The Most Common Mistake Piano Beginners Make 

I will practice the same difficult bar or two over and over if I have to. That jump from the B-octave in Chopin's E minor Prelude: I spent an hour a day just repeating the two measures from the B-octave to the A-minor chord, just over and over and over. Comforting to know that's actually considered a practice technique - I thought I just had OCD, lol.

Another thing that I've noticed when practicing, is that sometimes I would practice bars 5-8 and bars 9-12. But then when it came time to actually play the piece, I would always mess up on the transition between 8 and 9. So make sure instead of practicing in discrete sections, you overlap your practice chunks.

"Think like the producer not like the consumer" is probably the best advice I've ever heard. Well said Jazer Lee!

I am 65 and retiring at the end of next week. One of my goals is to relearn and build on the piano skills I had in my youth. I took lessons for about 8 years, but never did anything serious after high school. I have been doing self-teaching for a few months to get ready for my retirement piano adventure. I will be using your techniques immediately in my practice time. I have been using a bit of the "no pedal" for awhile, but I never thought of the "no rhythm" method. I am working on Mozart's "rondo alla turca" and have a couple of rough spots that I tend too gloss over, but this should help me correct some bad habits. Thank you for the video and excellent advice.

You asked for it. So here it is - your handy dandy Timestamps 🤓 🕘 Timestamps 0:00 Intro 1:40 Cute Foreword 3:00 Analogy on How & Why 5:04 Practice Technique 1 6:55 Practice Technique 2 7:50 Practice Technique 3 8:15 Milo Ends the Lesson

Thanks, Jazer. I've been playing piano for almost 60 years and found this out through the school of hard knocks. I have a friend who won 1st place in the Tchaikovsky piano competition years ago. He was also a piano professor at a local university. He sometimes spent a 1/2 hour on one measure of a difficult piece & was a stickler for perfection. I can spend months studying just one Dotzauer cello etude and still not get it the way I want it. How much "perfection" is perfect?

Yes, but at some point if you spend most of your practice time taking apart and drilling the difficult parts then under pressure you may find you play only those difficult parts well (and unexpectedly make mistakes in easier sections where you didn't spend much rehearsal time.) Whole piece does need to be drilled regularly enough to get it in muscle memory unless maybe you have uncommon calm, non-anxious performance temperament.

When I see your videos I 1) watch it and 2) play something. It's a good reminder to go play. Thanks Jazer.

Thanks! I'm definitely guilty of playing the entire piece. I stumbled on a technique that I'm using now. I was having trouble playing a certain key combination from The Entertainer so I closed my eyes and played it several times--just feeling how it felt under my fingers. That helped me quite a bit.

This guy such a great teacher. He's so insightful and always puts himself in the place of the student. He also covers a wide range of nuances pertaining to learning the instrument, which I find extremely helpful for students to move forward. He's truly one of the best.

Ha! That “no rhythm practice” is me!! Not sure I’ll move past this. Thanks for great video. Great advice!

Jazer, I learned about the 'three p's' from a sewing channel I follow. I've added a couple of p's of my own which I now apply to anything I want to achieve. My five p's are Planning, Preparation, Patience, Practise and Persistence. Thanks for the tips. As an absolute beginner I'm benefiting from your wisdom.

I became a advanced piano player under a year, and i think it's amazing how i even reached advanced level by self-teaching, Jazer is one of the people whom i watch to correct my wrong techniques and it helped alot, i also overcame the hand/finger independence. Thanks to you and other people on the internet i haven't regretted playing piano up until now.

Excellent video and not just for pianists. As an ex-pro dancer, we were taught that practice makes permanent as well as it takes doing the same thing on average 72 to become muscle memory. Meaning that if you practice the entire routine over and over, you aren't fixing your mistakes, you are making your mistakes muscle memory and it's a lot harder to unlearn something to perform it correctly than it is to learn it correctly from the start

Milo is adorable.

I have noticed that on particularly difficult clips, which I may have a difficult time getting it perfect, I stop and take a break for a short time. Practicing it wrongly, I have found, is really counterproductive. Many times, when I come back from a short rest, the passage comes much easier. Another great video. Thanks.

Yes, the no rhythm practise is what happened whenever I started to play a new piece of song which I totally have not play before. It's so difficult to get the rhythm right when the notes are not even play correctly. Love 😍 watching your videos as I always find something 🆕 to learn and know. You are so amazing! Thank you for the videos! 🥰🤗🙆🏻‍♀️

Thanks Jazer! I am 73 and just took up studying piano again. I studied a short time in my twenties but then didn't become interested again until recently after hearing some piano concertos and following some pianists who inspire me. It has become an obsession with me, not sure how it all happened but glad it did, and your lessens are a tremendous help! I have been studying for just one month and I feel happy with the progress I have made so far. I look forward to getting more tips from you as I become a more accomplished pianist! (By the way, what breed of puppy do you have? I think I want one!!)

The first one speaks out a lot to the beginners. I played piano for atleast a year now. But what I do is: I play the peice and stop when I mess up. Then, I focus on the part I messed up on. And I repeat it till it’s on point. Then, I play the peice and the part I mess up at and stop for the day. It fixes my schedule though.

Thank you so much for this reminder, it’s what my piano teacher told me before and sometimes I also tend to forget and keep practicing start to finish too. That took me much longer to learn unless if I try to piecemeal it and break it all down until I get the hard sections first. ☺️

Yesterday I was practicing the 2 hands part of your Despacito tutorial the "no-rythm" way and couldn't stop thinking it was not the good way. Today I'm happy to discover it's ok. 👍 Thank you Jazer for your tutorials. You're one of the youtubers thanks to whom I've played the piano for 2 weeks, making me happy and my life more colourful. 🌈 See u Milo 👋

Even as a non-beginner I always practiced by playing the piece through a few times. I only started practicing by isolating and repeating sections/measures last year and it has made a HUGE difference. I learn pieces so much faster now, and I’m a lot more confident in my playing. Also, since I’m not playing the pieces through over and over, I don’t get sick of playing them very quickly at all (when I have to practice months for exams/auditions/recitals). I honestly don’t know how I got as far as I did practicing that badly, and I often wonder now how much further I could have gotten if I had practiced well from the beginning. Anyway, thanks for the great advice! You are partially responsible for getting me to practice better :)

Thank you jazer you are literally showing my own mistakes.

Omg your explanation is so clear! Thank you so much!

First off, Milo is absolutely adorable! 🥰 I repeat sections, I've played them slowly. I started learning how to play without a sustain peddle. I got a sustain peddle for Christmas. I love it! It's the same style that you'd see on an acoustic piano. I didn't find it difficult to learn how to use it timing wise. It felt natural. I had to take time to process the difference in sound though. What I did was play a short bit with the peddle and the same section without it repetitively until I could clearly distinguish the difference. I learn one hand at a time and later I pull it all together. In the last month roughly, my timing and rhythm is off and I've been struggling. It's been frustrating lately. I've most likely lost some more of my hearing. I've noticed differences in sound and subtle changes in my balance so I'll be getting retested. (Hearing loss can effect your balance) I'll have to readjust. Once I get new hearing aids, I'll have to readjust again. The technology in the ones I'll be getting is different. It's new. In figure skating, it the same. When I work on a new skating routine, It's done in sections. Similar method. If I run into difficulties with certain sections of my program, I work on that section repetively. Thank you for your videos, Jazzer. You've really helped me. Being able to see pieces and techniques broken down helps me learn because I rely on visual so much. I really appreciate it.

I’m learning minuet in G major-bach-petzold..and I know the right hand as as i learn sections of the left hand I can’t remember the right hand unless i start from the beginning or at a major place. I’m glad though that the advise not to spend time learning one piece. I do try to learn sections separately so this is a relief. Also i took out a few notes which i will add back later

Jazer, your dog training was a good new element, making a visual and emotional connection to the idea of repetition. Thank you very much. I know you covered these before but this presentation was particularly helpful for me.

Addressing your weak links in the piece is key to reach performance-ready mastery. There's always a few parts in a piece that need some isolated refining (long jumps, sudden position shifts, etc)

Thank you so much Jazer for you precious advice! I was losing patience in my piano practice and felt no progress anymore, which discouraged me. Now that I've discoverd your great advice and techniques, it motivates me! I like that you emphasize that piano is a process of hard work, and as pianists, we should focus on the step by step approach and cannot simply expect the beautiful result to come fast. We have to think like a producer and not simply like a spectator. Thank you!

Playing from the start to the end helps me improve my sight reading. Before I always learnt the piece by memory and that's why never actually read notes. Now I do both and I think this is very good.

One of the most precious piece of advice I've ever received as a learner, thanks Jazer

I think you have a verry goed point here, I also have the tendency to play the hole piece over and over again and it is not good to do so, and my teather taught me to start the study of a piece with playing the whole piece as good as you can, then you see wat is okee and what you need to study on the end of the practice you play the whole piece also to notice what you have to study on the next day

Jazer, I’m a professional chef and that metaphor was too perfect - and might have been the best metaphor for me to understand.

I love how I've been playing piano for 8 years and I'm watching this like "ah. tips. good to know."

This actually reminds me of practicing fighting games. Even though the ways of practicing can be far different some of the mindset is very similar.

It’s funny when you think you have a part nailed on the piano and then you try to play along with the song and it all falls apart and you can’t play in rhythm. That’s how you know you aren’t there yet 😭 🤷🏻‍♂️. Thanks Jazer! 🎹

I kept doing this with the chopin Prelude in B Flat minor and it really helped thanks

My doggo is named Milo too XD Love the videos as always Jazer! You have helped me improve a lot. Been watching your videos for as long as I've played the piano. You are an amazing teacher!

You know watching this hits me different. I've been learning for 2 months now and was happy with my progress up until this week. When I tried to perform songs, at random request that I had played before, I couldn't remember them right,i jst had a hard time and for the life of me I couldn't understand why. Why couldn't I properly play a simple song that I had played the week before? Here's the answer : I have a keyboard tutor and he plays amazingly. The techniques ur talking abt now Sir, I used to use them before. But then my tutor, whenever I would practice a song with him, he would force me to play the whole song every time and keep with the rhythm. And now it has interfered with my learning process and how I was best able to grasp songs. This week has been so frustrating indeed. Thank you for making me realise that I wasn't crazy or stupid for learning with these techniques before, I will go back to them.

I just started learning piano but I second every part of this video as a french horn player! Because I am so used to practicing like that from my years of french horn, I kinda didn't realize that other people who were new to music did not do this until a friend of mine asked me to help her with a piece for class and when I told her to go through the piece measure by measure she looked so puzzled! Great video!

Excellent. I’ve been practicing like this … it’s extremely productive …

Thanks for the video, Jazer. The main reason I played from start to finish is because I enjoy the music so much that I don't want to stop, even with a lot lot of mistake. It does take long long time to learn a piece. Also pedaling can mask out the mistake, which is not good for learning. I will use your advice. Hope to speed up my learning process and be more precise. Thanks for the tip. Glad to find this channel, and I will follow this.

These practicing techniques go for not only piano, but really for anything in general repetition is a big thing when learning anything new! I love this video.

As a lifelong dancer/choreographer, your comment about HOW a dancer practices perfecting a movement by repetition really resonated with me. Now, in my late years and wanting to become a bettter piano player than in my past....applying the same M.O. to the paino really resonated with me. Of course! Thank you so much1 Love your video. Bar by bar....phrase by phrase.

Thank you Jazer, I always struggle to get the notes and rhythm correctly and i tend to force myself to get those two correct earlier in the practice which is very hard. Tip number 1 actually helps. And i just got the Soundbrenner metronome oer your recommendation and it is a game changer. No more annoying clicking sound and now i actually enjoy practice with it to make sure i am in beat. Much love 😝😝😝

Thank you Jazer for another excellent video! I would be very interested in a video about avoiding tension when playing the piano. I can understand why and what we don't want, but very few teachers actually have provided me with good examples on how to play in a relaxed manner and avoid tension. How can one identify tension? How can one practice to avoid tension? Thank you Jazer!

I play piano as a hobby and learned this technique through experience. When I was starting out, I used to push through learning pieces in full and it took an awful lot of time… but when I broke it out into segments, it took maybe a day or two. Once I’d perfected a couple of bars, I’d learn another couple. After that, I’d play both segments together until it sounds good to me and repeat 💚 and it feels so amazing at the end when you can finally play the full piece!

I clicked on this video despite not being exactly a 'beginner'. I think this advice is immensely helpful to intermediate players as well.

I just want to say thank you for these advices and tips. As a self-taught begginer your practice methods helped me a lot! I'm recently working on Chopin's Waltz in A minor I can say that you need to do some hard work at first but the pay off is huge! Thank you so much

You had similar video months ago. 5 repetitions does not work for me. 7 sometimes does but on some parts I have to make it 7x4 and i strike the part I am practicing 4x . I envy those people who learn things with short repetitions. You are good don't get me wrong. In fact your advise helps me to this day. That routine i said above it's just an expanded version of yours.

Applied all of this advice and has greatly improved my rate of learning, retention and accuracy. Dedicated practice in 25 minutes w 5 minute breaks has greatly improved learning as well. Work first enjoyment later!!!!

What would be an ideal weekly routine for students who must put together a complete repertoire of pieces, classical, baroque, romantic and contemporary, plus a study. including playing accompaniments for your classmates. What would be the best way to organize since you must also study harmony and theory?

Hi Jazer! Quick heads-up, when watching the video with captions on, the captions overlap some of your on-screen annotations. The first minute of this video has a couple of examples. Might be worth sliding your on-screen annotations up so that they can both display comfortably. Thanks for the great content!

Thank you so much. This is very helpful for me who have just learned a keyboard by myself (by looking at youtube) for this couple of days.

I think that your tutorials are some of the best in RU-vid.

Great lesson & Milo is gorgeous 😊

Hi Jazer, love your videos and explanations! I was wondering if you could some day make a guide on how to practice big jumps with both hands simultaneously?

Wow these are all my mistakes from mindset to the practice method 😂, thanks Mr I love you ❤️

The consumer/producer analogy was great! I need to find a friend like this guy. Playing piano would be much more fun if I had a friend like this.

Initially, I will try a piece from start to end to get an idea of what is required of me to do then note down the difficult pieces and get those difficult pieces right, then when I am satisfied with the result, I can put it together and perfect it with a metronome.

Sometimes I just sit and play different songs I know as warm up. Whether they are good or bad, it is a means for me to keep my fingers limber and my muscles strong as well as a way to release any stress from the day and fade into the music. But, if I am learning a piece to play for church or whatever, I will first play the piece through then work on the areas that I have difficulty with and just concentrate on that area. Learn one area then play through to make sure I can move from the "easier" area to the difficult area, then move to the other areas that I need to practice. I always play the piece through the first time I sit down to practice it every time. It just works for me. I've been playing piano for 53 years and this is how I have been doing it for the entire time.

Thank you for reconfirming what I have been doing during my practice. I am an adult learner and one year into my lesson. My teacher gave me the same advice and this way of practice helps me tremendously in such a short time. Thank you so much for sharing to the rest of the piano learners.🙏🙏🙏💜💜💜

when you played für elise, when you cut out it immediately gave me a yousician ad with the song- i think they know

Super helpful! Thank you for these videos :) they keep me going in my practice

Your lessons are very informative!👌

I love your approach, your reasoning, and your analogies. Your channel helps me a lot with my late-in-life piano learning journey. I take lessons, but these videos really help reinforce things for me. Thank you!

I need to keep hearing to not practice start to finish as I tend to do that. I like the idea of being the chef first and not the customer. All good tips.

Excellent tips. Better to master small passages before completing the entire the entire piece and on another note dogs love music. Mine lie close to the pedals. Much better than loud fireworks.

I'll come back to this video when I finally got a chance to learn and play the piano. I've been telling my dad to get me a teacher to teach me for the past few days. Ever since I've heard Chopin's Ballade No. 1 in G minor Op.23, I just felt so moved by that piece. One day I'll be able to play my favorite, the journey will be rough, but hey, that's part of the process and I'll make sure I'll have fun learning.

Thanks for the video - repetition is critical. Also Milo is adorable!

that's cool I liked that idear of producer and consumer ...

It turns out that I'm practicing correctly!! Yay! I'm learning Fur Elise right now. I've managed to get the first two parts done and am working on the 3rd part (I may not be saying this right, but oh well). I'm starting the bit where it changes to the slightly faster part. What you called "No rhythm practice" I call 'getting the notes under my fingers'. Rhythm is out the window until I can play the notes properly. Thanks for the lesson! I really appreciate the work you're doing!

Yes! It works! Thank You! 😅

Yeah, that makes allot of sense. I apply this method in many other things I'm learning, e.g. knitting, caligraphy & writing; never occurred to me to apply to playing the piano. You are so correct, from my experience, practicing a piece start to finish makes me avoid the instrument for days because it's just so difficult to learn the piece. For example, the music director at a church I had worked at gave me sheet music for Ashokan Farwell (for really really beginners) that I've been trying to learn; over the past 8 yrs.! Every time I attempt it I get so disappointed because I struggle with learning new stuff to play. But now I'm going to approach it your way. I'm actually looking forward to dragging that nemesis out & conquering it one or two measures at a time. Thanks.

I repeat between 1:40 and 2:18 over and over. Too much cuteness 😍. But one day I will watch the whole video 😁. It's not gonna be easy 😮. How you can get anything done is beyond me 🤔.

The piece at the end of the video is amazing

Well as for me I learn a song like a day or 2 (sometimes it goes for a week depending on how hard the song is) with my guitar just this pattern Listen to the song and familiarize it Then take the chords learn by parts Afterwards try to play it full song if mastered adding additional melody and some improvements (Coz I like to play around chords its fun)

Please make a video on synthesia piano tutorial vs piano sheets :) I really need one

Thank you for this advice, it has really helped me.

In music school it wasn't even an option. I had to practice this way learning it line by line, hand by hand, correct finger placement (it all gets graded during exams) and then when you can smoothly marry it all together then you start to use pedal, the variable tempos and ryhtms, variable loudness levels and accentuation. It was very methodical and mechanical, and they won't let you do it any other way or your grades will reflect the sloppiness and you won't learn the pieces by exam time (oh and we had to learn it off by heart, unless exceptions apply like health/cognitive conditions/disabilities etc)

Thanks’ I really appreciate and enjoy your teaching’ Visual, audio, and muscle memory repetition absolutely the keystone For piano practice and learning’

I agree! I have been doing piano for 4 years so I’m intermediate I guess?

Thank you I needed this today!🤩

The Puppy !!! So cute!!

I love your channel and tips! And Milo 💕

I've been wanting to ask this for a while but constantly keep on forgetting to, but is it a wrong to practice 3 or 4 pieces at once? Also you just made the right video for me, when i practice a piece i always find myself bored when i practice the same thing again and again so i think these tips will help me alot. Thank you!

Thanks for the tips....huge help! I was stuck in the "dark zone" part of Fur Elise and gave up long ago. Will practice the music sheet again. 😊 Hi Milo! 😊

Thanks teacher Lee, Your lesson touched my nerves ( all my bad habits) and my heart ( your teaching approach). Now I am a customer not a chef as you said... Indeed, I apricate your professional expertise.

I already do what you described as the "no rhythm" method, but when you brought it up I thought you meant to just play each note at the same speed. So if it's two sixteenths and an eighth, you could just play those like three eighths or three quarters instead. Same rate throughout the whole piece (or section only). I feel like that could be a really useful technique for me because I have more trouble with finding the notes than the rhythm I think (at least for the piece I'm trying to learn). Which makes sense because I was a drummer in high school. Drummers don't really need to learn to read notes fast, but they sure need to know to read rhythms!

I have never before thought of 'no rhythm practice' as a positive thing, but it does make sense. Good move bringing the cute assistant in, by the way.

Jazer 😭😭 What would I do without you?

Fantastic information. Many many thanks

The fact that I got a simply piano ad before this

Good advice! Thanks!

Can you do a video for ear training 🙏

As a new piano player, your videos are helping alot! I am learning of YT, skoove, and other online courses. At the moment I am practicing scales, focused on one hand at the time. Now I am playing with both hands with descent control and trying to play with eyes closes to get a better feel. After scales I am usally playing a piece from a adult beginners book. Focusing on a section at time. But there is so much to learn and not sure if there is something that is better to focus on then other. Should I focus on learning chords before I find a piece that I like, or figure out those chords as I go? Trying to get 30min to 1.5 hours a day. Learning piano as an adult is exhausting at times 😄

Thank you Jazer for your video which will be a great help to me. I am currently trying to play Cannon in D which I am doing ok with, well apart from the timing in parts. It’s not the easiest version I have seen but there seems to be many variations out there too. I am interested to know if it’s good or bad to start learning a more difficult version of a piece that you have learnt.

you are so on point!! 💯💯💯

"Think like the producer not like the consumer" best advice ever, Thank You.

As someone who juggles and plays piano: you severely underestimate the difficulty of juggling more than 3 balls ;)