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[pies]

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[ThePhoenixEffect]

How are you practicing the piece?

You should not practice Hands Together until each hand is at least 1.5 times faster than the final speed.

You shouldn't practice "slow", but in "slow motion".  They are different.  Playing slow and playing fast use different hand motions.  You should use the fast hand motions, but in "slow motion".

With each practice, practice with a goal in mind.  Don't juse practice hoping something good will come out of it. For example, plan to one hard part almost up to speed hand seperately for one session.

At this stage, don't worry about dynamics, articulation, etc...not until you learn it.

You might want to take a break from the piece, for a week or so.  I found that this always helped when I had trouble with a piece.  

[Saturn]

One possibility is that you have gotten bored and frustrated of the piece.  Sometimes if you practice the same piece for a while, without seeing much improvement, this can happen.  Then progress gets even slower, and you get even more frustrated, etc.  So make sure you vary your practice by working on other pieces and never FORCING yourself to play a piece just for the sake of practicing it every day.  It shouldn't become a painful ritual.

There is also the possibility that you're practicing incorrectly.  In order to improve, you need to know what you need to improve on.  Always practice with a goal; never practice blindly.  Focus your practice, so that you're working on specific passages, not just playing.  What you should do is find the most difficult part of the piece, and work on that section first.  Practice the passage hands alone and then hands together to see if the problem is with any particular hand, or if the problem is the coordination between the two hands.  After you get this passage down, work on the next most difficult passage, until you've effectively smoothed out all the rough parts of the piece.

Practice dynamically.  If one method of practicing doesn't seem to be getting you any closer to your goal, formulate a different method.  If you start to get frustrated, take a break, or practice something else.

Know and understand your music.  You should be able to "play" the piece in your head, just looking at the music, without being seated at a piano.  Break the music down, look for patterns.

Memorization is important.  If your music isn't memorized, then the speed at which you can play the piece will always be limited to the speed at which you can read the notes.  Unless you're a great notereader, this is probably slowing you down quite a bit.

All of the above is general advice, not specific to the entertainer.

Of course, if none of these things do any good for you, then there's always the possibility that the piece is beyond your ability at the current time.  I don't know what level you're at, so I can't say if this is the case or not.

[pies]

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[faulty_damper]

Only 2 weeks?  I started playing this piece long before I had the technical skills to play it, even the simplified version!  This simple version is the piece that got me started playing the piano.  Then my sister told me that it was the easy version.

"Easy?!"  I thought it was really difficult and that there was something more difficult was daunting...

But I was soon able to play the actual piece.  It took me a long time to get it right and not play the wrong notes on the fast chord changes of the right hand.  I had periods where I was practicing so much and didn't see any improvements.  The remedyy?  Stop practicing it!

That's right, stop practicing it!  It could be that your hands are just tiring from all the practice and haven't the time to recoup.

[Antnee]

Have patience... It takes a lot of time.

One thing to remember is to not play the piece continuously slow for an hour of practice on the piece. You should practice it like three times slow and once as fast as you can get it (even with some mistakes) to make sure your hand movements are right. The most important thing is to maybe skip a day of practice on it. This can be very benificial to your brain and lets it grow more (learns the hand movements).

-Tony-

[johnreef]

Practicing a piece is not the same as trying again and again to play it. Work out a method that works for you --- I don't buy that hand's alone bit -- if that were true you should be able to play the right hand alone of Chopin's opus 10#1 at a metronome marking of 264.
But I will tell you that if you cannot play it through slowly, don't bother to try to play it at tempo.....learn it slow first...be methodical. Also, why do you want to play this piece of crap?   <g>

[newsgroupeuan]

 The remedyy?  Stop practicing it!

That's right, stop practicing it!  It could be that your hands are just tiring from all the practice and haven't the time to recoup.

Correct.  Also do a LOT hands separately. LOTS!! LOTS,LOTS,LOTS,LOTS,LOTS,LOTS,LOTS,LOTS,LOTS,LOTS,LOTS!

I started on the "hard version"  !!!!!!!!! *massively over-inflated ego*

[pies]

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[donjuan]

You have been given some great advice.  Just take it slow- what, was it last week you learned what a scale was?  In music, two weeks is nothing.  I spent 4 weeks on the same bar from a chopin Ballade.  Every lesson with my teacher, we would do the same bar OVER AND OVER.  Eventually, I understood the technique and applied it to everything I played afterwards, without spending too much time per bar.
donjuan