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Thanks Progman,

I've gleaned so many useful pointers from posters here on PW, if anything I've written about has helped you out, I am thrilled to bits. As Keselo says above, practice habits will get you there. I've got three new books on practice methodology coming that Amazon is keeping from me an extra day, I'm sure due to the inclement weather of the season. I'm hyperventilating in anticipation.

Knowing the pieces I want to work on isn't a problem. I've got a year's worth of appropriate material in the cue and am constantly having to make judgements of what stays and what goes (Thanks so much Keselo for that Satie recommendation, one of my planned RCM repertoire pieces may bite the dust due to it!), but what is ever fascinating to me is HOW to go about learning each piece.

Stick to one method all the times and it gets stagnant (for me), bounce around too much and accomplish next to nothing, I'm constantly reading, digging, and tinkering with the "how" and THAT gives me a plan with meaning, focus, and freshness each week. Will it be repeated next week? Not this time. Learning how to break down a single measure with 16th notes, two accidentals, and a break in phrasing by going note to note...I could KISS Josh Wright for that one and will never be convinced it isn't the right way to go about that process. (I'm old enough to be his mother so I'm sure he would politely take it on the cheek!)

Even though I will not be pursuing deliberate breaks in my practice regimen the way I did this week the exercise of trying it out was highly useful. At least to me. I'd heard about it, read about it, evaluated the sources of the idea as credible and gave it a whirl. Now I KNOW how it fits into my world and that experience is mine alone, earned, and makes me that much more knowledgeable in my own right than I was last week.

Happy practicing to everyone!

I agree. If it weren't for 6 years of flute, 2 years of guitar, 3 former years of piano with teachers, 2 years of singing choir, and 3 years of bell choir where I could play 6-8 tones in a single piece frequently with 4 in hand at a time, I would consider myself that rank beginner in the music world.

I don't.

I simple see getting myself BACK to a place where I feel the need to have instruction something I can do on my own time. To be sure the technology to record and hear myself keeps me honest and a Chopin-by-memory playing mother sets a standard that is hard to ignore.

But please, don't lose any sleep over it, I will have a teacher again when the time is right and believe in them wholeheartedly.

Thanks Moo,

LOL that I would try Chopin in the original.

It's an arrangement created for my level.

Sorry, I guess you mentioned this previously but I forgot about it. You are definitely not a beginner.

Moo

Honestly I find far more junk on the YouTube teaching side of things than anything remotely useful, but Alyssia at PianoTV.net is an RCM level 10 player and professional teacher with a decade of experience teaching adults and children. I find her videos charmingly eccentric, her music selection high quality and her recommendations in line with an established entity, the RCM.

I would be leery of leaning entirely on anyone via internet alone. Josh Wright, concert pianist, included.

It's her tailoring her site to supplement the RCM curriculum that won me over.

Ok Holly. I didnt realise it was a simplified version. Good luck. The teacher / non-teacher is a constant debate. It is never ending. like Brexit. We often have piano wars at times which I find very funny. But surrogate youtube teacher can be damaging and there is a temptation to seek a teacher via youtube if you are trying to find an answer but it can lead you down rabbit holes. I think if you are the analytical time I'd try and not overanalyse things too much from these videos if you are wanting to watch them. It will be very hard to know what is correct without a teacher. And often the youtube piano surrogate teachers are often contradictory. Will be interesting to follow the thread. I hope to see some videos at some point. X

No worries, pianoloverus, you set a high standard and hold people to it. Nothing to apologize for.

And I will say again, I think her Spreadsheet is outstanding! Extremely useful!

thanks, NobleHouse

FYI I put a line across the top above the designations for Faber lessons, pTV, Etudes, etc. So at the top of those columns I now have a time estimate, for example, 3 weeks for each lesson piece, 2 weeks for each etude, 12 weeks for a pTV piece. Since you like my spreadsheet and all...

So you guys got me thinking…

I spend 2 hours a day, most days, practicing. Everyone and their uncle, plus a few stray tips from teachers I really respect, point out my sheer volume of material is too much. But is it too much for two hours a day of practice? My recent foray into separating my pieces into two days showed me some kinks in the system, such as 80 minutes worth of technique material. Really? That’s patently ridiculous.

My husband points out that I signed up for the 40 piece a year challenge and have 102 pieces on my list for the year. Shut up, Steve.

And what else might be lurking in there that I’ve just been too pig-headed to see? How to find out?

My thing is to rework my “how” endlessly to keep each week’s practice plan fresh so this week I’m rethinking what I posted yesterday to regroup my sets to see where the excess baggage might be.

Instead of 4 sets of:
Technique
Piece 1
Piece 2
Something easy

I regrouped my materials by SOURCE and by the time they DESERVE, not necessarily what I give them each day currently.

Faber Lesson work (1 hour)
Technique and applied theory
1st week piece
2nd week piece
3rd week piece
Sight reading

pianoTV pieces (1 hour)
Mikrokosmos
Czerny
New piece
Progressing piece
Polishing piece

RCM Level 1 Materials (1 hour)
Technique (scales and chords)
Sight reading
Ear training and Theory
Etudes
Repertoire


Personal Choices and Repertoire maintenance (30-40 minutes)
Maintaining my 3 memorized repertoire pieces
Kunz 200 Canons
Gurlitt Op. 117
1 Piece from other sources like Little Peppers, Connections, Alfred’s Essential Repertoire

Houston, we have a problem.

I’m obviously trying to squeeze about 3.5-4 hours of material into 2 hours a day. Something’s got to give.

But I LOVE it all...what to do?

Someway, somehow, I need to trim an hour and a half worth of material from my list to effectively practice the remaining material.

This is going to hurt.

Some old posts on the Faber Graduates thread pointed out that some of the supplemental books are labeled a level below the student’s lesson level. So a student studying at level 2, would play some particular supplemental material from a level 1 book. In short, you have to finish level one to play the level one supplement. LIGHT. BULB.

My “supplemental materials” are the pianoTV, the RCM and personal choice sets. So I have to start there.

I’ve struggled with my pianoTV pieces taking an inordinate amount of time for the level they profess to be. They most fit the descriptor of materials to be played AFTER I’ve done a level. I know all about having pieces that make you stretch, but when I say “inordinate amount of time”, that’s just what I mean. A whole HOUR on pieces that are supposed to flesh out my main work? Too much. I looked ahead to level 2, where she has only 5 pieces suggested. Okay, so if those are for when I’m actually doing level 3, then…It’s a simple matter of moving the ones I have listed under level 1 to a place on my spreadsheet where I am getting into level 2. I’ll keep enough to have ONE open pianoTV piece at a time. This cuts 25 minutes from that set.

Next, I looked at RCM and Personal choice sets and flat out balked, so I circled back around to the Faber lessons.

It’s a good thing to push, but is 3 pieces in progress simply too much at one time? I’m going to have to find out. Out comes the spreadsheet and spaces are inserted every two pieces instead of every three to ensure that each piece gets 3 weeks of allotted time, but only 2 are open at a time. Of course, if a piece needs longer than 3 weeks that’s just the way it goes, and that’s why God gave us computers, to have spreadsheets that let us move our piano curriculum at will. Fifteen more minutes cut.

Now the hard part, back to RCM and personal choices.

RCM. Here I’m going to cheat because when I tally practice hours I never put in ear training and theory. I mean I’m curled up on the couch with my computer doing the RCM ear training or scribbling in a theory workbook. That’s not “practice time” right? 25 more minutes cut.

And too be fair something has to give with the “personal choices” group.

I’ve decided after a week working with both, and based on where pianoTV puts them in her curriculum, to make Kunz and Gurlitt consecutive instead of concurrent. I’ll continue with Gurlitt Op. 117 for now and save Kunz 200 Canons for when Gurlitt is done or set aside. (10 minutes cut)

All total that leaves me with 1 hour and 15 minutes less practice time needed to truly cover what I’m working on and reshapes my practice to something like this:

Faber Lesson work (45 minutes)
Technique and applied theory
1st week piece
2nd week piece
Sight reading

pianoTV pieces (35 minutes)
Mikrokosmos
Czerny
1 piece

RCM Level 1 Materials (35 minutes)
Technique (scales and chords)
Sight reading
Etudes
Repertoire
Ear training and Theory (done separately)

Personal Choices and Repertoire maintenance (30 minutes)
Maintaining my 3 memorized repertoire pieces
Gurlitt Op. 117
1 Piece from other sources like Little Peppers, Connections, Alfred’s Essential Repertoire


Now I’m looking at what should be a little less than 2.5 hours of material and a penchant for 2 hours of practice. That, my friends, is close enough. I’m bleeding already so the first person to suggest more to cut better have a spare IV of O-positive!

Of course! If I may, try starting with 'What Little Princess Tulip Says', the second piece in the book. It's the least demanding, the most effective at a slow tempo, and oh so beautiful and cute. Seriously, my heart melts even thinking about it.

Loved your last update, the cutting in what to practise to not be spending the entire day behind the piano, well, that hits close to home. If I may give another suggestion, and I think you've read about this as well, is that constantly maintaining repertoire isn't very beneficial (and very time consuming). I'm not saying you should cut it, I know I didn't when Moo repeatedly told me I should, but I feel it should still be said so that, once you find it becomes frustrating, you have no qualms just cutting it from your practice regime. I do recommend my 'forget-and-relearn' method for anything you want to dive deeper into. You'll probably not be able to play it at any given time, but you will grow more into the piece than you would if you constantly keep it at the tip of your fingers. And, after relearning a piece a couple of times, it takes hardly any time at all to get it back in your fingers.

If this is already the way you do things, then ignore everything I've just said.

Thanks for the update.

Thanks for the input, Keselo,

On your suggestion, I'm tweaking this week's regime to work only 1 of the 3 I have in repertoire. That would put those 3 pieces on an every three week spiff it up schedule.

I suppose I could just drop them and ever be moving forward, but I sort of enjoy the end of the day after a couple of hours of actual work, to simply play something I can play.

Lately I'd settled in at one run-through of 2 of them then focusing the rest of the time on SUPER SLOW play by memory of the third. Total time 10 minutes.

My hubs, the DC-neurologist, says the science supports dropping them entirely for time periods as you say. By the way he REALLY likes your spaced repetition regime!

Thanks again.

I can definitely relate to wanting to play something at the end of the day which you feel comfortable playing, I do the same thing. Keep doing that!

Perhaps you could ease into a forget-and-relearn system. Every time you're done learning a piece for the first time that you really liked, you keep it at the top of your fingers as you do and drop the oldest repertoire piece to be relearned later. You should definitely not entirely drop the pieces that you like, but getting to play something that you really like after not having played it for 3 months is just wonderful. And it's one of the best ways of measuring progress; you'll suddenly be able to play it much better than you could before, and that without spending a minute of additional practice on it!

And I'm glad my methods are neurologically approved! It's nice to know that something works for reasons that make sense to people much smarter than I am.

Exactly my experience with the repertoire. I had made a pdf called Animisha's repertoire, with the pieces I tried to maintain. When I found that it didn't work, I renamed it Animisha's favourites. It is really nice to leaf through and find something to play with when I want to play more but I don't want to practise any more today.

This week -

Pieces finished or set aside:
Fiesta Espana – Faber 2 AIO
Sea Chanty – Faber 2 AIO
Czerny #11, Vol. 445
Bach BWV 514, arr. Van Betuw
Morning greeting -Gurlitt Op. 117 #13
Full of Confidence – Christopher Norton

In progress:
Mikrokosmos Vol.1 #25
Gurlitt Op. 117, #6

Polishing:
Minuette in A Minor – Kreiger
Bourree in E Minor – L. Mozart

Starting: (2 lesson pieces, 3 pieces, and 1 exercise)
Pachelbel’s Canon, Arr. N. Faber
Musetta’s Waltz – Puccini, Arr. N. Faber
Far Away – Teresa Richert
Slumber Song – Elissa Milne
Minuet – GP Telemann
Czerny #12, Vol. 445

Time on the bench: 10 hours Lifetime on piano: 219 hours

So, this week a certain snarky internet friend referred to my diary here as “Holly's Ever Evolving Program for Pianistic Enlightenment™”. You crack me up TS, you really do.

But in light of the truth in that commentary I thought it best to point out to the other beginners here that I obviously offer absolutely ZERO encouragement of anyone following my example.

If, however, you find some of my logistical manipulations interesting, please bear in mind what does NOT change each week:

10 hours, butt on the bench, eyes, brain, hands, keys forming a loop that exercises itself with concentration and intent. Every week. THAT part does not change no matter how I rearrange the order and number of pieces worked on each week.

And speaking of changes…

(come on you didn’t really think I’d settle for how I did it last week did you?)

So, this week I came up with the following idea for ordering my pieces:

Times may vary, they’re really just place holders

Faber Lesson Work – 45 minutes
Unit technique and applied theory pages (15 minutes)
Lesson Piece 1 (15 minutes)
Sight reading (5 Minutes)
Lesson Piece 2 (10 minutes)

RCM Materials/personal choices, varied
1 hour (10 minutes each)
RCM Level 1 Technique
RCM Level 1 Etude
RCM Level 1 Repertoire Piece
Exercise - Mikrokosmos Vol. 1
1st Piece, modern composer, my choice
2nd Piece, Space repetition work

Keith Snell Essential Repertoire/Personal choice, “classical”
1 hour (10 minutes each)
KS Level 1 Technique book
KS Level 1 Etudes, various composers
KS Repertoire Piece
Exercise - Czerny Vol. 445
1st piece, “Classical” composer, my choice
2nd piece, Repertoire maintenance (1 piece per week)

I’m not capable of 2.75 hours of concentration so my idea is to do the Faber lesson work every day and alternate days of RCM and Snell. Basically, hit my lesson work every day and use alternating days for my “supplemental” pieces.

I obviously don’t do 10 minutes per piece like a robot. I set a timer for technique for 10 or 15 minutes, yes, but for pieces I start a stopwatch and check it when I’m done and record it whether it’s 6 minutes or 36 minutes.

For those keeping score that takes my daily “pieces” load from 16 down to 9. More than forty percent decrease in daily practice load. While still leaving me roughly 2 hours of material a day plus ear training and theory.

See, I listen to you people, really I do.

Thanks to this diary, I get to keep a record of the ideas I try out and discard and having to write out WHY I make my choices and analyzing how they work out each week makes me really think about the purpose of each piece.

What I figured out this week was that my materials could be neatly divided into
1) Lesson material
2) RCM + modern
3) Snell + classical.

“Modern” is just a convenient catchall for all kinds of pop, jazz, and miscellany pieces that pop up in RCM materials and the internet. Keith Snell neatly divides his materials into baroque, classical, romantic and 20th century, which I’m egregiously lumping into the category “classical”. Forgive me.

It’s really just a refinement of last week’s four categories
Faber
PianoTV and exercises
RCM
Personal Choices/Repertoire

You may notice that the PianoTV presence is greatly reduced. That was a decision made to make sure the percentage of pieces I CAN PLAY stays high with just lessons and the occasion piece being items I have to stretch for. Having a higher percentage of pieces I can easily learn the notes, rhythm, basics of dynamics, and come close to tempo within a week so that I can then focus much more on how musical I can get it simply makes piano more fun.

I can already report lumping all my Faber material into one session has greatly influenced how seriously I take my “lesson” work. These are progressively leveled pieces in units with a technique theme. I’m starting the last two pieces in Faber 2 Adult All in One this week, which means I’ll be done, hopefully, within the month.

RCM materials are also leveled, though not piece by piece. I really enjoy the Etudes and have picked several pieces of Repertoire to polish up to memorized repertoire status. I’ve already finished the RCM theory and sight-reading books for this level and will use an Albert’s theory book on RCM days for theory and just keep sight reading to the Faber books. I’ve lumped Norton and Milne pieces that I committed to learning this year into this category since RCM is more varied than Snell in music selection choices.

Keith Snell, thank you so much, has original “classical” materials divided by time period along with technique, and theory books. So into this category I’ve put the Albert’s Essential Repertoire pieces and “classical” composers I want to try out.

I split my Czerny and Mikrokosmos just based on Bartok having a more modern feel to it going into RCM leaving Czreny to fall into the Snell line up. (Got to say I’m glad I only have 8 more Czerny exercises to get through and I can put that one aside.)

The last things to be divided were Personal Repertoire and Spaced repetition pieces. Flipped a coin.

Finishing up this past week with the 16 pieces after I’d come up with my plan for this week felt disorganized and I could recognize the chaos that it must have seemed like to everyone.

Of note this week in practice:

Mikrokosmos: Do I like the “music”? Is it music? No, and I don’t know, BUT I can feel myself getting just plain BETTER at playing piano every session I do with them.

Faber. I was AMAZED at how fast my lesson pieces shaped up this week as I stopped thinking about them as 1 of 16 and 2 of 16. They were the pieces in the lesson category. What I would be presenting to a teacher at the next lesson. (If I had one.) That attached an importance to the work on them that worked for me.

Gurlitt, both the RCM etude, Morning Greeting, and the exercise in Op. 117 are darling. They feel light and full of movement.

Full of Confidence. This Christopher Norton piece eventually grew on me. Working out a triplet with 2 accidentals in it was a technical challenge I relished conquering and the piece got my kids into the room asking what I was playing. Guess it’s true that the general public prefers it when piano players put forth music they can relate to without any “training”.

I still preferred the Gurlitt.

Have joyous practice everyone.

GREAT update!

It's that time of the week:

Finished/Set Aside
Slumber Song - Elissa Milne
Minuet - GP Telemann
Far Away - Teresa Richert

In Progress
Pachebel's Canon, arr. Faber
Musetta's Waltz - Puccini, arr. Faber
Mikrokosmos, Vol. 1, #25
Gurlitt Op. 117

Polishing
Minuette in A - Krieger
Fur Elise - Beethoven (Intro only)

What's new this week:
Czerny #12, Vol. 445

Not starting much new this week because I've got a trip coming up and I planned my pieces for the year with the idea of not having much in progress while I was gone. I was supposed to start the Czerny piece last week and didn't get to it, which brings me to the confession:

I only practiced 3.5 hours this week.

So much for my 10 hours week in and week out brag last week.

I don't really have a convincing reason why. All the excuses I could come up with have been realities in weeks where I got 10 hours or more in the past. Because they all showed up in one week? I'm not buying it.

What I think is probably going on is this thread.

Accountability to other people, however tenuous.

On my own before I ever started this thread I got my 10 hours or 15 or 8 or 3 or 20, most often 9-12, and went merrily on my way ticking off pieces I was satisfied with, reluctantly continuing pieces I'd grown bored with, but honestly needed ANOTHER week after already taking me three more weeks than I'd planned for, and starting new pieces I'd picked for myself according to my diabolical plan...but then I went and let somebody (or many somebodies, if the 3000+ reads of this thread is accurate) see the plan. I put my goals out there for others to see, possibly judge, or check in to see if I actually did what I said I would do...accountability to others. I don't do so well with that.

Probably a fear of failure thing, but that's a conversation for a therapist's office (if I had one), not the thread.

Here, in our privileged little bubble of space for those with time and resources to pursue music and spend time talking about it with other piano nerds, I want to focus on what happened on the bench this week and what happened was major dip in my practice hours. For whatever reason.

How will I fix the situation? Why bother to fix the situation? Who cares?

Last first: I do. You all know why or you wouldn't be reading piano nerd threads in the first place.

Why bother to fix it instead of just quit the thread? I have made MAJOR progress in my practice routine prior to this with what I've learned laying it all out in writing and taking into account what others had to say about it. My most recent iteration of every day lesson work and alternating days of classical and modern focus with Snell and RCM materials is WONDERFUL. I love it and I wouldn't have found it without the process this thread inspires. I don't want to lose that.

How to fix it? I'm assuming this particular soul-baring post will help. For this week I'm taking a buck-up approach and plan to be harsher with myself about my practice skipping. I want to play piano better, that takes practice and no one can put my butt on that bench but me. Scolding myself instead of letting it slide is uncomfortable for me. Tough love, as we call it in America.

I'll let you know how it goes. I will promise if it doesn't work I'll give it a few more tinkering sessions to make it work before quitting the thread, which is on the menu of possibilities because in the end the playing outweighs all other considerations. I'd hate to, but I will if I must.

In the meantime:

The pieces I finished this week were all little 1 pagers, each very easy. I liked the minuet by Telemann, the other two felt like exercises.

Pachebel is my first four-page piece. Oof-da. The PATIENCE required to get through a four page piece in sections is a new level for me. I can't get to all the sections of a piece in one day for the first time. EEK!

Memorizing the Minuette is going well. I like working with it extra slow as I memorize trying to override the muscle memory memorizing that won't stick. I'm hoping to having it comfortably memorized before my trip and see how well I remember it when I get back.

A question for you all: When you have a piece where all the sections can't realistically be gotten through in a day do you,

a) work on sections until they are perfect, then work the next section?
OR
b) work each section equally moving the whole piece forward at the same pace?

Happy practicing everyone.

Dear Holly. I hope I will find the time to write you more later. But please don't scold yourself. Just be friendly and encourage yourself. Treat yourself in the way a wonderful and patient piano teacher would treat you!