How to Improve Your Piano Playing

Playing a piano is quite different from just sitting at a piano bench and pressing notes. Creating music is an art. As an art, it requires subtleties, patience, hard work, and dedication.

If you want to be a good piano player and improve your piano playing, you need to be dedicated. You cannot give up easily at playing the piano.

The first thing you can do to improve your piano playing, is to practice your scales. Aside from the C major scale, there are other scales that you need to practice. This helps you build accuracy, and makes your fingers stronger. Furthermore, it familiarizes you with the notes on the piano scale. You learn where the "sharp" and "flat" key positions are, and that will aid you when you are playing piano pieces in the future.

Another thing you can do to help improve your piano playing, is by paying attention to the dynamics. Is a crescendo happening? Does one passage in the piece require you to play loudly, while the next passage needs you to play softly? Adding dynamics to a piece can greatly enhance the emotion that you bring to the piano piece.

The third way you can improve your piano playing, is by using a technique book. In these books, there are repetitive exercises that exercise your fingers. This may sound boring, but it is a very good thing to work on if you want to be a good piano player. Why are technique exercises important in improving your piano playing? Because you have fingers which are naturally weak and cannot move as fast. Your ring and little fingers are a lot less strong than your middle and index fingers. However, you will need all of your fingers to play the piano! Furthermore, your non-dominate hand is sometimes slower at playing piano notes than your dominate hand. This is not a good thing, because improving your piano skills requires that both hands be evenly matched.

The fourth way to improve your piano playing skills, is to learn how to sight read. What is sight reading? Sight reading is taking a piano piece that you have never played before or seen, and attempting to play the piece (or at least a few lines of the piece) after reading the notes silently for thirty seconds. Many good piano players can sight read easily, and play a new piano piece perfectly. Learning how to be a good piano sight reader is an excellent way to improve your piano playing skills.

The last way you can improve your piano playing skills, is by practicing everyday. It is difficult to play piano everyday if you have a busy schedule. However, if you practice piano an hour a day, you will actually improve more than someone who practices piano once a week for seven hours!

Playing the piano is very rewarding. You can make beautiful music on demand, it is a good way to channel your emotions, and you can play music for other people! However, a piano is not an easy instrument to master, and you must be dedicated to playing the piano, in order to be a successful piano player.