Your Learning Style

When practicing a new piece on your particular musical instrument, it is important to know how you learn things best. It will help you make more efficient use of your practicing time.

For example, being a male, I learn best in a linear way, focusing on one thing at a time. Over the past week, I’ve been teaching myself to play “Waltz in F Minor” by Chopin. To be fair, this is a relatively easy piece for a person of my skill level. However, I’ve been focusing on learning this one new piece instead of a bunch of new pieces. To break it down even further, I’ve focused on learning this piece hands separately before learning it hands together. Actually, I played it all the way through hands together the first time just to hear how it sounds, and since then I’ve been practicing it hands separately. I’m starting to see why a lot of other people I know, who play the piano, don’t get the chance to play pieces by ear: it’s really easy to play the music by reading the sheet music if you don’t care how it sounds. By focusing on these separate things, I could probably play the piece hands together fairly easily.

I learn in many different ways, though. For example, my piano teacher is teaching me to play four-octave scales and chromatic scales. In my practice sessions, I always make sure to do some improvisation (which I record on a tape) and, in this improvization, I’ve put in a few cool-sounding chromatic scale-like things. So, I’m learning a very boring concept in a way that interests me.

So, take your learning style into consideration when learning new pieces or concepts.