How do you cram piano pieces?

[ranjit]

Sometimes I try to learn 8-16 measures of a piece on the day of a piano class. So if the class is in the evening, I would try to practice in the morning/afternoon. This has never really worked for me so far as I only feel "settled" in a piece at least 1-2 days after learning the notes. Does anyone have any ideas on how to cram pieces on the same day?

[lelle]

Ideally, you don't.

"This has never really worked for me" - yeah, exactly! Unless you have absolutely brilliant skills where you can a vista the thing quite flawlessly, it'll need at least a few nights of sleep to settle.

The fastest I have crammed is probably the Bach Prelude & Fugue in F major from WTC Book 1 in 1-2 days before a lesson. I have also crammed a rough version of the first movement of the Mendlessohn D minor trio for a rehearsal in a week.

What's worked for me is to practice one small fragment at a time multiple times until I can play that particular fragment in tempo, then linking together fragments. I would practice each joined combination of fragments multiple times, making sure to play at a speed where I don't stumble until I can play the joined fragments, and so on. Once the entire piece was worked through, I would do the whole process again, identifying what spots needed more work to iron out compared to others and focusing on those fragments and/or seams between fragments.

Practically, in the Bach Fugue, many fragments were maybe 1-2 bars at the most. I would work on one bar until it felt reasonably "settled", then practiced the next bar until it settled. Then I practiced joining bar 1-2 together and playing both bars until the "seam" between the two was ironed out. Then I practiced bar 3, and then the seam between bar 2 and 3, and so on.

This can be quite tedious and requires discipline and honesty with yourself, are you rushing and making mistakes, or are you truly, carefully practicing everything correctly and slowly? One thing that's helped me is to start from the end of the peice and work backwards to the start, it makes it harder to fall for the temptation to continue playing through the piece.

[jamienc]

I’ve never been able to do that. For me, cramming and music were never the best of friends.

[thorn]

Learning pieces quickly is a good skill to have but there's a difference between this and cramming (which to me means trying to learn something in less time than you need).

The only way to get quicker at learning pieces in my experience is to practice with pieces that are 1) just above your sight reading level to prevent lazy learning, but 2) below your playing level because the time it takes to learn these is the thing you're trying to reduce.

For cramming, I'd personally just own up and explain why I didn't have time to finish but that I'd done X pages/bars. Most people understand life happens and they'd rather hear 1 good page than 10 fudged ones.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

'Practice' it away from the keyboard.

If you can hear the music in your head that will help, also try to play/recreate the piano part on things like a table or other flat surface to internalise it.

[jaquet]

 my best advice if its particularly fast and perhaps difficult is to also follow lelles advice but dont forget to go through it very slowly and finger almost every note. then repeat over and over with metronome, take a break then repeat until you feel comfortable at a higher speed.

[ranjit]

Thanks everyone!

What's worked for me is to practice one small fragment at a time multiple times until I can play that particular fragment in tempo, then linking together fragments. I would practice each joined combination of fragments multiple times, making sure to play at a speed where I don't stumble until I can play the joined fragments, and so on. Once the entire piece was worked through, I would do the whole process again, identifying what spots needed more work to iron out compared to others and focusing on those fragments and/or seams between fragments.

Practically, in the Bach Fugue, many fragments were maybe 1-2 bars at the most. I would work on one bar until it felt reasonably "settled", then practiced the next bar until it settled. Then I practiced joining bar 1-2 together and playing both bars until the "seam" between the two was ironed out. Then I practiced bar 3, and then the seam between bar 2 and 3, and so on.

This is essentially the method that my teacher suggested. I've been trying it and it's very difficult and requires discipline. But I think you're right, I should just get along with it and do it as much as possible.

Doesn't sight reading through the piece and then gradually getting the piece up to performance standard work?

[lelle]

Thanks everyone!
This is essentially the method that my teacher suggested. I've been trying it and it's very difficult and requires discipline. But I think you're right, I should just get along with it and do it as much as possible.

Doesn't sight reading through the piece and then gradually getting the piece up to performance standard work?

I mean, I haven't conducted a scientific study to verify which method is more effective

I'm sure sight reading through the piece can work - IF the piece is at a level where you can sight read it accurately and comfortably. As soon as you come up against something more complicated, or where you have to practice slowly because of technical problems, I find the fragment approach to work better if you want to be fast and efficient.

For example, I feel learning a fugue by sight reading would be inefficient for me. Doing a fragment that you can look at, take in mentally in its entirety, and then play completely accurately 7 times before moving on to the next one is more efficient than trying to sight read and flubbing things. I just remembered that last year I, as an experiment, learned the G minor fugue from WTC book 2 in two hours using this appraoch - I basically started at the end and chewed myself through the piece bar for bar to the beginning multiple times, and by the end of that session I could play a rough version slightly under tempo.

Every time you practice in a way where you make mistakes or can't keep up mentally, you are building habits that you then have to erase again through more practice = less efficient.

[transitional]

I would just tell your teacher that you didn't have time to learn the piece, unless it was absolutely necessary, which I can't see being possible for myself, at least.

Doesn't sight reading through the piece and then gradually getting the piece up to performance standard work?

Depends on the piece. I'd try it if it were decently sight-readable to me at half speed, maybe ABRSM grade 7 at the most.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

Does anyone have any ideas on how to cram pieces on the same day?

Ideally, you'd learn the piece before the last possible second.

Ideally, you don't.

"This has never really worked for me" - yeah, exactly! Unless you have absolutely brilliant skills where you can a vista the thing quite flawlessly, it'll need at least a few nights of sleep to settle.

lelle summed it up pretty well.

[Bob]

You don't really. 

Lots of practice on the piece.  Lots of time.

More mental control rather than having it in your fingers.

Maybe some cheats like leaving out a note or simplifying something.  There's a good chance no one will notice unless they've played the piece and are paying attention.

And then the skill of doing all that, adjusting and practicing things, for a "now" result.

To take advantage of mental resources, the sooner you go over everything in the piece, the better.  Things get consolidated overnight during sleep so the sooner you've covered the whole piece, the more chance things have for sinking in deeper.

On the 'more mental' side, looking for patterns or anything that will help you hold bigger pattern-pieces in mind. 

And then more extreme is sight reading.  Same process, just less time.

Even the word cramming suggests there's extra work involved.  It wouldn't necessarily have to be.  You just decide to put so much time into it.  But there is a process like any project when you start to make decisions so you can wrap it up.