Trying to prepare weekly recordings to assess my progress, etc.

[perprocrastinate]

I don't even know what forum section this is supposed to belong in, but here goes.

So I'm recording my progress of the piece(s) I'm working on every week to analyze my playing, and I've run into a little issue. I usually take at least two takes of a piece before I'm satisfied with the result, and it usually turns out okay, but this week I had a problem.

I try to procure more or less note-perfect recordings because I haven't brought the piece up to tempo yet, but today, I just couldn't manage to get a take without an obvious error here or there, so I ended up running through the piece several times. Should there be a general limit to how many times I restart, and just take the best possible recording? I'm getting the feeling that striving for absolute perfection is impractical and will just tire me out, rendering any following practice less effective.

I suppose the question I'm really trying to ask is, do note errors indicate that a piece needs more work, or are they simply unavoidable sometimes, and should be accepted?

This post may or may not make sense, because I'm typing this while being absolutely infuriated at myself after a frustrating practice session. It feels like I've made no progress on this piece this past week, or even negative progress, simply because I wasn't able to prepare a recording of equal or greater quality than that of last week's. I'm trying to find out what could be the reason. Maybe I've hit my limit with this piece and need to let it sit for a while before coming back to it? I dunno.

[j_menz]

I suppose the question I'm really trying to ask is, do note errors indicate that a piece needs more work, or are they simply unavoidable sometimes, and should be accepted?

Sometimes they're just random errors. More often then not, though, past the first stage and into learning the piece they indicate issues that should be addressed. This is particularly true if errors recur in the same passage (whether the same error or not).

By aiming for note perfect recordings, you're depriving yourself of another opportunity to spot where these are (and then go on to fix them). Whilst you're learning, the mistakes you make are probably the most interesting thing in the piece.

[outin]

I've noticed recording too much and too often tends to be counterproductive. One gets too obsessed with note perfection and listening to other qualities of one's own playing suffers. And the more obsessed one gets on not making mistakes, the more difficult it becomes to achieve. But maybe that's just me.

I think I have musical Tourette's, my brain needs to make the mistakes, so will put them in somewhere no matter how well the piece is learnt

[bronnestam]

Well, you don't make recordings in order to sell them yet, I suppose. You record because you want to learn and develop.
Then don't be obsessed with perfection. I often use the virtual software Pianoteq, which logs everything automatically. I find it very educational to listen to my "recordings" afterwards, because then I get a much better perspective on how my playing actually sounds. I can think "I have too much forte there" or "that was uneven" or "maybe I should try to express more sadness in the melody there" and I think this is very helpful to me. (Like listening to another student playing - you learn quite a lot from that, don't you? And especially you learn from the MISTAKES, not what is "perfect". So it is important to listen to pianists who are not excellent sometimes ... even yourself.)

Well, note errors are also something important to analyze. It is a good thing that you take notice of them, but remember: you are not to sell these recordings. You are not to play them for someone else, in order to show off. You use them for learning and developing.