I've been taking lessons for about three years now, and my dream is to be playing anything chopin, liszt, mozart, bach, beethoven, handel, schumann, mendelssohn, ect. but i can't play hardly any of their music at all! i can play chopins prelude in c minor easy, prelude in e minor, a major, and sorta play his g major no. 2, solfeggio, some schumanns album for the young, couple waltzs by tchaikovsky (easy), first two clementi sonatinas ect you get the picture. i am about 6-7 months from starting the bach invention adventure, but i am so terribly afraid that i am not going to be capable of playing at the level i want.

my whole calling in life is to focus on training myself at the piano it is the only thing i care to do. i am constantly battling anxiety because it is such a difficult task and i have such limited foresight (regarding my possible progress). it is really unfortunate to start at the age of 21 but there is no time for regrets. i will not quit no matter what, but at the same time i feel as if i am in love with someone that speak an entirely different language than me, and i am too stupid to learn in order to even communicate nor form a relationship!

i have so much music to learn, but considering the rate at which i am currently moving i can see no possible outcome that allows me the time and intellect required to harness even a sixth of my desires.

my teacher says i have nothing to worry about, but her explanations are always dependent of the future, meaning, it will come in time.

i want to desperately play rachmaninoff but i fear i will never be able to reach such a status.

/rant

Instead of focussing on how far you have to go, focus on how far you've come. I think when you look at it that way, you'll realize you are closer than you think.

+1

No worries, it will happen in time. I have seen people blossom into accomplished pianists. It appears to happen all the sudden but I think it's more cumulative in nature. It's like all what we learn, theories, technique, voicing, etc need to reach critical mass for that to happen. Anytime before, you may not be able to see visible progress. So keep your hope up, smile and move on.

Andy and Farmgirl gave you fantastic advice. Just so you know, when I read over what you have done in just three short years, I thought "Wow, that is a lot of progress!"

It saddens me to see that this is your focus.

Playing piano is a wonderful gift that not everyone experiences. You, apparently, have this gift.

It has been said many times but bears repeating. Enjoy the process. There will never come a time when you will be able to sit back and say "Wow, I made it ." .... No matter the level of skill you attain. Enjoy the music. Be thankful that you are one of the lucky ones that can do this.

Setting goals are fine but don't make ... reaching the goal ... the only moment of enjoyment. That would be a great mistake. Enjoy every moment you are playing. If you do that you will have a lifetime of personal enjoyment. And, if you fall short of "your goal" ... you will know, then, that reaching "your goal" was never really that important. It was the process of working toward the goal that mattered.

Enjoy !

Understand that no matter when you start, it takes YEARS to get to where you want to be. And I don't mean 3. Closer to 10 to scratch the surface. You are playing some wonderful beautiful music that some can never even think about playing, and it's music by the masters. Instead, you are dissatisfied with it because it's not the hardest music out there to play. Enjoy where you are, love the music you are playing and give it everything you've got. Not only will you get where you want to go quicker that way, but you will also enjoy the process.

As a side note, when I say "get where you want to go" please understand that for some of us, music is a never-ending journey. Some people want to play distinct pieces and once they do, that's it for them. Others keep finding new challenges and discover new pieces and composers that we know we won't ever get to play them all.

Thanks for the feedback. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy playing very much ,except once I've repeated something about 400 times. Even after much repetition I still enjoy playing said songs but I would love to learn things a bit faster I guess. The main thing that bothers me is emotionally/artistically much of the beginner type music is designed for children. I want to touch the dark tragic Sou of Rachmaninoff, or the bravura passagework of an excitied romantic.. I know it takes years upon years I just hope I can feel those emotions I love everyday of it though.

I know what you mean. That is something I encountered as a teen in my lessons. My teacher was having me play music that didn't speak to my [tortured] soul . Have a talk with your teacher, tell her which pieces really speak to you, and perhaps she/he can find something at your current level of playing that will satisfy you emotionally.

1+
Wonderful advice from a professional, above.
Since your title to this post is "some advice please", I would only add try hard to be optimistic. There is a lot of negativity and pessimism in your original post.
You are in your 20's? My gosh, you have PLENTY of time! I think it's your attitude and anxieties you need to work on the most!

You are playing some nice intermediate literature after 3 yrs. Seems like your progress is quite appropriate. Stick with it and you will get there. No one goes from elementary school directly to grad school. All those "easy pieces" are giving you the foundation you need.

Dear Woody Allen,

Yes, lighten up a bit. Let's not go in for the NY neurotic tortured soul thing, at so young an age. ;-)

The mark of an educated man, is to realize how ignorant he is. I think stress is in fact something that propels one, from point A to B (or octave to octave, in our case).

Should you ever truly feel, that you've "arrived," you're not worth a **** to yourself or anyone else. Or, if you want psycho-babble from Dr. Oz, "be there in the moment" or as John Kay from the band Steppenwolf said, "let the sound take you away."

If hands touch the keyboard everyday, or routinely, you have what it takes and the journey is the thing (as the poets are wont to say). It "do" take time, though, as I've also been finding out along the way.

Be of good cheer, my friend.
--Pat / an old, 60s-70s rock and roller.

I'm just an amateur pianist, but I've often performed easy pieces in front of audiences in ways that have left them with their jaws dropped and/or clapping furiously. Technically easy pieces (and especially overplayed and overheard easy pieces) are great opportunities for you to experiment with interpretation and expression to satisfy your darkest emotions or to startle people with bravura.

I have found a number of children pieces to be incredibly expressive. I had a "Tiger Mom" when I was a kid and I was forced to learn the piano from maybe 4 years of age. By the time I went to primary school when I was 6 years old, my whole day after school was booked out solid with private tutor after private tutor for all the different subjects PLUS foreign languages that she wanted me to learn like French. After the tutors had all left came the allotted times for piano practice followed by violin practice. I hated all this and used to run away from home to watch cartoons. Then I'd get found by the nanny who'd take me back home and cane me. Then, she'd tell my mom and my mom would cane me. Then, when my dad got home, they'd tell my dad and my dad would cane me. Then, after dinner, they'd make me sit at the piano to make up for the practice that I'd missed. I hated practising on the piano.

Then, one time, this happened again, and I was made to sit at the piano late at night and forced to practice alone in the dark with just the light from a small lamp on. The piece I was learning came from a book called "Children's Pieces". The actual piece was called "The Voice of the Heart". I was hurting from the wounds inflicted by the cane and bawling my eyes out in tears, and choking and hiccuping as I played the keys of this hated piano. Suddenly though, I heard the sadness in the melody and it resonated with what was happening to me emotionally. Then, I played the repeated staccato chords in the bass and I felt the pounding of my heart in time with the chords. The music validated my emotional state and nursed me and my wounds in the dark. That was the moment I first discovered the value of music. Let me reassure you that, as I grew up over the years (I am now in my 40's), my playing of this "children's piece" has continued to evolve in emotional interpretation. At one stage in my young adulthood, when I was psychologically like an overheated pressure-cooker already leaking steam and just about ready to explode, the way I played the plaintive melodic line of this piece, with the angry staccato bass chords accelerating and getting louder on every single beat, I made this "children's piece" the emotional equivalent of Chopin's Prelude in D minor Opus 28 No.24! Thankfully, now that I am not such a sad and angry person anymore, I can play "The Voice of the Heart" like a children's piece again.

Other performances I've done when I was fuming mad include playing Fur Elise in the usual overplayed and overheard way the first time around, but then the middle section with the A minor arpeggio, I'd start an octave lower and end up an octave higher and I'd increase the tempo so much that it would make Lang Lang embarrassed by the excessive amount of virtuosic display, and then for the descending chromatic passage, I'd bang it out in double octaves with each note a karate chop at Elise. When Part A returns and I play it in a near-"normal" manner, it becomes so saccharine that even Stalin would have noticed that it was meant to be satirical.

Another fun thing I did with an easy piece like Bach's Prelude in C from Book 1 of the WTC is to play it so fast that I blur the distinction between each bar being made up of 2 broken chords vs. each bar sounding like 4 strums on a guitar. In this way, one can create illusions and the work becomes fresh again.

Anyway, I hope these examples encourage you to view easy pieces in a fresh light and use them as opportunities to work on emotional expression and interpretation.

Cheers!

thanks for all the replies. i wasn't trying to sound impatient, and pessimistic, but rather worried about limits i guess. I have watched my progress over the past two years in which i've really been hitting it hard, and from what i have gathered i noticed how vast the learning curve is, and i am very well aware of my ignorance to the art of piano playing in its entirety. from what my rational sense tells me, it seems that it may take even more than ten years to even begin beginning level advanced studies at the rate at which i learn. But i am not entirely sure if my judgments are correct since i am not really sure how long it really takes to learn that 'said amount (or the ten years to master/ 10,000 hour rule).' since ive yet to experience it.

i just want some security i guess. my dream is to have some type of job based around music hopefully in my thirties, but i don't know if i am capable of doing so (not being a concert pianist of course, more along the lines of a teacher of any sort in music). i am getting tired of my mundane repetitive job (of which everyone is) and i am planning on going back to college for piano preformance once i feel ready, but i am just worried that i won't be good enough to realistically do anything career based from a musical standpoint. i am trying to plan i guess, and it is hard to plan when you are still stuck in the beginner phase. ah

tl;dr i just want the type of confidence to allow me to believe that i may be able to obtain a position of some sort in the piano/music world one day, and the only way i can imagine getting such confidence is by being able to play tough pieces.

but i guess so far faith seems to be the key from what ive gatherd.

zYe, check out this thread -- someone in a similar situation, wanting to make a career out of playing the piano. You might find some good insights.

hilarious. i am stuck in the computer field too.

great thread, thanks.

Well, I don't know about motivating the OP but you've frightened the daylights out of me!

Poor little Elise, who would have thought she'd end up karate chopped!