When I was 14, my parents thought it would be a good idea for me to study piano. I had already been playing guitar since I was 8, and my initial reaction to this was “but I’m a guitar player, what do I need to learn the piano for?”

They had a teacher in mind: Donald Denegar, well known locally as a private piano and music theory teacher who set very high standards for his students, and had the results to back it up. Many of his students would go on to become professional musicians and composers, and even those who didn’t would often achieve a command of their instrument and appreciation of music that they would carry with them for the rest of their lives.

Of course, I wanted none of that. I wanted to rock–to be free. I had a deep-seated suspicion of regimented discipline, and certainly didn’t want anyone else telling me what to do.

But, for some reason, I relented to what would end up being my parents’ better judgment and began taking piano lessons from Don. These lessons ended up lasting only about ten months and yet Don would end up being the best teacher I ever had in any subject, and I still use most of his teaching techniques with my students (and myself) to this day. I did go on to take a teacher’s training course from him, as well as private music theory and orchestration lessons.

Learning New Music:

Here are the three-step practice instructions I end up writing out for all my new students, and continue to write out for each new piece they do until I’m convinced they are actually implementing them (and believe me, I can always tell when they don’t). I got these from Don and I’m convinced it is the most efficient general strategy for learning a new piece of music there is. So here we go:

1) Tap your foot, clap and say rhythms.

What this means is when you are studying a new piece of music, and, let’s say, the time signature is in 4/4, then your foot taps quarter notes, you clap the rhythm of the notes in the section you’re learning and you say those rhythms out loud:

For a 6/8 time signature you might tap your foot on 1 and 4, and for odd time signatures where the 8th note gets the beat, you’re best off tapping your foot and counting to groups of twos and threes:

(Notice that in the third measure of this example the accents changed, and so did the count- from 1 2 3, 1 2, 1 2 to 1 2, 1 2, 1 2 3)

The strategy to this step should be obvious- if you do not clearly understand the rhythms you’re playing, if you can’t clap them and count them out loud as your foot keeps time, then you can’t fully know or accurately perform the piece in question. This step also helps to develop rhythmic independence between your foot and other limbs, a very important skill for any musician. Mastering this practice step more or less insures that practice steps two and three will go more smoothly, with less risk for error, and the more errors you make in the learning process, the more un-learning you’ll have to do later.

2) Practice in sections, at first without a metronome, and then with a metronome slowly.

You might need to use this step as you are implementing practice step one, especially if the rhythms are complicated or the piece is more than 16 bars or so.

You’ve already clapped the rhythms- now forget about that for just a bit, because when you’re first learning a series of notes, it is unlikely you’ll be able to play them at any steady tempo until you have each section more comfortably under your fingers. This is a good time to make sure your picking is correct (if you play guitar) as well as your fingering and the most logical or desirable position (also for guitar) for each passage to be played. Sometimes a two measure section at a time is plenty, sometimes four is ok, or you may want to mark a piece into sections according to phrase:

The idea behind practicing in sections is this- the brain can absorb an infinite amount of information, but only a little at a time. A common mistake is to attempt to play through a new piece from beginning to end. This invites the same mistakes to be made over and over, especially if you’re playing at an unrealistically fast tempo. When you break a piece into manageable sections and practice at slower tempi, mistakes can be caught early and corrected, and that section can be repeated until you’ve played it correctly three or four times (in a row is best). Then you can move on to the next section. Remember to never rehearse a piece or section faster than you can play it accurately.

3) Combine sections, increasing tempo slowly.

After you’ve gone through a few sections, begin to string them together to start hearing how it’s really going to sound. Start below tempo, eventually from beginning to end, and gradually increase the tempo as you are able. When you are finally at the desired tempo for the piece, keep practicing until it becomes comfortable. At this point you may even want to rehearse a little above tempo, in order to gain some “reserve” technique. It’s not uncommon to lose a percentage of chops during a performance because of nerves or other factors, and this can help to minimize mistakes in a live situation. After that, play it a bunch every day until it becomes a part of your waking consciousness. If any particular section is giving you problems or doesn’t sound or feel quite right, go back to isolating that section- slow it down to see if you’ve made some note, picking or rhythmic errors, correct them and slowly bring it back up to speed. Some classical performers, such a guitarist Julian Bream, may practice a piece for years before they feel comfortable presenting it before the public. A lot of us don’t have that luxury, but the idea is the same- a methodical approach will yield the most solid results.

Ear Player?

If you don’t read music, you can use a similar approach to the steps above, but obviously you will need to learn, by ear, tiny sections of a piece by listening to it over and over. For this I recommend a piece of software called The Amazing Slow Downer . This application allows you to take a piece of music and set loop points to rehearse to. You can change the tempo of a piece without changing pitch. You can also change pitch without affecting tempo, or you can combine any variety of pitch and tempo modifications simultaneously.

What about tabs?

You can use the strategies above with guitar tabs, although I would recommend tab with rhythms:

Otherwise, you have no idea how to count the piece without the aid of a recording (don’t trust your memory!)

Don is a great guy, and was the world’s best influence for a kid like me who desperately needed a practical methodology to improve as a musician and a composer. It has been largely through his influence, his phenomenal grasp of learning and practicing techniques that I’ve been able to eek out a career teaching, writing and performing music.

Composer, guitarist and arranger Steve Kirk's music has been featured in film, video games and TV. This includes music for the Disney game version of "The Princess And The Frog", Microsoft Games "Voodoo Vince" , the FarmVille Theme for Zynga Games, and to be released in Spring 2011, Cantina music composed for the Star Wars MMOL game The Other Republic. Steve teaches guitar, music theory and composition privately in Oakland, California, as well as Blue Bear School Of Music and Community Music Center- both located in San Francisco, California. He is also the guitarist for Club Foot Orchestra and Orchestra Nostalgico.