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Newbie here. I've been working hard at lessons for almost a year, but only now have I really had more time to devote to practicing, which I love. Here's my question: When I'm working on a piece, I get bored with it after a while. I'm not memorizing many pieces, but happy enough when I can play it through without mistakes. I often feel like I've learned as much as I can from that particular piece, & want to move on. Is this the right way to look at my practicing, or should I be memorizing more?

If you feel you're learning then that's great. Working on a piece isn't only playing it without mistakes, you must do music and you must give that piece a meaning, you must feel the message, the idea, the beauty...
Move on when you feel you can express something with that piece, when you feel you've worked on musicality, technique and every other aspect.

Cheers.

Hi PianoMA,

You didn't say how long you'd been playing, only that you've been taking lessons for a year so I'm a bit uncertain where you are.

I think the answer does depend somewhat on where you are in your learning process. When you're first starting and for the first few years I think it's beneficial to "churn through" as many pieces as you can. Each piece you learn will introduce new challenges and, consequently, new learning. Also, it will have the spin-off benefit of improving your ability to read music because you'll be practicing it more and seeing different notation. If you take a long time to polish each piece to a high standard you will certainly obtain some benefit but I don't know that it's the best use of your practice time.

After you've reached a certain level of maturity I think AQP87 is right - you should concentrate on musicality and polishing pieces to a performance level.

Note that this is not to say you should completely ignore musicality and just play each piece "flat". You should always pay attention to dynamic markings, pedaling, etc., I just don't think it's beneficial to spend weeks polishing "Mary had a little lamb"

Hope this helps.

Actualy it would be interesting to see what a really mature and adept musician could do with Mary Had a Little Lamb. Can he or she make it shine without ornamentation, simply through purity of the playing? That must be the hardest of all.

I have a sudden urge to hear Mary played impressively.

OK, I shouldn't have used a specific example. There's no question a top artist can play even the simplest pieces with beauty and expression - the Ivo Pogorelich video of Fur Elise that's been posted in the past is a case in point - but the question was "when should I move on".

For those of us who aren't in the same league as Pogorelich, there's a point of diminishing returns where there's more to be gained by moving on to something else.

I agree with some of the others and have also had this experience myself and still go through it often. I get bored of pieces after a certain point and do also enjoy playing them without mistakes--as much as possible--and memorized. I think if you feel that you're learning, than fine! As long as you're having a lot of fun! If you're getting to be a more "mature" pianist, I'd suggest trying to polish up some works--keeping them for a week or two longer and fine-tuning your dynamics and such. That should be fun!

You will be able to finish your pieces in less time - efficiently and effectively - if you will choose music that is within your ability. The first sight reading will go well enough, you will work to play accurately and go slowly enough so mistakes do not creep in either in notes, fingering, or counting. You will work to find out all you can about the dimension of the piece through analysis, and put it all together like a puzzle. You will use all the musicianship skills you have learned to date and your natural talents.

You are not developing your musicianship for all it needs to know if you are spending your precious time spoon feeding yourself notes, correcting mistakes, and frustrating yourself.

You must be honest with yourself and know when you are not ready to take on a piece.

Playing piano is a highly coordinated physical and mental activity and for it to come out as written, you have to be attentive to every detail and play it accurately well coordinated and in a steady present moment beat.

Hi BB Player,

> ...there's a point of diminishing returns
> where there's more to be gained by moving
> on to something else.

I think that's the key point. However I have found that you can come back to a piece months later and improve it until you hit the diminishing returns stage again. My teacher calls it building up the piece in "layers".

I never actually consider a piece 'done' - I've just gone as far with it as possible at this time.

Hi Betty,

> You will be able to finish your pieces in
> less time - efficiently and effectively - if
> you will choose music that is within your
> ability.

Can you define "finish" in this context? Because without a clear goal you can't tell what is within your ability and we seem to have a circular situation with finish and ability being mutually referential...

Edit: I gave up trying to make the rest of my message make sense and edited it away...

LaValse,

Finished in every sense of the word!

This is not necessarily about trying to play a piece that you are having to learn new concept for - using the talents and acquired skills you already have. So that means the contents of the musical page must be readible to you in key signatures and time signatures and at tempos you already are familiar with and do well with.

If accidentals added in the score are confusing to you, you would finish learning the concept of chromatic scales and note identification before taking on something with lots of accidentals.

If you have never taken on 1/16 notes before, likewise. Learn techniques off of the music first, and then apply it to the specifics of this piece.

If 5b and impressionistic, 8 pages long, pp, gives you hives because all you've played recently is ragtime, would you start in cold on this "harder" piece, or would you do some preparatory work, listening to recordings or watching videos, playing easier impressionistic pieces, or neoclassical with these charistics?

Development and preparation for the task is a step often neglected. Climbing to the mountain top when you haven't walked the foothills? Or, even around the block in your neighborhood?

Finished would be accurate, musical, confident, consistant outcomes, memory, performance (sharing with others, communicating the composer, the piece and the era.) You need to know the significance of what you just accomplished: many students do not remember the name of the piece, nor the composer when playing pieces.

Some music is assigned because it is music to learn with, to cut teeth on, to battle it out. Some music needs the well prepared musician with a full "tricks and tools" box.

I'm not sure this is the answer you were looking for - each of us responds so differently.

I think the student needs to have every advantage when starting a piece. Unbalanced would be if there are more things you don't understand in the music than what you do understand.

Betty

Such fabulous advice, and you've all given me something to think about. All of a sudden, I don't feel like such a dope for not having the right answers to my piano questions, because I don't think there ARE any right answers! I'm so happy I found this forum. Thank you everyone!