hi terry
Well, I'm 18, I'm not self taught I have taken 10 years of piano lessons, then I took time to work on and improve my own repertoire... and now I can teach it to others
I got the same kind of trouble 3 or 4 years ago, as I began to learn the pieces I wanted to be in my repertoire. I think I was learning about 20 pieces I found beautiful or just difficult. but I got bored. there were long, so I just read and learnt the first pages, or the most exciting moments, and then I learnt another. After a few months, I stopped and wondered what was I able to do really, perfectly from the beginning to the end.
Nothing. I had 1/4 pieces, 1/2 pieces, 3/4 pieces, sometimes just 3 lines to work on to finish, but I never learnt them. So I decided to learn whole pieces (at first, I wanted hard ones, but I eventually accepted to work on easier ones -I was ashamed to learn such easy pieces
); it was quite boring at the beginning, but it showed me I had much work... it was hard. But now, I feel just like I can play anything
well nearly anything, and when not, now I can throw the paper and say "too hard for me, I'll wait"... there are pieces I can play, like rachmaninov's, but I know I'm not good enough to perform beautifully...
well, I think you're wrong the way you practice, just as I was... you say you are advanced, but you cannot finish a piece, spend 2 hours failing the same passage... and in spite of this, you keep learning 10 pieces in the same time
I'm sure you can play well a part of the piece... but the entire work, you'll see, it's not the same. playing the piano is not just "pressing its keys"...
the chopin etudes you mentionned are not so difficult, so if you were of required level, you wouldn't have so much trouble practising it. but you are doing too much in the same time, for a 2 year beginner... so you get problems. try easier ones, from the beginning to the end !
hints to improve your 4,5 fingers
you should take time to read, to practice your etudes with the correct fingers (fingering is really important in chopin etudes, your fingers should be of equal strenght if you want to perform correctly one of chopin's pieces...)
if you have weaknesses, then do some exercises ( some of Hanon's, for example ; or Czerny, or Cramer) and after you feel that weaknesses have disappeared, then you can come back to your pieces and finish them easily.
if you don't like exercices, you can work on Bach's inventions. It seems easy, but it requires technique, and it will show you exactly what your weaknesses are.
Learning a piece from the beginning to the end shouldn't be difficult. It is boring because you spend hours learning it. Imagine you could learn any piece in 20 minutes (try mendelssohn's venetian boat songs, good 2-3 year piece), you wouldn't get bored this way. If you spend too much time, the piece is too difficult for you. Let it down, and try it months afters when you feel ready -then you'll take fewer time to learn it, and will enjoy it...
remember that the most important work is after a piece is learnt : interpretation.
PS : sorry for this big post, I'm not english so it takes me hundreds of words to explain something simple
Topic: AM I WRONG ?