I know this category of questions has come up before, but I have a rather specific question that has kind of been bugging me lately, and my teacher is out of town (in fact, I haven't even started lessons with him yet...) so I'll post it up here. The thing is, I'm wondering what you believe to be the most effective way to practice: 1) learn the notes of an entire piece ALL the way through at a slow tempo, and speed the WHOLE thing up all at the same time (that is to say, you use a metronome at a low beat, play the whole piece, then up the beat some, play through again, etc etc). or 2) learn little bits of the piece at slow tempi and speed those bits up one at a time, perfecting each one in doing so, then putting the pieces together after a few weeks. I try to do the latter one more often, but I find that I spend so much time trying to "perfect" the first section I do, I get kind of hesitant (for some reason) to continue on to the next area. So, is it a good idea to learn the notes of the whole thing (or movement, in the case of a sonata) at once? Then go back and polish up the little pieces? What are your opinions?