One of the most common requests from piano students is to skip ahead. “Can we learn this piece instead?” “I don’t need scales; can we just work on repertoire?” “Why do we have to learn this before moving on?” The impulse is understandable.
“Practice for 30 minutes” is not deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is a rigorous methodology based on decades of cognitive psychology research, formalized most notably by psychologist Anders Ericsson.
Your hands are shaking. Your heart is hammering against your ribs. You can feel every eye in the room trained on you as you lower your fingers to the keys. In that moment, it is easy to believe that your body is betraying you. It isn’t. That surge of adrenaline is your body’s way of preparing you to perform at your best. The difference between a pianist who crumbles under pressure and one who rises to the occasion often comes down to a single thing: how they interpret that feeling.
Every piano parent has been there. Your child sits down at the bench, plays through their piece once (maybe), then announces they are done. You know the recital is in three weeks. You know what their teacher assigned.
Traditional practice wisdom often recommends intensive focus: drill one scale for ten minutes, then move to arpeggios, then work on that difficult passage. This blocked approach feels productive because you can hear immediate improvement within a session. But research in cognitive science points the other way. Mixing your practice activities produces stronger long-term learning, even though it feels harder in the moment. Interleaved practice (the deliberate mixing of different skills within a single session) creates deeper retention and better transfer to performance situations.
Most pianists understand that practice should be spread across multiple sessions rather than crammed into one marathon day. But the science goes deeper than general wisdom.
We often hear that consistency matters in piano practice, but timing matters too. Recent neuroscience research reveals that when you practice matters almost as much as how long you practice.
One of the most common questions I get from parents in the Clearwater area is: Is my child old enough to start piano? After years of teaching students of all ages, I have some honest thoughts on the matter.
This performance of “River Flows in You” bridges the lyrical simplicity of modern piano music with the depth of classical tradition.
Chopin’s Grande Polonaise Brillante from the Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise Brillante, Op. 22 is a spectacular work showcasing both Chopin’s compositional genius and the virtuosic demands he placed on pianists.
