Getting to Grade 8 from scratch in one year.

[bernadette60614]

For some reason I can't quote to a prior message...but I'll allude to and hopefully reply in this post:

I don't think our progress is impeded by having unambitious goals.  I think our progress is impeded by having ill-informed goals.

Can you play grade 8 pieces in one year...probably, if you are willing to devote your year to that one pursuit.  Can you become a grade 8 level pianist in one year, that, I doubt.  Becoming a well-rounded pianist requires a complex interplay of skills:  manual dexterity, musicality, "soul" for lack of a better word, understanding of theory and personal expressiveness.

For me, a good analogy would be:  can I run a marathon with a year of training..probably.  Can I become the equivalent of a dancer who has trained for 10 years...no.

[frederic_choping]

I don't know if your going to believe me or not (No one ever does, whenever someone asks me how long i've played I just say 'a while'), but this is exactly what I did. When I was 12, my dad passed away. It affected me greatly. I was having night terrors, panic attacks, and I withdrew into myself. It got really bad and only got worse. So, I decided I needed to find something to distract myself with. I tried out piano - I had always liked classical music as my mom does, but never had the mind to play it for myself. So, when I started I got really into it, and I played 6+ hours a day. Soon, my hands started to hurt and school had started so I played 3 hours a day, 1 hour before school and 2 hours after, but I wouldn't often exceed the time due to the fact I was desperate for something to take my mind off of. On the weekends and during school breaks i still play 6+ hours a day. I've made a massive effort to learn many songs and develop properly, but I have many years to keep practicing, so I'm not worried   In relation to another reply I have a pretty high IQ, and I'm guessing that aids the practice. But I haven't wavered, and I'm about to take my grade 8 in about 2 weeks. I'm 13 at the moment - I'm sure anyone can do it if they have the drive to practice enough...  

[kuska]

So, I decided I needed to find something to distract myself with. I tried out piano

Didn't you have video games?

OK, serioiusly: how many pieces did you play during this year? 6 hours a day is much but it could be spent in various ways.

And let me re-ask then:

So far I've seen e.g. The Wild Horseman to be a grade 3 piece which seems silly to me. What means to be a grade 3 piece? To be able to play along the notes? Yeah, then maybe it is. But what about playing it well?

Some people on youtube claim to finish grade 8 but I don't like their playing too much. I mean, it's fair enough, it's nice to listen. But even I can see how their are hiding their lack of technique by excessively using sustain, even in rags. And it just doesn't work with what I considered to be the 8 grade piano playing.

So, what exactly IS grade 8?

[adodd81802]

And let me re-ask then:
So, what exactly IS grade 8?

It is a mixture of things that cannot honestly be absolute. We know this because each new syllabus even today is coming with revisions of pieces that was in one grade that is now in the other.

Here's what I think.

There are 2 aspects which I think contribute to the grade of a piece.

The first which cannot truly be measured is interpretation. It's the ability to be convincing with your performance whether it's a diploma piece or a grade 1 piece, you need to make your performance believable. We often hear pieces that we say sound mechanical, or that we hear and can't quite put our finger's on it, but there's something missing. This is it.

We could find many examples of pianists that play wrong notes, play different tempos, are not always strict to the score, but we are still convinced of their performance, and feel the ideas.

The second is technical requirement. Now as technical requirements increase, interpretation get's harder to focus on. We can all close our eyes and play twinkle twinkle like a Chopin Nocturne, because there is relatively 0 technical ability required and so all focus can be on how it sounds.

Technical ability comes into 2 main categories.
The first is speed. The fact is the faster we have to do something, the harder it is to do. This is obviously why slow practice is required.

The second is refinement. It's the understanding of a technical requirement and how to apply it in different situations and making it as efficient as possible.

This may be why we find a piece that is much faster than another and is still in the same grade, because there may be less technical requirement, or that the requirements do not need to be very refined.

I've checked your wild horseman from what I can see, it's not in the 2017/2018 syllabus? It looks like it was 2011/2012... Refer back to my point on revising pieces and grades.

I don't believe a true database exists of all piano pieces and their grades so unless you've just found this on Youtube I wouldn't consider the grade labeling definite. Regardless let's take a look at what makes it an easier piece.

Firstly it's in C major. There are a few accidentals, but ultimately you can remain in the white key area and so there's little hand movement required. Further to this, in the first section, the lowest note is E and the highest note is only an F octave higher, which for most people all the notes in between can be hit with relatively little to no movement of the hand. No big jumps here..

All these notes are singular, so there's no double notes, no octaves, no chords at high speed. The tempo of the piece itself is relatively slow.

There's little to no dynamics, so we've completely taken out the interpretation requirement here, the few dynamic markings are on the beat of the music so there's no rhythm ideas to worry about either.

The chords that are in the left hand to start are very simple chords F major / E major / A minor / C major they almost all require very similar hand shapes and fingering.

Going back to the right hand they just look like broken chords / arpeggios things you begin learning straight from grade 1.

Ultimately this piece I think does fit into this grade, and I think maybe you're just concerning speed as the factor of difficulty here.

Unless maybe i've misunderstood and you think it's too easy to be a grade 3 piece? My points still apply but we need to compare it to another piece for you to see why it's grade 3 and not higher / lower

[adodd81802]

Thought I'd close this post out with the conclusion on the users blog - they gave up

Stopped for 2 months, then although not directly stating - that grade 1-8 in a year is simply not something you can just force.

Posted on September 14, 2016
Hello all! Apologies that I’ve been out of touch for so long. I spent most of my summer away travelling and was away from a computer for much of the time and (more importantly for my project) away from a piano for all of it. I got back about a week ago and since then have moved house, so it’s only really this week that I’ve begun to get back to the piano. And, man – have I forgotten a lot! It was quite worrying at first as my fingers seemed completely lost on the keys and every other note was a mistake. Still, I guess that’s to be expected when you don’t play for two months. Thankfully it’s starting to come back to me, so I guess in a week or so I’ll be back to where I was.

I think the amount of time I’ve spent away was symptomatic of being a bit burnt-out with the project, so for this second half of the year I’m going to take things a bit easier on myself. Therefore, I’m planning to focus entirely on enjoying what I’m doing with the piano, rather than trying to push myself to take Grade 8 in January. I still intend to take Grade 8 in the future – but in my own time and in a manner that I’ll enjoy rather than the 40 hours a week slog that I was putting myself through. As such, this week I’ve started looking at a different piece – Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 which is one of my favourite pieces of music and was an unofficial goal for me to achieve at the start of this project. For anyone unfamiliar with this piece (you poor things) you can see a great rendition of it here. This is quite a way beyond where I currently am (particularly having gone backwards over the summer) but if I get there by Christmas I’ll be happy🙂

[mjames]

Ok good (lol duh)

Now it's time to shut down the "adult learners can't learn difficult pieces" thread. who's going first, you or me?

and by adult learners I mean people who started at 14+ years old.