Oh, before I begin, One essential aspect of outlining is that you keep the fingering from the original piece intact for what you choose to copy.
Outlining isn't meant for easy pieces. It can be done but it wastes time when you can learn the entire piece in an afternoon without doing it. However, say you want to learn Godowsky's Passacaglia, or the Hammerklavier, or even one of those Radnich transcriptions everyone likes. Suddenly, you're left with a huge amount of work to do.
Let me put it this way: go to the piano and play from memory some easy piece from when you were an absolute beginner, one with a RH that's a single melodic line. Now, when you've finished, play the RH in octaves. It was easy, correct? Now play the Left Hand in an embellished way, and the RH in octaves once more. You've gone from a very simple passage to a significantly more complicated one. The reason why outlining is so efficient is because it lets you first learn the musical basics of the piece, and develop a clear mental picture of what's going on in the piece. Remember, as you play the outline, the full piece should be playing in your mind. After that, you add back in the difficulties one at a time. The thing that makes a piece difficult is that multiple things are going on at once. Outlining lets you take them on one at a time instead of all together. What is the most efficient way to break a rope with your bare hands? You fray the end (the initial technical work you did in when you were a beginner), then you unbraid the separate strands that make up the rope. Outlining may seem like it would be inefficient, but when you get the right kind of piece, it becomes the most efficient way I've yet tried. Why not try it with, say, a Grieg Lyric piece, something that would give you a challenge but not an insurmountable one, and then tell us all what happened?
Cliffy
Topic: Rewriting Music as a Learning Tool