I have decided with my teacher to devote about 30-40 minutes of daily practice time (from an average of around 3 to 3.5 hours on weekdays and usually at least 5 hours on weekends) to studying in detail a fixed selection of representative fragments from all op.10&25 etudes (I have played 10/1,2,4,12 and 25/9,11 and 12 at various times, but this time I really care about pursuing it more intensively, for all etudes, and as a more continuous effort).

The approach will not be sequential (i.e. to work on some fragments for three weeks and then move on to the next set), but rather as simultaneous as possible (in practice: sample about 8-10 fragments, keep them for some successive days, then re-sample from the set of fragments [some fragments could also be kept], and to frequently re-visit fragments over time).

I plan to devote 30-40 minutes a day for as long as necessary (say 8-10 months). When my teacher and me are both satisfied with the results on the fragments, we will start to work on all etudes as complete pieces (and from this point on, I will move from 30-40 minutes to 100% of the daily practice time for the etudes). The goal is to be able to play the full set together.

My questions are:
1. do you also consider this a promising approach of working towards the goal of playing all etudes at a very high level at a single point of time? If not, please share the reasons why you disagree, because I might reconsider the plan if the reasons are convincing.
2. if you think it's promising, would you be interested in joining? This way, it could be a lot of fun, and we could benefit from the exchange of ideas and experiences (problems we encounter, solutions we find, ...). One could also share videos or recordings of fragments for mutual benefit on a regular basis.


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The rest of this and the entire next post only contain some more details
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1.) Here is why I think this approach might be better than just working on full etudes sequentially:
-- With only 30-40 minutes daily time (as I said, the rest goes into the transcriptions for the next months), it is not feasible to expect intensive work on all etudes and to keep them all alive and in steady progress for a long time.
-- By working on selected, representative fragments, we can work in very much depth on every little detail of motion and musicality (because in the end the fragments should be played as musical as possible, as they would appear in the full etude). Once the details are understood for the fragment, it will be much easier (at least this is the hypothesis :p ) to transfer this to the full rest of the etude.
-- In this approach, very little time is spent on "learning the notes". I quickly know all fragments by heart and we can focus entirely on the real stuff.
-- Most importantly, I will have practised all fragments for a very long time, and crucially with many and frequent revisits. This is also not feasible when working on the full etudes with the time that I want to devote to this.
-- By working on other repertoire during this "preparation phase", I have enough diversity of styles and pieces to also cover other aspects of piano playing.

2.) A caveat I have not mentioned above: In several etudes, stamina is a substantial problem for most people (10/2 being a particularly notorious example for many, including me). This means we also need to add some stamina exercises for these etudes, but they should also be derived from the same fragments (by repetitions or very simple alterations of a fragment) for the reasons listed above.

3.) In the next post, I will share what I plan to work on for the next two weeks, mainly to give a concrete example of what I outlined above.

P.S. I have shortened my original post to make it more readable.

Here are suggested "representative" fragments for four etudes (bar numbers, e.g "7-8" means beginning of bar 7 to end of bar 8) I plan to start with. "Representative" should actually be a mix of frequently occurring patterns and the most difficult single parts of a piece (very subjective, of course). It should not just be the beginning of each piece, because I think the most useful patterns for intensive preparation practice might be others.

As I said before, the goal is to accumulate a complete, fixed set of fragments for all etudes rather quickly and then keep them active for several months, often mix among them to ensure steady progression on all of them over a period of time. I'm very happy to change the choice based on other peoples' comments! Also, suggestions for fragments from all other etudes ae also very welcome (again provided there is any interest at all in this idea).

For each etude, I add some notes of the variations I plan to practice for each fragment and some general things to consider (again, very subjective and may change a lot over time; credits to my teacher also). Since we only started discussing today and had other pieces to discuss as well, this is still very sketchy....

The main purpose for now is to show what I mean in practice with the post above and to see if people would be interested to contribute their suggestions and tipps and maybe join the exercise - and the fun

10/1:
7-8
21-22
29-30
31-32
35-36
59-60
63-64
Practice variations:
- legato
- staccato
- Rhythm alterations suggested by Cortot (exercises no. 12-15) - rhythm alterations are a widely useful exercise that many of us are doing all the time anyway. These four here are the four basic hand positions by starting at the first, 2nd, 3rd or 4th note of the arpeggio.
Some notes:
- keep in mind when practicing slowly that at full speed not all hand transitions should be played with a full finger legato, because it would cost a lot in terms of fluency. Also practice this exact movement at slow speed (one can still benefit from full legato practice even though it's not the final motion)
- no pedal
- practice loudly (but not harshly), from f to ff and back to f for each phrase
- don't forget the accents at the top of each phrase
- when practicing in small units, always include the hand transition either by playing the next note, or by at least ending with a hand that would be fully prepared for going on (I hope it's clear what I mean)
- always, even at very slow tempo, keep thinking in quarter notes
- also do practice with metronome, gradually working up the speed (leave quite some time for slow practice also)

10/11:
1-4
44-45
52-53
- No idea for practice variations (other than written) yet, need to check Cortot or get some other ideas
Notes:
- always have each arpeggio _fully_ prepared in mind before playing and as prepared _as possible_ in the hand.
- arpeggios are synchronous in LH and RH and it's crucially important to always beautifully shape the melody (top of the arpeggios). this may be hard to do by fingers alone; a little twist/kick from the wrist may help.
- don't play the "1" in each bar with too much emphasis, only possibly the top (melody) note.

10/12:
9-10
15-16
29-30
73-76
81-82
Practice variations: also no idea yet.
Notes:
- similar to 10/1, at full speed a full finger legato is not good for some transitions (e.g. bars 15-16) because it would require big hand movements.

25/9:
25-28
33-36
Practice variations: same as above, no idea yet.
Notes:
- leggiero!!
- the succession of heavy-light-heavy-light-... is important throughout
- the thumb does not need a full legato; it may get too heavy otherwise
- the wrist has a little feeling of down-up (corresponding to heavy-light), but this is not a big motion (waste of energy). In the end it may even be barely visible, but the feeling is still there
- never forget about a sense of relaxation (this applies of course to all music, and yes, there is no complete relaxation.....)

Well I've never heard of anything like this before, but I think i can take 40 minutes of my day into this. I'm not sure though, I just got a load of accompaniments today with more coming, but we'll see. Definantly sounds interesting though... I would like to see a sample schedule of how you spend those 30-40 minutes though.

PV,

This is intriguing, to say the least. I would be a good candidate to take part in your proposal, as nothing could be more "up my alley."

My practice is already 100% devoted to the etudes, though (except for Op. 49, which I still haven't quite polished), and I am not at all in the habit of breaking them down into fragments as you propose.

But I'm not ruling it out! I need some time to re-read your posts thoroughly and give it some thought.

Kudos to you and whomever joins you.

Steven

Steven and Cheeto, thanks for the first feedback and just a short note: I think we could still benefit a lot from each other (and have fun) even if we do not all follow the same schedule (for example, Steven it seems you currently spend more time with the etudes than only 30-40 minutes a day). The crucial thing (in my opinion) is that we (try to) also share some very detailed observations (not only high-level comments), and ideally also videos/recordings (just push the record on your Zoom or videocam and post without any cutting/editing because it's really only to share experience without spending much time on it - don't care about mistakes etc. just mutually share our current state regularly). I also think discussing details could be particularly easy when focusing on a limited range of fragments. I would be thrilled to give it a collaborative try (the fragment recordings are not necessary of course - just an additional idea). But first I'll stop spamming for now...need a little sleep