Improving your skills as a pianist

Sometimes we wanna practice and we don't know that to do exactly. And sometimes you wanna practice but you feel lazy.
Many pianists are playing well but they find it hard to get past a certain point. You may be very good or average but discover that you make some little mistakes while playing or you lack speed.
The solution to all these is some exercises.

Let's Go Back to the Basics

You might be playing very well already but did you really go through the basics? Or have you avoided them and thought that everything will be fine?

You should try to go back to the basics. It will surprise you how this can positively affect your playing.

Learn how to play the basic scales

This is very crucial. You are never to skillful to practice your scales. Yes! And if you think it is very easy and because you are already playing fine, then try to run some scales on all the keys. You will discover that it might not be as easy as you think. In subsequent posts, I will talk more about musical scales and how best to play and practice with them

Using the correct fingering

This is very important to your improvement. While running the scales or while playing your chords, it is important to use the right fingering as this will generally help you to play better. In subsequent posts, I will explain further on some of these points.

Understanding basic progressions

So you have been playing keyboard in church and you can play to all the songs very well but do you have that progressions foundation?
Here is another scenario. You have been playing for a while now so you really want to improve fast. You want to play like Mike Bereal or Aaron Lindsey. Hold on!!! You still need to go back to the basics. You need to understand how simple basic progressions work before you can play like the big boys. Sweet progressions is just a replacement of the basic progressions with some voicings and maybe some additional passing tones here and there but you need to understand the basics as this helps your creativity as well.
If you understand the basics, you can hear a song and play to it instantly. I do that all the time. Also I want to emphasize again that you will be really creative

Do not get frustrated

Practicing on the keyboard can be very frustrating. But when your nerves feel like they're going to drive you crazy. Take a 5 minutes break and come back to what you were doing, you will find it easier to do.

Learn new songs

This is the final point for this post. The benefits of learning new songs cannot be over-emphasized. It will help you all round. It will improve your skills, creativity and probably challenge you to learn some new things. If you don't try to learn new songs, how do you know that you are improving. Learning a new song might show you what your level is as an instrumentalist.


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