Hey Gang,

My current m.o when confronted with a difficult piece is to work on it page by page, so that I won't go on to the second page until I've got the first down pretty well..

Just wondering what the rest of you do. I'm only an intermediate, so just about anything I play these days qualifies as difficult. Currently working on Chopin's Raindrop. It's so gorgeous I don't mind the single page approach at all. But is it the most efficient way to go?

Many thanks,
CG

I can't say that the pieces I play are all that difficult but here's how my last recital piece went:

1) I learned the beginning bit of the song. This helps get me excited as I knew what the song sounded like via recordings. It is encouraging to hear me play the beginning.

2) Once the beginning is down, I would find one of the difficult sections to work on. This turned out to be right after the beginning part.

3) I ended up working out some of the ending. I did this so I could take a break from the difficult stuff. OF course, I ended up not playing the ending exactly on my recital audio recording. So I guess I wasn't paying enough attention at that time.

3) I worked on the other tricky section. It was a similar yet different version of the first section. Just note that these sections weren't all that difficult but were certainly not as easy as all the other parts.

4) I worked on the section between the two difficult sections. This was different than the beginning and ending parts of the song but I got the hang of it pretty quickly.

I guess with this one I was trying to get all the difficult sections worked out before finishing up all the easy ones.

Now, I ended up starting very late on the recital piece. I had two weeks until the recital opened to get it done but I still managed to get in as the #1 recording for the recital. I guess I can work quickly under some pressure.

However, being on a time crunch is a habit that I'm trying to get out from. That trick will only work while I still have easy short pieces that I can learn.

I also work on one page at a time, actually I break it down further, to one to two measures at a time. I am also an intermediate ( not an only") and I am proud to be playing! Folks have heard" me say that on many occasions.

I'm still working on Bach, "Toccata" and my instructor told me that it took her six months to learn it on organ and it's taking me six months to learn on piano! I do have a deadline... I have to play the entire piece next Thursday, so I'm definitely working on those various little places:-)

Be proud of your accomplishments! Keep on doing what you're doing! Take care

I'm much more similar to AnthonyB. The hard parts, for me, are going to take a *lot* longer than the easy parts, so I definitely start on them first and work on them a lot.

Right now I'm reworking my first recital piece from 2 years ago - The Entertainer from Joplin King of Ragtime - and by "reworking" I mean re-memorizing, once again working on the right hand octaves, and again paying attention to the harmonic progressions and inversions. I sometimes work on the octaves just two at a time. But my hands are so small, and my old self so slowed down, that the octaves may never come. So - besides working on the octaves, I'm also working on ways to cheat so that I don't have to use them but it will still sound closer to the original. But those octaves are only in the A & B parts - C & D are duck soup except for one left hand octave run. So I use C & D, as Anthony did with his intro, as a reward for having worked on A & B, and add the left hand run to my daily octave work. I'll probably revisit this piece for the rest of my life

The nice thing about learning the end of a piece before you get there going page by page is that then, when you're playing the whole piece, you get *more* confident rather than less so, and you play better at the end, which is what you'll remember

Cathy

This is the way you're typically taught in lessons.
The teacher has you master the first few measures, and
only then goes on to the next few measures, and so forth.
This is convenient for the teacher and gives the student
a sense of accomplisment.

But I see fundamental problems with this way. You master
the piece unevenly: the first part will always be better
learned that the last part. But in classical every single
measure of a piece has to mastered equally well.


In long, difficult pieces the first page or so is typically
easy, and so a player can be lulled into a false sense
of accomplishment, and when he starts hitting the
more difficult sections, he'll likely throw in the towel.
I knew someone who had mastered the first few
measures of a difficult piano concerto, and he
could play them beautifully, better than any commercial
recording, but that's all he could play of it. He
never buckled down and learned the rest.


I've abandoned this way of learning in favor of always
proceeding all the way through a piece, never stopping
to master any particular section. This way the piece
is learned evenly and you'll master every single
measure of it equally well. For example, suppose you
want to play a movement of a big concerto and you
have limited talent and experience. The first few
measures will typically be easy and anyone could master
them, but if you did that, you'd likely be discouraged as soon
as you started to hit the difficult sections, and you'd
end up with just the first few measures mastered.

However, if you proceeded all the way through the movement,
--no matter how slowly initially--never stopping to master
any particular section, you'd eventually master the
whole thing. For example, suppose you get the two-piano
score of some big concerto like the Rach. 3rd. (play
the second piano part where the first piano is silent
so you have something resembling a piano solo). This
is difficult and scares off even advanced players,
and an intermediate player might only be able to do
one measure a day very slowly, initially. But
I see this as no problem at all. After about a yr.
at one measure a day, you'll have gotten through
the whole movement. Now how about that, you've
"played" the first movement of the Rach. Third.
That should give you a sense of accomplishment.

Then go right back to the beginning and do the same
thing. Here is where all this seemingly futile effort
starts to pay off. You might find that the second
time through you've gained enough strength and
experience to do two measures a day instead of one,
which cuts the time to cycle through the movement
in half--a 100% improvement, which is nothing to
sneeze at in anyone's book. If you continue on
in this tortoise fashion (the hares mastered
the first few measures and quit, long ago), you'll
eventually be able to do a page a day, then two,
three, etc., and finally you'll be able to play the
whole movement in one sitting, although slowly and
with errors. This is what you've been shooting for,
because when you can do that, it's essentially like
any other piece and you can play it over and over until
it's mastered.

I agree mostly with AnthonyB as well. I almost never learn a piece by just starting from first to last. I work on different sections out of order, usually focusing on the most troublesome (the list of troublesome sections sometimes changes as I work through a piece).

I also look carefully at the structure of the piece since sections and motives are often repeated (sometimes with variations) so I often group these repeats for practicing. Sometimes I spend a whole session just practicing the transitions between sections, especially where there are big tempo, dynamic, or key changes within the piece

I do like to master the very beginning early so that I can get a settled feel for how to launch into the piece (getting a piece started just right is a critical thing for me in terms of establishing the right musical framework for the whole performance).

I almost never work on a page at a time. I will play straight through when I'm first learning it, getting the sound of it in my ears and the feel of it in my hands. I do this the first few times I play it. Then I pick a spot that I know will cause me trouble (or already is) and work on that alone until it's fixed or at least up to the tempo of the rest of the piece. I'll do this for a couple of days, then play straight through again to see how I'm doing overall.

I like to alternate between the focused practice and the "big picture" practice because playing entails so much of that. By going page to page, you do lose a sense of the overall piece. It's not wrong, though. You just have to find a way of practice that gets you the best results.

After reading through a piece and decided I want to learn it, I then break it down by major cadences (usually those don't follow page by page). Cadences are the most challenging parts of any piece and if they are learned first and can be confidently played, the rest of the piece should more easily fall into place.

Along with this method, I always enourage my students to "take small bites" and work on short segments for awhile then "reward" themselves by going through the section from start to finish. Gradually the entire piece is learned and the most difficult sections - the cadences - are never a problem.

Dr. J - the more you play the better your day

Personally, I wouldn't try playing something that's so difficult that it's beyond my level, but I want something that's challenging, yet still something that can be done at my skill level. Otherwise, I'll get sick and tired of it and get bored of it by the time I learn to play it properly.

I sight read the entire piece first, just to see what it's like. Then I try to play it as accurately as I can, but slowly enough so that I'll hit the right notes. If there are spots giving me trouble, I play them again. Also slowly. Then I also try to find patterns in certain parts so that it will be easier to remember and play and then tinker with different fingerings to see which one I am most comfortable with. I keep playing them until I get them right; playing at the right speed just comes naturally after you play it right.