5 ways to practice better

These are five essential habits for beginners through masters. Great practice is small, intentional, and repeatable. Whether you're just starting out or refining advanced repertoire, these principles will help you make meaningful progress.

1) Start with warmups

Begin every session with a few minutes of warmups that improve circulation and flexibility in your hands. This could be a simple scale, a five-finger pattern, or arpeggios that match the key of your piece, or even a few simple measures from your piece. The goal is to wake up your fingers. When you first sit down, expect that your hands might be a bit clumsier than you might expect; that's okay because that's what warmups are for.

Keep it simple—don't try to focus on too many things at once during warmups. If your teacher has given you specific technical tips to work on, pick only one or two to concentrate on. Posture and hand position are important, but these are often too hard to assess on your own and are best addressed during lessons with an instructor.

2) Set small, specific goals

Instead of "practice the whole piece," focus on something really specific. This could be a single bar of music or passage that you want to improve, but it could also be something like a dynamic shift across a section of a piece, or working on the voicing of the melody in a section. The point is to identify and focus on a specific goal, which is more effective than trying to practice everything at once.

This targeted approach creates real progress. You might work on a clean pedal change in one measure, nail the timing of a syncopated rhythm, or smooth out a tricky left-hand jump. Small goals build confidence and help you avoid playing through the same mistakes repeatedly.

3) Master rhythm and tempo

From beginners to virtuosos, tempo is the secret weapon. A clear sense of rhythm and the ability to stay on beat elevates any performance, whether you're learning "Twinkle Twinkle" or a Beethoven sonata.

Practice with a metronome. Some electric pianos have them built in, you can buy a standalone metronome, or you can use one of many free metronome apps available for your phone. Get one—it doesn't have to be complicated and it can be free—and use it. If a passage falls apart, slow down the metronome, get the rhythm solid, then gradually increase the tempo.

4) Practice deliberately

Deliberate practice means practicing with full attention and intention. You're not just repeating movements—you're building neural pathways and connecting synapses. Every focused repetition strengthens the foundation for technique and musicality.

Signs you're not practicing deliberately include that your mind wanders, you play through mistakes without stopping, or you practice at performance tempo before you're ready. Good habits to reinforce are to play slowly enough that you can execute everything correctly, stop immediately when you make a mistake and figure out why it happened, and stay mentally engaged with every note.

Deliberate practice is harder work than mindless repetition, but it's much more effective. Even 15 minutes of deliberate practice will outpace an hour of unfocused playing.

You can also make practice more effective by playing a passage correctly a few times in a row, as opposed to rushing and making mistakes. This way, your fingers can learn what they're supposed to be doing via deliberate repetition.

5) Record and listen to yourself

Recording yourself is one of the most powerful tools available to accelerate your learning. You'll hear things when listening back that you completely miss while playing.

The simplest approach is to use a voice memo on your phone. Just hit record, play through a section, and listen back immediately. If you want to reduce the sound of keys clacking, move your phone a bit farther from the keyboard to emphasize the musical tones over mechanical noise.

You can also set up a camera to film yourself playing. This lets you see your hand position, posture, and movements, though even a voice memo works well since piano is ultimately something you hear.

Many electric pianos have built-in recording features that let you record segments and play them back through the piano itself. If you want to get more detailed, you can plug an electric keyboard into a computer and record MIDI files. Then you can use MIDI file visualizer like SeeMusic (which has a free tier) to see exactly what notes you're hitting and when. This level of analysis can be incredibly useful in a lesson context with an instructor, though it may not be worth the complexity if you're a beginner learning on your own.

The key principle is to use the technology available to you to accelerate the learning process. Start simple—a basic voice memo is perfect—and you can always explore more sophisticated options as you progress.