How many pieces -- and Bernhard's principles?

[flyinfingers]

I'm on Grade 3 or thereabouts after starting back up again.  I was reading Bernhard's posts and principles and he works on ten pieces at a time, from what I've read.  I was just wondering how many pieces you guys work on at once.  I see that with the advanced pianists it's more like five.  
Also, has anyone been using his 7 X 20 rule?  If so, how is that working out?

Does anyone know where Bernhard lives?

From what I've gathered, he doesn't believe in Hanon.  Are others in agreement with this?

Here's his post:
1.      Consider three completely different levels of practising/learning: short term (what you do day-to-day), middle term (monthly), long term (1- 5 years).

2.      Start with the long term: Which pieces would you like to be playing in one year’s time? In five year’s time? Do not worry about being over ambitious. At the end of the year you can review your goals. Sit down and make a list of them. For the purposes of illustration, say that your list of desirable pieces at the end of 5 years is 100 pieces.

3.      Plan your monthly work. Using the 1-5 year list, distribute these pieces over twelve months. Again do not worry too much about being able to do it, as you go along you can reevaluate your goals. However try to work on at least 5 pieces a month, but no more than 30 pieces. For the purposes of illustration, say that you are going to work on 10 pieces a month. Now make table with these ten pieces ocuppying the first column and 30 columns (or 31 depending on the month). Everyday you are going to work on these ten pieces, and tick in the corresponding column if you did it or not.

4.      Plan your daily work. You are going to work 10 – 15 mins daily on each of your 10 pieces. After you finish your 10 –15 minutes, forget about it until the next day. Move on and do another 10-15 minutes on the next piece. These 10 15 minutes do not need to be consecutive. They can be any 10-15 minutes anytime of the day. This is the beauty of this system, you do not need a block of 2hs 30mins (you can do it if you want though), but you can spread it in ten blocks of 15 minutes.

5.      The most important requirement for this method to work is consistency. You must do it every day.

6.      The second most important requirement is that you have a specific goal that can be achieved in 15 minutes. So if you are learning a new piece, this may mean that you will be working on the first two bars. If you cannot master two bars in 15 minutes, next day do just one bar. Next day do the next bar, and so on.

7.      Do not work on scales /arpeggios separately. Practise the scale of your piece, and do it as part of the 15 minutes. Imagine your piece is in A minor. That is the scale you will practise. First day, just play the notes, one octave only: your aim is to learn the notes, not to play the scale. This should take only a couple of minutes. Then move on to the piece an do a single bar, or two bars hands separate.

8.      Next day, do the scale again. Do you know the notes now? Then work on it hands separate two octaves, your aim is to master the fingering. Do your piece’s two bars. Have they been mastered? If not repeat the previous day work, if yes, move on to learn it hands together.

9.      Next day practise the scale in hands separate, but in clusters of notes. Then your piece.

10.      Keep a music journal where you write briefly where you are at, and what your next steps are, so the next day you know what to do.

11.      Since you are doing ten pieces, chances are that you will be covering a lot of scales everyday this way. You may choose your pieces so that they cover certain specific scales.

12.      At the end of the month you will have learned certain pieces, and others you will be still learning. The learned pieces are replaced by new pieces. The others go on to the next month. You must wait until the end of the month to replace pieces, even if you have learned them in the first week.

13.      If you choose your pieces so that they cover different techniques, you will not need to do technical exercises (drop Hanon – waste of time – if you want to do Czerny, just treat it as a piece. But why not do Scarlatti instead? It will give you exactly the same benefits of Czerny, but it will be a beautiful addition to your repertory). Scales and arpeggios however are very necessary (not as technical exercises, but as foundation to musical understanding).

14.      After 2 or 3 months you will be able to review your goals and adjust them. You will also be able to plan better your middle and short term work.

15.      This practise does not involve only work at the piano. You may spend your 15 minutes listening to CDs of the piece you intend to learn, analysing the score in order to decide how to break it down in 15 minute sections, memorising the piece from the score, etc. (in short, mental practice).

16.      The key word here is discipline. Never practise by sitting at the piano to play whatever you feel like. It is perfectly all right to do so, but it does not count as your 15 minutes practice. And if you do it, make sure you share it with someone else, this way you will be practising performance.

This is the tip of the iceberg, but it should get you started.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[rmbarbosa]

I dont know where Bernhard lives. If I knew...
But when Bernhard says something, do it exactly like he says.
Bernhard is a wonderful teacher.

[m1469]

The number of pieces I'm working on at once varies, depending upon the purpose for studying them.  I'm still getting to know myself in terms of my most efficient means of practicing, but there are many ideas within the post that you've used as an example which I have used very much.  If I could sum up the last number of years of what my practicing has been 'about,' while I've been learning pieces and techniques and musical concepts and who I am ... who God is, what the world is, deep layers of spirituality, what love is, what desire means ... oh, excuse me, but I've been exploring and growing in a number of ways, yes.  But, to sum up what I think I've been doing the most, you could say I've been constantly re-evaluating how I practice and what to practice.  It's been constantly shifting.  So, yes, maybe I'd set out with a plan, but that would *always* change.  And, I find myself always needing to balance out the psychology involved with it.  

Please keep in mind that everything about my playing, *everything*, has been getting rebuilt from ground zero over the last 3-4 years.  Even my entire emotional set and psychology.  That is a very different place to be in than at the very beginning, or at a place where you are concertizing and have several programs in working order or just about in working order.

Right now, I have pieces that are starting to live inside of me, they are starting to inhabit some space deep within me.  With those, I might not be giving them daily attention but something is still growing and deepening, even over months while I am concentrating on other pieces.  I've only just become conscious of this being an actual way that I function, which is probably a very good thing since eventually I'll have way more pieces than I could ever give attention to each day (well, that's already happening, but it will be different in the future).  I've realized that if I can feel their presence there, as though they are just below the surface, then they're possible to pick back up again and bring to life, plus whatever I've gained in general since I last set it down.  The work I would do with a piece like that is very different than what I would do with a brand new piece.  I also believe in doing scales and arpeggios everyday as their own part of my routine.  

Sometimes 15 minutes with a piece each day is enough, sometimes I really need more than that.  Right now I have some pieces I'm spending about an hour and a half with, which is quite a lot in one day for one piece for me these days.  But, there are reasons.  

All in all, you do need to find out how you work personally, and there are a lot of good ideas in Bernhard's post.  The benefit of giving something specific a very good effort is that you are aiming for something specific and can start to learn from there whether you gel with those specifics or not, and when you make adjustments, those can be specific as well.

[werq34ac]

In general, Bernard has some very good things to say, like the 10-15 minutes not consecutively. The key word is goals. It doesn't matter how much time you are putting into practice if you are not accomplishing anything. One should always have goals when they practice so that their practice is productive.


However there are some things i might disagree with. For instance, 10-15 minutes per piece every day I feel is not enough. 30x15=450 minutes which is about 7-8 hours a month. It's not uncommon to practice a single piece that much in less than a week. 10-15 minutes is enough to achieve maybe one or two goals, but this would mean progress would only trickle in learning the piece.

And the solution to this is just less pieces and more time to them every day. I've tried juggling 5 pieces at once and the result was that some of the pieces were neglected and given maybe 20-30 minutes every other day while others gained the benefit of an hour a day per piece.

[flyinfingers]

Thanks for those responses!  I  can't imagine working on ten pieces at once at any level. How could you give each piece its full attention and how could you possible stay focused on ten pieces?
Anyway, I feel like a baby starting to walk again because me NEW teacher is teaching me technique with my hands that no one else had ever addressed (even when I was a kid taking lessons) and told me that if I ever wish to play difficult pieces then I need to develop proper technique, i.e., loose wrists, hands moving with elbow action (my own words) and hands moving towards the front of the piano.  I may not be describing it correctly.  But the whole hour was spent on this and I'm sure I'll get the hang of it because she said I was learning fast -- hopefully!  I think she's going to be a great teacher.
Someday after I learn how to post a pic, I'd like to post a piano piece, but, then again, you feel stupid playing a grade 3 or 4 piece.   I should have never told her that my short-term goal was to play Chopin Etudes or is that a long-term goal?  We'll see!
I'm sure we can all define short- and long-term goals differently, but, after age 40, everything is short-term!
m1469, I can't get the sounds out of my head!   I've been playing the same two pages of this piece for three weeks solid because I switched teachers and never got to play it yet!  Working on page 3 now thankfully!

[m1469]

I have to say that, ultimately, I wish that organizing all of my practicing and getting pieces learned would be that "simple" ... that would be my kind of ultimate practicing goal.