Is there a time you accept you cannot advance to a higher level

[pianodannn]

   I understand what your saying.I kind of disagree with the practice being rushed or not focussed enough.It might appear that way, but i guess one persons focussed could be another persons 50% of their attention on the television.The very nature of the exercise revolves around speed.It would be pointless to take all the time needed to ensure perfect jumps each time, because whilst playing to standard, you don't have all the time you need,  but a very fixed time to perform the motions.
     As for the jumps, so i need to kind of incorporate the lateral motion and the chord playing into one  fluent motion, rather than across, then down as 2 seperate motions.Using the inertia of the shift to come down into the keys or something like that?

[ranjit]

The very nature of the exercise revolves around speed.It would be pointless to take all the time needed to ensure perfect jumps each time, because whilst playing to standard, you don't have all the time you need,  but a very fixed time to perform the motions.

You jump to conclusions too fast. This is a method I and many others use all the time. Choreographing your hand movements is a very powerful technique.

[lostinidlewonder]

The excersie is easier than playing the piece as written. One large point of the excersie is that it should be totally perfect and utterly mastered without room for improvement, there should also be a freedom of thought, if your brain is overloaded with info you need to severely trim it. The exercise is a subset of the technique required to break it apart and if you have failure in this then improvement in the simpler exercise will directly improve you ability to play it as written.

[brogers70]

       As for the jumps, so i need to kind of incorporate the lateral motion and the chord playing into one  fluent motion, rather than across, then down as 2 seperate motions.Using the inertia of the shift to come down into the keys or something like that?

Rather the reverse of that. You need to move quickly from one chord to the other without playing the second chord at all. You want to avoid using the momentum of the shift to press the keys. The single fluent motion is up off the first chord and down to the surface of the keys on the second. Then you wait a bit, and only then you press the second chord. Have a look at those two videos in my last post (Josh Wright and Danae Dorken).

 I can tell you I had no chance of hitting the rapid chords in the first and fourth movements of Beethoven Opus 2 #1 until I worked on those exercises. Of course, in the end, you will not pause with your fingers on the keys before playing each chord, but it is extremely helpful to do the exercise this way; it really takes the tension out of the motions.

[roncesvalles]

   It would be pointless to take all the time needed to ensure perfect jumps each time, because whilst playing to standard, you don't have all the time you need,  but a very fixed time to perform the motions.

I don't think this is the right mindset.  There are essentially three elements to playing:  sounding the right notes, playing them in the right rhythm, and articulating them how you want.  If you're missing notes in practice you're training yourself to miss notes.  Speed is the result of having mastered something, not the starting point, unless you're an accomplished pianist.  If you're missing notes (or not articulating them well) then you should slow down to where you can play whatever it is you're playing (exercise or piece) well.   Only then can you build up your playing where speed is comfortable, precise, and nuanced.  You don't want to rush speed, or you'll probably be rushing mistakes and likely be unwittingly imposing artificial speed limits on your playing--it's kind of counterintuitive, but that's how it's played out in my experience.

I used to be of the mindset that everything had to be practiced at close to concert speed.  It was the athlete in me ("no pain, no gain") wanting to go full throttle.  It led to a lot of frustration, abandoned pieces, or things that sounded brutal if I did learn them.  But it did a lot of violence to my hand, and it's taken me years to fix my technique and start approaching the repertoire I was butchering before.   Control should be a more important concept at this stage than speed, because it actually enables speed with practice.  Whereas speed for its own sake pushed for too soon often means a loss of control (physically and musically) which inhibits further speed or at the very least the quality of the speed.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

I agree with what anacrusis posted. Actually, I don't think you're doing badly at all, just you need to focus more on accuracy and precision. For the time being, I don't think velocity is the issue at all - in fact trying to achieve velocity at this point may be actively counterproductive. I suspect, but I would like the second opinion of an experienced teacher like LIIW, and I have the caveat that this would be so much easier to examine in person as opposed to online, that there are physiological reasons for the errors such as lack of conditioning of the relevant hand muscles and a tendency for the fingers to be "floppy" and susceptible to hand position instability.

[lostinidlewonder]

...I don't think you're doing badly at all, just you need to focus more on accuracy and precision. For the time being, I don't think velocity is the issue at all - in fact trying to achieve velocity at this point may be actively counterproductive. I suspect, but I would like the second opinion of an experienced teacher like LIIW, and I have the caveat that this would be so much easier to examine in person as opposed to online, that there are physiological reasons for the errors such as lack of conditioning of the relevant hand muscles and a tendency for the fingers to be "floppy" and susceptible to hand position instability.

Yes, I generally don't believe velocity should be trained if the movements are not totally correct in the first place, usually this causes one to play in some inefficient estimated manner, perhaps getting close to the target but all accompanied with some sort of struggle in the body and mind that doesn't go away thus producing a pianist who is tense and cannot relax while playing (and who might think this is what piano playing is about!). It is actually important to see what someone does when they try to play fast, this reveals their inefficiencies quite quickly and then the teacher can prioritize what improvements need to be made.

Almost in all cases you cannot change everything and must deal with the most problematic issues first. The exercise quantum suggested is a good starting point to weed out inefficiencies in playing, of course we have mentioned it is not going to solve everything but it helps identify improvements which require high amount of priority and any errors in these exercises need to be looked at very closely.

Crafting exercises for troublesome passages are used as diagnostic tools by teachers to measure what improvements the students require to successfully deal with the challenge, merely playing a problematic part in the score over and over again may trap the student into micro improvements or no improvement at all, thus applying exercises and drills on troublesome sections allows the student to prioritize important movements first then gives the opportunity to take them further and solve the technical difficulty with control. Of course the most sensible attitude to take when studying the piano is to avoid pieces which have too many problems and build from the bottom up.

Certainly someone who can play 100 slow pieces with total control has much more capability for speed than someone who can just play 1 fast piece, that is certainly confusing for a lot of developing pianists but something that should be meditated upon. 

[pianodannn]

   Well it seems to me that you can play slowly with perfection a million times over, but as soon as you play the same passage faster, you will invariably make mistakes, as all of the muscle activations are totally different for each different tempo.You cant get used to playing fast, by practising slowly and accurately.Practising slowly prepares and conditions you for playing slowly.
     I really think inherited factors are the main thing limiting the speed at which people can play.It is blatantly clear to me that there is no practice or training that can prepare a person with poor motor ability or poor cognition for any kind of fast or complex music . Some people are just slow and clumsy.Speed and precision will never come to them, even after a million hours training under the best tutor in the world.

[lostinidlewonder]

Well it seems to me that you can play slowly with perfection a million times over, but as soon as you play the same passage faster, you will invariably make mistakes, as all of the muscle activations are totally different for each different tempo.You cant get used to playing fast, by practising slowly and accurately.Practising slowly prepares and conditions you for playing slowly.

Yet practicing slowly with movements that related to faster tempo this is a practice tactic used by all pianists. You rewite your last post and replace YOU with I because you have no experience teaching other people to make such assumptions.

I really think inherited factors are the main thing limiting the speed at which people can play.

Maybe if you are mentally handicapped or suffered a stroke or lost a limb.

It is blatantly clear to me that there is no practice or training that can prepare a person with poor motor ability or poor cognition for any kind of fast or complex music. Some people are just slow and clumsy.Speed and precision will never come to them, even after a million hours training under the best tutor in the world.

If someone who cannot do a backflip into a pool starts with trying to do a triple backflip into a pool then after failing at doing that claims that doing backflips are imposssible, then it's their own error of over extending themselves and not prioritising what is important to master first, to build up to a level of expertise and not just dive into deep ends blindly wondering why pouring inefficient time into that isn't solving the issue.

[timothy42b]

   Well it seems to me that you can play slowly with perfection a million times over, but as soon as you play the same passage faster, you will invariably make mistakes, as all of the muscle activations are totally different for each different tempo.You cant get used to playing fast, by practising slowly and accurately.Practising slowly prepares and conditions you for playing slowly.
     

So to play a passage both slow and fast, you would have to practice for hours at one tempo, move the metronome up 1 beat, practice at that, etc.  Thousands of repetitions, and it still might not work, because maybe there's a difference between quarter = 60 and quarter = 60.5.  To move tempo from 30 to 120 will take you decades, especially if you have to move by 0.1 instead of 1 beat at a time. 

And that's essentially what you are trying to accomplish with your incremental speedup approach. 

I don't think this is how it works.  Rather than a distinctly different technique for every speed, I think there are probably a few discrete points where you have to alter technique.  Like I can walk, jog, run, or a horse can walk, trot, canter, gallop.  (that's 5 I think, don't horses have to learn to canter left and right footed? can't remember) 

Anyway, on that journey from 30 to 120, I suspect the technique at 30 will work fine until at some point, maybe 55, you'll come to a plateau, until you work out a way forward, which might hit another point at maybe 85-90, etc. 

The key point is that if I'm right, your 120 technique works all the way down!  But you've learned your 30 speed technique so thoroughly you might never hit on the necessary advanced one. 

[klavieronin]

So to play a passage both slow and fast, you would have to practice for hours at one tempo, move the metronome up 1 beat, practice at that, etc.  Thousands of repetitions, and it still might not work, because maybe there's a difference between quarter = 60 and quarter = 60.5.  To move tempo from 30 to 120 will take you decades, especially if you have to move by 0.1 instead of 1 beat at a time. 

And that's essentially what you are trying to accomplish with your incremental speedup approach. 

I don't think this is how it works.  Rather than a distinctly different technique for every speed, I think there are probably a few discrete points where you have to alter technique.  Like I can walk, jog, run, or a horse can walk, trot, canter, gallop.  (that's 5 I think, don't horses have to learn to canter left and right footed? can't remember) 

Anyway, on that journey from 30 to 120, I suspect the technique at 30 will work fine until at some point, maybe 55, you'll come to a plateau, until you work out a way forward, which might hit another point at maybe 85-90, etc. 

The key point is that if I'm right, your 120 technique works all the way down!  But you've learned your 30 speed technique so thoroughly you might never hit on the necessary advanced one.

The approach I've found to be quite effective is to speed up in slow increments (2-5 beats at a time), over the course of a few months, punctuated a few times each session by attempts to play much faster, both in short spurts of just a few notes and the entire passage. So I think your theory might be correct.

I'm also reminded of something Josef Hofmann wrote in his book on piano playing. I can't find the actual passage but he basically explained how in order to play fast you need to learn to think fast. This is also something I've found helpful though by no means easy to accomplish.

[pianodannn]

Yet practicing slowly with movements that related to faster tempo this is a practice tactic used by all pianists. You rewite your last post and replace YOU with I because you have no experience teaching other people to make such assumptions.
Maybe if you are mentally handicapped or suffered a stroke or lost a limb.
If someone who cannot do a backflip into a pool starts with trying to do a triple backflip into a pool then after failing at doing that claims that doing backflips are imposssible, then it's their own error of over extending themselves and not prioritising what is important to master first, to build up to a level of expertise and not just dive into deep ends blindly wondering why pouring inefficient time into that isn't solving the issue.

  what if they been doing single backflips every day for 10 years, and try a double backflip and cant do it? Thats a better analogy.
     As far as mentally handicapped, all people suffer mental handicaps.It is simply the degree of handicap which differentiates individuals. You can actually have quite a bit of brain damage without being classified as disabled or learning impaired.Theres probably about 40 IQ points variation amongst "normal" individuals. Those 40 points make a big difference to how easily you can do various things.
    And yes "I" cannot play fast by practising slowly, irrespective of the nature of slow practice.

[lostinidlewonder]

  what if they been doing single backflips every day for 10 years, and try a double backflip and cant do it? Thats a better analogy.

No it isn’t we have seen your inefficient attempts. You can live in delusion who really wants to save you from that? Not me lol! You have no idea how to build up your skills and merely beat your head against a wall as if that’s correct. Why don’t you ask your world famous concert pianist teacher for help lol!

As far as mentally handicapped, all people suffer mental handicaps.It is simply the degree of handicap which differentiates individuals. You can actually have quite a bit of brain damage without being classified as disabled or learning impaired.Theres probably about 40 IQ points variation amongst "normal" individuals. Those 40 points make a big difference to how easily you can do various things.

Your mind is what is limiting you for sure and that already has been pointed out. You make up stories, extend truths, cannot follow instructions etc etc, all quite debilitating.

    And yes "I" cannot play fast by practising slowly, irrespective of the nature of slow practice.

Irrespective of you following instructions correctly too as was pointed out clearly in this thread. So why are you here just to cry? Don’t you have a world famous concert pianist teacher you could personally get assistance from as you so boldly proclaimed in this thread, one who overshadows all the experience of everyone on pianostreet? Lol

[pianodannn]

  The problem is in my mind for sure.Cognition is what allows one to play a piano.Any shortcomings in that area would limit the amount of progress.
   Its already established that the most effective and efficient practice methods still wind up producing hard limits for certain individuals.They simply wont ever advance beyond that with any form of training or practice.It doesn't matter who is teaching, what the student does or doesn't do, they wont go beyond specific limits of difficulty. Its entirely impractical to even attempt to work out what is holding somebody back, as every tom dick and harry has a different theory as to why.Nobody knows, so what do you do? Spend 1000 hours going over 15 different theories as to why one small sub skill cant be performed to the requisite standard? Spend 4 weeks trying this exercise, another 4 weeks on that exercise and so on and so forth untill something results in progress? Its way too slow and impractical to pursue.

[pianodannn]

No it isn’t we have seen your inefficient attempts. You can live in delusion who really wants to save you from that? Not me lol! You have no idea how to build up your skills and merely beat your head against a wall as if that’s correct. Why don’t you ask your world famous concert pianist teacher for help lol!
Your mind is what is limiting you for sure and that already has been pointed out. You make up stories, extend truths, cannot follow instructions etc etc, all quite debilitating.
Irrespective of you following instructions correctly too as was pointed out clearly in this thread. So why are you here just to cry? Don’t you have a world famous concert pianist teacher you could personally get assistance from as you so boldly proclaimed in this thread, one who overshadows all the experience of everyone on pianostreet? Lol

   I'm not sure if your comprehending what im saying. I could have a concert pianist examine my every twitch, 5 hours a day for the next 40 years, and i still wont get any better.Guidance doesn't work.Some people are suited.Some aren't.End of story.

[timothy42b]

   Its already established that the most effective and efficient practice methods still wind up producing hard limits for certain individuals.They simply wont ever advance beyond that with any form of training or practice.

That is probably true. 

But how many of us ever get to our actual hard limits?  Inefficient approaches may result in us topping out at 50, 60%;  even less probably for most. 

Reading this thread, the group doesn't seem to agree you are at your hard limit yet. 

[dogperson]

   I'm not sure if your comprehending what im saying. I could have a concert pianist examine my every twitch, 5 hours a day for the next 40 years, and i still wont get any better.Guidance doesn't work.Some people are suited.Some aren't.End of story.

I don’t agree that you can’t do it, but if you have convinced yourself that no amount of guidance or practice will help you, then why in the world are you still struggling?  Find a new hobby.

[pianodannn]

   What if the ability to practice is in itself a talent?  Maybe the same talents that make you a good performer, also make you a good practicer.I certainly cant do even the basic exercises to a standard like some can, even if i have twice the focus and spend 3 times as long trying to perfect it.Once you break the skill down into components, theres only so much you can do to teach somebody how to do it better.Like shift your finger from point a to point b in X amount of time.Theres just a limited range of ways you might practice this, and eventually theres really no novel ways to continue trying.Some will do it really easy, others may never find a way to do it.

[dogperson]

   What if the ability to practice is in itself a talent?  Maybe the same talents that make you a good performer, also make you a good practicer.I certainly cant do even the basic exercises to a standard like some can, even if i have twice the focus and spend 3 times as long trying to perfect it.Once you break the skill down into components, theres only so much you can do to teach somebody how to do it better.Like shift your finger from point a to point b in X amount of time.Theres just a limited range of ways you might practice this, and eventually theres really no novel ways to continue trying.Some will do it really easy, others may never find a way to do it.

Let me repeat:  if you believe you are not talented enough to practice, go find another hobby.  There is no disgrace in saying to yourself ‘this is not for me’ snd moving on to something else.  Make a list for yourself of what you believe you might be able to learn, snd try them out.  You are beating your head against a brick wall right now which is not emotionally healthy.  There is no advice that has been given here that you have found helpful. 

[ranjit]

   I'm not sure if your comprehending what im saying. I could have a concert pianist examine my every twitch, 5 hours a day for the next 40 years, and i still wont get any better.Guidance doesn't work.Some people are suited.Some aren't.End of story.

I disagree. You would obviously get much better in the next 40 years. That said, it still doesn't mean that there won't be a 15-year old out there who crushes you in terms of ability. You will get better, and push against obstacles and overcome them. However, the rate and extent to which you overcome obstacles will depend on a number of factors. 99% of people aren't practicing anywhere close to optimally, and from what I've read in your responses, you aren't either.

Suppose you take a video game as an example. Do you play it for a couple of days, and then shrug and say that no matter what you do, you won't get better? No, it's obvious that you will improve with time and by learning new strategies, as anyone would. While the learning curve will differ among people, and I agree that not every obstacle will be completely surmountable, you can obviously get considerably better with several years of effort sans a mental disability.

Now, I think I do understand and relate to your perspective as to why you don't take dogperson's advice and take up something else rather than the piano. It's a matter of  principle, and that tenacity where you refuse to believe something to be unachievable. I have had people tell me all along that there's no point in aspiring to be a virtuoso pianist starting at my age and that I should pursue something more worthy of my time; I credit a similar kind of perhaps irrational tenacity as being a large part of why I've been continuing with it regardless. Given how much you're clearly frustrated over the topic, if you are financially able, I think your best course of action would be to find the best instructor available in your vicinity who will accept you as a student, and go have lessons with them weekly in person for the better part of a year. You may feel like the endless pages of text you read here encompass all of what you need to know when it comes to learning the piano, but it really is only but a fraction of what's out there; textual descriptions in my experience can really only serve as a sort of cue, wherein provided you have already somehow acquired an idea of the territory when it comes to a particular field, you can get an impetus to proceed in a new direction, which you will then again need to flesh out yourself. While this can be very effective, it really only works for the right person in the right context, because if you're unable to ascertain a direction you should take, you will end up trying things and not progressing, going in circles. And you will not even be able to assess whether or not you've made any progress because you will not know what 'progress' means in that context.

[timothy42b]

   What if the ability to practice is in itself a talent? 

I would not discount the idea that the willingness to take advice might be a talent.