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I don't think there's one solution; it really has to depend on context. Besides, the only way I can get to that "comfortable" tempo is by starting slowly and working my way up.

What about playing small chunks at tempo. Has that worked for anyone here?

Hi! I'm new here. I'm 18 years old, soon to be 19 and I've been playing for 14 months and on my own (not exactly because I want to, but because I can't find a teacher or a music school that teaches piano, ha!). I find this thread very interesting and it's nice to see more people that, like me, are learning on their own (or as others say "without formal lessons").

Regarding the bringing a piece up to tempo, well, I can't sight-read or sight-play well so I learn note by note. So normally while I'm learning/memorizing the piece, I play at a slower tempo (but not too slow) but it doesn't take me long till I can play it at the right tempo. Perhaps it's because I haven't played anything too fast. I think the faster piece I've learned/played is "Victor's Piano Solo", from the movie "The Corpse Bride" (but the "completed" or "full" version. Yes, that's fast for me ^^'). But an hour or so after I memorized it, I was playing it at the right tempo.

Of course, sometimes there are passages that I just can't play at the right tempo even after a while, so I work harder on those passages until I feel ready to play the piece from the beginning at the right tempo, making as little mistakes as possible.

By the way, I've been wondering... From time to time, I like to play the pieces much faster than the original tempo, because I enjoy it very much, haha. Do you think that's a bad thing? Some time ago I read somewhere that it is... but I don't know. What do you think?

Anyway, I apologize for my english!

Welcome to PW, Skylyn!

A lot of teachers recommend practicing a piece up to tempos faster than the "correct" tempo, the idea being that if you can play it well at a faster tempo, you can definitely play it at the correct tempo.

I did this with the Bach C minor Invention, and it helped a lot.

Excellent thread.

No one likes to be replaced.

Self-directed learning is the evolving reality, whether through books, media, online universities, and the inevitable artificial intelligence or possibly plug-in to your brain insta-programs (ala, The Matrix).

Yes, people write the books and program the robots, so by proxy one would still have a "human teacher".

100 years from now (or sooner) I wouldn’t be surprised if androids (or whatever) are sitting next to piano students and encouraging them with seemingly sincere intent: "Try it again, but this time remember to relax," or "Not bad, but watch me play the piece."

Yep, whether it’s the automotive factory worker or the piano teacher, no one likes to be replaced by automation.

So maybe we should just forego all this angst and ask the inevitable question:
What... or dare I say who... will teach the next generation’s piano phenomenon, the HAL 9000 or Data from Star Trek?

Happy playing,
AC

(Never say never... right?)

You wish.

It is too bad that "teaching" can indeed be at that level. The second line is a great way of discouraging a student. Show him or her how superior you are, without givin the tools to get there, or even divulging that there are tools - it is not pure superior talent or magic to be inhaled in the studio.

Oh, that was just one example of human quality and emotion advertised in the Virtual Piano Teacher 9000 brochure.

But... there is no doubt that when these interactive programs and androids are in their initial beta-testing phase, suggestions from humans will still be invaluable.
Enough reason to keep those old human piano teachers around... for now...

Happy playing,
AC

I'm curious if anyone would be interesting in participating in an experiment to test learning efficiency. Because we have so many unanswered questions, it would be nice to see if we can find out the truth of matters for ourselves. Here are some questions that I'd like to know the answer to:

Which of these practice/drill methods will result in the least amount of time to go from just beginning to learn a piece to playing it well at tempo in a performance setting?

a. in chunks (and how large of a chunk)
b. both slow and fast
c. occasionally faster than tempo
d. gradually bringing a piece up to tempo methodically

And even more important--are these techniques applicable to everyone, or does everyone have their own unique method which is best?

It seems if we could find out answers to these questions we would be in better shape than before.

Because we are beginners, the piece should be appropriate for the level of ability, and not too long, but still have some difficulty and test speed.

Designing an experiment like this is tricky, but I'm sure there are other mathy/scientisty people like me to help out. It might be interesting--any thoughts? Anyone know of a similar study that's already been done? cheers.

"The Art of Piano Playing: A Scientific Approach," by George Kochevitsky is the most scientisty book I've read on the subject. I think it's time for me to read it again.

Here's what I consider the most important tip when not taking lessons:

Record yourself, and sit back, listen to the recording, and evaluate your playing.

With my electric piano the playback will sound exactly as it does when I'm playing, and I usually walk across the room and sit down to listen.

When I do that (and I do it almost every day) I usually find something obvious that I'm doing wrong. For example, I may notice that I'm playing the left hand part too loudly, or I'm not keeping a good time feel.

Let me know if you want to know what your best learning style is. Here is an experiment I think that might provide an indication.

Take two pieces from Czerny School of Velocity--just 6-10 bars each. Heavy on dexterity, light on musicality. Learning it and bringing it up to speed should take maybe 10-20 minutes.

Learn one piece using the slow and methodical approach of gradually bringing it up to speed by increasing metronome tempo. Learn the other piece by alternating between too fast and a more accurate tempo. Time how long it takes to learn each.

This will provide two things. First, each person would have an overall percentile ranking of how long it took them to learn the music (both pieces). The second thing is more complicated to explain, so bear with me.

Let's say it took 10 minutes to learn the first piece, and 20 minutes to learn the second. So the difference was 10 minutes. Now let's say someone else learned the first piece in 15 minutes and the second piece in 15 minutes. The difference was zero. So the second thing we would be able to do is to rank everyone by how much difference there was in playing each piece. This would give an indication of how much it matters how you learn.

So with these measurements, you could learn something about yourself (above 50 is faster than the median):

Piece A: 40th percentile
Piece B: 60th percentile
Total: 50th percentile
Difference between A and B: 80th percentile

So this would tell you that you learned faster using the approach you used for piece B, and because the difference is 80th percentile, it makes a big difference which way to learn it.

Unfortunately, this won't answer the question, 'which approach is better.' One way to do this might be to have some people learn both pieces using the same technique. For example, let's say we have someone learn both pieces using the methodical approach. Suppose it takes them 10 minutes to learn each piece. Then you could compare this to someone that learned the first piece methodically in 10 minutes, and see how fast they learned the second piece using the fast/slow method. So if they learned the second piece using fast/slow in 8 minutes, but they both learned the first piece using the same technique in 10 minutes, you might say the fast/slow is better. It' not conclusive, but it's something.

Well, I'm up for finding out the best way to learn how to bring something up to performance speed as quickly as possible--anyone else? If we get ten people it's worth it. If you have any comments or if you know of a better way to achieve this goal, feedback, criticism, etc., is welcome. cheers!

I totally agree with you. I can hear that my recordings are not as smooth as I thought they were, and it's really obvious that my left hand has been playing heavier than I intend. I've also video taped my hands playing the keys and I can see tension in my fingers at times.

Recording yourself if very useful.

Another thing that I do is watch experienced pianist play. I'm lucky to have weekly access to at least 1 and sometimes up to 3 different ones. Watch their hands. I watch to see how they make jumps, how they do runs, and watch how their fingers are relaxed. If you can turn pages for them, you may be able to watch how their hands change positions at certain areas if you're familiar with the music.

I prefer to just sit behind them and watch. Just ask them if they'd mind.

One other thing I've learned from watching one of the pianist is how she recovers from a big mistake. A few Sunday's ago I knew the pianist was going to start into a song into which the praise band would follow when she got to the chorus. She started singing and playing and I knew she was in the wrong key. My mind was rolling a hundred miles an hour trying to figure out how she was going to adjust that. She kept on playing, changed keys...ran a few rough notes and started the song again. She didn't stop and I hardly detected a change in her rhythm. Her facial expression never changed. I'll bet many of the congregation didn't notice. If I had been playing, I probably would have stopped completely, and would have made a mess of things.

Use your eyes and watch experienced players play. Watch yourself play. Record and listen to yourself. It's great to hear something that you play sound great. It's also great to improve upon what you can already do.

Thank you, moscheles001.


And yes, recording yourself and listening to it later is definately a good idea. As GracieCat I've also video taped my hands and because of that I've noticed some things I was unaware of, for example, apparently I tend to move my hands and arms too much, now I'm conscious of that so I can control it for a bit (without turning myself into a robot, of course!) or at least try to understand why I do that (like I said, if it wasn't for the video, I wouldn't have known).

Watch experienced pianist is also a great advice.

Since I've never have someone in person to tell me what I'm doing wrong, I try to read as much as I can about important things (as correct posture, wrist position, pianist's injuries...) and watch other people playing so I can learn from them.

Hawgrider,

Which tool can you use to build a house?
A Hammer
A Saw
A Tape Measure

Seriously, you need all of these tools and many, many more. The question is not which practice tool is better or which will get you to your goal faster, but rather WHEN do you use each technique. A lot of what teachers should be teaching you (and my very first teacher did not teach me anything about practice, she gave me great technique, but no practice skills) is when to use each particular practice technique.

Rich

I'm embarassed to admit that I don't think I could bring a piece from Czerny up to speed in ten to twenty minutes. Learning the notes, maybe; but to speed? No.

It would be just a small section. Maybe only 4-6 bars. Maybe 10-20 minutes is too little time. I'm not that quick either. Maybe instead of seeing how long it takes to learn it at tempo, you could see how much progress has been made in 30 minutes--what tempo did you start with and what did you finish with.

I guess I'm the only one who's in a hurry to learn things...

So, I'll experiment on myself...call me Dr. Frankendriver. Or, Hawgbert West, Reanimator.

Here is an opportunity to learn if it's possible to learn more music in less time, and so few are interested. Why stay grounded to an intuition or opinion that might be keeping you from mastering pieces quicker, when there is a way to measure which is the fastest way? :crickets:

If anyone is interested PM me and we'll pick a quick couple of selections (probably only a few measures) from the CZ etudes I linked. Once we get a handful of people we can then draw more compelling conclusions, and maybe start our own thread, which will then get people to go, 'cool, I can find out the quickest way to learn a new piece of music.'

This offer not available in stores...

I started like this: I bought a very cheap electronic Yamaha keyboard and borrowed a book from the local library. I played through the 2 first volumes of the book series and then I tried out for this prestige music school, and I thought I totally made a fool out of myself at the audition. Two weeks after that I bought a used acoustic piano and have been playing with it ever since. And in the end I actually got into the music school to study piano playing. Now the 3rd and last volume of the book series is over so I'm just going to have to wait another month until I get real lessons.

So I think self learning is a really good way to start. But if you really want to get a lot better, you gotta get lessons, since no book or video can teach you as well as a real person (I suppose...). I'm almost 18 years old and have now been playing for a total of 6 months. I was actually totally shocked when I found out that I got into the music school since I thought I messed up the audition. But anyways... Well I guess that's what I just wanted to say!

I'm not sure that this would prove anything, though. I think it really depends on the music you're trying to learn. A Czerny etude isn't as complex as even Beethoven's Op. 49 or Clementi's Op. 36.

I tried "chunking" at speed with the Scarlatti sonata I'm working on now, and it went nowhere. I got further by playing slowly and working up to a faster speed. Once I felt fairly comfortable with it, I jumped to a faster speed rather than continuing to gradually increase the speed.

I haven't started the second section of the sonata, so I may try chunking with that, since it uses patterns similar to those in the first part.

JF

Hi - I am new to piano and off course I am also new to this forum.
I did Googling and found this very interesting thread. Thanks for the administrator to approve my registrations.

I just bought my digital piano last month. The Privia PX-330. This is the first piano I ever have. Maybe I am to old as a beginer. Yeah, I am 41 years old. I played guitar before but I never had a formal lecture. Here, I want to share my first month experience of learning piano by my self.

To start my lesson, I purchase both RocketPiano and PianoForAll online piano course. Each of the course have a very different approach. Rocket Piano use the classical approach likes play simple melody and how to read a score. PianoForAll approach is using chord. In one week I am able to use my piano to accompanying my son singing his children song. Thanks to the PianoForAll. At the same time, I am start able to read the score, thanks to the RocketPiano. What I am thinking is I will easily get boring if I just follow the RocketPiano method. The PianoForAll build my confidence since it makes me feel I can play. However, the RocketPiano give me a solid foundation to works with both my hands, controlling my finger, how to sit, and read scores.

Currently I am learning to play one of my favorite piano pieces, "Ballad pour de Adeline". It takes 2 weeks to learn the scores until I remember all the notes without reading it. I spent the next week try hard to play it correctly. I am using youtube to get the video of people who play this song. There are a lot of it in youtube, I just choose one that I like much. So the term 'play correctly' is i want to play exactly the same as the video. I have no idea about is this right or wrong. It just sound good to me. And now in the week 3, I am able to play the complete song with some mistake here and there. Oh yes, I am recording my play to hear how good or bad I play.

Last weekend, my 15 years old nephew come to visit me. He never get a formal piano course but he learn and play the keyboard on the church. He saw me play the song and ask me to teach him. Amazingly, he can play at the same level with me (with some mistake here and there) in only 1 days!

So my questions is, how can we measure our efficiency in this learning process? Am I to old and that caused me to very slow in learning a new things?

I am sorry for my bad English, I am from Jakarta, Indonesia.