Piano Practice Trick: Highlight the Thumb Notes

Today I want to share a great piano practice trick that I like to use when learning a piece with a lot of fast notes.

First I must mention the importance of choosing a good fingering, and playing the section with the SAME FINGERING EACH TIME. As we learn a piece of music we should be using several different learning modes to really engage with the piece and learn it well (this is especially true when memorizing a piece of music). The easiest type of learning is through muscle memory – when you play a passage enough times in a row, your fingers just sort of automatically learn where to go next. This can be really helpful, but it’s important to remember to not ONLY rely on this type of learning. When you use the same fingering every time, it allows your fingers to learn the passage more quickly and more accurately.

I like to write in my fingerings, especially on tricky sections – it ensures I use the same fingers every time and helps me to engage and learn the section using some analytical thinking, or the “read and write” learning mode.

But I like to go one step further. On especially thorny passages I will take a colored pencil or highlighter and highlight every single note that will be played by my thumb. This adds a really helpful visual cue to my learning and helps me to nail those fingerings. If I can get my thumb landing on the correct notes each time, everything else seems to fall into place. The thumb is the pivot point on your hand as you play scales and arpeggios, and so landing your thumb at the right time makes a world of difference as you navigate a tricky passage.

Here is a section of Beethoven’s Waldstein sonata in which I have highlighted all of the thumb notes. Once I did this, this passage went SO much smoother!

I encourage you to try this practice technique with your piano students and with your own practicing. I also encourage you to find ways to use several different modes of learning and several different practice tricks on the same passages in your music. Using kinesthetic (muscle memory), aural, visual and analytical memory (not just muscle memory alone) will really help you engage with the music and learn your pieces faster.

Happy practicing!

Interested in more practice tricks? Check out my Practice Tricks Pack and my Memory Tricks Pack for tons of ideas and resources!