Is there anyway I can improve my learning speed and retention? I don't think it has mainly do with practice time...maybe it's the method.
I disagree that it takes years to learn piano vocabulary. The vocabulary can be learned very quickly as the patterns aren't that numerous to begin with. It's definitely much smaller than English vocabulary.
Learn pieces which you can do in say one week and play somewhat mastered.
In a way you are right, but what if ANY piece, no matter how short takes much more than one week to be mastered?
Playing larger works for instance or more complicated works of course will take a longer time.Students of piano should strive to know if they are studying a piece which they can learn quick and those pieces which take longer. Being able to measure how long a piece takes can be more difficult than it seems, but a student who works on understanding how long it takes to learn a given piece will benefit from a more efficient study approach. Too many students study pieces which take too long, this is a slow and inefficient path to take although it can be a source of great joy for some and in that case go for it! But to develop your rate of learning you need to work with material which you can learn efficiently, then you can slowly raise the difficulty level of what you can learn efficiently.
Then you are still thinking about pieces that are too hard.
Do you have a teacher?
See my answer above. Last summer I decided to learn a piece that was half page long and I think it's grade 1 or 2. After about a week I gave up because I just couldn't get it into my head...and there were no technical difficulties, just learning the notes With your logic everything written for the piano is probably too difficult then...maybe some people should just quit?
Not quit, no, just keep finding simpler things until you can find something you *can* memorise.If half a page of grade 1 is too consitently too hard, then reduce it to one phrase.Or one measure.Or one note.And then build up again.And if one note is too hard, then yes, quit
It sounds easy and simple, but it just does not work that way. I have tried that approach and it doesn't make it any faster, rather the opposite. Sometimes one note really can be too hard to remember
You are here assuming that it takes long because the pieces are more difficult.
But really, for some people it takes long no matter how short and how easy the pieces are.
I have never encountered a piece I could properly learn in a week, no matter how short and how easy.
Oh, i'm really surprised by this.I made the usual mistake of thinking that my [common] experience was universal.If you don't learn by chunking and then building bigger chunks then what works for you?
That is not an assumption it is a truth, the harder the music the more time it takes to learn.
From my experience teaching piano to hundreds of students I have never come across anyone who takes a long time to learn everything no matter how easy it is.
But of course! That does not automatically mean that the time required can be reduced infinitely by just making the music more simple.
My teacher sometimes seems a bit puzzled by me also
Of course it depends on what you consider "learned" and what you consider a long time. You must remember that when there are other things that require a lot of brain power a week really is not such a long time. Are you saying you do not see individual differences in your students in the time they require for learning when the difficulty is properly suited for them? Or do you just assume it's because they practice less or work less "smart"?
As for experiencing easy works...what would you consider really easy? Is there something easier than Bartok's Mikrokosmos vol 1? Or grade one method books?
A lot of my students puzzle me too but that's the great joy of musical education to work out how we learn.I always aim that students learn new material at a good rate, what is a good rate depends on the student of course. It is difficult to talk specifics on something that is a very individual matter. However we can have constants, like determining what pieces can be learned in fast time and those which take longer.
There are plenty of contemporary pieces which are quite easy and also enjoyable. The internet is a great place to research all the repertoire that is out there, it would be just random advice if I started suggesting pieces. If you are lucky enough to have a good teacher they can guide you through repertoire that could be learned at an efficient learning rate. It is much more fun to explore yourself and see what is out there, your task is made even more easy with access to recordings which can play pieces for you. I remember before the internet I would have to learn pieces to work out what they sounded like, I even would input notes on my old Commodore 64 to hear what fast pieces should sound like. Nowadays it is so much easier to educate yourself and discover what you like. It is however no more easy to determine your level, getting to know your limitations (and systematically improving them) is a big challenge.
We are here talking about managing repertoire and learning pieces to performance level, are we not? It just is not possible for me in a week because of my poor memory and concentration abilities.
I've simply accepted the fact that I learn slowly because none of the numerous efforts to change that has made any difference.
Simplify, do easier works, get through pieces from start to finish to mastery fast. It often means doing pieces far below what you think is your level, but if you take this step and learn a lot of music, you will benefit. Sight reading is a key skill that commands the rate in which someone can memorize a piece. Learning many pieces also trains reading skills, something which can be stunted if studying only limited pieces.
I can sympathize with your situation. I have met students who make limited improvement but there is always improvement and those that are willing can almost always recreate and create new ways in which they see the piano. There are often situations in our life where we Do not know that we Do not know. We often need good guidance from someone greater than us for us to over come these obstacles. I find this especially true for piano as I am referred students who have been taught ineffectively for years sometimes only to see them finally make progress and shift out of the hole that their previous teachers did not recognize.
You are here assuming that it takes long because the pieces are more difficult. But really, for some people it takes long no matter how short and how easy the pieces are. I speak from experience. I have never encountered a piece I could properly learn in a week, no matter how short and how easy.
Are you talking now about artistically satisfying, or just knowing which keys to press?
I mean, if you were facing a few lines of "Michael Row the Boat Ashore", I think it wouldn't take you more than a week of diligent practice before you could play it from memory.
Are there other things that you can memorise easily?Can you draw a parallel between something you find easy to memorise and the music you find hard?(and note that easy-to-play and easy-to-memorise are probably different).For myself, i have a pretty good memory for song lyrics so i find songs much easier to memorise than lyric-less pieces of similar playing difficulty. The example above of 'Michael, row the boat ashore' would be fine for me, because the lyrics tie the whole piece together (for me) and give the overview that i can attach phrases and notes to.
If you mean me and not the OP, yes I do.
I cannot memorize much of anything really, never could...I am a fast and efficient reader, but I cannot memorize text. When I studied physics I could never remember the formulas, I had to create them from the scratch in the exams. I cannot memorize any phone numbers (people used to do that before the cell phones).
Since you studied physics, then i'd guess you have an aptitude for systems and that its the individuality of the notes that causes the problem. How strong is your music theory?One alternative approach would be to learn the piece through analysis rather than memorisation.That is, really study the notes and chords so that at every note you can say 'the composer chose this note next because....'. I don't think it matters much if your reasoning is 'correct', it is more that you are creating a chain of logic that describes the note progression, and the chain of logic might build into an overall system that reminds you how the piece works.If this kind of analysis works for you, there probably are some technically complex pieces you'll be able to analyse (and hence remember) easily but some technically simple pieces that you won't find an internal logic for, and hence won't remember.Since this is the internet, i've not actually tried working through a piece in this way, so i'd be interested if it does work, or not.
This paper by chaffin & logan gives a fairly detailed description of how one concert pianist memorised a piece:https://www.ac-psych.org/download.php?id=14Its very interesting how the different layers of structure fit together.