I'm a 14 year old student, who is very encouraged to play, and very proficient for my age. When I was looking foward to play the revolutionary etude or the Anti-Aries fire scorpion concerto (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGfh8Qy8NtI but i'd probably edit some parts). Anyways, he told me to start practicing the School of Velocity, and frankly, I hate it. I can't concentrate at all, and make random, stupid mistakes. Any ideas to get enough focus to stop making these mistakes, because I'm getting no where.

Certainly "hating the guts" of Czerny is not going to help in the first place :P !

Now, although I never had problems with Czerny's monotony - as it seemed "more musical" (if one may say that about his studies) than the Hanon or the scales I "hated".

So here's what I did with Hanon & scales:
I played them "as musically as possible" this mostly meaning I had various dynamics for them. Like the classic going crescendo upwards and decrescendo downwards but also the reverse, while also having microdynamics for the Hanon patterns (or the short arpeggios in the scales)

I also played different articulations, starting with the most common staccato or legato to other articulations like "two by two" or "two legato" + "two staccato"

And there was always playing in rhythms that made it "fun"

So, I was concentrating more on some aspects of how I WANTED to play the thing than the fact that it bored me.

I don't know if this is helpful in any way... but it's all I could think of. I mean it is obviously more a psychological block than anything else. And it all leads to a vicious circle. It's just like when you decide "you hate Maths" and because of that you don't allow yourself to understand it and therefore you go on and "hate Maths even more".

I've just read your "first post"

You can look at Czerny as your "coach" to getting to play the things you are really looking forward. What Czerny actually does is make a "song" for each of the problems you may encounter when playing the real difficult pieces you like, where you have all sorts of technical problems all in the same piece.

For example you were asking about repeated notes. Well, no. 22 of the School of Velocity addresses that. Once you've "mastered" no. 22 you'd have no question about "how that guy does it" you'd do it too

Unfortunately I couldn't find a youtube file that showed no.22 up to speed (there's a recording by Vivien Slater of all the op. 299 where you can listen of how they should be played.)

The only one I could find was of an 8 year old girl playing... not bad at all considering her age, but definitely not as fast as Slater plays them (or as some editions indicate in the tempo half note at 96)
8 year old playing (no.18 and) no 22

Opus 299 is indispensible in my book, most of the other Czerny volumes are not.

What does your teacher ask you to think about when you are working on them?

As a student, many times I thought I had a certain selection 'finished' and mastered. My teacher would then ask me to start it over as if from scratch with a whole other set of goals.

And most times, it wasn't about speed. It might be about, for example, making phrases end gracefully, or hearing basic diatonic melodic order, how to subtly underscore right hand passages with the chords in the left, etc.......in other words it was about gaining musical knowledge and using your imagination.

As an adolescent, I just obviously lacked the maturity to think about these things as they would apply to a Chopin etude (or in a Mozart Sonata, for that matter).

Well, have you tried playing SLOWLY with a metronome???

I don't like Czerny, either. You might be better served by using the Celebration Series: Perspectives etude books. Some really, really interesting music in those volumes.

I can't help but smile. With the name "School of Velocity", what is the chance that a student is going to have the wisdom to *not* play it as fast as possible?

Maybe you can try Czerny's Op.636 first, the Preliminary School of Velocity. It is also available at IMSLP .

If you just yell at yourself "FOCUS!!!" then you get nowhere - you found that out, I guess. :-)

To get focus, you have to focus on something. Maybe memorizing some of the Czerny stuff will make it easier to play without all those mistakes, because memorizing makes you notice the whole thing and not just one note at a time.

Random mistakes are not random at all - they just seem that way because your focus is random.

Hope that helps a little...

I'm there with you brother. I'm in the same book and it is kicking my butt.

Oh man, I feel your pain!!! I've been there. I thought I was pretty good, too ("playing" a Beethoven sonata), and then in January, my teacher started me on The Dreaded Opus 299.

I thought I was going to die.

I was so bad. I felt like a dumb beginner with spaghetti noodles for fingers. My practice time increased 50% almost over night just working on etudes, and I even rearranged all the furniture in my room 3 times that first month as my way of venting that frustration. After feeling pretty depressed about piano in general, I changed my attitude. At the end of each bad practice (or worse, my lesson), I would open my copy of 299 to the picture of Czerny at the front and say "You may have won this battle, but I'm going to win the war." I was not about to let some nerdy-looking dead guy beat me and make me quit and give up piano.

In some ways, the etudes are like learning how to ride a bike or juggle or things like that. You try and mess up until your brain figures out how to tell your fingers what you want them to do. If I'm having serious problems with a section, I'll run through it a couple of times as slowly as I need for it to be almost correct right before I go to sleep. More often that not, the next morning it will much better. Not as often, but sometimes, that can happen with a whole piece-- it will just "click." I'll also mark the harmonic progressions to help me to read as whole "words" rather than individual "letters" (if that makes sense). It's really important to play the notes correctly and not fudge through any problems, and if it's slow at first don't worry about it. Eventually, you will get better. Like I said, I started 299 in January, and at the moment, I'm polishing etude #9, hoping to add #10 next week or the week after. It seems each one is getting a little easier to pick up.

Hope that helps!

Czerny 299 is an excellent exercise and also very musical. I love those exercises.