Slow down your practice & finally get results 

This is probably one of the MOST IMPORTANT videos about piano ever put on here!!!! I have been playing professionally for over 15 years now and I love to spend hours reharmonising and rearranging standards but what happens is that I never really LEARN what I have written. In performance I skate through the piece, guess, cheat and fake bits but keep in tempo so nobody knows what they have missed (except me)! So, thanks to Shan, I have been going over all my favourites to learn them PROPERLY...it takes a LOT of careful, slow practice but is very rewarding, I keep reading bits I had forgotten and thinking "oh, that`s cute" and sometimes "what WAS I thinking there?" If you want to learn piano effectively SHAN is the only one on RU-vid to listen to,,,10_.15 mins is more than enough information to absorb and practice, AVOID anything that says "INSTANTLY" as in "Learn to sight read instantly" or "Transform your playing instantly", it`s all nonsense. There is NO SUBSTITUTE for slow, careful practice. I went to a Barry Harris session in New York City and its easy to see where Shan got his teaching skills from....short little ideas, phrases, and, progressions---perfect.

Andras Schiff said words to the effect: "You can practice slowly, but *always* practice musically". Every note could be a gem !

I'm so glad I watched this. I just started a year and a half ago, and I don't consider myself yet at a Beginner level. I was never a musician and joked that I was born with two left ears. So I bought a piano at 65 yoa (like my Mom did) and started in. I was watching lessons on jazz chords, and developed some skills that might be considered intermediate, I didn't know what I'm doing. So I decided that I had to master triads first. I learned the Rule of the Octave 3 months ago, and my teacher is encouraging me to learn them in all positions. I'm making progress, but I asked myself if I was doing it in rhythm. This reinforces that idea and I'm going to do like you said. This was a very valuable lesson, and I will just say, merci beaucoup from Switzerland. And I hope you are playing pain free. That concerns me a lot since I was a therapist and loved helping people.

Ìn classical music, The Tradition (e.g. Rubinstein, Michelangeli, Horowitz, Volondat) teaches us that the eventual speed of flawless performance is the inverse of the speed of faultless practice in the beginning. The slower you start learning a piece, the faster you will be able to play it. I had to try this out with the first sections of Gradus at Parnassum and The Pathétique. And it worked. I was astounded.

If all music teachers would take their very time and explain things like this it will be really wonderful indeed. Thanks sooooooo much . Keep it up

Thank you... What I try to do, while improvising, is to actually 'hear' the note(s) I am going to play before I play them. At the level I am at at the moment, this means I am playing quite slowly. I am trusting that at some subliminal level, this is going to inform the physical patterns that my hand makes and the way those patterns are formed. Otherwise I will be playing slowly for ever.!!

Absolutely! I have been practicing the same way since I’ve been 13. With classical music, always hands separate, fingering, and then hands together. Practice is for thinking! No time to think in a performance. For improv, I don’t practice slowly, but I do think about what I’m doing and sometimes stop to evaluate the chords. Exercises like Czerny are essential. Oscar Peterson built his technique on Czerny exercises. “Short cut, Long delay!”

I don’t play piano but this totally applies to my guitar practice. Thank you.

You have a lovely gentle approach that is very inviting. I'm not a pianist or a jazz muso, but I love what you are teaching.

This so true! I left my amp in another town and didn’t practice at all for like 10 days. I was pretty scared to play in front of a crowd without any practicing or warm up, but it was my best performance) yeah, I’m cocky enough to call it a performance

I'm not even a jazz player, hardly a player at all, but your explanation here is inspirational and transfers to all types of play. ty. Sub'd.

Perfect practice makes perfect!

Practice does not make perfect it makes permanent.

Шён,ты просто молодец,правильный учитель...

You are amazing!

Powerful advice.

Time comes to us if learn to anticipate it... Everything is easier whenever we know its coming (we don't have to rush, it slows down mentally) yet, oddly we suddenly seem to be able to fit what seemed impossible before we knew it (lick, passage ) was coming. Loved the Excellent tutorial. Thanks so much 👍 ~ Inertia

Great content thanks❤

Just started watching your channel and it is the best yet. Thank you. I am subscribed. Yea!

Thanks for the reminder! Slow down 😌

Thanks, subbed!

So simple... and so brilliant! Thanks!

Great post, thank you

Thank you!

Escellent lesson! Well demonstrated. Thank you!

excellent advice. It's good to be reminded about, and is relevant to any skill level

Thank you,Sean.⭐🌹✨🌹⭐Great tips: inspirational.

Excellent explanation, wish their was more like this on RU-vid...thank you!

You provide some of the most valuable guidance that can be found on RU-vid.

appreciate it

You are an excellent teacher .... and, at the very least you come across as an excellent teacher and one who has an excellent approach and one who encourages studnets. Well done.

Woah, i didnt even know they updated the slowdown, that’ll be helpful!

Hoo boy do I need to work on this.

“Owning” the skill, not simply acknowledging the idea; so hard! Oldsters need more wood shed time-

The best lesson (in this regard) I learned was don't play immediately. Take a moment, look at the changes, dominant cycle movements, etc. play the skeleton, then start the real work.

PREACH 👏

One practice technique that helped me so much was playing from the end to the beginning. So last bar, then 2nd to last and last, then third....etc

We should practice in time, but we should learn out of time. It's impossible to play in time when one is unsure of where the notes even are.

Slow and deliberate is the best practice….

Hi. Very interesting video. What's the run at 2:35 please?

If you can play perfectly slowly, you can develop speed quite easily. The reverse is more often not true. For instance, trying to keep the tempo of a metronome in your head at slow speed is much harder that at high speed.

What would be a simple jazz standard to learn with minimal changes in the A & B?

I find myself rushing from one composition to the next to rehearse my entire songbook and frequently breakdown at the same spots. I need to rehearse the problems more at slower tempo. This seems obvious but I’m not there when I should be,

Yep, I Have Learned To slow Down……. 😂. It’s hard playing really slowly but it forces you to understand the rhythm and literally I know won’t allow myself to play a song any faster than I can take the bit I find more sticky. Work on that then put the rest in at that pace. As others say gets there quicker than just running at it. Also the prep before. Why am I playing an Eb song if I’m not already fluent in that key (or keys).

My problem is i take to theory like a fish to water, and my feel is ok, but my overall technique is terrible. Do you have any recommendations on how to learn general piano technique? Seems like all the greats and even jazz pianists i know personally are classically trained.

Slower is faster.

This is great, thank you! I share a free, bite by bite “learn to read music” course on my RU-vid channel in the hopes of making music literacy accessible to all.