my piano diploma...

[ballade]

hey
pleease reply if you have any advice about this!
I have a piano licentiate diploma in two weeks. I'm 16 years old. My programme is
A sonata By Benda
Beethoven's Moonlight sonata
Chopin's cherzo number 4
Two etudes by Dohnanyi (5 and 6 from his concert etudes)
and two modern etudes by David Horne.

The Chopin and the Beethoven are a dodgy in terms of memory (!!) and notes. I'm panicking completely as my teacher has told me that I could pass or fail at this stage and I would really like to get a distinction.
I'm afraid of wasting time in inefficient practise. What is the best way of perfecting, or polishing pieces without wasting time? I don't want to "cram practise" but the way I paly them now I will not get a distinction in this exam...
Please help! any practise techniques would be appreciated!

[dreamaurora]

I'm afraid that there's nothing much you can do. It seems that you may have chosen pieces that are way above your current level, hence your struggling with them. As a general rule before taking a music exam where the program is to be memorised, you should have your pieces secure and memorised one or two months before actual exam or performance, then the rest of the time is spent playing in student's recital or your friends to make sure that those problem spots that stick out during actual performance are spotted and corrected.

Since you are taking the exam in two weeks, I suggest that your reduce your actual playing tempo and practice very slowly the parts where you have mistakes. Cramming practice will not help much at this stage, as you will get more panicky and impatient.

[ballade]

Thanks for your reply!
The pieces aren't above my current level, I just haven't had as much time to practise with them as I should have. The main problem is getting them securely from memory. Do you have any tips for memorising quickly and efficiently?

[dreamaurora]

There's no shortcut to memorising, To test whether you have memorised effectively, play only one hand from the beginning of the piece to the end. If you can get all the notes and musical ideas flowing correctly, your piece is secure in memory. However, if you lose the notes when you play separate hand, that shows you are relying on your muscle memory, the most unreliable type of memory that you can use.

There are many different types of memory you must use together to achiveve the best performance, I will not go through them in detail here since it has been discussed many times before in this forum, just run through a search here.

In order to memorise effectively, you have to get all the right notes first. In my experience, a wrong note during practice will become a huge mess in performance, so it is imperative that you get all the notes right during practice. Since you are in a quite a predicament now, I suggest you follow these procedures. Break up your pieces into sections where if your memory fails during a section, you can continue or restart from a section where you are more secure. Practice each section slowly for a few times, and play them only up to tempo after 5 or 6 times. This method works for me pretty effectively, Hope it helps.