Getting Serious/Staying focused

[allisonrae]

Hello, I've read a few of the posts here and I thought this would be a good place to seek help.

I've been playing piano for about eight years. I've always liked it but I get frustrated with pieces easily and often dread my lessons because I know I haven't practiced enough. I have no problem playing certain pieces (I could play Schubert's Ave Maria for hours) but when a piece gets difficult  I give up for fear of failing. It's a vicious cycle and it's my New Year's resolution to get serious about my piano practice. Any tips on how I can stay focused and not give up when a piece gets difficult? Or practicing strategies to stick to?

Thanks,
-Allison
 

[Sandra Tanahatoe]

Try setting shorter goals.  Instead of the entire piece, set a goal of 4 measures and work those measures until your fingers can respond properly.  This must be done very slowly.  Then go back to the beginning and play adding the new section.  Making shorter goals works much better for a student.  Work on patience and positive thoughts.  Good luck.

[hfmadopter]

Hi Allison !

Your teacher should really be helping you with this, to find an approach to the piece that works for you. Meanwhile as has been suggested , the shorter goal approach I feel is the way to go  as well. Sometimes it actually can be way down to just learning a phrase. However, go after that phrase that bar, the couple measures with conviction and determination ! Walk away after a few minutes, play something you like to play, then take another few minutes with that phrase, measure or two measures. Let it soak in. When something is really technically tough at what ever level you play at, the best approach is maybe 10-20 minutes intervals of intense work at it until it starts to come together for you. It works for me and has for a very long time now ! I'm working on a piece right now that has an arpeggiated melody in the bass against pulsing chords in the treble, counting is critical and setting the pulse and two chordal patterns at once in seemingly reverse order has messed with my head a bit. I've done a bunch of intense hands separate work and then together to get the pattern and rhythm down but it's coming together now. Point being you might as well start tackling this stuff now cause it doesn't get any easier later on. You still hit these obsticles along the way. If you can set up a work ethic for yourself, you will conquer those goals, I absolutely promise you that !

It's tough getting through music you don't like though. Back when I had a teacher she was very good about advancing me with classical music that I liked and also working with me on pop or movie theme pieces that I had selected myself. She might upgrade versions or she might do the shopping for the score herself in some cases with the pop music. At one point she even brought in a book of intermediate level theme songs, another of popular pieces for the piano, including themes and some classical pieces. Make no mistake, I also got the intense scores as well and worked on them in just the way I described above.

I now have a couple of students myself and I'm trying to work in a similar way as my teacher did with me a few decades ago now, she was very good and her ways are fresh in my mind still.

So go after those tough spots with conviction a little bit at a time but intensely is my suggestion.

[bronnestam]

Good advice you get here. I just want to add this: I also work with shorter goals now. Or rather, my only goal with my practicing sessions is "learn something new". I sit down at the piano and work with something, and when I feel I have learned to do SOMETHING better - and that could be something as essential as mastering the transition between two chords or learning how to hit THAT particular key right (after one hundred failures) or memorizing just another bar - I tell myself "so, I have made progress!"

It might sound odd, but this approach is very encouraging and in this way I NEVER experience "failed" sessions. Every single time I sit down to practice, I make progress and therefore I feel successful, and therefore I stay motivated! Of course you sometimes play worse than you did the other day - never mind, forget the other day, just concentrate on this session. You can be 100% sure that you always will make progress in long terms anyway.

So, by limiting my goals to small, small chunks, I make constant progress. I used to be more ambitious before, and the result was that I got bored and disencouraged and felt like a failure most of the time. And that, my dear, is the worst motivation killer you can find!  

The second worst motivation killer is believing that you can replace quality with quantity. You tell yourself that you have to practice "at least two hours a day" (for example) and then you spend one hour and 40 minutes getting tired, bored, developing your self-doubt, getting distracted, feeling sloppy etcetera etcetera, and the next day you want to punish yourself for being that bad the day before, and you whip yourself even harder and finally you feel like the most un-talented pianist in the world. And you also start hating every other pianist who boasts about having practiced for six hours a day, or for 12, or for 28 ...  

So, 10 minutes of real good quality practicing, when you work with, let's say, just one difficult bar until you make some progress, is far better than two bad hours. Believe me, I've tried both ways.


I also want to emphasize practicing a lot with separate hands if the piece is difficult. That will let you make progress quickly, instead of playing slo-o-o-wly with two hands ... for ages. Meanwhile, you will learn how to hate the piece and forget how it really should sound.