All our lives we've heard that practice makes perfect. But even as I write this blog entry, we all know that practice does not necessarily make perfect. We've all seen or experienced the opposite at one time or another. The word "practice" has become a catchword. It explains our failures and our successes. Poor pracitce means failure and good practice means success. However, let's not forget the base meaning of piano practice which means to train by "repetition". Repeating something "almost" correctly leads us to slow learning, or, at worst, no learning. It often causes the kind of frustration that leads to giving up. The goal is to have your child or student practice what is correct 100% of the time so that nine wrong experiences out of ten tries does not become the habit rather than the correct one. So---when your child comes home from their piano lesson three things must occur:
1. The student should be prepared to practice his/her home assignment correctly and have understood it before leaving the studio.
2. The student must follow the practice outline each day.
3. Practice must be exciting so that the student is creating wonderful performances. Your teacher will give you lots of ideas to help with this.
Practice steps make the student think about what he is doing and allow correct habits to form. Therefore:
GOOD HABITS + AUTOMATIC RESPONSES = SUCCESS
( adapted from Richard Chronister, " A Piano Teacher's Legacy"- 2005)
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