Spotting bugs during your piano practice - how to find what to fix!

When playing a piece through to your teacher, it's often surprising to find unexpected bugs and tricky spots which didn't seem obvious at home during practice.

"You can't solve problems you don't know are there." Philip Johnston

Why hunt for bugs in piano practice rather than wait for your teacher?

There are three reasons why it matters:

1. It wastes lesson time pointing out problems that you can easily find yourself.

2. It delays being able to fix the problem spot.

3. Even worse, if you embed the error by playing it lots of times, it's much harder to fix.

Here's how to find the problem spots that you didn't know were there.

'Spotting' piano practice strategy

I love this practice strategy. It is designed to find what needs fixing - where are the problem spots? Start at the beginning of the piece, or section of music you want to check. As soon as you get to a place where something happens that you wouldn't want to hear in a performance, stop and mark the exact place with a pencil spot on the score. Then keep playing until the next problem, stop and add another pencil spot. Repeat until you reach the end of the piece, then loop round and do it again.

For 2-3 practice sessions, do this activity, marking every time something goes wrong or sounds bad. After 6 or more play-throughs, some places will be clear, some will have one spot and others will be covered in dots! Hey presto, you have found the places to focus your future practice time, or ask your teacher for help.