Besides frustration, does any real harm come from attempting a piece that is beyond your skills? No piece in mind and no particular motive for asking except curiosity from reading a related thread.

-Tom

The downside is that once you've learned a piece badly, it will be difficult to UNLEARN it and relearn it the right way later.

I'm not the expert but I was told that when you are able to play a piece correctly, even if very slowly with only one hand you are learning to play correctly. But if the piece is so hard that mistakes are frequent then you are learning the mistakes. So as long as it is not so hard that all you do is endless repetitions of "wrong" you'd be OK.

I spent years playing pieces that were over my head (since virtually all of them were). In my case it hurt me in two ways:

1) The only way I could play them was to painstakingly memorize them note-by-note, and then practice them until I was happy with the result. Consequently, I did not develop reading skills as I should have.

2) I have no doubt that in the process I ingrained any number of bad habits and poor techniques.

I have now embarked on a journey to become a "real" pianist, but if I had only done so long ago and started where I should have, gradually building from pieces within my reach...

Wow you are scaring me. I do repeat a lot of "wrong" when I learn 2 voices inventions. So many of them that it becomes frustrating. And yes I dont read, instead I memorize everything from A to Z. I just memorize each hand separate then HT and repeat slowly. I could make 0 wrong but I guess I just try to play too fast too early. I should try to learn like 1 note per second maybe.

But on the other hand it only takes me 1 week to learn an invention so I dont know what to think ?? Could you learn badly and fast at the same time ?

Play what you wish to keep the passion burning, just don't forget to keep a few pieces where you work on your reading skills. Most harm is done by setting a limit on yourself. If the piece is over your head, work twice as hard.

Break down what is bogging you down and see if you can find a corresponding technical exercise from ie, Hanon that addresses that problem.

Just don't forget to also work on pieces where you can play through by reading.

Define "over your head" a little, please...

I had a friend, a guitarist, who was obsessed with the 3rd movement of the Moonlight sonata, Beethoven. Well, it simply is impossible for him to learn it. He was trying for 6 months and got down to the first page or something (probably less). I mean, it's one thing to try and challenge yourself a little, to get something a bit harder, and another thing to get something very very difficult for your current status.

Personally, if I can't make decent progress within 2 weeks then I deem it to be over my head. But that's just me. It can take me 2-3 months to learn an 'at my level' piece but I can (and so can my teacher ) tell after a couple of weeks if it's not working.

Do you have a teacher? If you don't and taking a long time doesn't frustrate you I think it's fine. I do agree that mistakes are hard to unlearn so you'll want to go so slow that mistakes don't happen. If you speed up and they appear again....slow it down again. You'll also want to use a metronome to ensure you aren't learning incorrect timing. That's also very hard to unlearn because after a while 'wrong' sounds 'right.'

Another rap I've heard on learning pieces over your head is the time it takes. You may spend months or years on a piece which could be learned more quickly if you had better skills. That time could be better used learning a lot of simpler, progressive pieces.

If you actually speak the counting out loud plainly and clearly not running the words together then there is no way you can go to fast. How many people can say "1 n & a 2 n &..." faster than about 40 BPM? I think I get tongue-tied before 30 BPM. At that speed you might be able to sight read.

When you play over your head the blood rushes down out of your arms making them tire quickly.

I am certainly no expert to give advice on this subject but I would say that I feel that the best way I've made progress in my playing is by frequently working above my current level. I recently moved from pop pieces (i.e. Billy Joel, Elton John) to George Winston. With Winston, I feel like now I'm really playing. I tried Holly and the Ivy (don't know how popular this one is) and it was way beyond anything I'd ever tried and two months later, I can play it through at George Winston's tempo. As I was learning it, I kept feeling like I could never play such a piece but because I wanted to play it so badly, I kept at it and now it's mine to play. It's in my head and I play it through all the time and love it.

I am probably not a great example because I've done just about all of my playing without the help of a teacher so I don't know if I have bad habits, etc. However, I decided to go for classical music and so I started lessons last week. I told the teacher that I wanted to play Fantaisie Impromptu and he said lets see what you can do and so I stumbled through it (I was working on it for a few weeks) and he said, I think you can play this and so that's what we've started on. I am extremely excited to work with my teacher and on this piece and I'm glad he is letting me go ahead on a piece that it clearly way beyond my level.

Years ago, I tried lessons for about 2-3 months (I had already been playing on my own and had even learned up to a Chopin Nocturne-op 55, no.2), and the teacher took me to ground zero starting on a very basic Mozart piece. It drove me crazy and so I had to give up lessons and keep going on my own which I was just enjoying so much more.

I would also add that in the Adult Beginner section, Hugh Sung is teaching Claire de Lune from scratch. People have questioned him on why he is teaching such a complex piece to beginners and he provided a very nice personal story about why it is important to try pieces with such beauty that one is pushed to learn beyond what one would consider possible. I very much agree with him.

Good point. But when you do develop those reading skills you find you learn pieces faster.
I think this is the biggest disadvantage to playing over your head. You're learning a piece, but not much more. Subsequent pieces are no easier, whereas if you build up the skills (including and perhaps especially reading) they are.

I think for some people not working on at least one thing over your head isn't an option. I find if I stick to just the "where I'm supposed to be playing" stuff I can easily lose sight of my motivation for playing in the first place. I have limited time available, a short attention span, and trouble getting myself to play songs within my skill range if I just plain have no interest in the song or piece. I've chosen smaller sections of things that are above me and learn just a portion (a chorus here, 1st verse there) as my goal and figure I can go back and learn the whole thing later on if I choose.

Hmmm...define "skill". I think sight-reading is a separate (and very enviable) skill. I guess every player strives to sight-read at their playing level. Is there anyone that can do this?

PS-I sight-read "It's a Small World" the other day from my daughter's Disney songbook. Such a fun little song.

Playing just a sniff over your abilities is doable but you teeter the edge of frustration, even anger at times.

If there is this exceptional piece that pops your cork and is realistically within your absolute limits, then I say go for it. It has to be REALLY worth it to justify the amount of effort it will take. Again, the piece MUST be still be within your own galaxy somewhere. Be realistic.

I agree with most of the comments so far. At least for me, the whole point so far has been to learn progressively more difficult pieces in order to get better. It helps to keep me interested and motivated and is extremely rewarding. I would like to think I'm learning something new with each piece.

Also, I think it's pretty clear when one attempts something that's outta their range (at least within the first week or two). I know I've had my share. Better to stop right there and pick it up another day. My next piece will be one of those, and I think I'm ready now for it.

There's a term in second language acquistion, i+1 (i= input, which in SLA is language that a learner hears). The companion term is o+1 (where o= output, in other words, the speech production of the learner). The plus 1 refers to "just beyond current level." (In other words, the current level would be zero)

The idea (to really understate these concepts!) is that optimal learning happens with i+1 and o+1, not, say i+5 or o+7.

So, to bring it back to piano, if you're playing something just beyond your current level,(say p+1) it will feel hard, it will be hard, but not impossible. Not only should you be able to get the piece into your fingers, (say say, in anywhere from a few weeks to 2 months?) but you will benefit from the learning process.

The flip side is that, with a piece that is p+5 (or even p+3) you will be overwhelmed by the difficulty and the learning process may break down. (I wonder if this is what some times leads self-learners to give up).

To draw on what Bluekeys said:


So the downside to playing a piece that's way over your head is that you actually will be delaying your progress. By working on p+1 or p+2 pieces, you will be advancing, enjoying new music, and also preparing yourself for future attempts at pieces that are currently too hard. In the process, you will be gaining pianistic and musical skills and knowledge that broaden your abilities. Then, when that "in over my head" piece suddenly feels like it's only p+1, the process of acquiring it will be not only much easier, but more enjoyable.

Did I just coin a new term? (Does this post need a reference list? Can you tell I'm working on my master's thesis??)

I think you did, and I like it.

I'm still waiting for an official definition of "over your head" too.

I guess, based on all the feedback here, it's a piece that one undertakes that one can not play 'at all' - even slowly - after a couple of weeks. I was surprised that some said months.

I'll give some examples of well-known pieces that I love, but I know are over my head: Chopin, Fantasie Impromptu, Beethoven, Pathetique Sonata, 1st movement, and Moonlight Sonata, 3rd movement (that's the fast one, right?). I think I'll need another 5 years (at my current rate of development) to take on these. Now...if I get a teacher....

I agree with mr_super-hunky. I admit that the point made by those posters above who warn that learning too difficult pieces may slow your progress is valid. However, it has been said many times on other occasions on this forum: In case or us, adult beginners who are not for the rat race of becoming first-class pianists, it’s the journey that should be enjoyed, not the destination.

It’s like traveling or hiking for pleasure. Not always you select a route which is the shortest in terms of distance or time. What you experience meanwhile also counts...

Yes, in general I advocate learning through the best available methods and rejecting outdated and ineffective ones, like Hanon.

But in regard to selecting the repertoire, I would say that if a particular piece is somewhat (within reason) above your current level, but you love it and it gives you enjoyment and sense of fulfillment, go for it even if the route is theoretically suboptimal.

Another caveat is also compelling: that you may acquire bad habits. But it is valid only if you don’t have a teacher and in this case you will acquire them anyway.

As to the issue of an impediment to developing the reading skills: we normally study a number of various pieces in parallel, don’t we?

Here’s another downside that I’ve had first hand experience with. If you do spend months or even years learning a piece that is “over your head” (while continuing to work on more appropriate pieces for your current level) and you get to where you can play the piece fairly well, don’t let anyone else hear you play this “upper level” piece. Once you do, it’s hard to go back to playing the things that are at your level for them and you realize it’s going to take you a very long time before you’ll have your next “extra special” piece ready for performance.

Undone

If, for the purpose of the definition, we allow playing with errors, someone who knows the musical notation may be able after a short time to play slowly and with errors even a piece which still will be beyond his/her capabilities when near-error-free performance is required as the goal.

OTOH, if we require that within the prescribed time limit of a couple of weeks one should be able to play without any errors whatsoever, albeit slowly, I think such requirement would be too stringent. Eliminating flubs requires neural development which might take more time, particularly for longer pieces.

And secondly, there are pieces where it’s all about speed, such as etudes. So being able to play them slowly means nothing.

So IMO no “official definition” is possible and necessary. It’s better to use your own (or better still, your teacher’s) judgment.

You are one of those lucky guys whose audience is capable of judging and appreciating the effort put into the piece {emoticon of envy}.

As it seems (there was a long thread about it), in most cases the listeners couldn't care less how difficult your pieces are.

Yeah, the main risk is of accidentally learning to play it incorrectly and drilling in a bad habit that's difficult to break afterward. It also takes much longer for less gain than learning pieces at your own level.

That said, if you're really determined to learn a piece beyond your level, it is possible.

So anything you can't read through and play is over your head?

My experience is that the time it takes to do the rote memorization of playing something over my head could have been better spent playing something in my league. To illustrate, I'll cite a hypothetical extreme. I've been playing for a little more than two years, and I can confidently say that I could, at this point, memorize something like Liszt's La Campanella. It would almost certainly take at least a year, after which point I could play most of the notes, poorly, at slower tempo than is indicated by the music. But I could play the notes, and, to most non-musicians, this means I could play the piece. But you and know this is different from actually playing the music. The time I spend between now and then could have spent working on the fundamentals I will one day need if I actually tackled the music. And I could also have been playing other fun things.

So to me, the main downside is time. It just takes me too long to choreograph playing things that I ought not be playing. Yet.

OP here. Thanks for all the thoughtful responses. You're giving me a lot to think about.



I'm shredding Frere Jacques right now, but everything else pretty much fits the definition. I didn't give it much thought, honestly. I suppose on the spectrum between a small stretch and forgetaboutit, I was thinking closer to forgetaboutit. Hunting, pecking, etc. I appreciate the various meanings people have given it, and the accompanying perspectives.



Yes, me, and he's incompetent. But my circumstances are what they are, I'm afraid. Maybe someday...



I was thinking mainly in terms of the ability to put your fingers on the right keys at roughly the right time. Reading hadn't crossed my mind, but of course it should have.

-Tom

My two cents are that you should always play a little above your level. You will learn quickest that way.

If you play things too far above your level, the learning curve will be too high and you won't make very much progress and it will take forever to get better.

Also as said before you ingrain bad habits and restrict your sight reading ability.

This makes sense but I would think a more sensible approach would be to only spend part of your daily practice time on a piece that is "over your head". I think for a lot of people, this may be even more so for adult learners, particularly those who are learning on their own, there's a real desire to learn favorite pieces even when they are far beyond the current skill set. I do the same myself and to be honest, I'd lose some motivation if I were forced to only play at my current level.