Boredom with Practice, How does one fight this?

[Cass]

Can one overpractice? I find I roam and make mistakes when I get bored with the piece, but I must perfect it. I have a competition next month. What do you all do to fight this, and does it happen to any of you?

[donjuan]

you need to do something else....walk away from the piano for a day or two, or practice something completely different.  Dont worry- a month is a long time away.  I have a competition on Friday and I havent touched the piano for the past 3 days because my family has been sick.  I practiced just today and everything is fine!

Take it easy, or you will hate the music and it will hate you back.

donjuan

[jazzyprof]

You say "but I must perfect it" so I assume you haven't perfected it yet.  To avoid boredom you need to practice in shorter segments, no more than 20 minutes at a sitting.  Then take a break, stretch, get a cup of tea, go out for some air, whatever...for 5 minutes or so.  Then come back refreshed.  During your 20 minutes at the piano (or less, if boredom sets in sooner) work only on those parts that give you trouble.  Those parts that you haven't perfected pose a challenge and the mind loves a challenge.  Solving the technical problems associated with those troublesome parts will help stave off boredom.  You get bored when you just play the parts you know well over and over.

[super_ardua]

A famous pedagogist,  whose name I cannot spell, (begins with L) advised to a concert pianist

Play your piece.

For each correct page put a counter on top of your piano desk.

If you make a mistake take away ALL the counters.

Do this until you get ten.

My advice : If you do this,  and get frustrated,  do not punch anything.  You will hurt your hand.

[donjuan]

A famous pedagogist,  whose name I cannot spell, (begins with L) advised to a concert pianist

Play your piece.

If it is correct put a counter on top of your piano desk.

Play it again.  If correct put on another counter.  If not take away ALL the counters.

Do this until you get ten.

My advice : If you do this,  and get frustrated,  do not punch anything.  You will hurt your hand.

exactly what is meant by "correct"?  Performing isnt like algebra..

And what is a counter?

[Goldberg]

A marker. Say you put a playing card each time you play it acceptably; ten means you have it down well enough to perform. It is a reasonably good practice in that it encourages the student to stay put until he/she can play the piece well and thus helps to deter boredom (it creates a goal to achieve). The student is left then to define "acceptable" for himself (assuming he's practicing alone) and, depending on the student's true motivations and aspirations, his performance will always reflect his level of seriousness but will not result in an overly competitive spirit (the student is left to follow his own standards and can either play it perfectly or with a few mistakes but no matter what will be happy because the outcome is in his own hands).

There are, I suppose, several possible answers to that, but that's the one I'll submit. A "correct" performance, in other words, should be one that the student is pleased with.

[shasta]

Can one overpractice? I find I roam and make mistakes when I get bored with the piece, but I must perfect it. I have a competition next month. What do you all do to fight this, and does it happen to any of you?

Start learning some new pieces!  Just because you have a competition coming up doesn't mean you have to stagnate on those same pieces; hopefully by this point in time you shouldn't have to be practicing your competition pieces a ton anyway...

[LaVirtuosa]

Goldberg is right. That was an excellent reply i think.

[Daniel_piano]

Can one overpractice? I find I roam and make mistakes when I get bored with the piece, but I must perfect it. I have a competition next month. What do you all do to fight this, and does it happen to any of you?

A way to avoid boredom in practice is to practice your piece in a lot of different ways instead of the same repetitive method
This is what is called overlearning and simply implies that if you learn your piece with 20 methods it will always be better than if you had played it with just 1 method
So start with whole piece practice, then when you're bored try a bar by bar practice, the when you're bored try a outlining, when you're bored to that try with different rythms, when different rhythms becoming boring try playing your piece from the end to to start, when this becomes boring try play each bar backwards and even when this will become boring try playing alternating bar, one bar fast and on slow motion, one a rhythm one another
When you have exhausted all the methods come back to the first one and you won't be any longer bored of it
By playing your pieces in a lot of different method (even method that change the piece itself while maintaining its structure) you're training your hands to feel always at easy with the piece because they know each possible variants, each possible modification, thouch and rhythm
This is makes playing the piece easier, and make it easier is the first rule to playing it perfectly

Daniel

[johnnypiano]

Daniel gives you a perfect answer.  As many ways as you can think of.  I will say no more as he has said it all.  But let us know how you get on.   

[nick]

A famous pedagogist,  whose name I cannot spell, (begins with L) advised to a concert pianist

Play your piece.

For each correct page put a counter on top of your piano desk.

If you make a mistake take away ALL the counters.

Do this until you get ten.

My advice : If you do this,  and get frustrated,  do not punch anything.  You will hurt your hand.

I find I need a whole lot more repetitions than 10 perfect ones before I have mastered the piece. But the concept of making each repetition perfect I agree with. The speed at which the repeats are taken are important: going slow enough you might be able to do 50 perfect or more!

Nick

[earthward]

A way to avoid boredom in practice is to practice your piece in a lot of different ways instead of the same repetitive method
This is what is called overlearning and simply implies that if you learn your piece with 20 methods it will always be better than if you had played it with just 1 method
So start with whole piece practice, then when you're bored try a bar by bar practice, the when you're bored try a outlining, when you're bored to that try with different rythms, when different rhythms becoming boring try playing your piece from the end to to start, when this becomes boring try play each bar backwards and even when this will become boring try playing alternating bar, one bar fast and on slow motion, one a rhythm one another
When you have exhausted all the methods come back to the first one and you won't be any longer bored of it
By playing your pieces in a lot of different method (even method that change the piece itself while maintaining its structure) you're training your hands to feel always at easy with the piece because they know each possible variants, each possible modification, thouch and rhythm
This is makes playing the piece easier, and make it easier is the first rule to playing it perfectly

Daniel

Yeah.  I think this is an excellent approach.  Thanks for for articulating it so well!

[ehpianist]

Some excellent suggestions on this thread.  I find that I usually become bored when I do not have a set goal for the practice session.  If you need to perfect this piece and it is not yet time to move onto a new piece then I recommend you:

1) Record yourself
2) Listen back to your recording without the score once.
3) Listen back with the score in hand and circle all the places that need extra work
4) make a list of these sections and decide exactly which ones you will work on during each practice session.  This also means you need to figure out which can be fixed with one serious practice sessionand which are long-term fixes which may require several days or weeks.  For the latter, assign a limited time each day to work on these, and don't go crazy or you will eventually get bored.

If you structure your practice it will probably be both, more effective and rewarding, thus cutting down on the boredom factor.

Elena
https://www.pianofourhands.com

[janice]

A famous pedagogist,  whose name I cannot spell, (begins with L) advised to a concert pianist

Play your piece.

For each correct page put a counter on top of your piano desk.

If you make a mistake take away ALL the counters.

Do this until you get ten.

YES!!!!!!!!!  This will not only drive you nuts, but doing this has "changed my life", so to speak.  I found this exact same advice on www.practicespot.com.  However, I can't find it right now.  Give me a few minutes.  It's under "Surviving Performance", or something like that.
----------
grrrrrr--I can't find it!!  And I have to go to work now.  But basically it talks about how you should practice "making yourself nervous" by setting up a system of rewards and "punishments" for yourself.  This has done wonders for me!!  And an added bonus, is that I (thank God!) never seem to get nervous any more when I play!  I used to shake like a leaf!

[anda]

Play your piece.

For each correct page put a counter on top of your piano desk.

If you make a mistake take away ALL the counters.

Do this until you get ten.

was he catholic and using rosary beans? 

anyway, sounds like a sure way to get bored with the work - in case you weren't enough bored to start with...

you don't get bored as long as you are interested in what you're doing. so, i think the best way not to get bored is to keep in mind a fresh image of the work/the passage under work and to keep listening very carefully to what you're doing. try different manners, different approaches in order to find which one will get you closest to that image.

i mean, you can't get bored listening, and especially if you don't always play exactly the same - right? (imo)

[JimDunlop]

Janice, I assume you were trying to find The Seven Stages of Misery  here:

https://www.practicespot.com/article.phtml?id=12&t=24

[chopinguy]

My teacher says that if you're bored with practice, you're missing something.  There is never and end to learning a piece.

His quote to me: "Practice not until you can get something right, but until you can't get it wrong."

[jason2711]

something that really helped me learn a piece was to just play it, not as it was written at all, but using the notes and playing them in whatever way you feel like.  Doing this five or six times and not only will you know the notes so much better, but you should feel fresher with the piece, since you then appreciate after hearing it so many different ways which ways you like the best and this can help in your performances.  At least, for me this worked, but i tend to be a little random, but since it was called 'exciting and lively' by the adjudicator, i think it worked