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This is a personal preference thing, I was just curious what other people do. I like to keep practising something until it I don't detect any mistakes when I play it. I think that's okay for relatively short pieces (less than 1.5-2 full pages worth).

But I think for longer pieces (whenever I might reach that standard ) I need a more flexible rule of when to say "Good enough".

I was thinking maybe a maximum threshold of one small mistake every 2 full pages of music. Obviously I'm not aiming for perfection, just progress. What do others do? Are you mostly Must-Be-Perfect Obessessives, or more Laid back?

Hi Julii, I'm definitely in the "good enough" camp, but that's because--like most of us--I'm my own worst critic and don't know if I've *ever* played a piece "perfectly". My goal is to master a piece well enough so that I can record it, with the recording containing mistakes that only I (and perhaps others who are very very familiar with the piece) would notice, e.g., things like a skipped note here or there. If it has major bloopers (obviously and clashing wrong notes, for example), I'll keep trying.

I play pieces that are 3+ pages each and my teacher will not let me drop them until they are basically perfect. By perfect I mean dynamics, phrasing, timing, and speed are all on the mark ... he doesn't really care about the odd finger slip though ... provided I "get" the piece and am clearly confident playing it. Personally, I think letting pieces go too early resuts in never really learning how to play the piano.

Maybe there are times when you have to let a piece go, if it is not inspiring you enough to want to achieve perfection.

Sometimes, moving on, is the right thing to do, if only to stop you getting bogged down in a piece that you may never even want to play, in the future.

I think Rob has a good point. My teacher had me working on a song for what felt like FOREVER. If I held a note a hair to long I had to keep working on it. Nothing went by unnoticed-NOTHING. And while I do believe that's a good thing. I was SO sick of playing that song. Sometimes when you move on you learn new things and have a fresh mind and feel rejuvenated. Then you go back to that other song and you are playing it better. So my theory is: when a song get so painful you can't stand to play it anymore it's time to move on.

My teacher's approach is different. When he thinks I've gotten a good overall grasp of the piece and the technical problems we move on to something else. He then leaves it to me whether to continue working on the polish of a particular piece on my own.

Sometimes I keep the piece in mind and continue working on it; sometimes I drop it because I just don't have time for everything. Basically, my teacher's approach right now it to help me learn how to learn a piece and to introduce me to a wide range of literature and technical issues, not to stick with me on every piece until it's performance-ready.

Kymber, just curious, how long is "what felt like FOREVER"? I often work on a piece for about 4-5 months. Usually about 6 pages at intermediate level. I wish it would be perfect like Tony above but that is not the case -- maybe a mistake per page. My big problem is I'm not at the correct speed, so that is what I'm planning on working on next--easier pieces or ones I've done. Would like to know how much time do you spend on a piece?

Hi Julii,
For me there is a big difference between "dropping" a piece and "moving on." My approach is to learn the piece well enough to play it with no areas of major difficulty and without the sheets. Then I add it to one of my two daily play lists, usually dropping some older piece from lists. At that point I continue to work on it (or at least play it) every other day for months or even years. Once a piece moves to the lists I usually start another new piece. Most of the time I have 2 new pieces going and around 20 list pieces. I find it takes most pieces several weeks to several months to gel, at which point I'm comfortable recording them or playing them in public.

This method has served me well in my nearly 3 years of learning. I'm always working on new and challenging pieces, yet always have something smooth enough to play when asked (or at least tolerated).

I practice until the piece becomes a part of me. Once that's accomplished it's just a matter of occasional practice to keep the technical abilities up to par.

My experience has been a lot like packa's. For my first year of lessons, we worked through a couple of pages of a method book each week. With that book, we would work on a piece until I had a good grasp of the technical issues (usually a week or two) and then move on. In addition to the method book, we worked on teaching type pieces from Burgmueller and a few others. These pieces would generally stick around for a few weeks as I worked on technical issues and dynamics and brought them to a level where I was comfortable playing them and where my teacher was satisfied with the results. We did drop at least one Burgmueller piece or two (and a couple of others here and there) before I was playing it smoothly since I had mostly gotten down the technical issues but didn't expect to add them to my repertoire.

Now I am out of the method book and we're focussing on bringing my playing to a solid intermediate level. My pieces are coming from a variety of sources and styles and we are spending more time on each piece to perfect the technical issues and dynamics. If I find a piece particularly fun or pretty, we will work on that for a longer period of time to polish it. Based on my expectations of my playing and my teacher's, I think there's been a natural progression over the last year to bringing my pieces to a more polished level before moving on. I'm also hoping to start recording my playing more often so will definitely want to polish pieces more thorougly.

I think it's important to continually reevaluate the music I'm playing and what I'm learning from it. For me, it's not always easy to put a piece on "vacation" and come back to it later but sometimes it's the only way to move forward with it. I have a few pieces now that are due to come back from vacation soon :-)

It’s my philosophy that we can always improve on a piece or an arrangement, no matter how good we are at it. So, with that being said, if I feel like I have accomplished an arrangement good enough for me to recognize what it is, I’m ready to move on to something else and then come back and revisit the piece in question at a later date and improve some more.

Does that make sense??

Take care,

Rick

I'm always working on 2-3 pieces. I don't worry about the occasional note mistake, but I'm picky about getting the rhythm correct. If it's a shorter piece for a class, then once the performance is done I'm done. But if it's a piece I love, I work on it until I play it without mistakes and I enjoy playing it. Basically until i would feel comfortable performing it for someone. Then once I know it well, I'll review it once a week or so. I'm not taking lessons right now so I only pick pieces I really love and that are a bit above my level. It takes me a long time to perfect a piece, months perhaps, but then I'm doing other things at the same time, a little bit of blues, jazz, some easier sight reading. I just mix it up so I don't get bored.

I'll work on a piece until I can express it the way I want to express it. This typically means I've committed it to memory because I'm such a bad reader.

Then I'll make video of myself playing it. It will then either stay in my repertoire or, if it drops from my repertoire then at least I'll have a recording of it so I won't get depressed a year down the line when I see how much I've forgotten!

This thread began with a really good question. But I'm not sure I can answer it. Perhaps, more accurately, I'll offer three answers.

I am currently involved in a program that involves a 'daily piece' and project pieces. The daily piece is really a form of sight reading. It's mandatory and people complain about it. But at the stroke of midnight, it's a new day and a new daily piece.

Hard, easy, good, bad, tomorrow is a new day--and a new daily piece.

The project pieces are different. You work on them for an extended period. But, even there, it's not a matter of sounding good, objective perfection or subjective satisfaction. Most of us seem to have a learning objective that we are expected to focus on, and master. That's the point of the project.

All that said, there is nothing keeping anybody from going back and revisiting something they worked on previously, whether a daily or a project piece. That can be particularly satisfying when you've learned something new that allows you to deal better on project piece if it is something that previously stymied you, or when you've heard someone else struggling the same issues that previously baffled you. Of course, that's on your own time.

This may be too utilitarian for most people's taste, and utterly lacking in any mystical approximation of perfection, but it's working for me.

This is such an interesting question, because I just made the decision to work on "easy" pieces so I can actually work on timing and dynamics. I was so frustrated working at pieces "at my level" because while I'm a good sight reader, I just don't have the technical skills to support a successful longer piece. I think was the reason why I was so bad at memorization. Now that I'm working very diligently on the scales, arpeggios and cadences of the major AND minor keys and working on the dynamics and proper timing of these easier pieces, I'm finding that I'm more able to feel "satisfied" with each piece and am able to "let go" to learn something new.

For me, I get around 80% of a piece *down* within the first week or so. I probably further refine the piece to close to 85-90% (of MY abilities) within the second and third week. The problem is that this is usually very close to the best it gets. Even spending another couple of months on the piece (which I usually do) will only yield a few extra percentage points in terms of refinement.

The law of diminishing returns seems to be in full swing when applied to my piano playing.

On a side note, my recital pieces are ALWAYS performed MUCH better weeks/months AFTER the recital has passed! I'm not really sure why because I DID put a LOT of time an effort into them to begin with but somehow I just seem to be able to perform the piece much more relaxed and with fewer errors at some point after the original submission. I almost wish we could re-submit former recital pieces again as mine are much better now than when I originally submitted them. Maybe there is some truth in the saying that a piece must *season* a little before it is to be performed. In my case that is SO true!

I know what you mean about those diminishing returns! And quite frankly, like you, I'd rather spend the time learning something new than trying to make a piece 1/2 of 1% better.

Didn't you make a great suggestion a long time back that we could have a thread where people do a "before and after" kind of thing where you re-record a piece you used in an earlier recital to show (one hopes) progress that's been made? We really ought to do that sometime. I still cringe when I listen to my very first recital submission.

YES Monica. I think at some point we should have a RE-cital just for that very reason but I have a similar idea that will address this issue that I will discuss in a new/different thread soon. Right now I have to go innoculate 20 Llamas for rabbies as we're having a very bad rabbies outbreak in our immediate area (northern Arizona).

We've already had 28 confirmed positive rabid foxes...(one which died on our property 2 days ago) as well as a dead cow.

It's really sad to see these beautiful animals die such a violent death.

Very interesting replies!
I suppose I'm too anxious; if I thought only perfection was good enough I'd never progress at all. The anxiety of worrying that I was going to make a mistake makes me want to make a mistake just so I can put myself out of my misery. Ditto why I would never do a recital/performance or exam. I'd rather just blow it decisively than put up with the anxiety or worrying that I was going to blow it entirely. Much much easier to fail than to put up with the nerves.