What is your criteria for identifying the most technically challenging spots?

[m1469]

This has actually been a challenge for me over the years to identify which sections/passages really stand out as the biggest technical challenges for me and why, and then to really know what to do in order to secure them.  Yes, my teachers help me with this, but even still there's been a swampy feeling within me about my own perception of pieces, where sometimes everything just blends together as difficult   (perhaps also I've not been truly distinguishing the difference between the feeling of work required for mere memorization and the feeling of work required to just be able to play something) and it's been tough to distinguish those sections which need special priority of some sort over others (in order to really get the whole piece together).  I think there are some explainable reasons for that challenge with me (like the fact that my entire approach to the piano has been in overhaul and before that it *needed* to be in overhaul), but I think I'm starting to get a better idea on what it means for me, but I am curious what it means for you?

Is there something very specific that alerts you to some passage being trickier than others?

[landru]

>>Is there something very specific that alerts you to some passage being trickier than others?

The depth of jaw-drop as I first look at the score is usually a good indicator.

But seriously, there are pieces/passages that my teacher in her wisdom and experience knew I could handle before I did, but I still did the jaw-drop and ended up doing fine.

However there are passages that I know will cause me issues when I first encounter them and will always stick in my craw as I work through them. They are usually exemplifying a known weakness I have. There are some "difficult" technical passages that I can get right away - but they aren't difficult as I know how to learn to play them, and they don't make my jaw drop. I guess with my stand out technical challenges it is the fact that I haven't crafted a way (yet!) to effectively tackle and learn them that is the issue - it is both the technical challenge itself and the meagerness of my toolbox that daunts me!

[m1469]

Yeah, I'm realizing it's connected with a sense of having a basic method for tackling a piece/passages, and then there are those which need something more than that.  I don't want to shoot myself in the foot, but I think my toolbox is starting to include that "something more" though, too, for many of the pieces that I'm working on anyway (teachers' guidance included of course!).  Sometimes certain passages have been in a coma though, just waiting to wake up from some deep sleep, I guess.  Just recently it kicks in for me that I can *really* *actually* fix things; that I can put them on a list and expect to engage a certain work and that it will get fixed if I do this.  This is a new and just freshly growing attitude for me so I'm still learning about how it works.  

For me right now it's somewhere that disturbs the flow of everything else around it, and of course there are degrees of disturbance.  I'm trying to really hone in on the specifics.  Maybe it's because I'm getting a number of things up to a certain level though, and so other things are just starting to stand out more, vs. an entirely new piece that overall requires a certain technical ability ... but, maybe they work hand in hand?  I mean, maybe it's all directly related to your overall technical ability ... which, of course it is ... but ... *swims through stuff*

[m1469]

but ... what's the difference between being capable of playing well a certain piece possessing "certain" technical demands, vs. one's overall technical ability having reached a certain overall level?  Is it just a matter of mentally being capable (or not) of recognizing where demands in one piece relate to another, and then to be able to carry it over?  

[thalbergmad]

but ... what's the difference between being capable of playing well a certain piece possessing "certain" technical demands, vs. one's overall technical ability having reached a certain overall level?  Is it just a matter of mentally being capable (or not) of recognizing where demands in one piece relate to another, and then to be able to carry it over?  

I only ever consider myself as good as the last piece I have studied and can play.

Just because I have mastered a phrase in thirds in one piece, does not mean I can immediately play a phrase in thirds on another. There is something you can carry over, but not everything.

Thal

[m1469]

I see your point, but there is also some point where the amount of ability that you carry over from one piece or however many pieces, means that you've generally passed a certain level of playing.  So, yes, maybe you don't know precisely how to carry over thirds, but playing well the piece where you learned them means you can play a bunch of pieces "below" it.  That is an imperfect way of saying it, but there's just some point where level 2,3,4 pieces don't present a technical challenge anymore, if you see what I mean.  

I know ... "experience" but that's broad and unspecific ... there's some other line in there that just gets crossed ...

[thalbergmad]

So, yes, maybe you don't know precisely how to carry over thirds, but playing well the piece where you learned them means you can play a bunch of pieces "below" it.  

Sense would dictate that is correct, but in my own personal experience, it ain't always so.

BRING IT.

Thal

[ted]

Being obsessed with improvisation I learn very few pieces these days, but for me, sectional physical difficulties worry me far less than whether or not I can feel some sort of overall conception to the piece. That's where I usually fall down, not because of trouble with certain types of movement or "hard bits". I have the sort of brain that has to start from scratch with everything, fit it into my own viewpoint, otherwise I don't feel I understand it.

At the moment I am trying to learn Waller's Blue Black Bottom (1926 recording, Farrell transcription). There's nothing there that is anywhere near a physical stretch for me but I've been playing it through for three weeks now and still can't grasp it, can't find a conception of it meaningful to myself. No good imitating Waller - nobody has ever really done that anyway.

This is what usually happens with me. At the outset I might spot a few tenths I can't bang down, a few awkward grips and so on, but I can soon fix those. My problems invariably concern things as a whole. It was the same in that Chopin study project. Learning and playing the notes isn't the problem; my technique is all right for my age. I just have an interminable wrestling match making anything I haven't created myself sound any good.

It's why I have virtually stopped learning pieces altogether.

[werq34ac]

Personally, I like to attempt a sight-read of the whole damn thing at about 70% of the tempo. Although I go for note accuracy more than flow. The sections where I slow down the most in order to play the correct notes are usually my problem sections. Except for repeated notes and chordal passages/octave passages that don't have too many accidentals. I don't have much trouble sightreading them, but I know that I'm going to need to practice them.

[slobone]

I don't think you can tell just by looking at the music. Some things that look horrific on the page really aren't that bad when you try to play them. An example would be the Rachmaninoff C# prelude. Other things are a lot harder than they look, like a simple little Brahms piece I tried to learn that turned out to be a real killer, because he pretty much has you doing something different on every note.

So reading through is the only way to tell. And even then, it depends on what's hard for you personally. Some people have smaller hands and can't do chords that spread out over more than an octave. I don't have any trouble with that (up to a point) but I freak out when I get one of those "8 against 13" things that Chopin is so fond of. I guess it's because I'm very literal-minded when it comes to math -- I really try to figure out exactly where each note falls.

[iratior]

Be suspicious of quavers, or 1/2ⁿth thereof, with long stems.  E.g., Chopin prelude in Eb major, no. 19!  The long stems usually indicate there will have to be some big leaps!

[danhuyle]

In Chopin Ballade No4 I've read the whole thing and played all the passages in the piece, the most annoying passage for me is the cross rhythm from bar 152-167. Ballade No1 it's bar 150-153 that's melody projection, and then bar79 with that annoying cross rhythm. In Scriabin Sonata 2 2nd movement, it's getting the rhythm of 9 to fit in a beat and that's the most annoying rhythm IMO. Then there's the right hand redistribution playing the end of the left chord. Liszt Transcendental Etude no2 would be the semiquaver triplets being THE most bugging passage in the etude. What I do is get everything else down, then come back to that passage.


My criteria would be knowing what my strengths and weaknesses are. Then what I do is look for the parts I can do and play them to the best of my ability. Then when I get those out of the way, I come back to the annoying parts.

How do I know it's the most challenging passage? I change tempo when I arrive at that spot. That's an alert signal for me.

[megadodd]

Just slurr through the sheets and see where the paper is more black than white