Some practice advice

[uncle_trapspringer]

     I've been noticing lately that I don't feel like I'm getting much out of my practice.  I'm currently 16, and have been playing for just over three years now.  In June, I'm going to be playing five pieces in front of a judge: Prelude #1 in C maj. from WTC1, Beethoven op. 49 #2 first movement, fur elise, Chopin's waltz in a minor (posthumous), and Gershwin's Prelude #1 in B-flat major.  My teacher points out my mistakes, but overall says she really enjoys my playing; that I have a natural "feel" for the music.  However, I don't think so really; I often lose my tempo, miss keys, or don't play them hard enough to make a sound, my phrasing is always off, and I don't feel my playing is very smooth.  I'm thinking about perhaps going back to my RCM books, which we seem to have stopped working out of, there are actually a few pieces I think are nice, and trying to work on my technique.  I just don't find practice enjoyable right now, and so I never really feel like trying.

     So I was wondering, does anyone have any tips or advice to help me get more out of practicing or to help me work on my technique?

[gyzzzmo]

I think you should have a chat with your teacher. Make him clear that you want to increase your technique and that you're even willing to do boring excersises to get rid of your technical flaws (you DO want to do this right??)

If your teacher listens and you're willing enough, he'll change the way of teaching and your learning curve will raise hopefully

[timland]

Make sure you're practicing in very small sections (1 measure or less) hands seperate at the beginning and don't expands the section size until the small section is so absolutely perfect that there's no way you could ever screw it up. Then combine small sections together into bigger ones. If mistakes creep in, go back to the very small sections again.

[pianoperformer]

Almost totally agreed with timland, except for one little thing:

don't expands the section size until the small
section is so absolutely perfect that there's no way you could ever screw it up

There's only so much time that you can dedicate to a section at a time before you start to see diminishing returns, and may even get worse at it. I usually do up to 10 minutes for these small sections, which may be from one beat up to about a measure. I stop when either that 10 minutes is up, or I start to make stupid mistakes I usually would not make. Then I practice it very slowly one more time without mistakes, and move on.

You will get bored and discouraged if you only do one section until it is perfect. Sometimes you may not see improvement for several days. Sometimes it may not be perfect for several weeks.

Therefore, I suggest extracting parts that you commonly have trouble with. When you work on one for enough time, move onto another. Don't forget to join them together sometimes to work on musicality as well as technique.