So often transfer students will come to me and play a piece they’ve been working on. When they make a mistake, they’ll stop and start the piece all over again instead of correcting the mistake on the spot and moving on.
If they do this at home in practice, they’ll have played the beginning part many times more than the ending – or they may have never gotten to the ending at all!
The infographic above shows a way to get around this problem. It’s also great for memorizing pieces during recital preparation.
Similar to this are some pieces in the early pages of beginning method books. Lines 1, 2 and 4 will be identical with only line 3 being changed.
If a student plays this over and over all the way through, he’s learned line 1 three times better than line 3. I always suggest practicing line 3 by itself several times to help counter this problem.