Never Perfecting A Piece

[applelover]

When I learn new pieces I learn it to my own satisfaction, until it sounds good enough so I can recognize what the music is supposed to be, get all the keys right for the most part.  However, I don't go that extra step to perfect it, get the musical expression on it right, get rid of all errors mising the keys... It just doesn't seem worth it going through the pieces so many times when it already sounds okay, to make it slighly better, to perfect.  Law of diminishing returns.  I play for myself for the most part, not to perform for other people.  Will this hinder my ability to improve at piano?

[whynot]

Playing for yourself is just fine, of course--I mean, it's an excellent reason to play!  But you could also plan to play pieces once in a while for anyone at all... friends, people from school or church, a lonely neighbor.  Have a little piano party at your house, tell them you would like to play for them for ten minutes, then you will serve them CAKE.  Cake is key--if you bake it, they will come.  Knowing that someone will hear you is extremely motivating!  You will start to hear things better and care about them more.  And doing it on a small informal scale lets you keep it mainly for yourself, while blessing a few other people and pushing you to prepare the music as well as you really want to.  Good luck.   

[tac-tics]

Well, from personal experience outside of piano, I can say it takes very LITTLE to impress most people. As long as you are not in the company of another pianist, people will applaud you as long as you 1) keep playing and 2) don't hit too many dessonant tones. If such was *not* the case, popular music would not exist  X-D

Will failure to perfect your songs hinder your future ability? Shrug. I can't answer that one. Most people on this board will probably say it does. But since you are just playing for yourself, I would argue as long as you are happy with your abilities, right?

[Kassaa]

Well, from personal experience outside of piano, I can say it takes very LITTLE to impress most people. As long as you are not in the company of another pianist, people will applaud you as long as you 1) keep playing and 2) don't hit too many dessonant tones. If such was *not* the case, popular music would not exist X-D

Absolutely the wrong way of thinking IMO. You should always be expecting people who listen very carefully and exactly know what you're doing, you will 1. practice harder and 2. get more satisfaction because you know you played very well.

We could all impress people with a flick of our fingers, but does it give satisfaction? Do you feel you have done something great? I don't, that's why I always try to make the best of a piece possible, so that other people AND myself are happy.

[Ruro]

This thread is quite related to a question which this thread (to no suprise) causes me to think of.

Be Forewarned, what I have written will probably either make you say, "Ah yes, I understand", or "please", those undergoing anger management may want to ignore O_o

What is the percentage for the average pianist, would you estimate technique is required to conquer a piece quite well? Or even better, what is the recommended minimal percentage required for a piece you are going to learn?


Slightly more depth, which get's a bit messy: I have the technique to perform a piece note wise correctly, except I don't always hit them all. So in theory, having just learnt the technique to perform the piece won't cut it, you will need to progress this technique until it becomes reasonably "better" - Not sure that is the best word...

So... is there like an approximate percentage in relation to the piece's difficulty? I realise there is SOO many factors involved in this, but it's a tough one to not go with out knowing SOME sort of "Guideline" to help you pick the correct pieces to play, and not wasting your time figuring out trying to play it to see if your ready.

An Example for further clarification (or confusion) in a scenario of a computer game:

                    The C Major Scale Technique
With 0% Skill Points, you never performed any scale, let alone played on the piano!
With 1% Skill Points, you can *JUST* perform it with one hand, barely;15bpm.
With 40% SKill Points, you can perform it sometimes; 30bpm.
With 75% SKill Points, you can perform it quite well; 60bpm.
With 99% Skill Points, you can butt whoop it on the literal verge of perfect; 240bpm.
With 100% Skill Points, is this possible? Maybe, Theoretically.

When you learn a new piece, should you atleast have 30% (for example!) of each technique required, or elsewise you are wasting your time? (In terms of productivity with technique/repertoire aquisition etc.)
In theory you should be able to calculate this yourself to some extent. Me with the Rach3 is probably 1%, remember that's 1% in relation to the requirements of the Rach3, not the C Major Scale!

Well, Okay, I just confused everyone enough. For those of you who understand what I'm getting at, you'll probably think I'm wasting my time! Actually I'm beginning to wonder if spending all this time on this post is worth it, but hey, I'll give it a shot

It's just... Curiosity Killed The Cat (Or should I say the flames will).

[rc]

hahah, I think I know what you're saying Ruro. A strange, difficult analogy . I would say that the minimum would be the technique to perform notewise correctly most of the time. From there I say the only percentage to worry about is giving 100% of your current abilities, to make it as good as you can for your current level.

I truely don't understand the point of playing music if you don't want to make it as good as you possibly can. Learning it half-assed is lazy. Anything worth doing is worth doing right. Even though most listeners won't consciously know the difference, they will more enjoy a better performace. Impressing people is not my goal, sharing the music is, and so my goal is to emotionally move a receptive listener. It's the musical expression, the devilish little details that make the difference whether a performance will move someone or if it's simply 'recognizable'.

I also don't believe anyone could not have the desire to share the music they learn, there must be the intention of at some point playing the music for someone else. Even in your post, apple, you said for the most part. Coupled with the interest in improvement, there must be some desire to eventually share your efforts.

There's no way you could become good with a half-assed attitude, doing the bare minimum. It's a horrible approach. I would suggest always trying to perfect whatever you learn (although perfection may not be possible, it's a good place to start ), and I second what whynot and kassaa said. You'll get a lot more out of the music holding yourself to a higher standard and through sharing your efforts.

I wonder too, do you like the pieces you learn applelover? That's an important factor.

[tac-tics]

Absolutely the wrong way of thinking IMO. You should always be expecting people who listen very carefully and exactly know what you're doing, you will 1. practice harder and 2. get more satisfaction because you know you played very well.

We could all impress people with a flick of our fingers, but does it give satisfaction? Do you feel you have done something great? I don't, that's why I always try to make the best of a piece possible, so that other people AND myself are happy.

Perhaps you misunderstood me. I meant that if you goal is to impress a crowd, it takes relatively little skill. I agree this has nothing to do with personal satisfaction. I'm just saying that if the original poster isn't keen on the idea of polishing pieces, it won't hinder his ability to entertain most crowds.

[applelover]

thanks for the posts guys, you have given me something to think about.  rc... i like the pieces i'm working on a good deal, however, i often choose pieces too hard for myself because they sound better than the easy sheet music.   some of the time it is just impractical if not impossible to get anything near perfection on those pieces.  however, barring those pieces...

when i work on something, for instance minuet 116 in AMB i have gotten it pretty good.  when i came to a measure that was causing me errors i'd keep hammering at that part until it was better.  a little amount of work for big gains in sound.  now though there is no specific part that is too bad, but i can't play the piece fast and i'll make errors here and there.  it feels like to get it very good i'd have to practice the entire piece through many many times, a lot of work.

[Kassaa]

Playing the piano is a lot of work. But it pays off, that's the good part .

[bwv772]

I'v ebeen thinking about this too, about perfecting a piece:  I attended a concert last weekend.  The pianist didn't want to play the Mozart sonata per the program because, according to him, it wasn't ready, it wasn't "up to his standards".  He played a Beethoven sonata instead, the entire concert was phenomenal, so unreal,  by the way.

So I figure that I'm currently playing my Grade 5 pieces as a Grade 5 student, which is fine, the same piece played by somebody with say '10 years experience' would sound better, and the same piece played by a person with '40 years experience' would sound better still.

So my thoughts on this is that you're always perfecting a piece, it's never really perfect.

I come across articles sometimes that mention that this artist has decided to revisit say Schubert after x number of years because they're now 'ready' and 'understand', and interpreting it with a 'new sense of maturity' or whatever.

So yes, I'd say we're always perfecting ourselves.

[applelover]

it feels great to try a piece and not do well on it then go back to it after some months... and find it's no doable and sounds a lot better.  great feeling!

[rc]

I think I've got the idea on your situation applelover... The music you love the most is quite a bit beyond your current level.

heh, I remember when I was getting into piano, first thing I did was tackle my favorite Beethoven sonatas. It was really nice to be getting into this music that I liked enough to make me decide to learn it, but it took so long to do a very sketchy job of a few bars. Eventually, I would either hit a spot I just couldn't handle, or I would get tired of scratching away at it... Maybe this is like your situation?

A better strategy is to leave those pieces that are beyond your grasp and instead work on pieces you can handle, smaller bites. Then, as you progress, when you're better prepared you can tackle the harder pieces. What I like to do is have one piece that's more challenging for me, while working through a steady flow of easier pieces that I can do a good job of. I steadily work on like this, while dreaming that I'll eventually be able to get to those Beethoven sonatas (motivation), in the meantime learning a lot of easier, but still good, pieces.

when i work on something, for instance minuet 116 in AMB i have gotten it pretty good. when i came to a measure that was causing me errors i'd keep hammering at that part until it was better. a little amount of work for big gains in sound. now though there is no specific part that is too bad, but i can't play the piece fast and i'll make errors here and there. it feels like to get it very good i'd have to practice the entire piece through many many times, a lot of work.

This sounds like you may be trying too hard to get the piece up to speed in a rush. Getting rid of the problem sections is good, no problems there. Getting it to the point where there are no specific bad spots is also good. Trying to directly add speed after that is where the problem is.

Two things to help in learning something up to speed: - as you learn the notes, try to learn them up to speed or even a little faster, perfecting one small section at a time, then putting the sections together.

- and when you have larger sections (or the whole piece), it's good to practice the whole thing slowly, aiming for control. Try not to get any notes wrong, eliminate any hesitations, always try and think ahead. The idea of aiming for control is important, once you feel you have good control over the correct notes speed comes automatically. Control.

I suspect you might have some less than useful practice habits. Read around the forum, posts by Bernhard are especially good, there's a lot of great advice and ideas in those old posts that could probably help you out a lot. Do you have a teacher?

[applelover]

hey RC thanks for the post.  you are right that i don't get my piece at the right speed in individual sections, i will try and do it the way you suggest.

"I suspect you might have some less than useful practice habits."

i started writing a response to this question, but think my response warrants a new thread.  also, you say you have a challenging piece and are doing some other easier more managable pieces concurrently.  i get excited by all the sheet music i have (and all the sheet music i can't stop myself from buying) and keep starting new pieces and must be working on 6 or 7 right now or maybe more.  as the pieces get better i gradually practice them less, so they get good but not great before they are phased out.  is this a bad way to do it? how many pieces do you practice at a time?

[rc]

hey RC thanks for the post.  you are right that i don't get my piece at the right speed in individual sections, i will try and do it the way you suggest.

"I suspect you might have some less than useful practice habits."

i started writing a response to this question, but think my response warrants a new thread.  also, you say you have a challenging piece and are doing some other easier more managable pieces concurrently.  i get excited by all the sheet music i have (and all the sheet music i can't stop myself from buying) and keep starting new pieces and must be working on 6 or 7 right now or maybe more.  as the pieces get better i gradually practice them less, so they get good but not great before they are phased out.  is this a bad way to do it? how many pieces do you practice at a time?

I don't like practicing more than 4 pieces at once, usually there's one piece I like a little more than the rest and that one gets laser-focus while the others get gradual progress. About a month ago I decided to focus more energy improving scales/chords and sightreading, so right now I'm only doing two pieces.

There's nothing wrong with having more pieces on the plate. That just means your practice time is divided up more, each piece will take longer to learn, but there's more of them. It's a personal thing really.

You said they get good but not great. I wonder though, do you mean 'not as great as the legendary pianist recording', or 'not as great as I could make it' ? bwv772 made a great point earlier, it's good to come back to a piece later on with more experience and bring it up to level. For me there is no phase out, just a point where I've gone through all the detail and expression I can think of, after getting it as good as I can is when I consider it done. It's good to establish a high standard for yourself.

Aside from the actual practice, it's a good idea to back up and take a look at your practice routine, HOW you're practicing. For me it's an ongoing thing, there always seems to be something I can try to make my practice more effective. constantly adapting. Experimenting with different ideas.

If you haven't already, read this stuff: https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,13011.msg139872.html#msg139872 , Bernhard has great advice, and is much better at explaining things. It's a lot to read, but well worth it.

[steve jones]

I find myself in a similar 'boat' to the original poster - learning loads of new pieces, but never mastering them. I figured that I can get the technical attributes without having to work for weeks to have the piece completely nailed. However, it occured to me that maybe my inability to play the piece perfectly was a result of me NOT gaining the required technique.

So now I plan to do things different - mastering all new pieces that I learn (ie, play to speed without major mistakes). Iv set myself the Bach Inventions, and I shall be perfecting them all before moving on (honest  )!

[alzado]

I can't stay on a piece for weeks, or even months, polishing and polishing.  I would go out of my mind.

However, I will once again take up a piece that "wasn't quite all the way there" at some earlier point in time --

I have once again taken up the Myra Hess "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." It is oftentimes played at Christmas.  That's why it came to mind recently. 

I am getting it better this time.  I am playing all of the little tiny notes she adds at many places in the piece.  I think they are sort of "elective," perhaps.  But the piece is better if they are included.

Even this time, I will not have the piece perfected.  But it will be pretty darn good.  In fact, by my viewpoint, it is pretty good now. 

But it can get even better.  Isn't that true of many pieces?