How to Increase Speed and Accuracy on the Piano

Having fast fingers and ripping through lightning fast runs on the piano is an important skill to have, but missing notes is not good. Playing note-perfect and making each note sound as it should, but playing it painfully slow is not good either. Here are a few things you can do to balance it out, outside the context of playing a piece to increase your speed and accuracy on the piano.

Instructions

1. Practice all 48 scales (12 major, 12 minor, 12 harmonic minor, 12 melodic minor) to a metronome. Start with what you consider to be a reasonable pace, going up 4 octaves, then down 4 octaves. Practice with both hands at the same time an octave apart, a third apart, and a sixth apart. As you successfully and cleanly play the scale to your selected metronome marking, bump the metronome up a couple of notches. Continue going up until you cannot play fast enough, then move the metronome back 1 notch. Practice in shorter, quicker bursts until you get it, eventually adding more to the length and finally getting the complete 4 octaves.

2. Lean more on one note in a run or a scale. For instance, play a 4-octave scale in C at 108 BPM to the quarter note with one note for each sixteenth note. Hold C down slightly longer, quickly go through D, E and F, holding G, and then quickly through A, B, C, hold D, quickly play E, F, G, hold A, then quickly through B, C, D. Change up which sixteenth note you hold longer and how many notes in between you do not hold longer.

3. Teach yourself to know where your intervals are without having to look and find them. Learn how far apart your fingers have to be to play sixths, octaves, sevenths, minor thirds, and more without looking.

4. To give yourself a sense of how far apart intervals are, play a C octave--low down on the piano. Go a chromatic step up, and come back to C. Go a whole step up (D octave), back to C, up to D sharp, back to C, up to E (add a half step until you are playing the C an octave above your starting point, always returning to C). Now go up another octave. Now start on that high C, and come backwards, always without looking.

5. Repeat, with your other hand.

Tips & Warnings

• The same principles of using a metronome and leaning to one note can and should (especially using a metronome) be used in the context of playing a piece of music.

• Don’t be frustrated if you can’t do it. It will come. Walk away for a while if you need to.