Cramming for piano?

[baseball964]

I was doing some cramming for a test (schoolwork) in the school library when I came up with an observation. You see all these people spending all day in the library just studying the same thing. This is incredibly evident during finals week. Could this apply to piano as well? As in, could you devote a whole day to just learning a piece of significant relative difficulty if you had the motivation and desire?

Right now I can't think of any reasons why you wouldn't be able to learn a whole movement of a concerto for example in one day if you spent 12 hours at the piano. Right now the only limiting factor I can think of is fatigue, but if you're learning a new piece you wouldn't be playing fast right? Idk I'd like to hear all your thoughts and if anyone's ever done anything like this before.

[mishamalchik]

This is not how piano works. The difference being that piano is not memorization, it is application. It works for school tests because they often just require you to recall information, but cramming has been proven to be ineffective for learning and tests that require you to apply information are very difficult to do well on when you only cram.

Piano is not wrote recall of information, it is very mechanical and practical in nature and one can only master a piece of difficulty with work over time. Have you ever tried to cram for a lesson? How well does that usually go? In my experience, watching my peers and myself, it doesn't work at all!

[hardy_practice]

Professionals have been known to memorize whole concertos on plane journeys etc.  I'm afraid that's out of your league.

[outin]

There was this guy some time ago who decided to try to reach grade 8 abrsm from scratch in one year. His practical experiment in cramming failed. I did most of my university studies this way. What I learned was to process a huge amount of information fast and find what's relevant and forget it all after the exams. It is a usefull skill in my job but it is not so useful for learning a skill such as playing the piano. If I really want to learn something tricky I need to practice it in small doses with adequate breaks between. It is a known fact that brain needs enough rest and sleep to learn.

[keypeg]

It's not that great for exams either.  In my last year of high school I did an experiment.  I happened to have a free period every day, and during that free period I reviewed whatever we had been taught that day, and continued that review at home.  It was a daily thing, and it also did not make my head hurt the way cramming does.  My average in each subject increased by close to 10%, with less effort.

Music is a physical activity which includes your nervous system and your senses.  What you practice during the day gets incorporated at night as you sleep, incrementally.  Cramming makes even less sense in music.