Daily piano tip #8.

Make your own etudes that are suited to your needs.

If you have a problem either memorizing or playing a particular place in a piece of music, make variations on it. That is basically what we do all the time when we practice well. Isolate a specific problem, take it out of context and approach it from different angles. Imagine the piece as a fully finished construction, a toy car for example. You want to learn how it works so you can reproduce it, so you take it apart; if there is a particular cog, gear or wheel that you don´t understand, you pick it up and look at it. You turn it around in your hand, see how it fits with the rest of the toy car. Then you take all the dismantled pieces and put them back together again.

Something easy that you can do, is take a small motif and play it in all keys. Or you can take it and play it on each step of the diatonic scale in which you are in. We do it constantly when we play something with dotted rhythms, or slowly and more articulated, or legato instead of staccato; this is just taking it a step farther. You can play it simultaneously in both hands, not getting too specific with the fingering; you can play it with both hands in mirror image- the result will be dissonant, but it does give you an idea of the movements and fingerings you are using. Play different versions of the passage you are having problems with, improvise a small piece using it as a base, re-harmonize it.

In the end, it's not the fingers that do the playing, it's your head. All this helps your head work, and keeps it alert and focused while you practice.