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Are you when attacking new music? It`s a war of attrition with me. Everything is brought to bear in the fray. A blitz from the word "go!" from which there`s no let up.

I don`t sleep well at the best o` times. But when a recital`s coming up (yes, it`s months away) I try to put things to bed ASAP. Unfortunately that doesn`t seem to apply to me.

Haven`t slept much last night. Not tired now; the fight`ll go on again today.

But I can`t say I don`t enjoy it . . . Much progress was made yesterday.

I'm extremely patient at the start. Trouble is, my patience wears out too fast.

As a now ex endurance runner I tend to treat the whole piano thing like a sport. I also find myself dreaming of practicing piano, waking up in the early hours and just taking on from where I left the night before. It's nothing new I used to be like that with my work and then my sport and now my piano. I can only hope I start to mellow a bit or I'll end up winning some battles but losing the war.

I'm very impatient. V.e.r.y.
But I'm catching on to the fact that working more slowly and methodically actually ends up being a faster way to get a piece under my fingertips.

I've also found that though I'd rather be playing piano than doing almost anything else...I've moderated my playing a bit, substituting a bit more quality time for plain quantity time.

Oh, I am very impatient. It always takes longer to learn a new piece than I think is should, and getting from the "learned" phased to the "performance" stage, takes even longer. The biggest lesson playing piano has taught me is to be patient and methodical. If I let my impatience rule, I create all kinds of errors that make the piece take even longer to perfect.

I'm not the least bit impatient. I get suspicious when my progress is too fast. I wonder what I'm doing wrong. That doesn't mean I don't get obsessive. I'm perfectly capable of pouring extraordinary effort into the piece that's posessing me at the time but I still expect to be in it for the long haul. I learn better that way. I think there are some neurological connections that must be formed and harden before a piece is set into your hands and mind. That can't be rushed.

Me too. I have to remind myself to be patient and enjoy this stage too. Glad I'm not alone

"I think there are some neurological connections that must be formed and harden before a piece is set into your hands and mind. That can't be rushed. "

Good way o` putting it. Like hammering nails into concrete . . .

peterws, I have read your post, here:

Are you when attacking new music? It`s a war of attrition with me. Everything is brought to bear in the fray. A blitz from the word "go!" from which there`s no let up.

I don`t sleep well at the best o` times. But when a recital`s coming up (yes, it`s months away) I try to put things to bed ASAP. Unfortunately that doesn`t seem to apply to me.

Haven`t slept much last night. Not tired now; the fight`ll go on again today.

But I can`t say I don`t enjoy it . . . Much progress was made yesterday.

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I will invariably be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed,or numbered

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Like the enemy at war, it is an unknown until you are in the fight. Even when you read the piece measure by measure, it is not the same like playing the piece for the first time or at any time.

War is deadly; that is the excitement - of how long you will last or how long it will take you to win.

The other thing that is nice is that you don't need anybody to assist you in your war or anyone to be the opponent because it is all there for you when you sit down on the bench and rest your fingers on the keys.

People often say I am patient when they see how I approach things, but really I am not. Think swan, lol.
I am calm and determined and methodical. I like plans, routines but I attack things intensively. I don't do things half heartedly, I go overboard with perfectionist details and I plan like crazy. I need goals and when I decide to do something , I want to start yesterday, with all the tools I decide I need right there and then. I am rarely in a hurry to finish something, but I am always early whenever I need to meet a deadline. I cannot abide lateness.
I can happily practice one measure over and over again, but I am not patient , just persistent. Stubborn.

Same here. I know how I want it at the start but getting it drilled in is such a drag... very very slow... many errors that are an insult to my ears... And indeed the drilling is only the first step. And so hard to make music at very very slow speed. How to make a crescendo while the notes are only fading away all the time???

I find it rather hilarious (and sad!) that I've taken lessons for three years and am FINALLY able to slow it down when learning a new piece. My poor teacher - she's been telling me this the entire time!I think part of the trouble is that I learned to sight read before taking lessons, and my fingers will automatically go to the right keys, but they are usually the wrong fingers and just throw everything off. That habit is finally breaking, but it sure did take a long time!


This is something I'm still trying to conquer. I "know" it; therefore I think it'll be a snap to speed it up, or fix a problem part I've ignored, or a transition I've ignored.. ha! These recitals on PW are certainly helping me fix that.. I want to do better when more people hear it, so it's forcing me to re-evaluate how I go about things.

I'm improving, but yeah, chalk me down as one who tries to go too fast too quickly. Like many intermediates, I'm sure, the trouble is often that there may be many measures where you can get the notes right pretty quickly after a few read throughs so you blaze the trail and then, OOPS!, smack comes a tricky measure.

The Clementi Sonata I'm learning is a good example of that. Alberti bass with nice easy 8th note melody, zoom, zoom - aargh, sudden leap. Too fast!

Richard's posts are full of insight on this, but I'll post just this favorite little snippet I keep saved.



If you're really impatient, then do things right and practice slowly and in very small sections, and you'll actually progress faster (sounds ironic, huh?). If I feel really impatient, I'll noodle around or play old material or something else unproductive; I won't go near new material lest I just ingrain poor mistakes that will take more time to undo later than it took to ingrain them in the first place.

Luckily, my teacher is more patient than I am.

Aimee, get out of my head. I have been taking since 2005 and FINALLY am realizing I was doing just that. 'I'll fix it in my lesson' ugh. I am also finally practicing in the correct way.
And also, realizing that getting it correct once through is not the same as being polished at it.

Quite literally. Although I'm constantly trying to be patient, and even frequently advise others to be patient, the sad reality is that with almost every new piece there comes a time when my teacher must say to me..."ok, now I want you to go back and just play it very slow and very loud without dynamics and without pedal at least twice a day for a week."

This, of course, is to combat/fix the little errors I've allowed to creep in by speeding things up too soon. When I finally get through a piece start to finish without this remedial pounding stage I will know I have finally learned patience.

Loud, without dynamics?? But that seems not the right way to me to practice, after all you then will have to unlearn the all-loud version

It depends on a lot of things. Where is the student at, and how is the teacher working with him? What is the teacher seeing? What's the overall approach.

There seem to be two philosophies. One says that you creative every musical aspect from the very beginning so that it will "be there" (and otherwise it won't be). You seem to be thinking along those lines, wouter79. (?)

I'm being taught to shape the music in layers. Even if I weren't, I'd lean in that direction because of my experiences. To work in layers, you work on simple basic aspects first --- right notes with handy fingering and basic good movement. This is done in chunks (which is already a known concept). You add other elements like dynamics, nuanced timing etc. later. The reasoning for this is that we can only concentrate on one new thing at a time. Especially if you're still getting your skills, if you try to do everything, all of it will be vague and muddy. But if you have the right notes in your hands, then you can let go to concentrating on the dynamics, get them into your hand and ear, etc. I definitely need to do this, and it works for me.

"Loud" makes sense to me, because "soft" is harder to do and can involve restraining yourself (if you're me). I have a bit of a parallel, because I used to play using mostly my fingers. To unlock, I use large exaggerated motions - like little kids drawing with jumbo crayons and using their whole arm - and then when all the joints know how they can move, let it settle down. Smaller movements also make quieter sounds.

I'm guessing that JimF's teacher has a reason and plan, based on what he (she?) is seeing.

Yes the teacher probably is right. Sometimes making mistakes is part of the path




no, I'm just saying that if you ignore elements such as dynamics or timing, you end up learning them incorrectly and that you have to unlearn it later to get it right. And that unlearning is harder than learning.