What do you find the hardest...?

[steve jones]

Just curious to find out what part of learning new music you find the most difficult (and time consuming)?

Personally, I find the polishing to be very time consuming. For example, I started learning Bach Invention 1:

- Memorising took about 2 days
- Learning HS to speed took about 5 days
- Playing HS just under top speak took about another 5 days

So in all, it took around 2 weeks to learn to play this piece. However, Im not 4 weeks down the road, and still ironing out technical issues and a boat load of other kinks! I have had to almost start again, going through each bar at a time and finding the right motions and hand positions in order to get the right sound, and avoid flubs. Now I can play the piece around 110bpm, using the correct articulations etc. But Im still making regular flubs and spend much of my practice time working on isolated phrases or even bars!

The piece is irrelevant, as I find this to be the case across the board - I can memorise and learn music quickly, but polishing the piece and getting it up to scratch takes much longer. In the past I have usually left it at around that stage, but now I prefer to properly 'master' (term used losely!) pieces before leaving them. I had this the worst with Beethoven Op49 No2. Not a difficult piece by any means, and I learned it quickly. However, I constantly make flubs and will have to return to this piece in the future to brush up to scratch. Very frustrating, as this part seems so tedious - you can play the piece, but not good enough to get through it in a single run without cocking up 

So how about you? Which part of the process causes you the most difficulty?

[brahmsian]

The interpretation is the hardest IMO. Assuming I can play the notes, I find it hard sometimes to make it sound the way I want it to sound. Anybody can play notes, but it's the interpretation that makes or breaks a piece. I dunno... maybe I am obsessing over the little things.

[steve jones]

I dont tend to find this so much of a problem. I can usually play the music in my head exactly how I want it to sound. Ofcourse, putting that onto the keys is not so easy, and I suspect this is what you are talking about. I guess it requires an extremely good technician to be able to articulate what they hear in their 'minds ear' fully. Or at best, a LOT of practice.

But again, I tend to be developing this side even before I can play the notes through. Whether my interpretations are any good is ofcourse a totally different matter...  At the moment, they are guided more by instinct and personal aesthetics than by study or knowledge. Maybe that is the best way to do it, but Im sure its also the most risky!

For example, I play the Moonlight first movement FFF from start to finish.