A 30-minute piano metronome routine
0-8 minutes · scales and arpeggios
Begin at roughly 60 percent of your target. What matters here is not the number but whether every note is equal in volume. The moment the fourth and fifth fingers weaken, you have found today's ceiling.
Raise by five, checking evenness at every step. A pass with uneven tone is not a pass. Start below yesterday's ceiling tomorrow and you will usually go slightly past it.
8-15 minutes · technical studies
Hanon, Czerny and their relatives are the easiest material in the world to practise badly, because watching the number climb is more entertaining than listening. Turn on eighth-note subdivisions and confirm the placement of every note slowly first.
Watch wrist height and arm weight as well. When the tone is uneven, the cause is usually the arm rather than the fingers.
15-24 minutes · hands together
Pick one passage in your current piece that sounds muddy with both hands. Play each hand alone against the click first to find out which one is arriving late.
Then switch on eighth-note subdivisions and slow right down until the hands lock. The goal is to hear which grid position the right hand's sixteenths share with the left hand's eighths. Once the grid is clear, turn subdivisions off and play it again at the same tempo.
24-30 minutes · metre and phrasing
Set the piece's actual time signature and listen to the accent pattern. Whether a bar is 3/4 or 6/8 changes the phrasing completely; in 6/8, accent beats 1 and 4 only and listen to how the music wants to move.
Finish with the click on the downbeat alone for a page of the piece. Wherever it slips is tomorrow's assignment.
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