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I have this one difficult section, about 4 bars long, that I mess up about 50% of the time. I keep playing over and over, and just when I think I've got it - blammo - I go back to where I started. I need suggestions how to attack this. I have tried slowing it down and repeating over and over. I have to play this at a recital class next weekend. Does anyone have some magic up their sleeves?

Can you list the repertoire, the measures, and how 'you mess up': i.e., do you miss the notes, the rhythm, both hands or just one hand???? Usually slowing down to the point where it is unrecognizable strongly helps.

Well, it looks like the stress of the recital is interfering with the relearning. All I can suggest is first and foremost relax. If you make a mistake in a recital, then it just happens. Not to stress over. 😃

Beyond this, I would just start practicing very slowly and in a very relaxed manner, each bar, avoiding any incorrect notes if possible. Then gradually add more notes in the same manner but not to add anything new until everything is totally instilled in body memory. Unfortunately, the time schedule creates unnecessary stress which is why I avoid these kind of things. Each note, each bar should be one of natural enjoyment and ease. At least that is the way I practice.

When im stuck on a bar I just keep playing and playing and playing. Wake up in the morning and you can play it with your eyes close. ALso dont play and play and play skip it and come back to it. Thats what I do.

For passages with lots of notes, my teacher often has me practice "in rhythms." This means playing the passage in different rhythms than what is written. For example, a passage in sixteenth notes can be played with any of long long short short, long short short long, or short short long long (in all of these a long is twice the length of a short.). You can also play it long short short short, where the king is three times as long as a short. Pick a pattern and repeat it for the whole passage. By breaking up the usual way of playing the passage, it lets your brain get a new handle on it. It also lets you practice playing the notes quickly (on the shorts) interspersed with time to think (on the kings).

For passages where I'm having trouble finding or coordinating the notes, she often has me play slowly back and forth between two notes or chords (repeat many times), , then back and forth between two more notes or chords (repeat many times), etc. The goal is to get my fingers used to moving from on place or key to the next.

As dogperson says, start slow. Very slow.

Can you play each part reliably hands separately?

Implicit in my teacher's instructions is *not* to simply play the whole passage over and over the same way. Try to find the problem and isolate just that for work. Then fit it back into longer phrases, but just a bit at a time. If you have many different problem areas in the passage, isolate each one and work on just those few notes.

I agree with most of what has already been said, especially the slowing down.

My suggestions are:

1. Pay close attention to your focus/concentration levels immediately preceding your "blammo" moments. You may be exhausting your focus, with the "blammo" being the moment your focus disappears. In the interest of not teaching yourself to "blammo" out of repetition, shorten your practice sessions for that piece so that you are putting that piece to rest just before the "blammo" usually occurs. Engage in more, but shorter, sessions on that piece.

2. Similarly, start quitting practice of that piece sooner so that you are always quitting on a success, instead of a failure. The accumulation of successes trains our mind that that particular task IS one we succeed at. Your brain will define that segment of music as one that you succeed at, and it will behave accordingly. One of my strengths has been helping players overcome, or break the ceilings that limit their performance potential. I've come across nothing that so effectively helps a performer move past their current, apparent limitations like the accumulation of successes. Avoid the failures by quitting when you succeed, and come back later to enjoy some more successes.

It's bars 13-16 in Sonatina in A Minor Albert Biehl. It's sort of a repeating pattern, and I think what happens is I seem to get "lost". I either hit the wrong note with the RH when I change fingers, or I lose the left hand and hit the wrong chord.

I am really appreciating the suggestions everybody.

From looking at the score, I would recommend breaking it down into small chunks; one possibility would be:
M 13 and the first note of measure 14
m 14 and the first note of measure 15,
then measure 15.

Practice hands separate for each small chunk and then hands together for each small chunk. Once each small chunk is good, then merge chunk 1 with chunk 2; then chunk 2 with chunk 3.

Really do this more slowly than you can imagine: concentrating on correctness rather than any speed. Be sure that your fingering is always consistent--- if not, you can throw off the brain/hand connection so that you get lost.

If you identify a set of notes where you consistently get lost, i.e., the last LH chord in m 13 to the first note in m 14, just practice that one chord and the subsequent note.

Thank you! I'll let you know how it goes.

In addition to all the good suggestions before, these are what often help me:
- Take a break, at least a week or so and then try again. Start working on the difficult section again slowly with the suggested practice methods.
- Review your fingerings. For me this is often what solves these. With badly chosen fingering no amount of practice seems to help, but a new fingering can be an almost immediate remedy. Relearning fingering reliably takes some time but can be done. Just don't do it too close to performance.

It's a difficult problem to crack in a week; it's the result of poor practice. The problem is typically from playing too fast too soon from too many repetitions and not enough concentration.

I support outo's idea of not playing this at the keyboard until the day. It can be practised mentally, away from the piano, with or without the score, with great concentration and at a variety of tempos.

By playing it only mentally there is a strong possibility that you'll continue to concentrate on it while you play it physically. This is a good way of avoiding playing it subconsciously where you've taught yourself a variety of notes and fingerings.

Repeating over and over is a poor way of teaching it to the piano or ingraining it badly into your subconscious. When you have a passage exactly how you want it in performance is the time to practise it over and over to get it into procedural memory. Until then it's best to never play it twice without something else in between. This way you have to concentrate every time and have more incentive to establish the tempo with a count-in before you start - and continue counting while you practise.

Don't worry about the recital. Everyone messes up in a recital until they get their heads around performing. You'll probably mess up whether or not you fix this thing. The trick is to keep your cool and carry on. No-one's going to remember you for the mistake but for how you well played otherwise. Give it five years and see how you do.

I would recommend that you discuss with your teacher how you practice: playing something over and over when there are problems just means you are teaching yourself to play it wrong over and over. Skipping over it just means you are skipping the problem that needs work.

The more difficult music becomes technically, the more important the way you practice becomes. You should develop good practice habits now. By the way, I wish someone would have discussed 'how to practice' with me when I started! My life would have been easier-- and I would be further along. I started piano as a child in the dark ages before the internet, so I had no idea that practicing had a wrong way and no reason to even ask my teacher 'how should I practice?'

In addition to all what has been said so far:

If you want to be able to play some difficult(for you)passage just the way it's written...don't study it as it's written!! Tear it into pieces, practice on them and reassemble everything.
If you miss chords, i.e., work on just one finger per chord, the lowest note, until your hands play the sequence by heart. Then add another note, the highest one, and so on.
This kind of tricks make studing more profitable.

When you have trouble in the HT part even though your HS is good it helps to train your brain on playing both sides while focussing on one side only.

Start by focussing on the left hand. Repeat the section with LH only a few times (don't tale breaks between the repeats, just continue playing). Now when you feel comfortable with that, stop and try to play HT. Keep focussing on the LH, the RH just should come along automatically. If you want you can look at your LH, but never to the RH.

If it doesn't work (very likely at the beginning), try to drop in notes. Play the LH completely, have the right hand play only the first measure (or even a single note). Important: your focus should still be on the LH only! Once you can do that repeatedly, add a note/measure. If you keep failing with that, go back a step. Slowly you can build this up to the complete section.

Now one important rule: only do this for a few minutes (five minutes max), then switch sides. It doesn't matter how far you progressed with the LH focus training. So now you focus completely on the RH and do the same right from the start.

When you keep switching back and forth after a while you will start to notice that you can play one hand automatically while focussing on the other and also that you can switch your focus at will.

This method works very well (at least for me) when my problems with a section aren't technical but more because of coordination issues.

You guys are great. I am keeping track of all of these suggestions because I am sure I will need them all in the future. Tonight I did some v e r y s l o w practice and RH/LH practice, and also broke the section up into smaller chunks. It seems to have worked so far, although I am sure I will need to repeat. I think as some of you have said, I have been repeating the mistake so many times that the mistake is in my muscle memory. I will keep re-training myself this week.

Glad you are seeing improvement-- one other practice tip? Practice it slowly the last thing you do before you go to bed, with the last session being note perfect.

A great way to keep the subconscious on the straight and narrow.

Figure out why it's going wrong, get it right slowly, then get it right 10 more times. 20 more times if you have a performance soon and you need to cure the feeling of being scared of that passage.

Once you've done that, if you can bear to look at it any longer, try "zooming out" to a larger section that includes those 4 measures so you can practice getting into that section from context.

It's always helpful to distinguish section practice from a run-through. Especially before a performance.
Section practice is perfectionist, repetitive, includes lots of successful repetitions and you stop whenever something goes wrong. That's to improve the piece.
A run-through just goes top to bottom with no stops, no matter what goes awry. That's to improve your ability to cope if something does go wrong (and it helps keep you aware of the reality of how well you really know the piece.)