After all, you have a group of some size - whether just a few, or thousands - facing you and outnumbering you! Even though most people know in their conscious minds that they're not really against you, this perspective can play tricks
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
Every human has feelings to a certain degree or another. Most of us understand the display of feeling in others, and so when we encounter music - which is a means of depicting emotion through sound - we “get it”. However, being able to get that emotion to come out of our fingers or
The process of dealing with Performance Anxiety needs to contain some healthy doses of perspective and self-reflection. Ask yourself questions like: Why am I doing this? Is there really anything at stake other than my pride? Am I afraid of disappointing a teacher (either real or imagined pressure)? Am I trying to prove to
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