Polishing Invention 13

[pianocat3]

I like this invention, and have worked on it about 20 minutes a day for over two months and it's still not polished. Am I just being a whining baby with unrealistic expectations and should keep polishing, or is this piece maybe too hard for me to play beautifully at this time?  I usually have 3, sometimes 4, pieces to work on at a time, plus the usual technical exercises. I average 1 to 1 1/2 hours a day.  The teacher had me lay this one aside, but I like it so I keep working it. She doesn't have me polish everything. I'm learning Mozart k 545 movements II and III and that is so easy in comparison.  Tx for comments.

[kuska]

There're many possible reasons. I guess no one will answer you this if we don't have idea about your overall playing, years spent on the piano and so on

[pianocat3]

I probably have had more than three years of lessons, total, but 2 years was as a child, and later as a teen and a few adult lessons,  plus 30 years playing a bit at Christmas, mostly easy piano arrangements. Goofing around.  I have had a bit more than a year of lessons now, and been much more serious about it.  I had some Alfred adult method books. Currently, there's nothing in the last book that I can't polish up to be very nice for public performance, and certainly can manage harder rep than that.  My teacher's degree is in piano pedagogy and I think she has me pegged as early advanced, but some skills are way behind others due to my background, which I have worked hard on that so it's getting better (those scales, arpeggios, not looking at my hands so much, prima vista sight reading, ear training, theory, transposing...) It all takes time, and 1 1/2 hours a day is what I can manage.

[kuska]

I'm not an expert, probably someone else will give your better pro tips, however Invention no. 13 is around level 6, and in theory you should be playing like 6 years. I believe it can be longer or shorter, depending on an amount of time spent in total.

There're sonatines you can play in your second year of playing but there's much difference in that play when you compare it to a professional piano player. My point is, Bach is personaly a hard one for me. Amazing, rewarding but extremely hard if you want to play it perfectly. There're higher level pieces like Haydn sonatas which I find easier than Bach's inventions. The best way to get a serious advice would be a video of you playing.

And invention no. 13 is one of harder pieces imo, especially bars 9-11, 13, 9, 22. I'm refreshing my skills and I'm working on that piece as well and I've been just bashing for around an hour all those bars one by one. The fingers changes are quite hard.

[chopinlover01]

This particular invention is about the middle of the road when it comes to difficulty, but all of the inventions are hard to get note perfect.
My advice would be that, if you've already got it to a performance standard, to leave it alone for a while, and THEN come back to it. That way, you kind of "re-learn" the piece with most of the heavy lifting done.

[pianocat3]

OK I think I'll give it another week and leave it and take it up again some time. It's getting fairly frustrating and invention 1 is going much better where I can be confident playing that one in performance should I want to. Thanks for comments!

[109natsu]

Hi guys,

I played Invention 13 in my third year too, so you shouldn't be worrying about playing for six years and playing this. In fact, if there is a person that takes six years to play a Bach invention, he/she is not doing very much work....

Inventions are a gateway to Preludes and Fugues, which leads to Tocattas, Concertos etc.

Bach is hard. You shouldn't expect it to be "flawless" and "perfect" if you only spend 20 minutes a day on it... Extreme amounts of slow practicing will be needed. As long as you can play it smoothly and it doesn't feel like wrong notes are disturbing the music making, I think you should move on.

I actually learned the Mozart and the Prelude much after the Invention. No worries!


Happy Practicing,

Natsu Ozawa
Cleveland, OH

[pjjslp]

Natsu Ozawa
Cleveland, OH

Sorry to hijack the OP's thread, but do you really move often, Natsu? I've now noticed three different cities in your signature and you haven't been posting here for very long. Just curious!

[109natsu]

I traveled a lot this summer. I just use my location so that I know what kind of crap I've been posting during my vacation.   If it's distracting, I can just stop that 

[pianocat3]

Well that makes me feel better, thanks! I did put it aside. I think maybe I do too many pieces at once which leaves me with 15 to 20 minutes a day on each since I do technical exercises too.

[pjjslp]

I traveled a lot this summer. I just use my location so that I know what kind of crap I've been posting during my vacation.   If it's distracting, I can just stop that 

It's not distracting, I just found it curious. I have family in southern Indiana, so I noticed that your initial posts said Bloomington. I actually have ties to Cleveland and Seattle as well, otherwise I wouldn't likely have noticed. Do whatever you like