Is it a gud practice to begin a piece and start over every time u made a mistake

[bonjing]

coz i always do that

[Bob]

Problably not.

Depends on what the piece is for for me.  If it's supposed to be perfect, then I better practice perfect and squash any errors just after they happen.  If it's not that important, and it's simple enough, a few complete run through each day seems to iron things out without much effort on my part.

Why not just target the problem spots?  Hit those hard.  Iron them out.  Then play through it? 

[Derek]

I think with anything it is a good idea to use the principle of "chunking." That is, if you focus on sections of the piece at a time, the more self sufficient you will become at "re starting" in the middle of a piece if you DO make a mistake.  If your brain is accustomed only to playing through the entire piece and never starting in the middle, you'll have less avenues of recovering from a mistake.  So in my opinion, it is good to be able to play a piece all the way through or start randomly in the middle or anywhere else.  So yeah...practice in sections. 

[guendola]

Very bad idea! If you keep doing the same mistake in the same place, pick that individual measure and practise it alone, play it very slowly, make no mistakes, repeat correctly until you feel comfortable with it. Then let it settle while sleeping and try again next day. Of course you can treat several mistakes this way before you go to bed

[kyliec]

It will result in the beginning of the piece being ok but will get weaker as you progress through to the end of the piece...

[quantum]

As others have said this may divert more practise toward the beginning than at other places. 


Regarding mistakes and repetition.  There are two methods I use, and they are probably equally important.  The first is repeat only the section where you make the mistake.  Make a conscious effort to think out the problem and not just repeat until "my fingers eventually get it".  Fixing mistakes using brain power is much more efficient. 

The second method, is playing the piece through even though you do make mistakes.  Also practise recovering from mistakes or lapses.  With this technique you get to have more of a vision of the whole piece and how it works as a composition.  You really should be able to start playing a piece from anywhere in the middle. 

[hasekamp]

You have to practice all parts where you make mistakes separately and SLOOOW
Suppose your mistakes are on pabe 2. It is useless to play page one every time until you reach them.
Your teacher will also tell you this. If you don't have a teacher, find one!

[timothy42b]

coz i always do that

It is almost impossible to play fluently if you practice like this.  Even if you learn to keep going at performance time you will have hesitations and abrupt changes in tempo.  You are teaching yourself NOT to keep a steady beat, which is likely to hurt you in the long run.  IMO, of course, YMMV. 

[counterpoint]

There's a simple rule for practising:

don't play faster than you can

So if you make the same errors again and again, it's a sign that you play too fast.

Just play slower... and slower... and slower... until you are able to play without these recurrent errors.

And don't restart always from the beginning of the piece, but jump 2-4 measures back from where you made an error and then begin there (after analysing what the cause of the error was!).

[mike_lang]

There's a simple rule for practising:

don't play faster than you can

So if you make the same errors again and again, it's a sign that you play too fast.

Agreed!  I once had a professor tell me, in order to clean up my playing, that I should lower the metronome a click at a time until I could play said passage without false notes and only then should I begin to slowly increase the tempo one "click" at a time (this particular pianist, a laureate of Chopin competition, misses a note about once every ten years). 

Now, I don't fully embrace his particular method, as it is rather inefficient (as great as the results may be), but it is true that when mistakes are made, it is often the result of an ineffective movement which cannot be examined and refined except by slowing down. 

Like others have said, if you are making mistakes, your practice tempo is too fast!

Best,

ML

[timothy42b]

Like others have said, if you are making mistakes, your practice tempo is too fast!

ML

That is one possible interpretation.

Another is that your selection is too long.  At fast tempo you may not be able to play a piece, but you might manage eight bars, or one bar, or maybe only two beats. 

There are also traditions where you practice at tempo, picking up more notes each time through.  Brazilian guitar music has some schools like that. 

Slowing down is not the only way and often not the most efficient way to avoid errors. 

[mike_lang]

Slowing down is not the only way and often not the most efficient way to avoid errors. 

Of course, you're right and I was careless not to qualify what I said. 

I think that different practice techniques are needed at different stages of the learning process.  Generally, in the beginning, it is helpful for me to play slow in order to prevent the development of mistakes.

Later on, when the piece has been learned and needs to be polished, slow is not much help except to observe the motion, to see what part of it is inefficient.  Once the observation is done, at this stage, "a tempo" (and sometimes faster!) practice should be used to ingrain the correct motion.

Best,

ML

[gyzzzmo]

its not good, period :p
try to practise the parts you find hard alone, after you done them all you can start doing the entire piece and work on the dynamics/melody.

gyzzz

[slobone]

not gud.

My last teacher, bless her heart, said "If you make a mistake, keep going. But if you make the same mistake 3 times, you MUST fix it. Even then, you don't have to stop everything, just circle it on the page and come back to it later. Never start over unless things are totally screwed up." Or words to that effect.