your day

[moltar]

hi, how does your day of practicing look like? how many pieces do you have going on at once etc?

[thalbergmad]

I rarely have more than 3 on the go at once, but i am in the habit of not finishing anything. something always crops up to divert my attention and i discard pieces quicker than i pick them up.

Thal

[richard black]

I usually have between 10 and 50 pieces at one time. Anything from a single song to a chamber piece to a whole opera. Accompanists have the most fun, folks!

[moltar]

I see. A little off topic, but how hard is it to work as a classical piano accompanist? It must be alot easier than becoming a concert pianist, right? I don't have time to only practice classical music, but a fantasy I have is seeing myself comping singers etc in the future.

[slow_concert_pianist]

Currently I am finishing off Beethoven's Sonata 16-1, starting on 16-3, finishing Chopin's Ballade 3, work still to be done on 2, about to start 4. I have pretty much completed Bach WTC2-6 prelude. Beethoven's Waldstein 3rd is about half way complete (I feel). Rachmaninov Prelude Op32-2 is very close to completion, but I have also started no 13. Liszt Transcendtal Etude 2 is making (surprising) rapid progress. I am also just starting Mendelssohn's Op35 set of preludes and fuges, beginning with Fuge 1 and 5. If I have time I may add in a "play around" piece (yesterday it was Chopin's Impromtu 1) or two. But that is my current rigorous daily practice schedule.

[vviola]

I see. A little off topic, but how hard is it to work as a classical piano accompanist? It must be alot easier than becoming a concert pianist, right? I don't have time to only practice classical music, but a fantasy I have is seeing myself comping singers etc in the future.

It still requires you to learn the music and play it expressively and accurately. But songs are typically shorter works with minimal bravura for the accompanist (the bravura is usually given to the singer), so in that respect it is easier, since you don't have to learn 20-some pages of music. There are many difficult works, of course (some piano parts in the Hugo Wolf songs for instance are very virtuosic). And if you are good sight-reader then you don't have to memorize the pieces, at least not entirely.

[simonjp90]

I rarely have more than 3 on the go at once, but i am in the habit of not finishing anything. something always crops up to divert my attention and i discard pieces quicker than i pick them up.

Thal

absolutely in the same boat, i set out to learn everything but never even finish one piece. need more self-discipline!

[ted]

I do not practise at all in the usual sense. I never was much good at that sort of discipline and now I am older the more I desire each day to be musically different. I maintain a small (by professional standards - certainly no more than a hundred or so) repertoire of pieces I enjoy but everything tends to be improvisation now.

I am relearning many of my old compositions but there isn't a lot of daily discipline about that exercise.

[moltar]

It still requires you to learn the music and play it expressively and accurately. But songs are typically shorter works with minimal bravura for the accompanist (the bravura is usually given to the singer), so in that respect it is easier, since you don't have to learn 20-some pages of music. There are many difficult works, of course (some piano parts in the Hugo Wolf songs for instance are very virtuosic). And if you are good sight-reader then you don't have to memorize the pieces, at least not entirely.

I see, but what about the work side of it? How much competition is there, and is there a big market? Will you get hired if you're not a virtuoso?

[richard black]

You don't need to be a virtuoso to be an accompanist, especially a vocal accompanist (some chamber works are more physically demanding), but you need to have a pretty decent technique. Above all you need to be a good listener. You also need to be a quick learner, unless you are going to be very specialised.

In terms of competition, there's plenty to be a concert accompanist performing with big names in big venues, but surprisingly little for the rather less glamorous stuff - accompanying students, small gigs, opera rehearsals and so on. That's mostly what I do and I can assure you it's a load of fun.

[liordavid]

I usually take 5-10 pieces at once. I am currently studying Beethoven's Sonata op 14 no2, Debussy arbesque 1, Debussy estampes, Schubert impromptu op 90 no4, Hindemiths Sonata for flute & piano, Eldin Burton's Sonatina for flute& piano. Even practicing for 2-3 hours a day, I cannot practice everything in one day. That is how i practice

[nanabush]

It depends really on what I'm playing.  I could spend an hour coordinating the bombastic octaves with a completely different melodic line in a Liszt piece, or I could spend an hour working out the voicing in a fugue.

That being said, I usually can't sit for several hours on the same piece (other people are different).  I can do an hour, then a break, then another hour later on the same piece.  I also don't like doing a bit of one piece, then getting side tracked with another (unless I am simply playing through them).  If I'm working in depth on a Bach piece (which I WAS doing today), and then suddenly switch to some Chopin 'for fun', I'll end up mixing up what I was accomplishing with the Bach.

So anyways, I'll usually do 2-3 'sessions' a day, rather than a 6 hour burst.  They'll last between 45 minutes and an hour and a half.  If I have the whole day to myself, then I'll do 3-4 sessions like that.  If I devote one chunk of time at one piece, I find I accomplish WAY more!  If I'm sitting for 3 hours rotating over and over between three or four pieces, I just feel really disorganized.

I also have my little creative part to my day (usually late at night), when I'll mix in some technique with some improvisation.  I make up a lot of little exercises for myself to work certain things.  An example of something I did today was large spanning double notes (to see how far I can actually reach )  So I played 35-24-13-24-35 on EC - CG - GE - CG - EC (intervals of a 6th, 5th, then 6th, then 5th, then 6th) with my right hand, as legato as possible.  I did this going down each major key.  I spent a good 20 minutes on that, then I practiced some chromatic minor thirds scales (now that I actually understand the fingering) for a little while. 

[ara9100]

I only have one piece (rachmaninoffs 2nd piano concerto 1st mvt). But i only have 4 months to bring it up to a really good standard, because i have my end of term exams. (thank god i have a really good memory) Learnt it by memory in only 1 week)

[vivace119]

At the moment, I tend to do things in 25 minute sessions, but I'm trying to focus on maintaining/relearning old pieces at the moment and dedicating fewer sessions to learning new things.

I used to sit for hours at the piano working on a new piece, but now it's measured exactly to 25 minutes. Any longer and I start to feel as if I'm practicing begrudgingly.

[mousekowski]

I like the idea of dividing your day up into sessions (which could be 25 mins). I think that it is necessary to have at least one session per day in order to make progress with a piece. The amount of practice time per day therefore limits the number of pieces you can make progress with.

I have a day job and a family and I only get to spend about one hour a day practicing. I'm currently working on two Chopin Etudes, Op10 Nos 11 & 12 and the first movement of Mendelssohn's First Piano Trio. This is more than enough to fill my one hour a day slot! I find I make better progress if I focus on just one or two pieces at a time.

[john11inc]

3 hours with that part of Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues.  Dicking around with Ustvolskaya Sonata No. 6 and Debussy's Etudes 1/3.

[saraddc]

Liszt or Pischna exercises and 3 pieces too. When I see more I'm in a bad day to piano :S So I read, read, read, read...

[fifthelegy]

I generally do about 3-4 pieces but 5 maximum. I don't like taking on too many pieces at once since I don't have the time to practice them all. And the fewer pieces I do, the more I concentrate on them  so they can actually start to sound good.

On a normal day, the most hours I could probably squeeze in is 1.5, what with school and everything. But now that it's the holidays, if I'm not at the computer, then I'm at the piano!

[go12_3]

I am busy with practicing the pieces I'm learning which may be an hour a day,
I have my violin to play also, plus students to teach in the late afternoons.
I have other things going on in my life and therefore, I make practice time on the piano
special.  I work on Bach mostly because I love his music.  When I was a piano performance major, I used to practice 7 hours a day because that was my life at the time....to  practice.
I have learned the skills of the keyboard, my practicing is more for pleasure, which is
a good thing and I can learn anything I want without the worries of what my teacher expects of me.   

[pianisten1989]

I use to play a concert program at once.. one classical sonata, another classical piece like a rondo, a bigger romantic work, some smaller romantic works, and most of the time something modern. I guess I'll add a piano concerto to that list soon.

I try to practice atleast 7 or 8 hours a day...