Hey y'all

Whenever I start learning a new piece I make great progress at first. I normally make it about halfway through and then I just hit a brick wall. Everything I learn past that point I forget and I find it hard to put in the effort to pick up where I left off. Does this happen to anyone else? What do you do about it?

Try learning your next piece from the end to the beginning.

Yes thief, it's called the law of diminishing returns. It happens to all of us.

I can learn just about any piece (that's within my abilities of course) in just a few days. After 2-3 days it will be at approx 75% of where it will ever get. After another few weeks, I can get the piece to about 85-90%. To get to 95% it will take me many months if not longer. I don't think I have ever got past 95% however. The amount of time and effort to do that is just not worth it for me. Especially when I can get another piece to 75% in a matter of several days and start the whole vicious cycle all over again!

I'm just being honest. Sometimes trying to squeeze the last few percentage points out of a piece just requires so much work and is SO innefficent, it just isn't worth it. I justify this mindset by saying that in the time it would have taken me to "fine-tune" a piece, I could have potentially exposed myself to so many other pieces that could have expanded my musical horizons as well as exposed me to many new and different melodies, fingering positions, chord combinations etc. Also, there is a very fine line between obtaining a sense of accomplishment vs becoming overly frustrated. I need to be careful with that one!