Have you ever been misled when learning piano?

[ethure]

I'm just wondering if any of you(especially the 'serious' pianists/learners) has ever been misled or gone into a wrong method for practice?  I know how severely awful it can be if you ever formed a bad habit or wrong doings during the learning, I seem to have met some and it gives me so much frustration, sometimes I just thought, oh this is so wrong, why would I go on pratising if nothing is corrected back to the right track. maybe I am too 'neat freak' and too impatient with myself(or  maybe there's actually no problem with the way of practice at all?). what did you do if you once had some similar situation?

[raphaelinparis]

and it took quite some time before I understood the need to work slowly.
Slowing down the tempo helped me to control many things at the same time : notes, rythm, colour, memorization, and improved my learning rate a lot. I found out that speeding up after wasn't really a big problem once you get everything working at low speed.
I had been misled into practicing too fast by a wrong interpretation of Chang's book, at a time when my professor did not care about telling me how to learn, so I tried to derive my own practice strategy from various readings (like Chang) and probably got some ideas wrong.

[nyiregyhazi]

and it took quite some time before I understood the need to work slowly.
Slowing down the tempo helped me to control many things at the same time : notes, rythm, colour, memorization, and improved my learning rate a lot. I found out that speeding up after wasn't really a big problem once you get everything working at low speed.
I had been misled into practicing too fast by a wrong interpretation of Chang's book, at a time when my professor did not care about telling me how to learn, so I tried to derive my own practice strategy from various readings (like Chang) and probably got some ideas wrong.

Chang didn't get it wrong, although he might perhaps have explained it more carefully. The whole point of going straight to faster executions is to TEST the quality of slower work. If you fail the test, you go back to the slower work and continue there. I don't think Chang says anything to imply you should simply charge through things and settle for sloppiness. It's about improving the feedback loop- not throwing out careful work.

[raphaelinparis]

I don't think Chang says anything to imply you should simply charge through things and settle for sloppiness. It's about improving the feedback loop- not throwing out careful work.

certainly. But for the beginner that I was then the message got oversimplified into "work quick, you'll be able to loop plenty times and you'll learn quicker"...that was very wrong as I later discovered.

[faa2010]

and it took quite some time before I understood the need to work slowly.
Slowing down the tempo helped me to control many things at the same time : notes, rythm, colour, memorization, and improved my learning rate a lot. I found out that speeding up after wasn't really a big problem once you get everything working at low speed.
I had been misled into practicing too fast by a wrong interpretation of Chang's book, at a time when my professor did not care about telling me how to learn, so I tried to derive my own practice strategy from various readings (like Chang) and probably got some ideas wrong.

Yeah, this is one of my habits.  What it is also important, and difficult at the same time, is not to imitate one's piano style.

[octavius_trillson]

I'll share my 2 cents about the dangers of practicing too slowly with the wrong hand/finger motions. I've been trying to play moonlight sonata's third movement decently for 5 years now. When I first started to practice it (probably a little too early), I was very heavy handed and depressed the keys all the way down as I was playing the arpeggios, I practiced slowly with these motions for too long without much thought as to how I was going to speed it up. When I finally began to increase my tempo I found it impossible to reach the speed I desired, someone here has used the analogy "you don't learn to run by walking really fast", this precisely describes what I was trying to do with this piece. It took several years for me to correct this problem and to learn that slow practice is fast playing in slow motion and not vice versa. I don't regret it though, as my technical ability benefited greatly from all this. Hopefully I'll have it performance ready soon!

[pianoplayjl]

I thought practice makes perfect but for me clearly that is not always the case.

[49410enrique]

I thought practice makes perfect but for me clearly that is not always the case.

exactly, how can learning something incorrectly lead to correctly learned?

  the lesser used adage of 'perfect practice makes perfection...' is the the truer general rule.

[cjp_piano]

Practice doesn't make perfect, no such thing as perfect. Practice makes MEMORY. You form habits.

As far as practicing slow, or fast. . . Play it FAST, then you do it in SLOW MOTION so you can actually practice it. There's a difference between practicing SLOW and practicing in SLOW MOTION, the latter being ideal.

Imagine watching a video of a runner in slow motion, this is not the same as walking. It's the same idea with playing piano. You play fast to see the motions and gestures you need to play most efficiently. Then you practice it in slow motion.

[kellyc]

cjp_piano has a very good point. One of the things that I have found is that certain passages require you to play them at many different speeds to truly learn them. The worst error any of us can make is one that we don't know where making. It can be a little thing such as the choice of a wrong finger, or a tenseness in the arm, or many other things. Sometimes the only way to discover these errors is to fully explore the passage you are working on.  There was a post somewhere I read on this forum that many pianists start learning a piece to fast and latter on cannot play it fast enough under control. I totally second that. Another point on practice I have found is that , practice is far more constructive if you have had a lesson with a good teacher, or a mentor has observed what you are doing with a given piece and thus can perhaps spot things that you are missing. 

Intelligent well thought out and prepared practice sessions will lead to good results.  Practice where there has been no organization or preparation can lead to an actual decline in your ability to improve on the music in question.  Twenty minutes of good smart practice will top 2 hours of not knowing what you doing any day of the week. 

I have had times where I spent an hour just looking at a score and then a week or more analyzing it and going over the fingering before I even touch the keyboard.

Here is to everyone having good solid intelligent practice sessions.

Kelly

[12baker]

I thought practice makes perfect but for me clearly that is not always the case.

I don't know who said this but I have heard that
"Practice increases the number of ways we can recover from our mistakes."
Just thought that when I read this