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I have very limited time for piano practice, and I want to use this time as efficiently as possible. I have made myself projects and done self-studies without any supervision. Too often I have left my projects unfinished and started with something new. Lately I have participated in ABF quarterly and themed recitals. To some extent this has helped me scheduling my practice. But even for these recitals the participant has to choose pieces to study, and in my case I sometimes have tried to grasp too much. Anyhow I feel that my participation has helped me dicipline myself, and I think I play better now than two years ago.

My question now is: What next? How should I plan my practice to get as much progress as possible with limited resources? I think I have the following options:

Study completely new pieces. This is the most fun option, but maybe not the best for progress.

Maintain the repertoire of pieces I know relatively well and try to improve these pieces further. I assume that a teacher or professional would say this was the best, but maybe a bit boring...

Take up old "big" projects. Unfinished difficult Chopin or Beethoven (or other) pieces. I have invested a lot of time during younger years with such pieces, but had a very inefficient way of studying. This option is quite appealing, but I'm uncertain if I have time or capacity to bring such pieces up to a decent level. Then comes the dilemma: What should I choose? The tempest sonata or Chopin's second impromptu? Or one of the hundred other options?

For me there is even a fourth option: Composing music. Quite fun to do, but I'll never be more than a mediocre craftsman making old style pieces. And this will take so much time, that I'll have little chance to improve my technique.

Any thougths? Recommendations? Or maybe somebody can give me another day a week or a couple of extra hours a day....

I'll have to say that, to some folks, I'll always look like I have too many pieces, and "finish" them, which for me means I've put them in my repertoire, way too early.

But it's the new pieces, often, that make the old ones better.

Which is not to say that I haven't learned a *lot* about what level I can polish to from here on the ABF, and what others are doing, and I bring pieces a lot further than I ever even thought about being possible before.

But it is still true that it is the skills I've learned from bringing a new piece to a higher level that then so surprise me when I return to an older piece.

On the other hand, I suspect I will be a perpetual intermediate, and that what happens is that I broaden my repertoire of intermediate pieces, and play all of them a little bit better each time. Technical improvement is, I suspect, pretty slow for me.

I have a different kind of repertoire than many here, tho, in that none of it is classical. None of my repertoire has a one-and-only arrangement like classical does, altho they have an "original sheet music" arrangement. I also have a different scope of what I need for repertoire, since I play pop songs essentially, and gig with them. So I have maybe 30 or 40 pieces, ranging from straight forward no frills Home on the Range to fairly jazzy "the original arrangement" of old big band tunes, and I trade them in and out of a set list for gigs every couple of months. So many of them are "forgotten" and "refreshed" and only slowly become permanent enough that they go on to an "I can pull this out of a hat any time I need it" list. None of those pieces are longer than a couple of minutes to maybe 5 minutes if I'm still playing them slow I'd like some day for the pull-out-of-a-hat number to be 40 or more.

But, within what I need to do for gigs, that learning a new piece for repertoire, and then applying those skills to old pieces when they come up for recycling, is where the real learning takes place.

For me, I think that's the way my personality works any way. If I had had to polish a piece to the level that I see many people here do in lessons before they could move to a new piece I would have quit. I'm a chutzpah kind of person, I come from a family of hams, and learning "on the job"/in and for gigs, with "the best I can pull off right now and fake the rest" is how it goes. If it's really not working about a week before a gig I either don't do it or change it. Which can't be done with classical.

But I still think, many many times, it's in the middle of learning new things that old skills get consolidated.

What sounds fun to me, from what you say, is those old pieces you once invested time in. I bet you would bring a whole slew of new skills, new musical insights to them, and learn a whole lot more to boot. I have no idea what level you might bring them to this time, and certainly no matter what level you brought them to there'd still be more to do. But what a treat to find how far you've come. And whatever you do with them will feed back into the repertoire you have now.

I'm pretty sure that's not much help, but at least it's another perspective, and maybe some insight will slip in sideways for you. I ask myself the same question a lot, given the way other people here work, but I always end up being me and change pretty incrementally in the way I work. Certainly the level of what I can pay attention to as I learn has expanded more than what I ever knew was possible.

I'm glad you brought this up. I'm anxious to see what other people have to say. Just don't get frustrated and quit!

Cathy

Ganddalf, you're light years ahead, at a point I don't think I'll ever get to... but maybe my experience can be helpful.

I used to maintain all my favourite pieces. As time goes on those favourites are replaced with more interesting/challenging pieces. There are very few from my first 2 years that I ever want to play now, sweet as they were at the time.

This past year, I struggled to work on my first Sonatina, and that was ALL I played and studied for months. In retrospect this was a grave mistake. I didn't keep up anything from the 6-8 months of study before the Sonatina and I lost all those pieces! I ended up not having any repertoire that I could comfortably play.

I've now started re-freshing the pieces that I feel are worth refreshing and I try to work on them in a cycle (I believe it is Richard /zrtf90 who has described his routine for keeping his repertoire alive and worked on in cycles in a few posts...If not, then maybe Sam S....).

I think that as your repertoire builds, in some ways it is harder to maintain because of the number of pieces, but in other ways easier, because of your proficiency.

I would suggest that if you are the kind of person who works well with set plans, that you make a chart of what you want to maintain, and what you want to work on - and allow yourself time to compose! - Make your chart for a one month period or a six -week cycle and see how it goes.

My old pieces get covered maybe 2-3 times a month.

While I do 2-3 new pieces every 2 weeks.

My logic is this, as I progress and improve those old pieces become easier relative to my abilities, therefore I can go back and only tweak it slightly to get it really good again.

The more difficult the repertoire, the harder it is to maintain. Just a few weeks of not playing something means that it is no longer playable for me. At least that is my experience. But those pieces can be polished up and brought back to life much quicker the second time, or the third. Last summer I had a plan to bring 5 or 6 pieces "back from the dead" - it worked, except that keeping so many pieces going at once was difficult for me, and left no time for anything new.

So, to answer your question, my current method is to continually prepare new pieces. I bring old pieces back to life when I need them, and that can take anywhere from a few days to a month.

Just like you, I always seem to choose new pieces that are slightly too hard, and am trying to be more modest in my goals.

This summer I am doing something a little different - I am concentrating on improving my sight reading. I want to be able to sit down and read an intermediate or early advanced piece and play it convincingly, even if it is slow. At the same time I am polishing two pieces for Summerkeys.

But this summer is a unique situation for me, since starting in July I will be on a walkabout and without a piano for about 5 months (if all goes according to plan!). I do not know what direction my music studies will take when I get back!

Sam

Of course people are different...but here's how it is for me.

I find it impossible to maintain several old pieces, no matter how much I like them. There's simply not enough time with all the new material to study, which is essential for my development.

But I also found that when I do have time to pick up those old pieces again (during summer when I don't have lessons) I find all kinds of new things in them and they feel more comfortable to my hands than they did when initially learned.

Re-memorizing is also much easier and secure than I would have thought. Due to my piano not being in good tune, I have not been practicing any of my romantic era pieces for about 3 weeks now. The tuner came yesterday and I decided to get back to those pieces that require pedal. I was suprised how little I had actually forgotten and how I felt more secure with them almost instantly than I did when I worked on them daily for lessons. I would hope that doing this for several times with a piece might eventually lead into more permanent memorization so that I could get back to them anytime with just a little mind work.

This made me think that I might not benefit from working too long daily with one piece. After I have solved the difficulties in a piece, the process of memorization seems to be quite ineffiecient and slow. What I need is increase my understanding of the whole and how the pieces is put together, that type of things I do remember.

It might be different for those who have a good tactile memory, one learns pieces fast but probably also forgets them if not practiced at all. I have a very inconsistent tactile memory, so I have to take the slow route to use my conscious mind in memorization. Even though my aural memory is very good, it won't help much when the concentration fails for one reason or another, because I need to remember specific details to know what to do next. To be secure, I need to know what is going on in the whole piece, be fully and consciously aware of the patterns or even individual notes in some places. Getting such ideas into my head seems to be easier after a break.

So I guess I am saying, you might try studying new material and go back to those old ones periodically, not worrying if they are constantly fully maintained.

The context of my answer is that of a two-year beginner. From what I understand, Ganddalf has several decades of experience on piano.

There is no right or wrong answer. From early on in my beginner journey I read the Musician's Way book, and it suggests:
20% old pieces
40% for new pieces
20% for musicianship (sight reading, ear training, rhythm training)
20% for technique (scales, arpeggios, focused section work)

These are loose guidelines but I found them useful. I spend at least half the time for new pieces on composition. Unfortunately, there are periods when I don't have much time and not much gets done. Splitting a tiny amount of time into segments means frustration on most fronts.

How important is it to have repertoire? How satisfying are each of the other choices? Each choice has its positives. For me, having repertoire is important. Composing new pieces is by far the most satisfying of the other topics. That means learning new pieces from scores get shorted, as does musicianship and technique. Though for technique, I often can find pieces where I can work on specific concepts. Because I learn new pieces so slowly, it is unrealistic for me to participate in the themed recitals.

Again, there is no right or wrong decision. Balance is almost always the right answer for me. For a person with 10+ years of experience, musicianship and technique are unlikely to move much unless a person makes a dedicated effort with a teacher. Same with repertoire, if a person doesn't have a reasonable repertoire after 10+ years of playing, it isn't likely to become deep without a major effort. Following this line of thinking, that would leave the bulk of the time for either learning new pieces or composing.

Go where the heart takes you, compose when the music is flowing. Learn from scores when it isn't. Spend maybe 20% on old pieces. Some on the forum do it a simple way, by playing old pieces only one day a week. How ever many pieces a person can maintain with that time is how many you get to keep. It will vary.

You may want to limit yourself more by how much time you can devote to practicing on a daily basis, and then go from there. Lengthy pieces can easily be broken down into sections to work on at a time, but you don't want to take on too many long pieces.

What's great about reworking old pieces is that you already know the trappings, so you can zero in on that almost immediately. You also most likely have the fingering all worked out and don't have to read it as a brand new piece. This means you can get to the heart of the matter quicker. So maybe one old longer piece, and one newer but less in complexity or length (or both). Maybe the new piece can be something parallel to what you can do now, don't pick a "challenger".

I think two pieces is enough given your limited time, but you can be the judge of that. I currently have the time for two such pieces, and want to work on 4. I, too, am starting up composing this summer and so I'm limiting my piano time to one hour a day at most. I find that even though I have hte physical time to do it all, I have limited brain power .

Hi, Cathy --

I have to say, it seems like we're so much alike, only you're more advanced at it. I have about half as many numbers in my bag. And I've just started playing a once-a-month gig. For free, just for the experience -- I'm not good enough to ask for money.

I only have two pieces that I've stopped playing, "Blue Skys" and "Stardust", and only because I want to forget the old arrangements and start fresh.

Here's what I play now:

Autumn Leaves
After You've Gone
Night and Day
Seems Like Old Times
I'll Be Seeing You
Anything Goes
Whispering
Let's Misbehave
It's All Right With Me
Charleston
September in the Rain
The Stripper
As Time Goes By
La Vie en Rose
Lili Marlene
Katyusha
In the Still of the Night
September Song
White Christmas

And I have a few things that aren't in presentable condition yet: Charade, an excerpt from Warsaw Concerto, and Der Fuehrer's Face. Charade is the only one that I'll probably add to the bag.

As to the original question, I'd say that the first priority is to maintain what you have. The more you maintain, the easier it gets, so after a while it only takes one day per week playing through the book. The rest of the time is available for new work.

As for composing, nah -- There's so much that's so good out there already. Sometimes I noodle around and jot down a couple bars, but nothing good enough to bother with.

How funny, John. You are right about so much good music - none of yours are on my list, tho I wouldn't mind knowing any of them. Most of mine have come from stuff I've played in the quarterly recitals - my initial push to get them presentable.

Congratulations on the gig! Two of my regular ones are volunteer, 1 is paid, 1 is a paid sub so I don't always get a call, and a new one she's going to see what she can do for me for payment. But gigging is such a treat, so have fun. Keep us up to date on your journey, eh?

Cathy

Probably the most pressing issue is how to keep the old repertoire from being boring. I think you should first of all decide which pieces you truly don't like and pitch them in the bin. Then of the ones you do like, maybe choose 2-5 a month to play regularly, the 2-5 you are most excited about this month, then change it up next month. Perhaps absence will make the heart grow fonder And after being away from a piece for a month or two you may notice new things you can bring to it next time around. Remember concert pianists are usually performing pieces they've been playing for years and years!

New stuff, I'm with Morodiene (as usual), go by how much time you have available, maybe half an hour per day for a shorter piece (under 2min) or hour per day for a longer piece/sonata movement.

Many good thoughts and useful comments here. Most of you seem to go for a mix of studying old pieces and maintain older stuff. The ratio between the time spent on new and old stuff, however, differs from person to person. A person relatively new to the piano will, of course, spend relatively much time studying new stuff. For people with decades of playing behind them will probably spend a larger fraction of the practice time on older stuff.

Many of you suggested that when returning to and old piece you may bring the music to a new level, and make use of new insight and improved skills when you work with the piece the second time. When I think back there are a lot of pieces where I managed to go 60 - 80% of the way before I hit the wall or just got tired of the piece.

I have a strong feeling that I would benefit the most by taking up some of these pieces again. So then the next question is - which of these pieces should I start with? As indicated by Hreichgott and Morodiene, I'll have to take the length of the pieces into account and be realistic about what I can manage to learn properly with the limited time I have for my disposal. Long pieces can, of course, be fractioned, but anyhow a long and difficult piece will take a lot of time, and I'll have to skip other music.

What bothers me a bit is a number of pieces where I really have spent a lot of time, but never really reached a level I'm satisfied with. Some of them are long pieces like Beethoven and Schubert sonatas and some of the greater Chopin compositions.

Then there are shorter pieces like Chopin etudes, Brahms piano pieces, Shostakovich preludes and lots of other stuff that I have abandoned at the 80% level. The most recent cases of such pieces are "Meditation" and "Quintuple waltz" of Tchaikovsky.

Currently I work on Bach's third partita for the "Suites" recital. This is an example of a piece I played a long time ago, and which I decided to start anew with. I'm definitely getting much further now, than I did 18 years ago. I'm also working on Beethoven sonata Op.10/3, but progress is slow since I spend no more than an hour a week on it.

Although I have the Bach and Beethoven compositions on my present plan, I want to start another project now. Preferably this should be romantic or later music. But I have some thinking to do before I make my choice.

Ganddalf, would it be of any help to think in terms of skills, rather than pieces? For example if you look at those pieces that you never got to where you want them, are there skills that, if you improved on, would help you get those pieces more like how you want them? If you identify skills you want to improve, you can then identify a plan for improving them -- which may include other things besides just working on the goal piece that uses those skills. Or perhaps you have several pieces that need improvement in the same skills: then working on improving that skill would give you progress on many pieces, not just one.

In terms of repertoire maintenance, I think it's not productive to try to maintain every piece. No matter how hard won a piece is, if it doesn't speak to you, drop it.

As an old hand at this I've found it practical to maintain a certain amount of pieces in long term memory that I can perform at the drop of a hat as well as a smaller number of pieces that can be played for a shorter term and turned over more frequently.

I tend to keep around twenty to twenty five pieces in long term memory and about a dozen 'newish' pieces for familiar friends who've heard my mainstay repertoire enough.

I have noticed from long ago that it is crucially important to work long term pieces still slowly, hands separately and in small sections. I'm never going to forget them so working on one phrase for a week or so is both sufficient to lift the whole piece and keep the whole thing in memory.

Nearly all my repertoire maintenance is done at the weekends but one or two pieces might be added to my weekday schedule especially where frequent daily practise is required to bring it up to performance standard after a few months or years away.

Some pieces are never going to make my repertoire as performable pieces but will be a regular part of my own amusement, Beethoven sonatas and difficult Liszt, Chopin and Brahms pieces fit this category. I never need to have them in my fingertips in their entirety and I never need to have them "perfect" - by this I mean that can run through a couple of awkward bars with only one hand or slow down significantly - I could even play an entire section just in my head - and not destroy the performance as it's only for my own amusement.

I'm quite happy taking such a big piece for a few weeks or months of individual attention without completion in mind.

What I do want to do is return to unfinished business often enough that I can make some measurable progress or improvement each time and use it as a refreshing change from my quotidian grind. One or two days going hands separately, from the score or from memory, in short sections is a good way of bringing a piece back into the memory. Slow practise in short sections highlights where the problems are and gives me something specific to work on. As I'm not having to learn new techniques from scratch with these pieces it doesn't take long to whip them up into a really nice place before letting them lie again.

Different pieces need different forms of refreshment. The first two movements of the Moonlight sonata, for example, need only one or two plays a day for a couple of days a week to be back in sparkling form. The third movement needs a completely different approach where individual passages need daily HS work and super slow HT runs between every other piece I'm working on each day and only once or twice a fortnight need I attempt the whole movement in it's entirety and even less the whole sonata - a feat which usually results after a good couple of months of careful build up and heralds it being dropped again for a good while.

There is something satisfying in being able to play familiar music from the score (known from recordings or previous attempts at reading but not having worked an the piece specifically or long) and from playing pieces from memory without having to dig out the score.

I am currently enjoying working on a new piece every week from the Hal Leonard Australia 40-piece Challenge initiative and I'm finding it very beneficial. There's a lot of good music out there that is fun to work on in the short term but doesn't provide the intellectual stimulus nor technical demands to warrant more time but it really does broaden the horizon and make more composers more familiar.

As well as working on easier pieces I can also work on a short extract of a harder one. Mayhap the entire piece will filter its way into my short term repertoire.

IMHO keeping up repertoire is waste of time. Just playing through it weekly will not prevent it from detoriorating. You need to actively work on it to keep it in shape. And that is so hard once it's at a level that can be hardly improved anymore at your current level.

So, once you have the old piece at the "polished" level, go for the new pieces. But make sure they are well polished before moving on.

I have no idea if composing is helping performance and how effective it is in that. Analysis is effective though, and I expect composing helpful for learning analysis as well.

Absolutely true in terms of technical development. A weekly play through is pitiably insufficient to keep the piece at its own best level or indeed at our current, and hopefully improved, level. A period of greater absence will be of more benefit with a more thorough relearning.

Just as we need to review with adult eyes our ideas about important things we learned as children, such as our religion, diet or hygiene, so too we need to restudy important works in the light of our increased maturity at the instrument.

The relearning after a period of absence is what drives the piece greater into our memory than the too regular play through where sloppiness grows from too casual an acquaintance or regard. But working on a small passage, in isolation, of a piece that is both difficult and intimate and see noticeable and repeatable improvement is a joy I would withhold from no-one.

The benefit of keeping a very specific repertoire in memory is manifold. Firstly, having something to play when asked (or when we feel like it) is so much easier when it's well known and needs no practise. Secondly, as new skills are learnt they can be added on to what is already known and lift it to a higher level. Thirdly, it is the fastest and easiest way of maintaining technical skills through a period of absence at the instrument. Fourthly, new pieces don't have the maturity and facility to be able to bring out our best and most demanding skills. It is only when the fingers can play the music without conscious effort or control that we can build up the smoothest and most subtle phrasing and articulate passagework and really focus on and bring out the music. These skills we can then more easily apply to our newer pieces and our daily piano practise.

Some pieces speak to us more directly and more deeply than others. Where most of us finish a period of months, often with ample frustration, learning a new non-trivial piece it is bliss itself to be able to play a piece at any or every occasion and know that there is no finer example of our technical ability on the instrument nor anything so easy to play as a well-worn and well exercised gem.

Yes, we must refresh these pieces, often at the level of learning them as if from scratch, but like a good book, movie or painting some things are worth the extra investigation and offer us new insights in spite of years of intimacy.

While not everything we learn sits as well with us once it's better known, not keeping up at least some repertoire seems to me to a far greater waste of time.

Personally, I think every pianist of early-intermediate standard and above should have at least a piece or two that they've kept in their repertoire and can play from memory at any time. Once a piece has been mastered and memorized, it doesn't take much effort to keep it under the fingers and reasonably polished. Of course, it should be something that's always a pleasure to play again and again for the pianist.

For several decades (until four years ago, in fact) I didn't have my own piano. What kept my technique from going totally to pot was the fact that I had a few pieces (and parts of several other pieces) that I could always play from memory, which meant that whenever I came across a piano, I could just sit down and play some favorite pieces, as well as join up bits of others with my own improvisations. I'd be technically rusty certainly, but not so rusty that I was stumbling at every corner. At least, I was able to entertain myself (and possibly even others ) on the piano, at any time - even on a honky-tonk bar piano.

It was more by accident than design (because they happen to be fun to play) that the pieces which I kept in my memory since my teenage years included lots of scales, arpeggios, octaves and chords - which meant that most of the important technical aspects of piano-playing were practiced whenever I played them.

And yes, I play those pieces with greater fluency and insight now than I used to.....

I tend to agree with wouter here. Whenever I've played a piece from memory for a long period of time after memorizing it, it tends to deviate into some weird caricature of itself. It's not so bad anymore, but I find I do better if I set the music aside for a while, maybe a year or more and then revisit it. I do much better and find areas where I can improve or alter much easier than if I just keep playing it.

It's always tempting to try to do more and more with (or to ) a piece when you keep playing it frequently again and again after having memorized it, which presumably is what you're getting at.

However, all I do is to revisit those pieces every few weeks or months (or years, for those pieces that I've got in my long-term memory from young - including Schubert's D899/4, Schumann/Liszt's Widmung, Mendelssohn's Rondo capriccioso, Rachmaninov's Prelude in G minor) - playing them just once through, maybe twice, if I wasn't totally happy first time round. I certainly don't play them every day, or even every week, once I've got them properly memorized. I've been adding more and more to the list ever since I've got my own piano, because I've been learning more and more newer, mostly more difficult pieces that challenge me technically, if not musically.

If you start to feel like turning your memorized pieces into caricatures of themselves, maybe you've got bored with them, which is a sure sign you should just drop them.......?