How to learn a new piano piece from score   by Georges Sokol

This article assumes that the pianist has an adequate technique and sight-reading ability. Once you have chosen a piano piece that you like, you need a method that allows you to learn the piece as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The process of learning a new piece is actually quite a tedious and mechanical one. Although some people enjoy the learning phase, it is more common for pianists to enjoy the final stage, which is when you can play the whole piece with both hands at a comfortable pace and with expression and emotion.

The usual method is to start learning the notes of each hand separately. If it is a long piece, you might begin by learning the first section of the piece that way. As a rough guide, one page is enough to start with. So you would start by learning the right hand only (usually notes on the treble clef) and then you would go on by learning the left hand notes (usually the bass clef).

Knowing each hand well may take a few minutes, or several days, depending on your time and ability. It is important not to rush but to focus on getting each part right. Pay particular attention to the fingering. The fingering is a term used to describe which finger you use to play each note. When first learning the notes, you want to figure out the best possible fingering that works for you. An 8-year old child with small hands may not want to use the exact same fingering as an adult with big hands. So fingering is unique to your hands and what is notated on the score is not always best for you. However as a general rule, the fingering provided on printed sheet music is usually good and you should follow it when you can.

As well as playing the correct notes with proper fingering, you must ensure that you apply the correct rhythm to those notes. So if a series of notes have short note values, you must play these notes faster relative to the other notes. That is the basis of rhythm. Accomplished musicians can work out the notes, rhythm and fingering at the same time when first reading a new piece of music. The more you learn new material, the better you will get at merging these three essential elements.

Once you can play each hand well using the same fingering each time (in other words without changing which fingers you play on a given note with repeated performances), you are half-way there. The last part is to play with both hands together. It is very important that you concentrate at this stage as any mistakes you make may stay with you, possibly forming bad habits which will take longer to rectify. In order to avoid making mistakes, you need to play very slowly, ensuring that each note is played correctly and in harmony with the other notes in the other hand. The tempo should be consistent too. Do not speed up the easy parts just because you can play those bits faster. Play so that your pace is regular and even, even if it means playing extremely slowly.

As playing with both hands requires more effort and concentration than learning each hand separately, you may well find yourself tired after playing a few lines of music. In that case, simply work in chunks. For example, you could learn a phrase of music with both hands before taking a break and repeating that phrase again. Repetition is boring, but it is fundamental to learning. Your fingers will remember the pattern of notes that you play on the keys when you keep repeating them. As mentioned earlier, make sure you play the correct notes, rhythm and fingering when you first start repeating phrases with both hands, for any mistakes at this stage might be unconsciously memorised by your fingers, especially if they are repeated.

After playing a chunk of music very slowly and correctly with both hands, you should learn the next chunk, and continue until you have learned the whole piece. Only once you can comfortably play a chunk at a slow tempo, should you repeat it slightly faster, and so on until the final desired tempo is reached. At some point, you will inevitably stumble across a passage that is technically difficult and you will have to work on this passage more than the others. If the passage is particularly challenging, you must find inventive ways to overcome it. You should be able to identify what the problem is and make up exercises based on the technical aspects of that passage.

You should practise until you can play the piece slightly faster than what you finally want it to be. In other words, you should always be able to play at a faster tempo than your final performance tempo. That way, when you perform the piece, it will feel like you have plenty of time; you will feel more at ease generally.

Finally, you should add expression to the music. The notated score will contain dynamics which are markings that tell you in what manner to play the music (e.g. loudness, articulation, tempo changes, attack, rates of change), and although they are a composer’s guide, it is ultimately up to you to make the piece your own. Adding emotion to the piece is personal and subjective.

Learning a piano piece requires a tremendous amount of patience and self-determination. Many people fail before completing the whole procedure and if you want to become good at it, you must persevere. It may take days, weeks, and even months for some to get to that level where you can perform convincingly.

If you are technically sound and relatively good at reading notes, following the instructions in this article should benefit you. Difficult works will obviously take more time to learn than easier ones. The more pieces you learn, the easier it will get and you will also improve your sight-reading. I am aware that there other systems for learning a piano piece, but from my experience, I have found that the method described in this article is the most effective for most.