Personal Practice Reflection Report for ATS1045 Module

This report presents a personal reflection on the challenges encountered during piano practice, specifically focusing on the difficulty of staying motivated while developing technical skills. The student identifies a lack of confidence and the challenge of recreating various sounds and rhythms as key obstacles. To overcome these, the student explores techniques such as learning music they love, mastering specific techniques, setting milestones, and tracking progress, using Mozart's "A Little Night Music" as a practice piece. The report highlights the importance of mentor feedback and systematized learning. The student emphasizes the significance of expert reviews and structured lessons in addressing these challenges, ultimately aiming to improve their piano skills and performance. The reflection emphasizes the importance of loving music to stay motivated, and the use of mentor guidance and structured learning to overcome challenges and improve efficiency. The report also details on how the student focused on harmonizing the tones.

PERSONAL PRACTICE REFLECTION
Name of the Student
Name of University
Author Note

I reflect upon the things that I have been able to learn throughout my piano practice. My
main focus is towards analyzing one of the major challenges that I faced during my practice. One
of the crucial anticipated challenges in my learning process is staying motivated to practice the
technique skills. The piano technique refers to the ability to match the right sound with the right
time. In order to nurture this skill a great amount of patience, hard work and dedication is
required. To stay motivated towards slowly developing the perception of sound and rhythm
constantly is a tough task and requires patient nurturing of personal skills.
The challenge is in regards to motivate myself to learn a set of things that would help me
in my piano practice. I cannot stay motivated as I feel a lack of confidence when it comes to
getting out of my comfort zone. Learning about various types of sounds and their rhythmic
elements and focusing on recreating the same is a difficult task for me (Johnson, Snyder and
Kraus 2017). Some of the techniques I thought about using for enhancing my piano skills are
learning the music that I love and improving my perception of music. This helped me to stay
focused in my piano practice. Next, mastering a particular technique and moving forward from
there was important. I believed in setting milestones and motivate myself to achieve these
personal milestones, like being able to develop a particular music piece part by part. I would also
need to find out the right keyboard spot. Another important factor will be to track my progress
(Eriksson et al. 2017). This will help me to know how far I have reached and understand my
shortcomings.
One particular musical work that I am interested in is “A little night music” piece by
Mozart. This particular piece is simple and effective to master my piano skills. Initially, this
music piece could be a stepping stone for learning better technique skills. My personal practice is
focused on harmonizing the tones. I use this piece to improve my technique and prepare for the

much more difficult phases for performance. I think this is the way in which I could motivate
myself to achieve better results in developing my piano practice. This has helped me to better
understand the techniques and rhythm adjustments (Hu 2018).
My mentor’s feedback had greatly helped me to focus on improvement. It was he who
gave me a systematic plan to focus on my technique. He said that the only way to be confident
and motivated at the same time is to love what one does in music. My personal practice
developed significantly after the assistance I received from the mentor. It is important to
understand that I need to focus on the technical aspects of learning piano more. I was able to
tackle this challenge significantly by using expert reviews. Taking lessons from my mentor and
systematizing my learning practice. My mentor personally oversaw my piano practice and
gradually I improved my efficiency.

References
Eriksson, H., Harmat, L., Theorell, T. and Ullén, F., 2017. Similar but different: Interviewing
monozygotic twins discordant for musical practice. Musicae Scientiae, 21(3), pp.250-266.
Johnson, M., Snyder, M. and Kraus, A., 2017. The Evolution of Piano Technique.
Hu, Z., 2018, November. Research on the Present Situation of Piano Education in Colleges and
Universities. In 2018 5th International Conference on Education, Management, Arts, Economics
and Social Science (ICEMAESS 2018). Atlantis Press.