Common Problems and How to Fix Them

As a piano instructor, I have noticed that some of the most common problems students struggle with are rushing, missing notes or jumps, evenness, rapid position shifts, chords, and trills. The fixes below have helped many of my students, and I still use many of these myself when practicing!

Ghosting

Play a note without sounding it! This really helps you focus on your finger, hand, wrist, and arm movements. If you’re up for a little more challenge, it can also really help to sing or hum along when doing this.

Stop and Prepare

“Pause” on each note in order to think ahead about how you are going to move the hand or finger before playing it. This helps a lot with rushing, missing notes/jumps, and rapid position shifts.

LOAF

Leave Out A Finger! Great for troublesome chords. Try playing a chord without one of the notes in it. For example, play a triad without the middle note (play just the top and bottom notes). Then switch it up!

Rhythm Practice

Change up your rhythms! For example, it could sound something like this: Lonnng-short-lonnng-short-lonnng….. Some great combinations are “short-long”, “long-short”, “short-short-long”, and “long-long-short”. This does wonders for evenness problems.

Trills

Try focusing on rotating left to right between the two fingers, using each note and rotation to “trampoline” to the next in one continuous flow. Make sure the rotation comes from the forearm and wrist, not the fingers! The faster you go, the smaller the movements and the closer to the keys you should get.

Many of these techniques can be applied beyond the piano! Give them a try during your next practice session!