Dealing with frustration & moving past tricky sections in a piece.

[maneceel96]

I'm very serious about learning the piano and would like to, if all goes well, study composition at my local conservatory but boy oh boy, it's hard. I'm currently working on Hermann Berens "50 Piano Pieces for Beginners". No. 9 is giving me an incredibly difficult time. I can play everything, but bars 5 & 6 are a nightmare. The first 4 bars the left hand just plays CEG in 3/8 time and in bars 5 & 6 it moves to DFA while right hand plays one quarter note of F and an eight note of F and then moves to one Quarter note of D and one eight note of D. It's so simple but i keep getting stuck when i got to make the repeated F's and D's. I can do it when it's at a ridiculously slow tempo but when i even remotely try it at regular speed i fudge it up and feel helpless and the pieces aren't all that emotionally satisfying so it gets old doing it over and over again but i feel bad to move on the next piece when i can't finish the one i'm struggling with.

How do you deal with frustration? If you have any tips for getting past the piece i'm struggling with, please let me know what you think.

Thanks

[drkz4ck]

Frustration is the worst part of studying the piano for me.

Try figuring out why you're messing up on those parts, comming up with solutions for it and testing them one by one.
Could be you're practicing faster than you should, maybe you need to get your rythms straight.

In any case a well instructed teacher can spot your mistakes more easily and give more precise solutions to work it out.

Frustration will likely be always present in your life, so don't le it ruin your mood.
If you're feeling too stressed out, it is wise to keep your distance from the piano just long enough until you cool down.
You can always study music theory, or do whatever else you want in the mean time.

When you try to study with a worried mind you will likely start making compulsive and mindless repetitions, which won't get you many places.

Try writing down your possible problems and solutions to them. It helps keep a more organized approach to your difficulties.

[keypeg]

Manecee, are you working on your own or with a teacher?  If you are working with a teacher, that teacher should be teaching you how to approach a piece in practising, as well as teaching things lying underneath the music.  Not all do.  It almost sounds as if you are trying to learn simply by having a book with pieces in it, and then going at those pieces somehow.  It took me three years into lessons on another instrument to discover effective practising and effective learning.  It makes things 4X as easy.  A search on key words around this will probably yield a few results, in case this is all new and unfamiliar.

[bernadette60614]

When I first started taking piano lessons, I did so in the adult education program of a university music school...where young students had auditioned to pursue performance degrees.

I would arrive 30 minutes early, just to calm my nerves and would wait in the hallway.  I'd overhead 30 minutes of one passage being played over and over.  Then, I'd have my 45 minute lesson, and come out and hear the same section being practiced again..a little better...but still the student was practicing one small segment.

The point of this story: Everyone has a part which seems to be troublesome...even those people who start studying at a very young age and who were good enough to audition for a degree program.

Take care.  I think it never gets "easy"..you just learn that this is an inevitable part of the process and try to embrace it as much as you can.