7 things I wish I'd known when learning piano

hi everyone my name is Jazer and i've played  the piano for 18 years and in this 18 years i   have made a lot of mistakes if i could go back in  time i would do things pretty differently so in   this video i'm gonna share with you seven things i  would do differently i want to save you the months   and painful years of figuring out these mistakes  so that you have a much nicer and smoother   experience learning piano i'm going to start from  number seven and work my way all the way to the   most important thing number one at the very end  so make sure you watch this video until the very   end number seven is to learn more music theory and  i think it's really important to learn more music   theory because learning more music theory means  you're gonna get a lot better at sight reading   because when you learn music theory what  you're learning is a whole bunch of scales   and key signatures arpeggios time signatures and  all these things they just really help you to   see music with quite a different lens i'm going  to use the mozart c major sonata as an example   if i had lots of music theory knowledge  i could first see that the right hand that first three notes there it's just a c  major triad chord right and the left hand is it's a bunch of alberti bases so that's  a c major and that's the five seven   inverted okay and the chord four so one so when you have a good deal of music  theory knowledge you start to be able to   chunk information and you stop to see music as  individual notes but groups of information that   you can then process and play much  much faster so when you see someone   sight read a really complicated an amazing  piece and they do it really really well   they're not it's not so much  that they are really good at   computing and playing many many individual notes  but it's more that what's happening in the brain   is they have played that particular group of notes  or that cluster of notes so many times that in   their minds it's just they're just performing one  thing so i've never learned this piece officially   before but before this video i took about half  an hour just to study and analyze this piece so   this is kind of half sight reading and half  practice for me so if you look at this one so i want to share with you right  what's going on in my head play this i'm not actually thinking about these notes as  individual like d b d g b i'm not quite thinking   about that i'm more actually chunking it all  into sort of one thing but they're just broken up   that's a g chord right c  chord the different chords   even that so for me to see this happen all  i see is the a minor chord but it's just   got this grace note before it right that's the  main bit but it's got a grace note in there so so number six on the list of things i would  tell my younger self to do would be not to   only practice it until i get it right but more to  practice something until i can't get it wrong so   this is quite a rookie mistake that lots of people  make that you know they play something many many   times wrong and they they sort of get one time  finally after an hour they finally got it right   and they think oh awesome i've finished my job but  it's it's not quite so simple it's you know it's   if you've got it wrong 99 times and you've  got a correct one time on your hundredth time   well statistically when you're on stage you're  more likely to still stuff up because you play   99 times wrong and only one time correct right  so it's quite important to play it many many many   many times correctly so this is something that  i tell a lot of my students practice until you   can't get it wrong okay going to number five is i  would stop using so much pedal during my practice   i think pedal is really really good for certain  pieces of music when you use it in performances   is very effective but when you're practicing it's  better just to not use it and just focus a little   more on clarity okay that's very very important  when you take away the pedal it makes your music   very naked and that's better because then you can  see which areas you need to improve on because   the thing is if you use a lot of pedal in your  practice it covers up a lot of your mistakes   and uh you don't really realize they are mistakes  until you you know record yourself and realize   oh my gosh i'm not even playing half the  notes so take away the pedal it'll do you   many many wonders so number four on the list is  to record yourself playing much much more here's   a thought that came to me recently when  you are practicing or performing about 80   of your brain's energy is spent at trying to  get the right notes the right dynamics the right   articulation so on and so forth and only about 20  of your brain energy is allocated to listening to   yourself right so because only 20 is allocated to  listening to yourself sometimes you don't realize   there are certain parts that are not so clean  or maybe you're not actually playing some notes   correctly okay uh it's really important to record  yourself because when you record yourself you can   listen to yourself from an audience perspective  and if you think about an audience member an   audience member spends 100 of their energy simply  just to listen they're not worried about playing   wrong notes right so it's so important for you  to record yourself and listen to yourself as an   audience so that you can spend 100 of your brain's  energy analyzing what are the things you're doing   well what are the things that need better phrasing  what are the things that need to improve so for   example something that comes to mind when i'm  practicing this is this trail over here so   this one here i currently think i'm not playing  it as clean as i can so as i'm playing right now   i am using about 80 of my energy to get the right  notes get the right phrasing articulation so on   and so forth and this trill is is for me not so  good yet so what i should do in a second is watch   this video you're watching right now i want to  watch it again analyze my playing and then try to   refine it later okay number three on the list is  to follow the fingerings i see on the page so one   of the beginner mistakes that i see many people do  is they play with very random fingerings okay so   sometimes when i see students play certain pieces  they can play five times and five of those times   they're using different fingerings and i this is  bizarre to me right because what you want to do   is you want to establish the same fingering  throughout your playing so that you build   the correct muscle memory and that helps you  to memorize the piece faster which means you   play the piece easier as time goes by okay so it's  important to use a fingering and the other note is   that editors they often have analyzed so if you  use sort of good editions like henley or peters   or pedorevsky these editions have been edited by  very professional pianos so they're usually done   in a way that makes the whole playing experience  more effective so that's something i would tell   my younger self i would follow the fingerings a  little bit more strictly number two on the list   is to practice more consistently now i know  that sounds quite cliche but this really is   one of the factors that will turn you from good  to great okay so if you look on this graph here   okay i'll just let you have a look there for  a second and you can see that if you simply do   one percent better every day after a whole year  it gets you to a mathematical value of 37.78 and   if you're simply just one percent worse every day  mathematically if you just keep timesing by itself   0.99 times 0.99 times 0.99 and if you do that 365  times it gets you a mathematical value of 0.03   now which one you want to be of course we all  want to be better right so you can see how if   you simply are practicing and just improving by  one percent every day you're going to gain huge   huge results getting down to our final thing  now and the final thing is to practice slower   and more mindfully okay i think too many people  play a little too fast in their practice it's   so much better if you could just slow things down  focus on the small details as you are practicing   that's what practice is for practice is not for  performing practice is for practicing which means   honing down on small little details so that when  it's performance time you can do a magnificent   job just a thought i had recently playing slow  and playing fast is actually very similar things   because the only difference with practicing  playing slow and playing fast is the amount of   time between each note gets shorter when you play  fast right so let's say we go into this one so um right that's essentially the same thing as the only real difference is that the time between  each note gets shorter when you play faster   so i recommend if you're practicing  let's say this piece to practice it   much slower and try to make  each note sound crystal clear the worst thing you want to  hear is something like this ah that's gotta be one of the worst  things to hear in a concert so   okay so make sure you're  practicing slowly and with quality and there you go that sums up the seven things  i would do differently if i learned piano again   which of these seven can you relate to let me  know in the comments below remember to like   and subscribe to this channel for more piano  tutorials i'll catch you in the next one you

Channel: Learn Piano with Jazer Lee

Views: 422,273

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Keywords: piano, piano tutorial, easy piano, piano lessons, piano chords, how to play piano, piano for beginners, beginner piano lessons, beginner piano exercises, beginner piano, jazer lee, jazer lee piano, piano tips for beginners

Id: CnogF5Amm4g

Length: 11min 47sec (707 seconds)

Published: Wed May 12 2021