How do you take in music?

[Bob]

What do you think about when you see a piece of music?

Are you seeing or hearing chords, individual notes?  Are you focusing on your hand position or relaxing to make it easier?  Are you focusing on keeping up with the metronome if the tempo is beyond your capabilities? etc etc etc...

What do you focus on while playing?

And, what should you focus on?  If you've drilled the notes into your hands so you can play without any attention, should you still be thinking about individual notes and chords (on that level)?

[pianistimo]

i used to focus on the size of chords and stretches involved to play and would automatically eliminate pieces that 'looked too hard.'  now, i say - 'ok. this looks hard, but i'm going to try it.'  i've found even with chopin etudes that the combination of practicing hard, with certain techniques (such as the zip technique - yes. oh no. not that again!) makes praciticing challenging  pieces not seem IMPOSSIBLE. 

also, with sightreading, i used to fake myself out and tell myself when something was too hard for me.  now, i say 'i can do this.'  must be like flying a plane or somehting.  when you have to do something, you just do it.  the first time might be eliminating a few notes here and there - but it's all in the amount of time and the methods you use for practice.  you say - ok.  here's point a and i want to be at point b (destination) at a certian time.  then you 'do the math' and say - ok.  x amount of practice for x amount of days will get me there.

you can try the method 'kill, kill.'  for some people it works.  you set about trying to kill the piece.  it's combining huge amounts of 'drill' time with memory work.

[lostinidlewonder]

Patterns, repetions, break it up in sections, where are the hardest/easiest parts. Do all the hard parts first. Pick out general procedure, relate parts to what I've learnt before. Lots of coloring in.