Why do I sometimes get worse over time?

[getcool]

I don't know if this has happened to anyone else, but I'm noticing it more often now than when I first started playing.

Basically I will learn a piece to a point where I can play it fairly well, and I'll move on to something else, but when I come back to the first piece, I'll suddenly have trouble with it.  It's almost as if I have to relearn everything, and some of the techniques/fingerings I used no longer seem to work.

The same is true on a smaller scale, as in individual fragments of a single piece.  I will learn a passage, move on to another, but when I return to the passage I thought I already learned, I suddenly have trouble.

I don't actually think I'm getting worse, since I do practice every day, but sometimes I wonder why I find something surprisingly difficult that once seemed easy...

[tac-tics]

Do you keep rehearsing your piece once you get it down? Even one day without practicing certain pieces will wreak havoc on my abilities.

[debussy symbolism]

Do you keep rehearsing your piece once you get it down? Even one day without practicing certain pieces will wreak havoc on my abilities.

Greetings.

Yes exactly. Leanring a piece fairly well, but not perfect is a nother problem. It means that you may not have a properly secured technique withing the piece and by not practicing it time is wasted basically. I suggest playing through the piece slowly at least once a day. This is the only way to keep it from diminishing, as it did with my Daquin piece, le Coucou. I got it now though.

Hope this helps.

[ilikepie]

speaking of which, you probably know crochet right? IF you don't tie the ends, it will only take a cat to unravel all your hard work >.> In the same way, if you don't fully learn it(and I notice you said "fairly", which I translate as decently, or at the least acceptable standards), you will find out that your practice was meaningless.. I find it better to work one piece at a time, rather than switching over before mastering a certain piece... works really well for me, but for you... well, you should know yourself better than me

[getcool]

Thanks for your responses.

Yes, by "fairly well" I mean I have not fully mastered the piece.  I tend to practice this way: I spend some time with one piece, then move onto another, then come back to the first, etc.

Maybe this isn't the best way to practice, but I have to wonder... more advanced pianists cannot possibly play every piece in their repertoire every day, so how do they choose the best practice strategy?  My repertoire is of course not very extensive (I've been playing for only about 1.5 years), but even so, I don't feel like I could keep up with working on every piece daily.

I guess my goal is to have a set of pieces that I can play on cue rather than have only one or two that I'm currently working on, with the others falling behind until I return to them.

Also, one last thing; my teacher has commented that sometimes it's okay to put a piece aside, then come back to it in 6 months, a year, or longer and approach it differently since your skill level will have improved.  If I find myself doing this, does this indicate that I am trying to play pieces that are beyond my skill level?  Should I stick to easier stuff that I can more quickly master?

[debussy symbolism]

Although it's okay to not master some pieces, it is essential that most pieces are learned to perfection, if not necessarily at speed. A piece is just simply not ready when you have certain parts of it not done or awkward. Spend the time on the piece and don't rush into others. Specify which pieces you are working on, maybe you are approaching them wrong. It depends.

Hope this helps.

[getcool]

Specify which pieces you are working on, maybe you are approaching them wrong.

Well, one of the first "real" pieces that I learned was the C Major Prelude from the Well-Tempered Klavier, Book 1.  At the time, I thought I could play it well, and I put it aside when I moved onto something else.  When I came back to it a few months later, though, I couldn't play the arpeggiations evenly, and I felt that I couldn't achieve the same level of rhythmic consistency throughout the piece.  I have since relearned this piece, however, and can play it much better now.

Where it is happening right now (and this is a good year now since I learned the Bach) is with the first movement of Mozart's A Major Sonata (K331), the "Tema con variazioni".  I moved through the piece variation-by-variation, and I thought I had mastered each one before moving to the next, but now, after spending a good deal of time on the last variation, I'm finding that some of the earlier ones (like the second one, the one with all the triplets) aren't anywhere near mastered.  I can't hit the trills in the second variation with the same level of precision anymore, and some of the triplets are rhythmically inaccurate.

These are just two examples, but this is a general pattern with me; I step away from a piece of a fragment of a piece for a while, and when I return, I find myself worse at it than when I left.

Thanks for your feedback, though, and you're probably right; I most likely am not mastering these pieces in their entireties before moving on, and it is biting me when I come back to them.

[sarahlein]

 Have a look here:

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,7603.msg76044/topicseen.html#msg76044
(a huge collection of links related to practising-kindly provided by Bernhard )

[getcool]

Have a look here:

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,7603.msg76044/topicseen.html#msg76044
(a huge collection of links related to practising-kindly provided by Bernhard )

Nice, thanks for the link.  And big thanks to Bernhard!