How do you remain commited and motivated??

[markstuartbell]

Hi all,

I am writing a magazine article on commitment and motivation and am really interested in speaking with those who are learning to play the piano, or are improving their playing.
There are many things competing for our time in modern life and, perhaps consequently, despite opportunities that we all encounter to learn or master a skill or language or instrument many of us never focus our energies and commit to excelling at one thing or in one particular area.

I would really appreciate the opportunity to hear your thoughts and experiences with this.

*What attracted you and continues to attract you to dedicating time to learning the piano?

*Do you have a particular goal in mind with your playing? Is there a particular piece you hope to master? Do you enjoy the aspect of self-improvement in and of itself? Is there something that reinforces this commitment to you, like seeing how much family or friends enjoy hearing you play, or being able to learn pieces quicker?

*Why do you think other people who start to learn playing the piano lose their motivation, or stall with their progress or cease playing?

*How did you develop self-discipline with regards to practicing? Did that motivation originally come from yourself or a teacher or somebody else?

*What had maintaining this commitment to the piano taught you? Does this skill translate to other areas of your life? Are you pleased, ambivalent or regretful at all about the time spent to reach your current level of playing the piano? 

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas! I really look forward to hearing what you have to say.

[indianajo]

I was started on piano lessons by my Mother, who noticed I never used my injured finger unless I "helped" it with an adjacent one.  I had cut the pad of the middle finger off with a folding chair I received for my third birthday.  I was compliant, and unlike the swimming lessons (her pre-teen hobby) or the art lessons (I have the artistic soul of a draftsman) I was pretty good at piano.  So much so, that after a couple of years, we were playing the movie hit "Exodus" in a simplfied two piano four hands version labeled with Ferrante & Teicher's names.
I was taken to various local guild competitions, and enjoyed some of the pieces the teacher found for me. Particularly the Spanish contingent, including Lecuona's Malaguena, Granados Playera and New Orleans Golliwog's Cakewalk.
In those days Mother would pay for the lessons and haul me to the teacher's (after she moved away) if I practiced 30 minutes a day the first couple of years, and an hour a day thereafter.  I had a wind up clock on the piano.  Wasn't a lot of alternative but reading library books, however.  I was horrible at anything physical, I was looked down on by anybody my age for being so small and weak, and television had three boring channels.  After you've seen the all the 1940's Roy Rogers shorts, what else is there?  Quick Draw McGraw?  Mickey Mouse Club? Piano at least got me out of the house to see someone who was nice to me, my piano teacher.  
I had a passion for music, and had been given a Bozo the clown paper diaphagm (no tubes) record player age three. Mother bought me CRC 78 rpm records with the best bits of classical music on them.  I was particularly fond of Tchaikovsky pieces, including Sleeping Beauty.  
Disney's Fantasia in 1957? was a big hit with me, especially the JS Bach piece.  I'd never heard JSB before.  In 1961 Dad bought an FM radio, and there was a classical station, KLEF, that played wonderful music.  Remember pop radio had banished black artists to the end of the dial in 1959 and replaced them with Pat Boone and Fabian. I was an AM pop radio fan 1956-59.   So I was hungry for great melodies. KLEF would actually play E Power Biggs Bach Organ Favorites sometimes, and I developed a great passion for three of those pieces.  I had never seen a pipe organ in person except at a wedding in a co-cathedral, which was blah.
Piano lessons were stopped aged 16 when I started having great success in the high school band on bassoon.  We were playing better repertoire than i could play on the piano, like Bernstein suites, Shostakovich fifth symphony, King circus marches.  I competed into the TMEA 1968 All State band,    
where we played JS Bach again and an amazing suite from Parsifal.
then I put away do it yourself music to pursue the goal of supporting myself with techical skills.  I tried  the college band for a few weeks but they were so awful.
By 1982 I was in the Army, owning a house in the country with some lonely weekends to fill.  Broadcast televsion was awful out there, Wichita PBS affiliate played mostly old movies on weekends.  I don't like watching sports competitions, only art sports like Olympic ice dancing. I was normal sized now but got plenty of exercise in the Army and the only sport I like by myself is bicycling. No single woman under seventy would say anything but epithets to me, with my short hair.   I bought a piano, and started learning pieces I really like.  The rest of the Moonlight Sonata, the manual parts of JS Bach's Passacaglia & Fugue in C min and Moussorgski's Pictures at an Exhibition.  These were a little too hard for me but great goals for the future.  In the meantime I owned a book of Scott Joplin rags, and learned three of them at my skill level, Paragon, Magnetic, and Maple Leaf
I stopped working in 2008 and found a lot more time to practice. Moonlight Sonata is up to about 1/2 the speed of the professional firebrands. Pictures at an Exhibition is pretty good up to page 16 and recognizable to the end.  I found a repairable 1967 model  25 pedal organ in 2010, and have got three pages of Passacaglia and Fugue in C min recognizabile with both hands and both feet.  
I did use the piano skill 1985 to 1989 accompaning a junior choir in a local church, which was great fun in the beginning, but the children became adolescents and lost interest. So did I.  
I ride a bike now for fun outdoors, do household and country property maintenance, and watch some PBS since the programming is so much better now.  I still have plenty of time to practice piano. Particularly after dinner piano or organ practice burns off the restless energy I have. TV is awful 7 to 9 anyway.  and FM radio plays so many awful string quartets and namby pamby baroque music.  Mozart pttttth!  The lesser baroque composers I spit twice on them.  
I have a passion for doing things myself in my own way, as does every one in my family.  My father and his brothers and his father tore down old mine camp houses and built new ones in better locations.  My Mother took piano for a while, but became entranced by needlework and made some amazing sweaters, bedspreads, and bargello wall hangings. Her father grew his own food and tobacco, had a cow and butchered hogs on a 1/3 acre lot. He built the house on that lot out of old mine camp houses, it still stands at 102 years of age.  So let everyone else watch canned entertainment and go to the amusement park.  We'll do something ourselves.

[gregh]

Caveat: I'm very much a beginner.

Competing for time: yes. Working full time and I'm trying to finish a project for a master's degree, and realized that I can play music or do my homework, but not both. Otherwise I'd practice about daily. Now I practice when I don't feel guilty about neglecting other things.

I like the piano because it can play more than one note at a time, it's one of the few instruments that is routinely played without accompaniment, and music theory is laid out on the keyboard for you. Plus there is no end of literature for it. And the cat can tolerate it, unlike trumpet-- when I took a break from that I think I figured out why the cat has been licking a bald streak into his back...

Goal: I'd like to play something and be asked to play some more, rather than be suggested we go do something else now. I expect to never make money doing this.

Discipline: if you don't enjoy it, then what's the point? It hasn't been much of a matter of discipline for me yet. But then, I didn't expect to pick it up easily. I just expected that if I keep doing it long enough I'll get better than I was, and I have a lifetime ahead of me. I've worked on difficult things before, like physics and foreign language, so I kind of knew what to expect.

Losing motivation: I understand that adult students usually don't last long. They want to play beautiful things, they practice for a few weeks and aren't playing what they want, and they get frustrated and quit.

I don't know what the deal is there. It's not like you can leverage your college degree into a Mozart sonata-- it's a totally new skill, and an adult with his ossified brain shouldn't expect to pick it up faster than an eight year old would. Children have some advantages over an adult: they don't know they sound bad, nobody expects them to sound good, and they have a parent who can impose a practice schedule. It's a matter of expectations, I suppose, but more in the sense that a lot of adult students wouldn't have started in the first place if they knew how it was going to work out.

Life skills: so far I've brought life skills to piano rather than the other way around.

[bronnestam]

Hi all,

I am writing a magazine article on commitment and motivation and am really interested in speaking with those who are learning to play the piano, or are improving their playing.
There are many things competing for our time in modern life and, perhaps consequently, despite opportunities that we all encounter to learn or master a skill or language or instrument many of us never focus our energies and commit to excelling at one thing or in one particular area.

I would really appreciate the opportunity to hear your thoughts and experiences with this.

*What attracted you and continues to attract you to dedicating time to learning the piano?

*Do you have a particular goal in mind with your playing? Is there a particular piece you hope to master? Do you enjoy the aspect of self-improvement in and of itself? Is there something that reinforces this commitment to you, like seeing how much family or friends enjoy hearing you play, or being able to learn pieces quicker?

*Why do you think other people who start to learn playing the piano lose their motivation, or stall with their progress or cease playing?

*How did you develop self-discipline with regards to practicing? Did that motivation originally come from yourself or a teacher or somebody else?

*What had maintaining this commitment to the piano taught you? Does this skill translate to other areas of your life? Are you pleased, ambivalent or regretful at all about the time spent to reach your current level of playing the piano? 

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas! I really look forward to hearing what you have to say.

How nice to see someone who also likes to study motivation and committment. I have been fascinated by the subject during the last few years and this is, actually, one of the main reasons why I study piano again ... because piano studies are for motivation research what banana flies are for genetics - unusually easy to observe. 

Well, there is more, of course. I studied the piano as a teen and although I was often told I was "talented" I often struggled very hard to get motivated, and I failed most of the time. So I made not much progress during the last years. Still, I refused to QUIT because I am not a quitter by nature ... and there was something else as well. Somehow I loved to play the piano.

I was not mature enough, though, to ask myself how I could have such a hard time getting motivated and still love to play. And I certainly never asked myself how I could improve my motivation. I thought there was just one way, the very hard way. Blood, sweat and tears! I had some friends who really went for a piano career, but I studied to become an engineer instead.

During nearly three decades I tried to come back to piano playing but I was not very successful. I bought a digital piano, one of the first Clavinova models, so I could play with headphones on but still I did not make any progress. I did not learn anything new during these years, and I got frustrated and angry to notice that my skills diminished, so that I finally just was a pathetiq shadow of the Master Pianist I told myself I had been back in my school days ... well ... maybe not quite,    but still much better than my Adult Myself.

Some years ago I met a very successful and brilliant concert pianist. I became a fan and a friend and started to go to concerts and recitals again. I did not just realize that I truly loved an d appreciated what I witnessed, I also recalled this piece and that piece, I even recalled that I once had been playing the piano too. (Yeah, it was like I had forgotten it!) And then I also realized that I am not, in long terms, satisfied by just sitting in the audience and listen. It looked kinda fun to be on stage as well ...

So i had to ask myself: where do I go from now? I was 46 years old, my life was FULL of tasks and responsibilities, I was not getting any younger. Should I be one of all those persons who with a bitter smile conclude that "I played too, once, but ..." and stay in the audience as a faithful fan and music lover, or should I give it a go once more? So it was time to make a decision.

I had also developed this interest for motivation and committment, so I started in a scientific way, and gave me those questions I had never thought of before: Why did I lose my motivation before? How to I keep it up this time?

My best teacher: MY DOG. Yes. My dog. They are wonderful animals, and you can learn so much from them, that is true! I looked at my dog and though of how I train him, how I keep HIS motivation up. Well, it is quite easy: you train in short sessions with very small increments, you encourage all the behaviour you like, and you IGNORE what you don't like.

And this was the whole key also to my piano practice. I realized that I had focused entirely on my mistakes. Every time I made a mistake - and I made awfully many - I got irritated and blamed myself, I literally took them as proofs of how much I sucked. "There I go again! I must be the worst piano player in the world, I SIMPLY CANNOT LEARN!"

Negative affirmations, yes. I recalled all those moments in my youth when I started to hit the piano keys with my fists, because I got so angry, it sounded so awful, I could not stand my own playing. So I left the piano in rage. It was the perfect way to become unmotivated!!!
Now I started "the doggy way" instead. I just focused on my progress, it did not matter how small, progress was progress. I praised myself all the time, I never left the piano with the sense i had failed. I lowered my ambitions to almost zero - but only ALMOST. I was so focused on looking for progress that I forgot the mistakes. A mistake was just a "progress yet to come", not a proof of failure. I made it a habit to end every practice session with a mental summary of what I had just improved. And so I was eager to start my next session.

By changing my mindset in this way, I really changed everything. Since then, I have been playing and playing, I think learning is FUN and I have no problems motivating myself any longer. My biggest problem in these days is to find enough time to practice. Normally I can get just one hour, but that is fine too. That is far much more than "nothing". I have learned many new pieces this year and I have stopped to think "this is, and will forever be, too difficult for me".


The reason that so many quit piano playing is this: they have too ambitious goals. If I give my dog a task with a too big increment, that is, I demand too much of him, he will quit training at once. He will not get his reward so he will lose interest in the whole thing and then it is hard to get him back on track again. I must give him an increment so small that he can hardly fail, and so he will get his reward and he will at once go for another reward.

Goals are, of course, useful. But I never make a goal for a practice session that I am not sure I will reach in a few attempts. I cannot set a goal that I MAY reach after three hours of practice. First, I may not have those three hours today. With my life schedule, it is not very likely that i can work undisturbed for that long. Second, the chance is enourmous that I will get tired and then I must quit without having reached my goal for the day, which will leave me in a sense of failure and frustration, which will put me back in that negative spiral. So I work with just one or a few bars instead. and I don't demand that I learn to play the section perfectly at once.

I also do a lot more work away from the piano nowadays. I read the notes, I play them mentally, I plan how I want it to sound, I play, and then I evaluate the result before I go on. This saves my ears, because I don't like it when it sounds bad! I have also discovered that I can foresee a mistake during mental play, and even correct it without touching the keys for real!

[dima_76557]

How do you remain commited and motivated??

Instead of replying to every single question separately and writing a long story, I'll make it short: As long as

1) The ones responsible for my education and/or upbringing can instill love in me for what I have to do
and
2) The ones responsible for my education and/or upbringing really address underlying weaknesses that keep me from being successful,

I don't need any sermons about "motivation", because the commitment already follows from the sum of 1 and 2. Also, when you learn the formula for success in one field, you can then apply it partly in some other fields, which helps development significantly.

P.S.: This does not mean that I myself am completely passive in this respect. I know the factors that distract me and I try to eliminate them from my life.

[Bob]

Find music you like.

Schedule performances.

Use willpower.

[dima_76557]

Use willpower.

But isn't willpower a result of love for and interest in the subject? I really don't understand why students would need to be "motivated". I see motivation talk as sly tactics to mask incompetence and blindness for what you need as an individual in those that are supposed to guide you.
Example: Thousands fail high school math finals in Montgomery (2 pages)
Is it really a coincidence that the one appointed to research the achievement failures is a certain Mr. LOVELESS?

[bronnestam]

See my long post above. I loved to play, but still it was hard to motivate myself.

Willpower is worthless, it only works for a very short while and then you focus on something else - because you have to - and then it does not work anymore.

I loved to play but found it hard to motivate myself because I, without realizing it, had begun to make an association between Practice and Failure. So practicing became a sort of self torture.

[lojay]

*What attracted you and continues to attract you to dedicating time to learning the piano?

Well it's either piano or the belt.  I prefer the piano.


*Do you have a particular goal in mind with your playing?

Yes - must play piano for 14 hours a day or I will probably not be walking the next week.


Is there a particular piece you hope to master?

This week I hope to master Rudepoema.  It was assigned to me a week ago.  I still have a few more days to master it otherwise I will be locked in my practice room until my next lesson.


Do you enjoy the aspect of self-improvement in and of itself?

No.


Is there something that reinforces this commitment to you, like seeing how much family or friends enjoy hearing you play, or being able to learn pieces quicker?

Yes, I am extremely motivated - read above.  Also, if I learn all my pieces for the week I get an hour of play time every day until my next lesson.


*Why do you think other people who start to learn playing the piano lose their motivation, or stall with their progress or cease playing?

They don't have tender, loving parents that care.


*How did you develop self-discipline with regards to practicing?

Motivation from my parents.


Did that motivation originally come from yourself or a teacher or somebody else?

See previous question.


*What had maintaining this commitment to the piano taught you? Does this skill translate to other areas of your life?

If I don't practice piano for 14+ hours a day, I will not be able to sit comfortably for a week.  I don't think this skill translates well.


Are you pleased, ambivalent or regretful at all about the time spent to reach your current level of playing the piano?


I am indifferent.

[dima_76557]

@ bronnestam

Were you on your own, or did anyone assign you what you "had to" do?
I ask because I indicated 2 factors for myself to become a "good doggie and get a bone": love/interest and addressing weaknesses, which a young person cannot do him/herself. Practising for failure is also a weakness that should have been noticed, addressed, and resolved by the ones that were guiding you. Since it was never addressed, you don't get rid of it so easily when you get older, notwithstanding the love that remained. Very sad. I respect you for getting as far as realizing yourself what was wrong. It takes good IQ and EQ to do that.

[indianajo]

Yes, bronnstam, my teacher was much better at teaching me how to handle errors than yours.  No skill on my part, I just lucked out my Mother found that teacher.  She would insist I slow down. one hand alone, and play error free. In the beginning of learning a piece, she didn't care how slowly I went, as long as it was error free.  Errors I made reading were handled with a polite circle in pencil on the score, not an emotional diatribe.  I enjoyed studying from her. After six months of studying a group of pieces, i enjoyed competing at the Guild recitals and getting little cheap brass medals.  
By contrast, the swimming teacher would handle my fear of floating with my nose 2" underwater, by insisting stridently that EVERYBODY CAN FLOAT!!!  Looking at the other students, with their noses confidently above water, and noticing only the center of my chest was above water, I sort of felt she was minimizing the difficulty.  I ground through two summer sessions of swimming lessons, then quit that hobby.  A decade later, when Army food and the hormones to desire that much food had fattened me up some, the Army taught me to swim the length of the pool with much less pounding of my heart and gasping.  
So Bronnstam, I'm glad you're back studying performance of  music you basically enjoy. Hope the emotions subside to patience in the learning part, and pleasure in emotional expression in the time after you have the basics of a piece down, It's taken me off and on 30 years to get a handle on Pictures but when I can do a part both hands together error free, it is so pretty! And I'm getting faster.

[Bob]

But isn't willpower a result of love for and interest in the subject? I really don't understand why students would need to be "motivated". I see motivation talk as sly tactics to mask incompetence and blindness for what you need as an individual in those that are supposed to guide you.
Example: Thousands fail high school math finals in Montgomery (2 pages)
Is it really a coincidence that the one appointed to research the achievement failures is a certain Mr. LOVELESS?

No.  Just decide to do something and do it.  The decision to do something might be based off loving it.  It's not always going to be fun though.  Sometimes it sucks.  Henc, willpower.  Just will yourself to keep working on it.

[dima_76557]

No.  Just decide to do something and do it.  The decision to do something might be based off loving it.  It's not always going to be fun though.  Sometimes it sucks.  Henc, willpower.  Just will yourself to keep working on it.

But what if you don't know what's hampering you to succeed? And what's even worse: what if the adult ones around you don't know what's hampering you to succeed? We all know that the secret to success is not the amount of practice, but the quality.

[Bob]

So learn how to practice better.

Nobody else is going to really motivate a student.  It comes from within.  If you put external motivation on something, the behavior will probably disappear when the external source is gone.

Adults or other people around aren't going to know everything.  Maybe they know all about motivating a student to succeed in science, but the student likes music better.  If the student wants it and decides to, they can invest time in figuring it out. 

[outin]

*What attracted you and continues to attract you to dedicating time to learning the piano?

-Attraction to the music and the piano as an instrument.

*Do you have a particular goal in mind with your playing? Is there a particular piece you hope to master? Do you enjoy the aspect of self-improvement in and of itself? Is there something that reinforces this commitment to you, like seeing how much family or friends enjoy hearing you play, or being able to learn pieces quicker?

- I hope to play a large chunk of piano literature.
I have no other motivation but my obsession for music and the instrument...commitment comes from understanding the fact that without it nothing much will be gained. I also enjoy solving problems, so that kind of practicing is very enjoyable. The other kind is sustained by habit I guess.


*Why do you think other people who start to learn playing the piano lose their motivation, or stall with their progress or cease playing?

- Because playing is much harder than it appears and the progress can be really slow, especially in the beginning. It takes some effort to find enjoyable music to play that is easy enough for a beginner.

*How did you develop self-discipline with regards to practicing? Did that motivation originally come from yourself or a teacher or somebody else?

- I don't have much self-discipline really. I just need to drag myself to the piano, after that I find it difficult to stop. I often tell myself that I will only play 10 minutes to not miss a day, but end up practicing for two hours.

*What had maintaining this commitment to the piano taught you? Does this skill translate to other areas of your life? Are you pleased, ambivalent or regretful at all about the time spent to reach your current level of playing the piano?

- I don't know if it has taught me much, maybe how to handle frustration better. I would never regret the time used for piano study, even if I never learned to play better than what I do know. Playing myself makes me appreciate the music even more than when I was only listening to others play it.

[nufan]

*What attracted you and continues to attract you to dedicating time to learning the piano?

Before I started playing, I was working like a maniac and began to feel uncomfortable. It's not like I had a depression, but I was on my way, so I decided to pick up some hobbies without any pressure. My choice was photography and piano then because I could practice them on my own whenever I like and these hobbies don't include any form of competition (like, say sports). I reduced my workload to something 50h per week and began enjoying my spare time.

I always liked classical piano music, so the piano was a natural choice.

*Do you have a particular goal in mind with your playing? Is there a particular piece you hope to master? Do you enjoy the aspect of self-improvement in and of itself? Is there something that reinforces this commitment to you, like seeing how much family or friends enjoy hearing you play, or being able to learn pieces quicker?

To me, playing the piano is like reading a book, or drinking of glass of wine: It's a relaxing joy.

Of course there are pieces that I love and that I wish I was able to play (Beethoven's Tempest sonata is one such example), but I'm not there yet. I'm still fascinated by the progress I've made, which is much better than expected. So, my motivation is somewhat intrinsic.

*Why do you think other people who start to learn playing the piano lose their motivation, or stall with their progress or cease playing?

There are so many possible reasons, ranging from a lack of time to a shift of interests. If it's a spare time activity, one should enjoy playing the piano, otherwise there is no reason to proceed.

*How did you develop self-discipline with regards to practicing? Did that motivation originally come from yourself or a teacher or somebody else?

I don't really need self-discipline here: If I don't enjoy playing, I don't play. If I just don't feel like playing, I do something else; I don't force myself into something I don't like in my spare time since my job requires this far too often. Still, I play almost every day, about 1h on average.

*What had maintaining this commitment to the piano taught you? Does this skill translate to other areas of your life? Are you pleased, ambivalent or regretful at all about the time spent to reach your current level of playing the piano?

I'm very pleased.

Apart from this, I must admit that the commitment hasn't taught me very much. My entire life, I've been a very ambitious person. When I was young, I spent almost all time training tennis, I just couldn't stand not winning a tournament. At the university, I was disappointed when I was only the second best of my class. As a scientist, I worked hard to become the most often published computer scientist in my field. In business, I always thrived to increase our company's return on sales whilst having happy customers.

I was never happy producing the second best result. When it comes to playing the piano, I'm happy with virtually any result, which is a very different attitude (since I started under the premise that I will never be a great pianist).

[momopi]

@bronnestam: I know someone who took a second degree in music (voice) in his mid-30s, more or less 15 years after taking his engineering degree (and years of engineering career.)

Whether you're after a career or a fulfilling hobby, know that it is never too late. Good luck and always keep motivated! Life is long.

And hello to your dog~!  Arf, arf!

[lorcar]

at 38yo, started again after decades of interruption, I realized two days ago I will NEVER EVER EVER play the Goldberg variations before I die. I am really thinking to quit.

[lojay]

at 38yo, started again after decades of interruption, I realized two days ago I will NEVER EVER EVER play the Goldberg variations before I die. I am really thinking to quit.

Are you predisposed to any medical conditions that will shorten your life span or render you unable to play the piano?

If not, consider that the average life span in the United States is 79 years old.  So lets give you around 45 years to accomplish this

You don't think you can do this in 45 years?  Normally I'd make fun of people with attitudes like this and ask if they required a drool cup or if they were dropped numerous times as a child, but I already made fun of someone a few hours ago.

Just stick to it!  If after a year of practicing as much as you possibly can, you still feel this way, practice for another year.  Keep repeating this process until you actually keel over.  Eventually, you're more likely than not going to find the Goldberg Variations very doable.  In the case that you go through your life unable to learn the piece, at least on your deathbed you will know that you tried.

I'd sympathize if you had practiced religiously for 10+ years, but you just came back.  I'd perhaps understand where you were coming from if you were 70+ years old or if you were very young, but 38?  Come on!

[hfmadopter]

at 38yo, started again after decades of interruption, I realized two days ago I will NEVER EVER EVER play the Goldberg variations before I die. I am really thinking to quit.

I only have one thing to offer you. If you quit, if music is in your soul, if music moves you, if music can bring you to fight tears or feel joy according to it's style and quality of performance then you will be back. It becomes with time away, first a re-interest, then a passion and finally you must perform music yourself. There is so much more out there than Goldberg Variations. Scores and scores and scores of beautiful music.

If anything about the above is true about you, then You will not succeed in quitting . I assure you that ! Been there done that over a medication that during the adjustment period took the edge off my ability to learn so easily as I had been doing, at around your age. I feel it was a big mistake to have not kept the piano alive in my life for my time away but I'm back to stay this time..

[outin]

at 38yo, started again after decades of interruption, I realized two days ago I will NEVER EVER EVER play the Goldberg variations before I die. I am really thinking to quit.

If that's the only thing you ever want to play, then I guess it might be better to quit...since you will have to play a lot of music to get to the level where it's worth to start on it.

But if you can enjoy playing other things as well, then quitting would not seem necessary...would it not be nice to play 100 other wonderful pieces even if you never play the GV?

[lorcar]

If that's the only thing you ever want to play, then I guess it might be better to quit...since you will have to play a lot of music to get to the level where it's worth to start on it.

But if you can enjoy playing other things as well, then quitting would not seem necessary...would it not be nice to play 100 other wonderful pieces even if you never play the GV?

thanks you all guys

i must admit I agree with you, it was more something debate-provoking than a serious thought. But the point is that the journey is very long and tough and at this age time available is what it is, body/mind are what they are, and the GV are really at the top of the repertoire for professional pianists.
I am waking up at 6:30 am and playing with headphones before work, then go back in lunchbreak in order to play 30 minutes and then if I can at night again, but having also other stuff to do as everyone else (yoga, movies, theatre, concerts, sports, friends, family) it's really difficult

[hfmadopter]

thanks you all guys

i must admit I agree with you, it was more something debate-provoking than a serious thought. But the point is that the journey is very long and tough and at this age time available is what it is, body/mind are what they are, and the GV are really at the top of the repertoire for professional pianists.
I am waking up at 6:30 am and playing with headphones before work, then go back in lunchbreak in order to play 30 minutes and then if I can at night again, but having also other stuff to do as everyone else (yoga, movies, theatre, concerts, sports, friends, family) it's really difficult

The problem of advancing to your goal becomes quite evident when one sees the list of other activities getting in the way. Non of my business mind you but I do recall putting lots of things aside to learn piano.

[gregh]

thanks you all guys

i must admit I agree with you, it was more something debate-provoking than a serious thought. But the point is that the journey is very long and tough and at this age time available is what it is, body/mind are what they are, and the GV are really at the top of the repertoire for professional pianists.

What age? 38? People younger than you can play those, and you're not half way through your life yet. You can start complaining about the time left to you when you turn 60.

So, what is at the end of this journey? That's a trick question-- there is no end to it. If you don't enjoy the journey itself, you'll be endlessly frustrated. Do you have a recital scheduled? Do you have a graduation deadline? What's the hurry? Enjoy playing as your skill allows. Or, if you don't enjoy it, I'm not going to try to talk you into staying with it-- find something else to do. Try bass guitar. Or nature photography. Try archaeology, there are amateur opportunities. There's lots of stuff to do.

[amelialw]

*What attracted you and continues to attract you to dedicating time to learning the piano?
I started off with electone lessons at the age of 2& a half and there was a piano at home which I would practice on and play pieces by ear which I heard.
It's just this never ending road; always have new things to learn and discover...and I love it

*Do you have a particular goal in mind with your playing? Is there a particular piece you hope to master? Do you enjoy the aspect of self-improvement in and of itself? Is there something that reinforces this commitment to you, like seeing how much family or friends enjoy hearing you play, or being able to learn pieces quicker?
Not really, I'm passionate about it and basically want to see how far I can go. Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy. Yes, i do, even though it's stressful but everytime I return to my teacher for lessons there's a sense of achievement. I'ts purely self-motivation; I do enjoy playing for others.

*Why do you think other people who start to learn playing the piano lose their motivation, or stall with their progress or cease playing?
Lack of support,lack of motivation and determination. Parents forced them to learn etc.

*How did you develop self-discipline with regards to practicing? Did that motivation originally come from yourself or a teacher or somebody else?
It was self-instilled but there have been periods of life when it was re-enforced in the right manner by my current mentor; sometimes the environment does play a huge factor. typically if I'm at home practicing there will be a conducive environment.

*What had maintaining this commitment to the piano taught you? Does this skill translate to other areas of your life? Are you pleased, ambivalent or regretful at all about the time spent to reach your current level of playing the piano? 
It has helped me to be more disciplined and focused in other aspects of my life like work or academic studies. I don't regret it but I do wish that I had a chance to start with a good teacher when I was younger