Well guys, I've done some thinking. What's something that is a weakness in your piano skills/rep/knowledge? We talk about strengths here alot, but what about stuff we don't do quite as well?


I am god-awful at sightreading duets. I am horrible. Counting and working with another player on top of sightreading drives me insane and I usually do poorly with some pretty simple stuff. Sightreading duets has been something I've been working on as part of my teachers plan to make me a pretty well rounded pianist and musician. Just like anything, I'm going to need to practice it alot more.

What's yours?
Matt

As you say, I'm bad at duets. And I've got to do one for a Christmas recital with my teacher...

My greatness weakness IN the piano is my height. Just not much space in there, especially since I don't get to play in the F308.

Sightreading definitely! And speeding through pieces, my teacher is always yelling at me to count and slow down!

Hahah, a lot of people have that problem I bet.


Matt

My knowledge of theory, especially harmony, is somewhat superficial.

I know the rudiments well enough to be conversant and can recognize common chords and cadences, but but structural analysis is, by and large, beyond me.

I'd like a deeper understanding both as a matter of principle and because it might make me a better memorizer.

Steven

Technique and precision. I play very sloppily. Trying to improve that, but it's an uphill battle.

octaves...but i've started to overcome that problem

Arpeggios are my weakness and have always been! Back in the days when I took piano lessons every single teacher told me I was stiff, especially with arpeggios. I remember a time when I was 14 and entering a piano competition and had to do this Chopin Waltz in Db major and literally spending 3 hours in my teacher's class trying to get them right and I was almost in tears by the end of it!!

Plus, I'm a horrible sight reader. I tend to learn things "perfectly" then play it off by heart, and do that forever with that piece. So my repertoire is quite limited...

So don't get me to sight-read arpeggiated passages

My weakness is my left hand: I just don't have the dexterity I would like. My 3rd and 4th fingers are particularly immobile. It's been getting better, particularly since I've been concentrating a lot on Bach, but its still not at the level I want it to be. Arpeggios are particularly bad in my left hand so I understand Tar above.

All technique all around.

Since I compose, my weakness will be fugue writing. I cannot committ to writing a decent fugue . I hear Bach pieces and Sorabji's fugue writing and I feel so crappy. It will be another couple of months before something decent is written on the paper.

I've noticed that my right and left hands are capable of completely different things. My left hand is MUCH better at arpeggios than my right hand is, but then my left hand sucks at doing runs (even simple ones) and repeated strikes. I guess it goes on to show what sort of thing I've been playing: tuneful at the top, "boring" arpeggiated accompaniment at the bottom...

In case it wasn't noticed, my earlier post was a hint at the syntactical error of the OP. In piano performance, my greatest weakness is tempo control.

It reminded me of Groucho Marx's quip:

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

Steven

Feeding too much technique into my improvisation to prove to myself I can perform certain extreme movements. This is unnecessary and can be detrimental to the musical result. Once in a while is okay but I still do it too often.

- I'm a horrible sight-reader
- I somehow get tired in my left shoulder
- x against x, except for 2 against 3

1. Saying "Yes" too much.

2. Inconsistency on stage.

Pretty much every weakness in the book :p

But if I had to pick one, sight reading.

Getting the motivation to practice and not just play

1) Tempo control. I tend to rush things, particularly rests in slow movements. It's partially the drugs (don't ask).

2) Arpeggios.

3) "Stride" type bass parts. While my left hand is pretty strong, I've never been particularly good at bouncing from place to place down yonder. I like to blame it on my small hands.

4) Everything else.

That was about the last thing I would have said, until you said it.

But I have arranged and transcribed and done my share of composing—composing has only been for students. I can mimic the style of most famous composers to some degree, with one absolute failure, and you just mentioned it.

I could not write a fugue even remotely like what Bach did on his worst day, not if I had 10 lifetimes to work at it. I just look at them, take them apart, study them in every possible way, and remain totally amazed.

Some of his earlier ones aren't all that hot. I bet if you actually practiced writing fugues by writing one a day (wasn't it Bruckner who did that, first thing in the morning?) you eventually would get the hang of it and write one as good as some of Bach's worst ones.

Oh, let's see:

- scales, in all of their permutations
- arpeggios
- block chords
- broken chords
- tone
- Schubert
- expression
- dexterity
- analysis of pieces
- Mozart, Haydn
- anything with "transcendental" in the title
- stylistic appropriateness
- anything moving faster than MM 60
- anything with "etude" or "study" in the title
- anything written in the last 100 years
- Debussy
- never playing for others
- playing for my own pleasure with low standards
- getting spread to thin
- often feeling a sort of knee-jerk competitiveness with other pianists, even though I don't even play for others (yikes! - how neurotic is that? and how do I stop it?)
- not having a teacher
- mindless playing out of habit
- being old
- lacking confidence in what I can do
- trills
- contrapuntal music

LOL!!

Another one I know I'm guilty of:

"Adhere to a constant note density as far as possible throughout the performance. If a passage is full of notes, slow it down. If a passage is full of minims and semibreves, speed it up."

Weaknesses? Who has weaknesses? Who - having any - would admit it publicly? What is this, a PWA (Piano Weakness Anonymous) meeting? :p

Since we're all "spilling the beans" on ourselves here, here's mine:

Impatience. (sorry, I know some of you have rather extensive inventories, but that's the only one I could think of right now).

I'm impatient to get to that intensely pleasurable point in the study of any given piece where I've reasonably mastered it - where I can play it as the composer intended, with all the right notes at the correct tempo with all the specified dynamics and all of the required "musicality".

In most cases aftera few brief run-thrus I can "hear" almost immediately how it "should" finally sound and I know instantly how I want to be able to ultimately play it, but I end up trying to do so far too soon, rushing thru it's phrases in my practice much too fast. I'm constantly battling with myself to slow my practice down and gradually over constant repetition increase the tempo up to speed, add the dynamics and play the whole piece with the feeling and emotional substance and technical precision expected from the work's composer.

But that's probably just a unique problem with me - or maybe not . . .

Regards, JF

I definitely relate to that, John.

And a counterproductive corollary is impatiently ramping the tempo up to speed too quickly, which makes it difficult to return to the slow-tempo practice that's most needed.

Steven

p.s. Is there really a Piano Weakness Anonymous? Usually, the acronym PWA means something different.

Hmmm...probably speed with accuracy. I can never play La Campanella's top fast notes right, it either gets sloppy or I hit wrong notes.

2nd thing would be actually practicing. I play a lot but I never actually take the time to practice the pieces I should.

Thank you for your input. What you said is true. Bach's compositions from Art of Fugue are just written in such a masterful way with good melody and perfect counterpoint. I can do all of it and yet I rip the compositions to threads because I can admit I am horrible at fugues. Sorabji loved Bach and transcribed a prelude and the chromatic fantasy, but we see the influence of the fugue in his huge works, and those make me cry. How is someone able to write such complex fugues using up 3-5 staves? Perhaps this field of composition is not for everyone but I will continue my personal studies. Good luck with you as well. =)

I'd say mine is getting discouraged. I'll go through periods where I feel like I play horribly and can't do anything right, then there are other days where I feel great about my playing and play much better.
I also get very nervous when performing ><