Relearning pieces

[thorn]

I think every pianist has at some point learned something that was beyond their current level without assistance from a teacher. A few years later, you sit down to play it and notice a million improvements that could be made and how downright awkward it feels it your hands.

How do you go about undoing all the bad things and replacing them with improvements? It's impossible to "treat the piece as something you have never seen before", because so much of it is on autopilot. Yet you still feel like it needs "starting again".

Any thoughts?

[perfect_playing]

Basically, you actually need to start again as if you've never seen the piece before. You need to take a step back from the whole thing and ask yourself: How would I learn this piece if it was presented to me and I had never heard or played it? Obviously, when one starts learning a piece, there are things we always should do such as practising the melodies separately, developing a sense of character in little motifs etc. You need to go back to this.

What you could do is go through the various melodic lines and play them, deliberately changing the things you have trained yourself into doing the first time you learned it. For example, when I relearnt Un Sospiro, I realised I was automatically slowing down a bit at the end of each phrase on the first three pages, almost without even noticing it. While this is not a bad idea musically, it is bad to get into the habit of not having control over youself. So I forced myself to be steady at the ends so that I could actually "start the learning process again". In fact, by the time I had fully polished it off again, I decided that I wouldn't slow down every time and my playing improved as a result of this new thought process.

[zerozero]

I have a Bach minuet that was the first piece I learned. I keep going back to it, but the familiar glitches appear. I took to playing it S_L_O_W and this helped, a two bar phrase at a time. its way better than it was now... stil imperfect though, but so is human nature...

[lostinidlewonder]

Sight read the music, this will help break the hypnosis muscular memory has on your hands. Focus on writing in the correct fingering, don't substitute what you think might be better. Remove your inefficient movements. Play the piece in different rhythms or play particular phrases in chunks with pauses in between. Start playing the piece from unusual positions not always at the start of the bar or beat, start in other places so your muscular memory doesnt trigger off and fall back into its old ways. Get a good teacher who can make this process quicker.

[flashyfingers]

yes, and if it hasn't been too much time, you notice your muscle memory outlasted your photo memory, and it is a trip to sight-read a piece that you had already learnt, and see your hands following the music faster than your eyes and faster than you could ever recall it.

It is a trip!!

[coherence]

I'll second slow practice, sight reading, random order, or anything that makes you do something dramatically different from what your muscle memory is telling you to do (changing rhythm, exaggerating dynamics or articulation). Honestly, those are good ideas even for pieces you're currently learning -- you're always unintentionally adding quirks in the background to what you think you're practicing.

The other thing that really helps me is recording myself, so I can really hear all those tics and fix them. I'm often shocked at first by how I really sound. (I love my digital piano for this -- quick, quality feedback.)