No talent

[melia]

I love music with all my heart, but I am a terribly slow learner, and it takes ages for me to polish a piece. I have a limited repertiore, cause it takes forever to polish a piece, sometimes, I get frustrated with myself and try to 'force' the speed and musicality. My music only sounds beautiful when it comes naturally from months of hard work and practice, but I hate being so slow, and plus, it doesn't do much for my repertoire either Anyone ever felt this way? Does being kinda 'slow' mean that you have no talent? I think I am comparing myself too much to you guys! I know this is wrong but I sometimes feel embarrassed playing the same thing every day for months until its perfect. My relatives might think I'm stupid or something that I haven't got it right yet.

[dolce cantabile]

hey I faced the same problem too! I'm now practicing peices that are supposed to be easy for me but I just can't seem to play them perfect at one go after practices....I bound to make mistakes and "play stop play".... I feel I'm worst than a beginner sometimes!

[pianowelsh]

I think weve all been there! some dwell there longer than others but it's part of life! Learning occurs in arcs and sometimes we get to a place where we sit for a while and YES it's FRUSTRATING but they don't last forever

[russ]

Dont worry, in Australia you learn 3 peices that you have to perfect per year, if you do exams. Not very exciting... But it doesnt mean you have no talent, if you were under the pressure to learn songs quickly you would probably rise to the occasion, but dont force yourself to learn songs quickly or playing piano may not be as enjoyable. Try playing a few easier pieces that still sound nice, but you can learn fairly quickly.

[willcowskitz]

A common mistake for people when they start learning something new is that there are secondary motives to it, which they treat as primary.

When you're learning to express yourself in a new way, its of course important to know yourself in first place, to be able to process the music by understanding it and relating to it and then transmitting it to people. When you're learning or listening to a piece for the first times, you're not communicating with others but your self. I've found that achieving humility (a lot more difficult for an average person to achieve than arrogance) and sincerity helps a great deal in a learning process, because you purify yourself from all the presumptions and expectances that would block your way on the path of making yourself more complete. One negative aspect is pride (when used as a driving force and the seed for things rather than result from having achieved something that you consider important); first of all because it is very vulnerable and can reforward damage to your fate and beliefs in your own abilities if attacked, secondly because pride hints that you're living your life through others and their images of yourself, which can in itself be a limitation to your self-development. There's music in all of us, and the better we know ourselves the easier it is to bring it out, in form of a piece composed by yourself or somebody else, it doesn't matter, because in between there's understanding of the music - a relation between yourself and the composer, which in the case of improvising or composing is the very process of getting to know yourself better which is why it is so helpful for learning to play the piano both musically and technically. Basics of the technical side of learning is not much different from the mental, it only adds the aspect of knowing your body, it's movements and dimensions, to the equation. Moreover, it would be attainable to integrate technicality and musicality for best performance, having technique arise from the need to communicate.

In conclusion I'd guess that being slow technically doesn't mean you considerably lack in "talent", but just don't know how to operate your body and mind more effectively in correlation to get the desired results.

[galonia]

I agree with what everyone above has said - don't give up!  Things get better, and you can always ask your teacher and search this forum about efficient ways to learn.

Dont worry, in Australia you learn 3 peices that you have to perfect per year, if you do exams.

Errr... good teachers don't let you get away with only learning exam repertoire.  I have always been expected to prepare a whole lot more work than what I needed to sit each exam.

[MarkAllison]

You should have a look through Fundamentals of Piano Practice by CC Chang. https://members.aol.com/cc88m/PianoBook.html, it will accelerate your learning. The author claims your learning rate will accelerate 1000 times and even provides a very thorough breakdown as to how he arrived at this figure.

PDF versions are good for printing. I personally have found a marked improvement in my general ability, confidence and learning speed. However, it is nowhere near 1000 times faster - having said that I still haven't disciplined myself to follow all his recommendations.

Enjoy,
Mark.