Practice Advice: Is this piece too difficult for me?
A common question is: "Can I start working on this piece, or is it too difficult for my level?" Today we will discuss general questions and considerations to make when choosing new repertoire that will challenge you to improve!
Find the start time in your time zone by clicking the photo or following this event link:
https://app.tonebase.co/piano/live/player/is-this-piece-too-difficult-dominic
We are going to be using this thread to gather suggestions and questions!
- What questions do you have on this topic?
- Any particular area you would like me to focus on?
-
I cannot attend live, but I will watch this later.
I like this topic a lot. I have found that, in order to stay motivated to play, I cannot choose pieces that are too difficult for me. For instance, during the Bach challenge, I pushed myself to learn the Prelude to BWV 997. After a couple weeks of practicing it, and still not being able to play it very well, I found myself unmotivated to practice it. Practicing it was literally angering me and making me feel bad about myself, which is not a good mindset for making music. I'm not a professional, and I play simply for the joy of playing, and so I chose to move on from the piece.
Also, as a general rule, I completely avoid fast pieces. They don't come naturally to me, and I don't enjoy working on them. It's hard for me to think of anything more boring than working on a piece for months, slowly working up the speed on the metronome from 60 to 160. I would give up around 72 probably.
Do you think that such an approach is holding me back? Should I find other ways to stay motivated long enough to play more challenging pieces? Any thoughts you have would be appreciated.
-
Following on Erik’s point. Hard pieces need months. How can we maintain the drive, and not get bored with the piece?
-
As I started learning classical guitar just under 2 years. Every new piece of music I encounter are fresh and interesting and there just so many pieces that I want to learn.
Since I'm not doing any graded examinations, I only learn pieces that I love listening to. So I'm already motivated to play them. They sometimes can be too difficult or relatively easy but I will not work on them for more than 1.5 months.
I never work on a piece until I get sick of them, I'll just take a break from them and learn something else. I'll revisit those pieces again later and often I find when I revisit a piece, there are nuances that I never realize before. Probably because my listening skills and technical skills have improved since then.
-
I am wondering, would a better metric would be hours per piece? My practice, while daily, varies a great deal in amount of time I can spend. There are apps where you can track time. I'm thinking what would be reasonable time frames per piece in time units do you think?
-
This makes more sense to me as well; I work the same way, without a fixed amount of time per day of practice.
