Do you dig right in, break it apart, practice small sections, and get down to business right away?

Or do you sort of paw at it gently, try to play through slowly, look for an idea of the whole thing?

I've noticed myself sort of barely sniffing around at the edges of my new Martha Mier piece, and I'm thinking it isn't very useful at all. Maybe it's just what happens, like small talk on a first date.

I play as far as I can fluidly.

The moment I become clunky and have pauses figuring out what to do next. I stop and focus on that bar and that bar alone, while polishing the bars I can play.

This piece:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX0Nv2ziqIw

First playing I could only play the first 7 bars without difficulty. The next bars were harder and I worked on two bars at a time. I am now at bar 29 and it accelerates away from me and I lose it.

I study and analyze it first, away from the piano.

I look through it first. I find all the things I need (time signature, dynamics etc..) Then I dig right in. I try to learn notes with rhythm at the same time, slowly, first. Then comes dynamics, phrasing and then I speed it up. Sometimes that means flying through the whole piece first time around and sometimes it's an excruciating measure by measure pace.

Mind you I'm not at a point where I can gently play through a song to see what it wants to sound like yet! lol

I play it all the way thru several times so I have an idea of what its "flavor" is - sometimes I'll want to swing it more than the written music indicates, for instance.

Then I chunk the hard parts - often, since I play pop music, that's the break. Sometimes I make sure I know the difference between first and second endings. Whatever's going to trip me up.

Then I chunk the whole thing to memorize it - I memorize it in pieces.

Cathy

I do pretty much what you do Becca. In each lesson my teacher gives me a new peice on Alfred's to work on and starts me off by him showing me how to play and helping me start it by me playing new notes, chords, new dynamics, timing etc.