How to get a better time administration?

[faa2010]

Before June, I need to get the next pieces:

- 4 songs of Bartok For children.
- Haydn Sonata XVI no 17 (at least the first 2 movements)
- Chopin Nocturne C sharp minor
- Gavote of Manuel M Ponce

I have played them since December, but I am still making mistakes, and I only have the first movement in the Haydn Sonata.

I am not sure what is wrong in my studying method, I started slowly With hands separated then together, at a slowly speed.

What could you recommended me?

[outin]

Before June, I need to get the next pieces:

- 4 songs of Bartok For children.
- Haydn Sonata XVI no 17 (at least the first 2 movements)
- Chopin Nocturne C sharp minor
- Gavote of Manuel M Ponce

I have played them since December, but I am still making mistakes, and I only have the first movement in the Haydn Sonata.

I am not sure what is wrong in my studying method, I started slowly With hands separated then together, at a slowly speed.

What could you recommended me?

I would stop learning pieces hands separate first. That is a waste of time and should not be required at your level. You learn the piece hands together and then you may study hands separate later for more security. Especially the left hand.

As for the mistakes, it depends on what kind and why. Imo some people are not able to be mistake free even if nothing wrong with practice methods. But if the mistakes are not random, then you should be able to eliminate most of them by learning those parts better. If they are just random then it's more important to learn to recover.

There's much more to practicing than hs or ht and slowly vs at tempo.  HOW exactly do you practice? If you don't explain more we cannot say what you may be doing wrong... I certainly hope you have done something else than just "played" them since December. Trying to play through is not efficient practice. You must use your head to determine why certain mistakes happen and then create a method to eliminate them. You cannot expect other people to always tell you what to do, part of the learning process is to learn how to study and different problems require different solutions. There's plenty of general advice available on efficient practice, but you also need to analyze your specific issues to pick the ones that work. I take it that your teacher isn't being very helpful?

[faa2010]

Ok, Yesterday I was drowsy, so I couldn't tell more.

The teachers I had and have have always coincided that I need to learn first with hs before putting them together, and it may be because I have a poor study method by my own.

Before playing, I play some scales and cadences, not all of them, but some for at least 10-15 minutes.

What I do normally when I begin learning a piece is playing using a metronome at a fair speed (eg 60 bpm), before I used to play with hands together, but after seeing many teachers, I decided to play first separately.

Yeah, I also learned that playing hs is also to polish and improve the piece.

But another teachers, two to be exact, who are my solfege teachers, one related to musicians in general, another to teach to become a music teacher, have told us that playing the instrument is the last thing to do, one needs to listen the piece many times, then read the score, sing the piece and then sing it. They assure that with all that we can learn faster, but I have problems with that because my mind and fingers are not utterly synchronized.

And about time, I also have other subjects to which I need to pay attention: solfege, music history, education laboratory, harmony and sightreading. Every subject is asking and giving me tasks which I need to pay attention as well like my pieces. I know that all are related and each one has to help and support the other, but sometimes is difficult to apply all that I have learnt in one subject with another one, and specially with improving my piano technique.

I also heard that there are other students and people who can learn faster and get their pieces in just one week. Eg, a pianist needs to have a repertoire of one hour for a concert in one month, and in one week he/she learnt and got Beethoven's sonata op 2 no 1 with all the movements. In my case, doing that will take me more than 3 months.

As you say, I need to learn on my own and no one is going to tell me how to study in the end, but until now, until now, I have been with many teachers, and no one has told me how to get a piece faster, they at some point tell me not to rush but at the same time be faster, follow what they say, but also advance on my own even if they don't tell me, and don't pay attention to the other subjects, but to increase my ability even though they don't tell me how to.

What I only want is how to increase my piano ability and technique and also have time to the other subjects and my work in the future. I always work hard, but for some reason I am slower than others.

[dogperson]

Your post stiil does not exactly answer how you practice.   What I would recommend, which has been included in a post to you previously on this forum:
- Yes, many find reviewing the score and singing the melody to be beneficial.  Look for fingerings that can be repeated, or sections that are similar but not identical...what is different?  How should you approach it?
- Start HT VERY slowly to identify areas that you need to work on HS
- Be sure that you use consistent fingering -  write it in the score where needed
- When you identify the problem sections (measures/notes) work on those.
- Do NOT allow yourself to start your practice session from  the beginning of the piece.  You must work on what is a problem.   Set up the practice so that your focus is about 15 minutes on  each problem: if you can't address it in that timeframe, you may need to work on a smaller chunk.

There are certainly more suggestions--- but the bottom line is that you need to identify problems and work on them in a focused way.   Never practice longer than you have true focus.

[outin]

Excellent advice from dog person. It's a bit difficult to talk about time management without knowing more...are you a fulltime music student? If so, you should be able to work on piano several hours a day. But you must know when to work on different things. No use to work on something new or complicated if you are mentally tired.

While your teachers are right that analyzing scores is useful, a lot of piano playing is still muscle memory and You need to build that with consists work on the instrument. Do you need to memorize the pieces? You can combine analytic memory with the procedural memory and aural memory, but you will be using them all when you play.

Here's a trick I use sometimes with the pieces I have to learn well:
I devide the piece into logical sections (the more difficult the shorter). I then numerize them. I have bag with numbered cubes so that I can pick up them in random order. Then I practice that section only as long as I can fully engage in it, which is rarely more than 15 minutes. Then I pick another one and so on. This way I learn to start in many places and make sure I devide my attention equally to the whole piece.
 Usually I do this after I am somewhat able to play the whole piece because when I know how this section fits the whole I can practice with all the musical aspects.

Sometimes I even do this for every single measure to make myself really aware of what I am doing with the fingerings. It is just too easy to keep going blindly after your hands have "got" the piece.

This is just an example how you can develope practice strategies for different uses. With something like this you will always know what to do when you sit on the piano. Of course remember to take breaks as well.