Juilliard graduate helping dedicated adult pianists who love challenging repertoire practice less while learning more.
πΉ π³ turn oh sh*t into I got this!
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You know the moment. You're three lines out from That Passage and your stomach already knows it's coming. π³ Hands tense. Breath gets shallow. You start playing the mistake before you've even reached the measure. I used to think the fix was more reps. Drill it until the fear goes away. But no matter how many reps, it was hit or miss for years. Here's the first thing that changed it for me. SMILE π Tension in any one part of your body bleeds into your playing. That's one trick. I've got three more... what I think about in the seconds before a panic passage hits and my "Oh Sh*t" turns into "I got this!" I put all of it in this week's video. After you've tried any of them, comment below the video it and let me know what happened. |
Lisa Spector, Piano Ninja
Juilliard graduate helping dedicated adult pianists who love challenging repertoire practice less while learning more.
Growing up, I swore by altered rhythms. Hours and hours of dotted-rhythms drilling my Chopin Γ©tudes. Five of them, on my debut recital at age 14. I don't practice that way anymore and haven't since high school. I posted about it on Instagram last week and it did not go over well. Most people pushed back hard. Fair enough, Instagram reels are short, I didn't have room to explain the alternative. So here it is. My real problem with altered rhythms comes down to one thing. When I'm doing a whole...
I've been playing Amy Beach's "Dreaming" at the same tempo for years. It felt like an andante tempo, as the composer wrote. Then I heard Greg Anderson play it slower. I'm talking seriously slower. π’And I stopped mid-scroll and was mesmerized, because something clicked that I didn't want to admit. My tempo wasn't wrong because it wasn't Andante. It was wrong because I'd never questioned it. Here's the thing nobody tells you about tempo: it doesn't just live in your fingers. It lives in your...
Yep. Fifteen. Chopin Polonaise-Fantasie. Ginastera. Godowsky. All three movements of Chopin E minor Concerto. Scriabin Nocturne for left hand. Gershwin-Wild arrangements. Bach/Brahms Chaconne left hand. Villa-Lobos. That list can feel like too much. I hear it all the time... sitting down to practice and scanning through everything, feeling like you're failing all of them. Like you have to touch everything or you've abandoned it. I built a practice tracker that fixed that. Not by reducing the...