Improving your Piano Learning with a Playlist

Have you taken a few years of piano lessons? How many pieces can you play right now without using music? If you've been taking what I call non-traditional lessons, the answer may be 3 or 4. Since I've been teaching the Simply Music program, my students' answers would be anywhere from 10-50 pieces.

One of the many valuable benefits that traditional piano curricula doesn't have is maintaining a "Playlist." It's simply keeping a collection of the pieces/songs you have learned. The playlist that I use with students provides a graph for the student to mark each time they play each piece. It's helps both of us prevent pieces from falling through the cracks. The value comes with keeping those pieces
"alive" by playing them every (or almost every) day. Consider this:

1. You put in a lot of work honing your wonderful piano skills. You're out in public or at a friend's house and you're asked to play something. With all the pieces you've learned, you should be able to give a concert. Could you?
2. Playing piano (especially without printed music) exercises a very large portion of our brain, including memory centers. This strengthens our neural connections. Yes, we need them or we'll get to the point where we'll be looking for our car in the parking lot for hours only to realize we took the bus to the mall.
3. We learn from playing songs - even when we know them really well. We discover nuances that we were not able to notice while we were learning the notes and rhythm.  
4. Your playlist is like a photo album or diary. You're journaling your progress throughout your music learning journey. You (and your instructor) can spot trends and be better able to correct problems, thus making learning more efficient and fun.

This is the shortlist of what you can gain by maintaining a playlist of your piano pieces. Now, how many songs can you play - right now?