|
Welcome to the Piano World Piano Forums Over 3 million posts about pianos, digital pianos, and all types of keyboard instruments. Over 100,000 members from around the world.
Join the World's Largest Community of Piano Lovers
(it's free)
It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!
|
|
71 members (anotherscott, AaronSF, apianostudent, beeboss, brdwyguy, benkeys, Abdulrohmanoman, 17 invisible),
2,224
guests, and
427
robots. |
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 144
Full Member
|
OP
Full Member
Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 144 |
Had a bit of a realisation when practicing over the last couple of days that perhaps I have been way too cautious moving forward within a piece I am learning.
My sight reading is terrible (I am working on it) but thankfully my plain reading of notation and memory are very good. This means I tend to read through a few measures extremely slowly. Then practice them slow adding interpretation and building towards a comfortable yet still slow pace.
I find I often get stuck on a few measures I can essentially play for ages though. Going through them again and again, trying to perfect them. I might be spending too much time getting small parts of the piece up to a standard I would perform for someone without moving forward. I always do polishing and re-interpretation once I have got to the end of course and I never play at performance speed until a lot of work after I have the piece 90% there.
I think I should be a bit bolder in moving on and getting the whole piece, or at least a fair chunk of it under my fingers first. Then go back and perfect.
I tried this with a piece I have been quite slow in learning over the last few days and although it is early stages, I certainly feel like I am making quicker progress.
So what do you guys do? Measure by measure perfecting as you go before moving on? Sight read the whole piece first? Roughly learn it all then perfect?
I feel like I am missing a trick here which is hampering my progress.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2014
Posts: 317
Full Member
|
Full Member
Joined: Jun 2014
Posts: 317 |
I often find if I work for too long on a piece I start to lose interest and (subconsciously?) stop practicing it effectively. Also, I vary how much I polish a method piece. Unless I really like it I'll get to an acceptable level and move on. I prefer to polish repertoire pieces rather than ones from the method book.
I'm self-taught, though, fwiw, and my advice may be terrible if you're planning to be a professional concert pianist. But it's what works for me as someone who plays for fun.
Roland F130-R
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 144
Full Member
|
OP
Full Member
Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 144 |
Haha, no plans of being a professional concert pianist (31 year old, been playing for about 9 months) but I think your advice is ok. Going to speak to my teacher about it when he gets back but he is away in china for a month and I have a lot to get through so thought I'd ask. I get what you mean about losing interest but my problem is less with polishing the whole piece and more about progressing through it at a reasonable pace. For example, I have been starting Chopin Op 55 No 1 (my current stretch piece so I fully expect to spent many months overall) and I have basically been repeating the first few bars of LH only for a week as i am still not happy with the dynamics, tone and pacing. The RH is very simple here of course and I could totally play HT but I keep putting it off until I will be 100% happy with the LH. I think perhaps I should really be moving along in tandem to my obsessive practice on the LH. What I have been doing sounds really stupid now I type it out
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 4,065
4000 Post Club Member
|
4000 Post Club Member
Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 4,065 |
I find I have to be careful not to get bogged down with a few tricky measures or a technical problem and go ahead and learn all of the piece. It's a matter of timing, I don't want the technical problem to resolve and not have the rest of the piece ready.
Each new piece I try to find where any issues will be and practice them in isolation, this will rarely be the start of the piece. I have tried going measure by measure and this seems to take a lot longer to learn.
Surprisingly easy, barely an inconvenience. Kawai K8 & Kawai Novus NV10 13x
|
|
|
|
Joined: Aug 2012
Posts: 4,765
4000 Post Club Member
|
4000 Post Club Member
Joined: Aug 2012
Posts: 4,765 |
While I do the initial "decoding" and fingering of the score by phrases or even measures, I never try to perfect any section before I have gone through the whole piece. I tried this with a couple of pieces and it didn't work. Now after I get to the end the real work starts...I go back from the whole piece to working on the details.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 144
Full Member
|
OP
Full Member
Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 144 |
While I do the initial "decoding" and fingering of the score by phrases or even measures, I never try to perfect any section before I have gone through the whole piece. I tried this with a couple of pieces and it didn't work. Now after I get to the end the real work starts...I go back from the whole piece to working on the details. This is what I am planning to test out. Seems like I will make better progress as like you say, the real work starts when you have put it together. My current issue is trying (not really intentionally) to do 75% on a section by section basis. I think that is probably slower overall, not least because I probably often end up unlearning stuff to change the section to fit with the flow of the whole piece. Whether I realise it or not.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2014
Posts: 317
Full Member
|
Full Member
Joined: Jun 2014
Posts: 317 |
Yes, this is how I work. I do a first pass with both hands, trying to avoid any mistakes, *incredibly* slowly, if necessary. It sort of lays a foundation for the whole piece.
Roland F130-R
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2013
Posts: 347
Full Member
|
Full Member
Joined: Oct 2013
Posts: 347 |
Is getting stuck in these sections causing you increased tension while trying to learn them? That happens to me often. I have to remind myself to relax and let things flow, even if I make mistakes, it really speeds up my learning (and sounds a lot less mechanical).
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 144
Full Member
|
OP
Full Member
Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 144 |
Is getting stuck in these sections causing you increased tension while trying to learn them? That happens to me often. I have to remind myself to relax and let things flow, even if I make mistakes, it really speeds up my learning (and sounds a lot less mechanical). Not per say. I think stuck is perhaps the wrong word as it is of my own making. Stuck on the idea of perfecting it may be a better way of putting it. For example, the realisation came when I was doing a piece where the first 2 pages (of 4) I could play the first 2 pages from memory, at just under performance speed with decent interpretation and zero mistakes and yet I couldn't play the first measure on page 3... That's got to be wrong, right?
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2011
Posts: 1,129
1000 Post Club Member
|
1000 Post Club Member
Joined: Jun 2011
Posts: 1,129 |
You just opened a big can of worms. Everybody is different and honestly, after 9 months, saying "I'm working on sight reading" is a nonsense. Not because you shouldn't learn how to "sight read", eventually, but just because at that level you are still working on "just reading accurately".
After 9 months of playing, doesn't really matter how gifted you are, you should work on pieces that aren't long that one page or two (and very few, of that length) There is plenty of increasingly technical repertoire in the 2 pages length to keep you busy for several years.
Why I do say this?
Because usually teachers after the basics are in place (preparatory school level stuff) they aim to get a page of music per week out of each piece and usually have you working between 1 to 5 or 6 pieces per week, depending on your practice time.
You should practice each piece about 15 to 30 minutes every day (depend on how serious you are)... less at the beginning, more when you get toward intermediate, and that does the easy math. if you have one hour every day, you might work on 3 pieces + 15 minutes of technique, if you have 2 hours, 5 or 6 pieces and more technique. 2 good hours of practice (not fun, not playing for pleasure) can have anybody playing advanced (as defined in the ABF) in very short time.
How is this related?
Every stage of advancement presents different challenges and different practicing techniques, sight reading or "prima vista", the skill of playing a piece pretty much perfectly as it's presented in front of you, is an acquired skill, and it's pretty advanced. Before, in my opinion, you need to develop many other skills and the ability to complete a piece in a reasonable amount of time is one of them. Your sight reading skills do develop from the ability of moving through a piece. Read it, play it, resolve the technical issues, to a point, you can't expect to fix everything in one day or even one week.
Let me do an example of daily practice and daily log that you should write on a notebook every single day to make yourself accountable of your own practice.
For example let say that this week you are trying to learn to play the G scale and E minor melodic and harmonic, 2 octaves for parallel motion and a one page piece like the E minor prelude (Chopin Op 28 n.4)
Day 1
G major scale hand separate to get the fingering right and hand together up to a speed you can keep for 8 repetitions of the scale without making any mistake. mark the MM speed on the journal.
Prelude, scroll through the score and mark the apparently though spots and mark some "metrics" to identify your practice. It's 27 complete bars + the incomplete initial one. To complete the piece in a week you should start working on the tough spots the first day and keep working on it every day and add 6 bars every day starting from the second day and let yourself work on bigger chunks and putting it together the last 2 days.
Tough spots in decreasing order of difficulty: In my opinion: 1) Bar 16, 17, 18 (start counting from the first COMPLETE measure) 2) Bar 12 (the rhythm) 3) Bar 9 4) Bar 25 and 26 (you don't want to mess up the finale) One measure, or even half measure at the time. Read it correctly, spell the fingering and the turn (gruppetto) in bar 16. play each chunk 5 to 10 times, slow, each correct note, no mistakes and move to the next, keep moving playing as last note of the chunk the same note you will use to begin the next chunk so your hands know how to move from one position to another. Don't get hold up if it doesn't sound great yet but you should aim to play at least one of the repetition with the right dynamics and all the bells and whistle... we are still trying to make music out of it. ;-) Finish the tough bar and if you are allowed to do that, drink a glass of wine or a beer. You deserve it.
Day 2
Scales: Work on the 2 minor scales in the same way, hand separates first make a mental note of the difference between harmonic and melodic and then put them together with the same criteria. play 8 times slowly with no mistakes, mark the MM on the journal.
Hard chunks, today the shouldn't feel as hard as the day before and you will be tempted to speed them up and get greater chunks.. DON'T. Slow, accurate, 5 to 10 repetitions hand separate.
Easy chunks, start one line and one half from the bottom (the last seven bar starting from bar 19) Half bar at the time, 3 times hand separate, 3 times hand together, repeat for the next half bar and then put the whole bar together, play it 5 times and move to the next bar following the same strategy. Remember to play the connection note, or chord (last note of previous chunk is the first note of the next) Remember to play at least once making music. You already practiced the final chords, just get your hands to do it one more time, SLOW, your brain need to know that these bar are going to be there.
Get a threat, it's done.
Day 3
Scales: G major, hand together, play with swing rhythm and reversed swing, than try hand together with the same criteria (8 times, no mistakes) and mark your final MM, it should be faster than the previous one, even if only one mark
Hard Chunks same strategy but now instead of half bar, one bar at the time, HS then HT, remember the extra note, remember the music.
Easy Chunks Bar 12 to 18, you already practice 3 as hard chunks, you have only to practice 12 to 14 plus the first note/chord of bar 15. Use the same strategy as day 2 easy chunks
Day 4
Scales: E minor same as previous day for the G major, remember to mark the MM
Hard Chunks. Now you should be able to do Hand Together from the beginning. Put together the 3 chord finale and practice it 10 times. Add a preceding and following note to bar 9 (last note and chord of bar 8 in position with the right fingering, and first note and chord of bar 10), practice it hand together 10 times. Do the same for bar 12 Group bar 16, 17 and 18 in two bigger chunks of 1 and 1/2 bar with a connecting note/chord as explained for bar 9.
Easy chunks Bar 7 to 11, same strategy, put bar 9 in the middle, eventually play it slower knowing that you are not performing at full speed and the day is over.
day 5
Scales: G major, 2 swing rhythms, then normal, increase speed, write down the MM
Hard chunks, as Day 4 except bar 16 to 18. you will play all 3 bars plus leading and following note/chord. this is the hardest, so a this point you should dedicate more time to this, the others should start feeling comfortable.
Easy chunks first incomplete bar to bar 6. Be accurate, the practice in chunk is almost over.
day 6
Scales: E minor, same as day 5
Hard chunks as Day 5, be musical before being fast. make a mental note or take even a metronome reading of the slowest spot, that would be the fastest speed you will practice the piece on this day.
Easy chunks divide the piece in 2 halves, practice 3 to 5 times the first half, do the same for the second half, including the hard chunks.
day 7 Practice both scales, no swing rhythms, mark your final accurate speed get ready to move to the next set of scales.
Put the piece together, play as slow as it's necessary to keep it accurate. Mark mentally every spot where you feel "uncomfortable" for isolated practice for the following week. At this point the expectation of a teacher would be that you can play the whole page, maybe close or maybe not to performance speed but the speed in coherent from the beginning to the end. Most of the hard spot are smooth or relatively smooth. The dynamic and phrasing is audible and the piece "makes sense".
The bottom line is that by the end of the first week, the piece should be reasonably well under your finger, now that you can play it all, the task for the next week is to work on all the rough spots (one or two every day, no more than that) but a harder work in terms of accuracy and fluidity... now you need to make music. After that job is done, play the piece through a couple of times and mark the hard spots again.
with the same strategy of week one, you should learn another set of scales (one major and the two relative minors.)
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 144
Full Member
|
OP
Full Member
Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 144 |
@Ataru074
Thank you very much for your detailed and very well thought out response. This will be extremely useful to me. Going to give it a go with my next new piece. I will report back.
Just to give you a little context in response to some of your beginning points which would normally be very valid. I was being somewhat flippant and jokey with my 9 month statement. I have indeed only been formally learning piano with anything more than very occasional practice for around 9 months. I did start about a year and a half prior to that but due to job commitments spent months away and thus only had a handful of lessons and some infrequent practicing. I came into that with 2 other instruments under my belt and a lot of theory. My music reading was accurate and pretty fluid even at that point. Additionally I had/have been tinkering about with the 'piano' for several years so could already play basic chords etc. So i guess I am saying I didn't start fully from scratch so while not gifted, I had a fair bit of a head start. Thankfully now I am at home 90% so I get my lessons frequently and can practice at least an hour a day :-)
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2011
Posts: 1,129
1000 Post Club Member
|
1000 Post Club Member
Joined: Jun 2011
Posts: 1,129 |
@Ataru074
Thank you very much for your detailed and very well thought out response. This will be extremely useful to me. Going to give it a go with my next new piece. I will report back.
I would love to hear back because that is what, more or less, I do diligently when I have time constraints and I need to learn something ASAP... I usually end up "having more fun" during the final polishing phase because I want to hear the whole pieces and I realize that I took longer to have the piece ready for performance, but not being a pro or not being involved in competition, I need the piano also as a stress relief, not as another source of stress. I like to work hard, for a week (or few weeks, depending on the size of the piece) to get it in the fingers so, for me, the big of the job is done. That sense of accomplishment boost your will to keep working on the piece instead of that sense of frustration when you have that impossible bar right out of the bat (Brahms G minor rhapsody comes to mind, for me) Just to give you a little context in response to some of your beginning points which would normally be very valid. I was being somewhat flippant and jokey with my 9 month statement. I have indeed only been formally learning piano with anything more than very occasional practice for around 9 months. I did start about a year and a half prior to that but due to job commitments spent months away and thus only had a handful of lessons and some infrequent practicing. I came into that with 2 other instruments under my belt and a lot of theory. My music reading was accurate and pretty fluid even at that point. Additionally I had/have been tinkering about with the 'piano' for several years so could already play basic chords etc. So i guess I am saying I didn't start fully from scratch so while not gifted, I had a fair bit of a head start. Thankfully now I am at home 90% so I get my lessons frequently and can practice at least an hour a day :-)
I "tuned" my answer to a level that I tough would have been pretty close to where you are, ahead or behind. Practice strategies don't really change much until the pieces become more than one page or are etudes where almost every bar is hard... in that case I tend to say that for an etude you do in 2 or 3 weeks what you would have done in one week on a piece. (If you can perform an etude in 2 weeks, wasn't hard enough to help you develop technique, at best was for consolidating, and at the beginning, that is good too.) But please, if you don't mind and you follow up, let me (or us) know when you start and when you end the week, with a sort of a logbook (scales speed, your ideas, and how you feel the program was.. too hard, too easy.. too much time here, not enough there) I think would be beneficial for many people, me included. Thank you.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 144
Full Member
|
OP
Full Member
Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 144 |
@Ataru074
Thank you very much for your detailed and very well thought out response. This will be extremely useful to me. Going to give it a go with my next new piece. I will report back.
I would love to hear back because that is what, more or less, I do diligently when I have time constraints and I need to learn something ASAP... I usually end up "having more fun" during the final polishing phase because I want to hear the whole pieces and I realize that I took longer to have the piece ready for performance, but not being a pro or not being involved in competition, I need the piano also as a stress relief, not as another source of stress. I like to work hard, for a week (or few weeks, depending on the size of the piece) to get it in the fingers so, for me, the big of the job is done. That sense of accomplishment boost your will to keep working on the piece instead of that sense of frustration when you have that impossible bar right out of the bat (Brahms G minor rhapsody comes to mind, for me) Just to give you a little context in response to some of your beginning points which would normally be very valid. I was being somewhat flippant and jokey with my 9 month statement. I have indeed only been formally learning piano with anything more than very occasional practice for around 9 months. I did start about a year and a half prior to that but due to job commitments spent months away and thus only had a handful of lessons and some infrequent practicing. I came into that with 2 other instruments under my belt and a lot of theory. My music reading was accurate and pretty fluid even at that point. Additionally I had/have been tinkering about with the 'piano' for several years so could already play basic chords etc. So i guess I am saying I didn't start fully from scratch so while not gifted, I had a fair bit of a head start. Thankfully now I am at home 90% so I get my lessons frequently and can practice at least an hour a day :-)
I "tuned" my answer to a level that I tough would have been pretty close to where you are, ahead or behind. Practice strategies don't really change much until the pieces become more than one page or are etudes where almost every bar is hard... in that case I tend to say that for an etude you do in 2 or 3 weeks what you would have done in one week on a piece. (If you can perform an etude in 2 weeks, wasn't hard enough to help you develop technique, at best was for consolidating, and at the beginning, that is good too.) But please, if you don't mind and you follow up, let me (or us) know when you start and when you end the week, with a sort of a logbook (scales speed, your ideas, and how you feel the program was.. too hard, too easy.. too much time here, not enough there) I think would be beneficial for many people, me included. Thank you. Will do. I currently do have a little log of my scales, arpeggios, etc but it could be much better. So I will definitely let you know how I get on. I am off for work (ironic given what I said in my last response :D) out of the country next week so you'll have to wait a wee bit but I will keep you up to date when I can.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Feb 2015
Posts: 4,033
4000 Post Club Member
|
4000 Post Club Member
Joined: Feb 2015
Posts: 4,033 |
After 9 months of playing you're at Chopin op. 55 no. 1 and you think you're going slow! I think you should lower your expectations slightly...
|
|
|
|
Joined: Aug 2011
Posts: 6,272
6000 Post Club Member
|
6000 Post Club Member
Joined: Aug 2011
Posts: 6,272 |
For example, the realisation came when I was doing a piece where the first 2 pages (of 4) I could play the first 2 pages from memory, at just under performance speed with decent interpretation and zero mistakes and yet I couldn't play the first measure on page 3...
That's got to be wrong, right? It's certainly not a good idea, though you could probably make it work. A better approach would be to go through the whole thing slowly, just to survey the landscape and find where the hard parts are. Then work a little on those hard parts to get a better idea of what the problems are. With that figured out, come to a decision as to whether the piece is too advanced, or is something you really want to put a lot of effort into. If you go for it, work first and most on the hardest parts, then the easy stuff, then put it all together.
-- J.S. Knabe Grand # 10927 Yamaha CP33 Kawai FS690
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2011
Posts: 1,129
1000 Post Club Member
|
1000 Post Club Member
Joined: Jun 2011
Posts: 1,129 |
After 9 months of playing you're at Chopin op. 55 no. 1 and you think you're going slow! I think you should lower your expectations slightly... yes but read this: "and I have basically been repeating the first few bars of LH only for a week as i am still not happy with the dynamics, tone and pacing. The RH is very simple here of course and I could totally play HT but I keep putting it off until I will be 100% happy with the LH. I think perhaps I should really be moving along in tandem to my obsessive practice on the LH." I would exercise a little bit of caution there. That nocturne is RCM level 9, the prelude is a relative test stretch at RCM level 7 ( I disagree, imho should be RCM level 6) One thing with Chopin is to be able to "hit the notes" (actually they tend to fit very well under the hand, once the basics are understood) and cheat using rubato as a tool to slow down the difficult part but in that nocturne, I'd say that the last of the 3 pages is rightfully level 9, the second page should be 8 and the first between 6 and 7... and I still think it's harder than the prelude. Maybe it's a little too much of a stretch for a performance piece but, if loved and someone is willing to spend months on a single piece, might be a booster of a particular technique.
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 9,328
9000 Post Club Member
|
9000 Post Club Member
Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 9,328 |
Be familiar with the whole thing before beginning to work on it.
Regards,
Polyphonist
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2010
Posts: 1,341
1000 Post Club Member
|
1000 Post Club Member
Joined: Sep 2010
Posts: 1,341 |
1. Play through the whole piece to get an idea.
2. Play through the easy bits to familiarise and get some fluency (decide on fingerings, phrasing, dynamics etc.)
3. Identify the difficult bit and slow practice (spend most practice time here).
4. Play through the whole piece and identify the remaining difficult bits (revisit fingerings, phrasing, dynamics etc.)
5. Slow practice on the remaining difficult bits (spend more time here).
6. Repeat 4. and 5. until all the difficult bits are ironed out.
7. Play through the whole piece and change things (musical wise) as desired.
8. Repeat 7. forever
Be yourself
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 144
Full Member
|
OP
Full Member
Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 144 |
The Nocturne No. 15 is my properly big stretch piece. Me and my teacher picked it with an aim to complete in like 6 months all said and done. I will be doing a bunch of shorter pieces along side it.
Thanks for the additional advice.
|
|
|
|
Joined: May 2012
Posts: 2,967
2000 Post Club Member
|
2000 Post Club Member
Joined: May 2012
Posts: 2,967 |
Be familiar with the whole thing before beginning to work on it. Agree, but if I do this with anything by Chopin I would not likely start on many of them. He seems to always want to throw in a couple of measures which are a few grade levels beyond the rest of the piece. I bet he had a smirk on his face when he wrote these measures ... lets see how well you deal with this part . With Chopin, I figure if I can get the first page or 2 sounding nice I should be able to get the entire thing sounding nice and I'll worry about the extra hurdles later. Of course, they will also take extra time but are not usually insurmountable. If they have the potential to destroy everything else that I worked so hard for, then I guess it is a piece for further down the road.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Piano
by Gino2 - 04/17/24 02:34 PM
|
Piano
by Gino2 - 04/17/24 02:23 PM
|
|
Forums43
Topics223,408
Posts3,349,457
Members111,637
|
Most Online15,252 Mar 21st, 2010
|
|
|
|
|
|