piano curriculum, classical and popular, advice please?

[ShiroKuro]

I'm trying to make a 5 year piano-plan for myself, and I'm looking for some advice about what pieces I should be working on.  This question is specifically asking what to practice, not how. How to practice is a totally separate issue (tho equally, if not more, important) but right now I'm wondering about the "what" part, the content.

For some background, I am an "adult beginner," and I have been playing and taking lessons for about 6 years.

I want to play both classical and "popular" styles. By popular I mean a range of things from George Winston to Ryuuichi Sakamoto to Vince Guaraldi to Jelly Roll Morton (yes, I know that's a huge range) I don't want to specifically focus on jazz, but I want to play things like Linus and Lucy, Jelly Roll Morton's "the Crave," in addition to non-jazzy stuff like the music from the movie "the Piano" and so on. (BTW I am not particularly interested in learning how to improvise)

On the classical side, I dream of Chopin's Nocturnes, Beethoven's sonatas, Liszt and Mozart etc.

Over the years I've played a lot of music, but the more difficult pieces I play tend to be popular not classical. (and the classical pieces I play have been beginner and intermediate pieces that I haven't been interested in keeping in my repertoire)

I play Hanon and Czerny (Op. 849) and recently have made it a point to always have at least one of my pieces-in-progress be a standard classical piece.

I think I am making decent progress in the popular music area, but I am worried that I am not doing enough classical work to prepare for future work on the serious classical music that I dream of being able to play.

A few years ago I played a few pieces from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena, but I haven't been working on Bach since then, and one of the things I've been thinking about is whether I need to be working on Inventions or not. My teacher says (and I'm sure she's right) that I am working on too many pieces and if I want to work on Inventions I would need to cut out a lot of the other stuff. Obviously this is something I don't want to do, so she suggested that I might consider going back to the easier Bach. But I sense that she feels at a loss over what else to tell me since she's really only trained to teach classical and doesn't know how to deal with my too-eclectic interests.

So one specific question is, do I need to work on Bach? Do I need to do Inventions? If yes, at what point do people usually start Inventions? What's the order that things are usually approached and is there something else I should be doing? Where does the Well-tempered Clavier fit into a curriculum?

Another question is, if I eventually want to be able to play Appassionata etc, is it sufficient for me to just slowly work through classical pieces that I like? (I have a book of graded, original classical selections that includes many of the standard pieces, not easy arrangements) By working through a range of classical pieces, will I be exposed to the necessary things?

And the last question is simply, what advice in general would anyone give me? Is it impossible to develop popular and classical simutaneously?

I know this is a terribly long post, so thank you for reading, and I appreciate any advice/comments anyone is kind enough to make.

[bernhard]

The answer is very simple: play what you love .

So, for a five year plan proceed like so:

1.   I do no think it is unreasonable to aim at 20 pieces per year, so we are talking 100 pieces mastered at the end of five years. So your first step is to make a list of the 100 top pieces in your “I totally love this piece” category. Think of it in this way: You find an old lamp, you rub the lamp, and a musical genie appears. He grants you the following wish: To be able to play perfectly 100 pieces of your choice. Now which pieces would you choose? There is your list.

2.   Now you must order these pieces in increasing order of difficulty, so the learning of one piece leads to the learning of the next in difficulty. At the same time, you do not want to leave all the truly difficult pieces for the 5th year, since they are going to take a lot of time to learn. It is also possible that having put the situation in the terms I have put in (1) above, you conclude that 100 pieces is not enough: you want far more than that. If so make your list of 1000 (say) favourite pieces. Now select 10 for each grade: 10 grade 1 pieces, 10 grade 2 pieces, etc. 10 grade 8 pieces and 20 virtuoso level pieces.

3.   Now organise your learning as such:

1st year: 10 grade 1 pieces -  5 grade 2 pieces -  5 grade 3 pieces.

2nd year: 5 grade 2 pieces -  5 grade 3 pieces -  5 grade 4 pieces - 3 grade 5 pieces – 2 grade 6 pieces.

3rd year: 5 grade 4 pieces - 4 grade 5 pieces - 3 grade 6 pieces - 3 grade 7 piece - 3 grade 8 piece – 2 virtuoso pieces.

4th year: 3 grade 5 pieces - 5 grade 6 pieces – 4 grade 7 pieces – 4 grade 8 pieces – 3 virtuoso pieces 

5th year: 3 grade 7 pieces – 3 grade 8 pieces – 5 virtuoso pieces.

Now do not take this too literally. It is just an illustration to give you a concrete example of the general principle.

Also you may not “finish” a piece (especially if it is an advanced piece) in one year, you may have to carry it over to the next year. (Although this is usually a sign that you tackled it too early).

You may also find – for instance in the first year – where all pieces are very easy – that you finish them all in the first two months. If so, excellent! Move on to year 2 straight away. You may even finish your 100 pieces in 2 years instead of five! Likewise, that first year may take you two or three years to accomplish (the beginning is always the hardest: a grade 1 piece to a complete beginner is far more difficult than Rach 3 for an experienced concert pianist), and it may take you 10 years instead of five to get your first 100 pieces. Piano learning is not linear. When properly done it should be exponential. (This is an approximation, it probably follows a logistic model – whose first part is exponential).

Although there are no easy pieces in year five, this is no reason for you not to include them. But by then they will be so easy that you will probably be able to learn pieces up to grade 3 in a mater of minutes. Also, it is actually quite difficult to find really good pieces in the lowest grades. However grade 5 and 6 have a huge amount of repertory, that after year Ύ will be very easy to learn. So feel free to increase your quota of 20 pieces a year to 40  or 50, if most of them are intermediate pieces.

In fact after year 5, you should be able to tackle any piece easily, and even considering virtuoso pieces, there is really no reason not to learn 20 pieces a month

This means that in the first 5 years, you could well learn 100 pieces, but in the next five this could easily be upgrade to 1200! (of course 80% of these pieces may be grades 1 – 6 and only 20% grades 7 – virtuoso – but so what? That is still 240 virtuoso pieces in your repertory!).

There is only two things that will stop you from achieving this (ask this from the genie next time): the know-how to do it, and the consistency to make it happen.

And by the way, you don’t need to play anything. But you must want to play whatever you play.

And to add something else to my very first sentence: What you love will change over time. So always be prepared to adapt your plans accordingly.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[rafant]

do I need to work on Bach? Do I need to do Inventions?

Joseph Hoffman: "Bach is so good for the fingers as for the soul".

Andras Schiff: "Bach composed the music intellectually deeaper and emotionally most touching ever".

Go for the Inventions, I started on them at my 3st year of learning. It's wonderful music you will be fond of, and won't be an adult beginner anymore. There is a complete thread here specifically about them by Bernhard.

[ShiroKuro]

Thank you both for the advice! I will look for Bernhard's thread about Inventions (if I find it, I'll post a link here too)

Regarding the 5 year plan, Bernhard, was that you who said to start at the end and work backwards? In other words, to first list the most difficult pieces (that would be started maybe in years 4 and 5) and then think about what you need to play in order to get to those pieces? I guess that's what I'm struggling with, the pieces that I want to and/or should be playing in the next few years, because I feel like I've just been playing at random up until this point.

It makes a lot of sense to always play pieces that I'm motivated to play because I love those pieces. I guess I just feel like I might not choose the best pieces to advance myself, especially technically speaking.

I think I am at the stage where I can play well enough so that there is a lot of nice music that is within my range (i.e. not too difficult and satisfying to play)  However,  I'm worried that I could easily just continue playing a lot of music at this level, but not really be preparing to move on to the next level.

Or maybe that's not it... Maybe I'm looking for a shortcut (even though I tend to believe there are no shortcuts!)  But isn't it the case that playing certain pieces will better prepare you for more difficult pieces?

If working on Inventions would give me something that I won't get by just working on a range of classical pieces, then I definitely want to work on Inventions. If I can cover all the bases without Inventions, then at this point, I guess I don't want to work on Inventions (only because I also have a full time job and my practice time is not endless!) 

So Bernhard, maybe what you're trying to tell me is, if I want to play Apassionata, I should play it, and If I want to play Inventions 1, I should play that? (Sorry, I'm a little slow here)

Hmmm, well, I think probably one thing that is not disputed is that there is a lot to learn from playing Inventions.  In the short run, while I am agonoizing over my plan,  I think I will get out the CD I have and listen to the recordings of Inventions while I look over the score. Maybe this will help me make up my mind based on Bernhard's simple criteria "play what you love."

Why is that so hard?