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Not knowing what skill level you are, it is difficult to suggest any particular books, etc. BUT technical ability is what everyone needs to work on, so as painful as it may seem, you need to work scales (not necessarily from memory), arpeggios chords; so if you don't own a good scale book, go to a music store and you'll find one on your level. AND you should add to that some etude books; there again look and see what you can handle AND if you don't own a book of song material that you like, try Broadway of sacred, anything will do for that area.

AnswerThere is another school of thought on this question, and it is not just my passing thought. It is held by many piano educators. They hold that the best way to improve skills is within the context of the music you actually want to play. In other words, concentrate on making music, and do that by playing and practicing the music you want to play. Choose the music well, and practice technical difficulties as they present themselves in that music.

I'm not sure which approach I favor. I studied classical piano as a kid, and definitely the first answer was more like the approach I took. But, especially if you are not heading for a concert or recording career, I think I'd suggest that this music-based approach is better. Just play and practice the music you like.

As a follow-up, and regardless of the kind of music you play, You can improve almost anything you play by doing the following. Make the music 'more difficult to play' during your practice than it actually is. This is what I mean. Isolate a part of the music you want to improve. Say that it is a passage written all or mostly in eighth notes. Change the rhythmic pattern so that it is like dotted eighths/sixteenths. Practice it this way. Then change, if you can, so that the passage is played as sixteenths/eighths. This may be very tricky. Play it as slow as you have to in order to master it like this. Find other ways to change the passage. If your volume over a given line is uneven, then practice it unevenly. Yes, that is what I said. Practice it, for example, with the stresses in a given pattern: loud-soft-loud-soft-loud-soft. Then practice the same passage with the stresses switched: soft-loud-soft-loud. For a real challenge, mix the rhythm patterns and the volume patterns. Master it every way that you can dream up to change it. When you go back to playing it as written, not only will the passage be smoother, but it will feel, and it will be, easier. There are several other practice 'tricks' that you can use; good teachers can share some of them with you.

One important thing is that for every change you make to the music during practice, mix it up so that you are spreading the affect of the change over all the fingers as much as possible. This way you are spreading the work out to all the fingers, and this is how you repair habitual errors.

Even more important than that is to play music that you like, and to have a great time playing. I know how much pleasure piano playing can give over the course of a lifetime. Stay with it.

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13y ago

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