Improving Learning Speed

[littl3sh33p]

Hi guys! How's it going?
I have a question here and I'd really like your suggestions.
I'll be a piano major in University of Western Ontario of Canada soon, and really anxious about doing well. Is there any way of improving repertoire learning speed - and does sightreading practice help with that?
There are times when I get stupidly stuck in a few bars in the songs, and that pretty much takes me days and days to get through, while some people just whiff through them effortlessly.
I hope there's a cure for this!

Good luck to you all too.

[ramseytheii]

The only way to learn anything properly is total immersion.  That means, read everything about piano technique you can find; sight-read every day; listen to music all the time and always discover new music; practice your pieces constantly.  That means, when you have five minutes of spare time, don't check your e-mail, sit down and practice two or three bars.  You have to have long periods of sustained concentration, and then those moments where you just want to address one thing.  If your body tells you it wants to play the piano, find a way to play no matter what.

Study theory and analyze all your pieces; also learn to read from orchestral scores.  Practice basic music skills like improvisation, transposition, and transcription.  Give up everything else you are doing, except perhaps drinking alcohol, and work, work, work, work, work.

Walter Ramsey

[rob47]

Give up everything else you are doing, except perhaps drinking alcohol

University of Western Ontario

Shouldn't be a problem for the OP

[mcdiddy1]

If you want to improve learning speed then mark down what ever you have learned in a practice session so you don't forger. Many time I see my students piano music blank and often they repeat the same issues they had before.

Before you can touch the music, you want to make sure your technique is sound....meaning playing without tension in your hands, strong fingers, relaxed tone.

Assuming you are capable of doing that sight read as much as you can but when you learn a piece...you want to learn it inside out for the technical demands and emotional demands.

Create goals and trouble spots and isolate them and only them before playing the entire piece so it doesnt suffer from neglect. The efficency that you have in your practice will shorten the time it takes to learn a piece

[littl3sh33p]

Thanks for the ideas, guys! I've been improving (which is a pleasant surprise)haha! Will be working hard.
PS: Too bad i've swore off alcohol

[gorucan]

The cure is to listen to each interval separately and think about how they have to sound (this is done in slow tempo), and for technical reasons try to do as much tremolo and doubles, triples... and positions ! try to find group of fingers you can press at the same time (according to your fingerings) and then put your hand on those keys with that specific position you will later play separately, and play it liks cluster in fast repetitions - this makes your muscle memorise it!

[xelamercedes]

What you're describing is intriguing but I'm unclear. "...try to find group of fingers you can press at the same time.....put your hand on those keys"??

Can you explain further?

[gruffalo]

try having a good mental grasp of the troubling passages. there are several ways of doing this. one is to have the fingering in the memory without having the score or using your hand to work it out. memorize the number sequence. you can also look at one bar, and memorize the line without playing the piano. usually if you are stuck finding the notes in one particular bar, it is because you are relying too much on your hand memory.