How To Learn Piano as Fast as Humanly Possible

If everything you play has bugs that you can't get rid of or you've stagnated and feel like you've stopped progressing as a player or there's something you just can't

learn

to do no matter how much time you spend on it it's not because you've reached Your limit is the way you are practicing. YouTube is a wash with isolated practice tips, but without an understanding of how practice actually works, most students will make the same basic practice mistakes. and once again, greatly slowing down your progress. Well, my goal today is to give you that understanding by teaching you my case theory of how the practice works and the fundamental principles I believe it is based on.

From these principles we will derive some simple rules. for an effective practice that will allow us to quickly and consistently improve how to make muscle memory playing the

piano

a motor skill like handwriting or doing a back flip and we

learn

motor skills by creating muscle memory for them. Muscle memory is created when we do something physical like playing a bar of music, simply playing this bar creates muscle memory and that muscle memory makes me a little bit better at playing that bar. Let's visualize my progress on this graph. The left axis is how good I am at playing this specific bar of music. and the bottom axis is the time the first run took about 10 seconds and made me a little bit better, so since I'm now obviously ready to play This Bar at lightning speed, I got cocky and made a classic mistake, that mistake created muscle. memory that will make me more likely to repeat it in the future, so now I am a little worse at playing this measure than I was a moment ago and this illustrates the first key principle of how we make muscle memory do something well create muscle memory to do it doing something wrong will create muscle memory to do it wrong and make you worse, so as a result of making that mistake you are now more likely to repeat it on the next try, which of course reinforces the incorrect muscle memory, which makes you even more likely to repeat it, which further exacerbates the problem.

This is the other key principle of how muscle memory is created. Developing muscle memory creates a feedback loop in which taking action creates muscle memory that makes us more likely to repeat. that action and thus strengthen that muscle memory, this feedback loop is very powerful, as we can see by the ease with which it turned my only mistake into a bad habit. Now I'm going to turn back the clock and try again, but this time I'm going to be a little more careful on my first run. I take my time and manage to hit the bar correctly.

This creates a little muscle memory and makes me a little better, so my second run is a little

fast

er than the first, which strengthens that muscle. My memory makes me even better, so the next run is even

fast

er and this trend continues with each correct repetition until I hit this measure, since now I'm out of time and without a metronome it's a piece of cake. Again we see the power of muscle. There's a memory feedback loop at play, but now, instead of exacerbating a bad habit, it allows me to learn something new extremely quickly, so here are the main takeaways on how muscle memory is created: One, everything we play creates muscle memory, whether we do it right or wrong, and two.

Developing muscle memory creates a positive feedback loop, so what does that tell us about how to improve at the

piano

? One to learn anything. We have to do it right more often than we do it wrong. Two. We can learn something extremely quickly just by doing it. Getting it right consistently while making zero mistakes and three, even a relatively small number of mistakes can double the time it takes us to learn something, and the more mistakes we make, the worse it will be until we stop progressing altogether, which brings us to the first rule of thumb.

Effective practice makes fewer mistakes, and here are two easy ways to do it that prioritize accuracy over speed on a new piece. This will usually mean playing completely out of time, simply putting the notes in the correct order when we are ready to start playing on time. We'll want to use a metronome to control our speed and set it to an easy Tempo where we can get it right reliably and once we're ready to speed something up we'll need to do it gradually waiting until we feel comfortable. and competent at each new speed before increasing the pace we basically have to do whatever it takes to achieve it Bri and that almost always means slowing down, don't gamble when you think you're about to make a mistake, don't limit yourself Roll the dice and hopes to do well.

Stop and only continue when you are sure you will succeed. To make this a habit, you will have to be consistent with it and that will require you to take a mental step back from what you are actually playing on the piano and focus solely on stopping before you make a mistake. This is a little annoying at first, but if you do it consistently it will quickly become a habit and you won't even be able to do it. I need to think about it, of course, we can't avoid all mistakes and that's okay because if we handle mistakes correctly, they will actually speed up our progress instead of slowing it down and all we have to do is fix every mistake immediately, this will end with evil Habits before taking Roots help you discover where and why you went wrong and forces you to correct your mistakes and get better at catching and correcting each mistake you'll need to make the next one.

Be alert for any errors. Times and if you have even the slightest suspicion that you have something wrong, stop and don't go any further until you are sure either way. Two when you make a mistake, stop and then restart from the first measure of the previous measure. Correcting every mistake is ridiculous. Powerful and with the right set of practice tasks, it will allow you to learn anything, but spotting mistakes is much easier when you have a clearly defined practice task and the ability to know whether or not you did it right next year. I will be launching courses on my pianos source.com website that will ensure you have everything you need to spot your mistakes and practice effectively.

If you can't wait, you can hire me as a private teacher and I will give you a clear explanation. work program and the tools you need to achieve your goals book a free consultation today. Now that we understand how to create muscle memory, it's time to learn how to consolidate it. The power of sleep. Everything we learn on the piano is a type of memory. and memories formed throughout the day are consolidated during sleep, this means that we improve in two places during practice and during the following night of sleep. The other side of the coin is the use-it-or-lose-it principle, which is the brain's tendency to wash out or make it harder to access any skill we don't use regularly.

This gives us two ways to make our practice more effective. Practice every day. This will solidify your piano skills with each night of sleep and prevent your brain from erasing the difficult progress you need. 10 to 15 minutes of practice daily for consistent progress, but I like to tell my students to aim for at least 5 minutes a day because even practicing just 5 minutes is absolutely worth it for the reasons discussed as it creates the habit. diary. practice and keeps you in the game and lowers the barrier to sitting down and getting started, which is the hardest part, and then students typically continue beyond the 5 minute plan once they've sat down.

It's a stupid psychological trick that works stupidly well. review review if we go a few days without practicing something we are going to lose some of our progress thanks to the user or loser principle then we will have to waste time going through Old Turf just to get back to where we were because From this, it is faster to put together a fragment at the time, bringing each fragment to a point where we can quickly review it as part of our daily practice before tackling new material. I have a method to do this which is contained in the final part. from the video, so we'll address that, that just leaves one more basic principle of practice that we can use to improve faster.

It's pretty complicated to make, but I have my own patented system that breaks it down and makes it so easy that anyone can do it in the Goldilocks zone, like we talked about, we can use the feedback loop of muscle memory to learn new materials and skills. extremely fast, but to get the most out of this, what we practice needs to be set to the appropriate difficulty for our skill level. I'll demonstrate why to use this music bar from earlier, so at this point I've already mastered playing this bar, so if I keep doing it it will only reinforce my existing muscle memory.

This has some value, but you will never achieve it. I'll take it to the next level, which is playing in time. Then eventually I will stop progressing and I will plateau, if I hit the bar at full speed, 140 BPM, I will do it wrong more often than I do it right. bad habits and undo all the good work I've done at 80 BPM. I can stop before I make a mistake so I don't lose progress, but this Tempo is still a struggle for me, so it takes me a long time to get the first one. a couple of correct reps and start taking advantage of the muscle memory feedback loop.

I'll get there eventually, but it's a painfully slow way to improve to 50 BPM. I have yet to master playing the beat in time, but it's slow enough that I can play reliably. bar correctly to quickly tap into the muscle memory feedback loop. It's not too easy or too difficult, but it's perfect, so it falls into the Goldilocks Zone. All practice tasks in the Goldilocks Zone have two key characteristics: one, they require us to master a new skill, and two , are easy enough that we can quickly tap into the muscle memory feedback loop. Practicing in the Gil loock Zone will allow you to improve faster and will provide you with fun and engaging challenges that won't be too easy or boring.

Overly difficult and frustrating tasks that are too easy or too difficult will slow down our progress a little or a lot depending on how excessively difficult or easy they are. How to stay in the Gil loock Zone To stay in the Gil loock Zone we have to Adjust the difficulty of the things. that we are practicing so that it is the right level for us. We can make tasks easier or harder by modifying them in various ways, but finding the right combination is quite complicated and only through my years of teaching have I started to develop a nose for it, so instead of teaching students To do it themselves, I spent years experimenting with systems that keep students in the Godil Lock zone while they practice during the week.

I have tried many different approaches and so far. This is the best one I could come up with wow, this system creates a series of clear practice tasks that gently guide the student toward the goal while keeping them in the gieck zone. It also has a review system that prevents students from losing their progress and makes it

possible

to complete large projects on the piano with just 10 to 15 minutes of daily practice. I plan to use this system in my courses and in some of my future tutorials, so I want to make a tutorial dedicated to it in the next video.

Having it be easy to find and reference has made a huge difference to my practice and teaching and it has been so much fun watching my students just Rock It Forward since they started using it, it has totally changed my relationship with the piano and I hope so be it. I can do the same for you