1. Never miss a day's practice, if you can possibly help it. If it should happen that your time is limited, practice your regular daily technical exercises at least. 2. If you cannot manage to get through with
study of work set for you, inform your teacher of it before beginning lesson. A few measures practiced thoroughly are better than a whole exercise or piece studied superficially.
3. Never waste time strumming on piano. The more conscientiously you practice, sooner you will be able to play anything you like. Five or ten minutes well applied will do a great deal towards improving your technique. Never practice, however, without being properly seated and without concentrating your whole mind upon your work.
4. Never begin to practice before having ascertained and made clear to yourself all about key, time, rhythm, and phrasing of piece. Think over every measure and determine upon best way of playing it.
5. When taking up a new exercise, carefully guard against first mistake. Remember: "prevention is better than cure;" it is always easier to avoid a mistake than correct it. The fingers are only too apt to repeat mistakes once made, and thus to accustom themselves to bad habits.
6. Every technical difficulty must be overcome and mastered by a special exercise. Similarly, every passage or part in a movement must be practiced, or worked up, till it can be played with exactness and precision of clockwork. Every detail in a piece must be studied and mastered separately, until whole can be rendered in a truly artistic manner.
7. It is no use playing a piece over and over again from beginning to end, even though each hand plays its part separately; mind and memory must first of all have become familiar with every detail, and fingers must be trained, until they become accustomed to overcome each difficulty perfectly and with ease. Hence necessity of dividing up each exercise into small parts or sections which must then, if necessary, be practiced first with each hand separately and then with both hands. The more difficult parts, more frequently they must be practiced.
