by Holly Champion
Many beginner piano students, or students of any musical instrument, don’t realise that practising your instrument isn’t just about playing through your pieces or scales. Practice is actually a whole field of knowledge, skills and strategies. In fact, a lot of what you learn in lessons (with a good teacher) is not how to play, but how to practise.* The ultimate aim of lessons should be to enable you to work independently on your instrument. Most professional musicians will still have lessons with a master teacher, especially now and then to ‘check in’ and keep up their professional development, but they are able to practise far more independently than beginner musicians can.
Most strategies for practising your instrument fall into two broad categories. I like to call these “learning practice” and “performing practice”.
