Ok, so I wanna get back into piano coz' "piano roll" composition is getting frustrating. My first goal would be to be able to transcribe the chords and melodies directly from my brain to the piano, and then I would also love to be able to improv based on simple feelings and ideas. I wanna create and follow a daily piano practice routine for myself that would help me achieve these goals.

I'm not expecting any one to give me the perfect solution or anything, but I'd be glad to hear about everyone's tips and experiences about practicing in general, or even share your own practice routines and what works for you

I've been meaning to ask u guys for help on this since 2021, but uhhhhh things and brain got in the way. RN tho, I'm medicated and have quite some free time on my hands for an undetermined period of time, so no excuses

Now if you have some more time to read and are not gone yet, here's more context about me and what I *already* tried...
I first took weekly "classical" piano +(sheet reading) lessons in a music school when I was 8, and back then the "school like" approach was already bugging me off. Spend ~a month trying to learn how to play a song. Do some sheet reading exercises and practice the song at home. Ok done. Rince and repeat. I barely lasted a year there, but apparently thats how most music schools work, especially with kids.
After that I had a private teacher for 3 years, he was a very nice and caring old dude. He kinda had the same approach, but by simply being more nice and asking me what type of songs I would prefer to play, I managed to be a bit more into it ( still very much struggling to practice even once a week ) and not quit after a year. Unfortunately, he died when I was 12, and since I was still struggling in terms of involvment, I told my parents I didn't want to continue.
Fast forward to 19yo me: I live on my own for the first time, started composing on my free time a year ago, and I want to play piano again. I start taking lessons with a teacher from music school again. Annnnnd it goes pretty much the same way again. Read the music sheet, learn how to play the song, etc etc... So I stopped again, after just a year. Tried to convince myself that I'd manage to teach myself and practice frequently enough to see some results.
Now I'm 23 annnnd I didn't really manage to do that hahahHHHH
I took some online composition lessons two years ago and it was great, made me create quite a few tracks that I'm proud of ( dat one for example ), but it didn't help me with this, specifically.

I fucking love music and I love creating more of it, but as my recent inactivity here has proven, I feel stuck and in need of change, of fresh air. If anyone wants to help by answering, I'll sincerely appreciate it.

Disclamer: I've been practicing piano for about 4 years, and only have reached an intermediate level.

I am a firm believer that experience trumps everything else. If you easily get bored, your priority should be to make practice fun so you end up practicing more.

That being said, I think the most useful thing for both improv and transcription is knowing your scales and chords. So I'd make an habit of practicing those a few minutes every day even if it's a little boring.

Focusing on songs is great for vocabulary, musicality and having experience with different styles, but if your end goal is improv, you should get into it right away! So make that part of your practice.

You also composing and transcribing on the side is going to take care of the vocabulary and style part anyway. So if you don't like learning songs, don't fret too much.

Not sure I'd recommend it for a beginner but I am going through 'Exploring Jazz Piano' by Tim Richards which has a ton of tips on improv, though it really focuses on Jazz (and Jazz songs), which might not be for everyone.

alright, so i've played piano for awhile. started when i was 6, started devoting myself to jazz improv when i was 14, and while i haven't always been focused, i would say, at the least, i got no problems walking up to a piano and coming up with something out of nowhere.

i second what WobbleBlast is saying about scales and chords. starting out, the most essential to practice are, of course, natural major and minor (maybe harmonic minor and melodic minor down the line additionally), as well as major and minor pentatonic scales. "practicing" isn't just going up and down the scales. try practicing going up in thirds (for C major: C, E, D, F, E, G, etc.), fourths (C, F, D, G...), broken triads ( C, E, G, D, F, A, E, G, B...), broken 7ths, and so on.

after those, the modes of the natural major scale are good to know by heart, as are the whole tone scale, the diminished scale, the chromatic scale (duh-doy), and, if you have interest in jazz or bluesy styles, the major and minor blues scales and the altered scale (although i don't consciously use this one much myself). i wouldn't worry about other scales people might mention. you'll come across them if you ever need them.


for chords, practice your inversions, your arpeggios, take common chord progressions (the blues progressions and ii-V-I are good for jazz, but applicable elsewhere as well; I-V-iv-IV and IV-V-iii-vi are good places to start for popular styles) and, starting from different inversions, practice moving from chord to chord with the smallest amounts of movement possible (i.e. for root position C to G, you'd go C-E-G to B-D-G). there's more to voice leading (maybe you've learned about this in your composition classes), but this is more than enough for starters.

for your goals, i also highly recommend learning music by ear, starting with really simple songs, of course. it'll probably be difficult to develop starting out, but it'll do wonders for your ability to improvise without "thinking" too much, as well as transcribing ideas from your head to the keys.

learning to improvise other other songs will also help, even if your goal is to be able to improvise without any particular song in mind. i recommend the blues, maybe some simple AABA structured songs like Summertime to start out with. although anything you like that isn't too complicated harmonically and in terms of form will probably do.

i'll stop here cause i've already written far too much, and i hope i haven't overwhelmed you lol. but these are good foundations that i think any improviser, jazz or otherwise, should have (and honestly, it's good stuff for composition as well. the two aren't all that different, if they are at all). for other resources, i think the Youtube channel Open Studio

has a lot of valuable information.

actually, two final notes:

practicing scales/chords is usually pretty boring and repetitive, especially if you devote a good chunk of your practice session to them. after maybe 5 minutes of focused practicing, there's nothing wrong with putting on a dumb stream or long video essay while going through the motions. i like Jenny Nicholson, myself.

if you aren't in the mood for practicing, well, you still should, but even 15 minutes of a good practicing session is still far better than nothing.

hope all this helps!

I'm a clarinet and saxophone teacher and I think that composition is an excellent way to get back into piano. Do you ever sit down and just improvise? It's an extremely low-stakes way to explore patterns in music that you would not otherwise find. Done mindfully, improvisation can greatly improve your intuition for the piano and technical work. Not to mention it's very fun.

Once you improvise something you like, you might want to write it down. Try recording it and transcribing it! It will be very hard at first, but you will get better. This will train both your listening skills and your music theory since having a good understanding of how your music is constructed will make writing it down much faster.

Once you have built up a pure, intuitive understanding of music I hope you will find reading and learning new music much easier and more rewarding.

Telling ourselves to practice more never works! What is required is to place ourselves in an environment where practice is enjoyable; where seeing ourselves improve is the goal in and of itself. Part of it is making sure it is as easy as possible for you to start practicing. Is your piano ready to go, is it tuned, do you have your music. When you feel like you want to practice, is it possible for you to, within like 10 seconds sit down and start playing? I find that if I'm not practicing it's usually because I haven't made it easy enough for myself.

In the end I think more important than any specific piano practice routine is whether or not you are enjoying yourself in the moment. Once you're enjoying improving, you will want to practice, and you will improve because you're practicing.

Thanks for reading my TED talk

EDIT: Oh oh oh! Another thing that helps me a lot to remember when practicing (and I remind my students of this all the time) is that the thing you're practicing is the hardest and the worst it will ever be *right now*. It's all uphill from there. Play the passage slowly 10 times, and now it's twice as easy. Now you can play the passage 20 times in the same amount of time! So now play it 100 times and now it's twice as easy. Work builds on work, and suddenly things won't look so scary anymore. Make sure you remember this when the going gets rough. I find things improve so much faster than I think they will if I just give it enough slow and careful repetitions.

I play the trumpet and my practice routine consists of “when I feel like it” so maybe I’m not the best person to ask for advice from.

HOWEVER! I do frequently practice making chiptune and my best method is taking another module and trying to replicate it in a blank module. What I will say if you’re trying to learn, say, piano, is watch some sheet music tutorials and try to play them yourself. That way you can learn whatever song you like!

Thank you, you 4, for your time and your words... And huh sorry for the delay, I was actually busy *checks notes* playing a bit of piano for a small, queer, cabaret-type show _{( that story is way too long )}

So I actually ended up practicing almost daily for this for ~3 weeks, but most of that practicing was me trying to play a few accompaniments with as few mistakes as possible. Not the routine I want to keep, but a start!!

Now I'm gonna start doing some of the things y'all mentioned
Smarter scale/mode/chord practicing, learning songs by ear more often, trying improvising things then transcribing them... But I still have some questions for u guys

- Would you guys recommend reading music sheets more? The problem I have is that currently, I am way quicker at learning songs by ear than by reading, so I have very little incentive to do so, and so I don't improve my reading at all...

- Do you have tips for hand independence? I think this is one of my biggest strugles right now. I have little issues with playing just chords or melodies, but when it comes to doing two different things at the same time it all falls apart

- For improv... What do I do exactly? I like the idea of improvising on top of other songs like CouldntBeMe mentionned, but I feel like it isn't exactly the same thing. And without that, i just don't know what to do

Also, looking back at everything I said in my first post, I need to add that I think my music theory knowledge is actually greater than my piano playing skill, from all of the composing I did in the past years and all the music theory analysis video I watched

I'm very glad y'all replied and it definitely helped me with confidence for the past month. If anyone has anything else to add that isn't related to my new, more specific questions, please feel free to do so!!!

- sheet music is less important than you think, if you can play better by ear, thats just fine. though if you feel like its necessary, you should learn it.

- if you're struggling to play a passage with independent hands, first you should practice playing only one hand, then the other, seperetaly. once you've gotten the hang of it, try to play them together slowly. the important part is to take your time, your priority is playing the right notes in the right order, playing in rhythm is not necessary. after some time your hands will have gotten the hand of it and you can up the tempo a bit, play in rhythm. after a lot of doing this your hands will become a lot more independent overall!

- im not the most improv guy, but from what i've heard, practicing scales and chords works well. improvisation is all about you, just messing around for a bit on the piano will help you realise what works and what doesnt.

practicing jazz/pop/rock improv is easy, you just find or record some chord changes and then do your solo on top of that. but it sounds like you mean improv in a more general sense! my main advice for any type of improvisation is to think about structure and not only the moment-to-moment details

for practicing improv specifically i would recommend "self-regulated learning" -- set specific goals for each practice session or improvisation beforehand, then monitor yourself and reflect on how well you did. it's mostly a trick to keep your practice intentional and focused rather than just autopiloting through it

- while learning things by ear is optimal for an improviser, it's still nice to have a visual aid every once in awhile, especially when it comes to music or musical concepts that are particularly complex. but judging by what you said, you seem to already have a decent grasp on reading sheet music, so it's really up to you if you'd benefit from practicing this more.

- i second Mugo's advice for learning hand independence. after you gain some level of hand independence, for improv i suggest practicing simple rhythms in the left hand (like, say, four-on-the-floor or the Charleston or whatever) while improvising lines in the right.

- for learning how to improv freely, before completely making up changes, i suggest just starting out with really simple changes, like the blues or I-V-vi-IV stuff i recommended before for practicing voice leading (although it's worth going even simpler, like say, a I-IV or I-vi vamp), sticking with really simple rhythms in the left hand (if not just playing whole note chords every measure), and perhaps restricting yourself to simple scales, like pentatonics. focusing on just coming up with lines that fit the changes and full solos that feel consistent (the same way you would when composing, really, if more loosely). as you get more comfortable, you can add more and more complexity, and slowly give yourself more freedom with coming up with changes on the spot. just don't push yourself too quickly!

(hint: singing your melodic lines while soloing is a big help for phrasing. i highly suggest this)

- that said, learning to improvise over other songs will help you massively with more free improvisation, as it is with these songs that we derive our own musical language. think deeply about any quirks these songs have with their chord progressions, and on occasion, try lifting some of the chord changes from these songs into your own improvisations, and you'll find your own vocabulary increasing while improvising.

(hint: while practicing other songs, perhaps try not only following the chords, but also building off the previously established melody? i haven't thought too deeply about this myself, but i suspect this will do wonders for building skills for melodic consistency while improvising, which is something anyone improvising for composition would want.)

my biggest practice notes, particularly for classical repertoire, are:
- set reasonable goals
- play *slow*, use a metronome, and practice selected sections of a piece
- take breaks
- keep hydrated and keep those calories coming in, you're constantly burning calories while doing intense mental work and you need those to learn
- have an easier piece and a piece that's arguably above your skill level in progress at any given time
- find chances to perform (local churches will often be very happy to open up their doors at a modest price, and open mic nights are cool)

To do with having easier/harder pieces or songs at any given time, I can't agree more; back when I was taking instrumental lessons there was always a drive to tackle rep a mile or two ahead of your technique. Looking back, the progress was pretty amazing, but definitely at some cost... you constantly feel unbalanced, giving performances while feeling a bit too far out over the edge mentally, wondering if all the mistakes are going to be your fate forever. It definitely kind of makes or breaks your response to stress, but too much of that and I'm convinced you start to get these brittle players who can fire off virtuosic passages under just the right circumstances but couldn't accompany random people or entertain friends to save their life...

You find music areas that work for you, too. I use oldschool hymn books for reading practice all the time; it's not a religious thing, but you can find them in any thrift or bookstore for nothing. Just vast numbers of one-page reads with straight-up-and-down 4-part harmony in lots of keys. Once in a while you get one harmonized by Beethoven or something and it's not even funny how much better it is than everything else in the book, but the wacky early american harmony is pretty cool too. Learning to follow along with chords at sight, etc... And if you can transpose that stuff, you're cooking.

Letting myself fall completely into ragtime really helped too; not just memorizing the entertainer or whatever but really trying to learn the idiom. It could be anything for you, but I love that stuff so much I don't even have to fight my brain to take on passages I really won't be able to pull off for years. And like anything it's idiomatic, so gains compound a lot. Kind of like tracking...