Difficulty--A matter of tempo?

[pianolearner]

I was quite proud of myself for being able to play a new piece (not brilliantly) within a few hours of learning it. However, I am only playing it at half tempo. I can't seem to get beyond that without making mistakes.

What is the best way to get up to speed? Is it a matter of practice, practice, and practice? I am almost 38 and some of the things I've read about learning at a certain age are quite discouraging. Is it possible for me to improve my speed?

[g_s_223]

Your use of the term "learn" is unclear. Have you memorised each hand independently? Can you play from memory each hand? At what tempo before errors appear? Have you read Chuan C. Chang's book?

[pianolearner]

Your use of the term "learn" is unclear. Have you memorised each hand independently? Can you play from memory each hand? At what tempo before errors appear? Have you read Chuan C. Chang's book?

I have almost memorised the entire piece, I still need to follow the sheet music for some parts. However I can only play the parts I have memorised at half the suggested tempo.

[steve jones]

For me, I consider I have 'learned' a piece when I can play it all, at speed, without mistakes, from memory. And this can take time. Memorising can be done quite quickly, but bringing it all together can take alot longer (in my case atleast).

I would try to break it up into stages:

- Memorising
- Learning to play each hand to speed
- Putting the hands together
- Getting HT up to speed
- Iradicating mistakes

[fra ungdomsdagene]

What is the best way to get up to speed? Is it a matter of practice, practice, and practice?

No. I don't think so.
I had your same problem. What helped me has been focusing on "playing easily"
Liszt used to say that virtuosity was easy playing, what Chopin used to repeat when facing students who had problems with speed and accuracy was "facilement, facilement"
I'm realizing that speed is more a mental fact than a mechanical fact and lack of speed is more a mental barrier (just like the "I'm too old" nonsense) than a mechanical barrier.
I was surprised for example to find out that I was able to play fast only when I focused on playing accurately and slowly but that the result was sloppy playing when I focused on playing fast. I'm not saying that playing slowly will build up speed, I'm saying to think slowly. Le me clarify. I believe that when we focus on playing slowly we are actually able to play fast because we're mentally projecting effortless and easy movements whereas when we focus on playing fast we subconsciously exaggerate all movements ... the focus on fast playing is translated into a subconscious attempt to make everything complex, big and stressful. But fast playing requires that your movements become smaller and easier.
You don't think about playing fast but about moving your hands effortlessly and easily (which we tend to think to be a characteristic of slow practicing and playing) That's why I said you focus on slow (accurate, easy, effortless) and small movements instead of playing fast.
Focus on speed and playing faster and speed will never come or not without unjuries and lot of wasted time. Focus instead on finding those movements that make the passages from each note to note smaller and easier. Another problem I think is that we tend to dismiss things that appear too easy as wrong because the imprinting we have is that if it is complex and virtuoso it must be necesarily "hard" so we dismiss easy solutions and look for hard alternatives sabotaging our success. Fast playing is instead finding and accepting the easy solutions.

What this implies technically?
Think about this: finding easy movements. What's the most logical way to find easy movements? Isolate the passages you have to find the movements of: chunk by chunk. Experiment with final speed on small passages: when you play slow you tend to make your movements bigger and when you try to build up speed you tend to make these movements even bigger. I think slow playing will be useful anyway for accuracy, for testing whether you memorized the piece or not, for isolating details but it's not a good logical choice for experimenting and finding "easy and small" movements. Overlearn: force your mind and your body to inspect all possible movements by practicing in all kind of rhythmic and structural variations, it will be easier to detect the easy movements from such a big and detailed "list". Practice hands separate until you've found the easy and small movements for each chunk in both hands: since you're finding through experimenting, you need to test lot of exploratory movements before you find the easy and small ones and so you need to forget many of them and the coordination required in practicing hands together stimulates deep memorization and internalization way more than hands separate practice so that forgetting and removing the "wrong" exploratory movements will be harder if not impossible.

Speed will come when your mind can think faster than your hands move. Speed will come when you can accept easy solutions and playing. Speed will come when you will stop focusing on playing fast. When your movements will be small and easy and your hands will move effortlessly. When you will think "easy" and will play "easy" you will play  fast.

Fra