Question for Bernhard re plan: section practice, practicing multiple pieces

[ShiroKuro]

Bernhard, I've been reading through posts of yours and have a question about your suggested plan for working on more than one piece at once.  For the record, I have always tended to work on many things, I'm just trying to get more organized about how I do it.

My questions came up after reading your comments about getting organized in this thread:
https://www.pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,7810.0.html

In this thread you said:
4.      Plan your daily work. You are going to work 10 – 15 mins daily on each of your 10 pieces. After you finish your 10 –15 minutes, forget about it until the next day. Move on and do another 10-15 minutes on the next piece.

It makes a great deal of sense to me to break a piece up into sessions, and only work on one session for 15-20 minutes. But let's say I've got a piece broken up into however many sections, and I work on section one for the first 15 minutes. Why move on to the next piece for the next 15 minute session, why not do section two of the same piece? It seems to me that you suggest only working on one section of a piece per day, have I misunderstood your method?

Here's another question: let's say I can only practice an hour and a half a day (that's about what I tend to average with work demands etc, but I am able to practice every single day without fail and usually I'm able to get at least an hour in every day, and sometimes more)

Up until now, it seems like I can't really more on more than three pieces at once (or three pieces a month.)  I have been doing Czerny but am planning on cutting him out (you've won me over on that one!) So that would make it 4 pieces. (At and before Christmastime I manage to work on about 10 pieces, but these are all Xmas songs and most are fairly easy, and very familiar).  Oh, and I have a repertoire of about 6 pieces that I play regularly enough to keep them current.

So finally, here's my question: Excluding Xmastime, and taking into account what I've just said above, how many pieces do you think I can/should be able to work on a month with a 90 minute practice routine?

[chopinisque]

Mathematically speaking, you should be able to fit 4-6 15-20 minutes sessions into one day...

However it is advised to take breaks between sessions...

And (playing the let's predict what Bernhard would say game) the answer to your first question would probably be: you've misunderstood... you're just not supposed to play the same section more than once... a different section would be fine... (insert Bernhard words of wisdom tm tastefully in between phrases and near the end).

But to tell the truth, I'm too obsessive and can't help going over 15-20 minutes.

[nomis]

It makes a great deal of sense to me to break a piece up into sessions, and only work on one session for 15-20 minutes. But let's say I've got a piece broken up into however many sections, and I work on section one for the first 15 minutes. Why move on to the next piece for the next 15 minute session, why not do section two of the same piece? It seems to me that you suggest only working on one section of a piece per day, have I misunderstood your method?

Who says you have to work on the next piece? As long as you work on something different from the previous practise session, all will be fine and dandy. For example, I could work on section 1 of piece A, then work on section 15 of piece B and then work on section 19 of piece A. It really doesn't matter as long as you're working on something different for each session.

Up until now, it seems like I can't really more on more than three pieces at once (or three pieces a month.)  I have been doing Czerny but am planning on cutting him out (you've won me over on that one!) So that would make it 4 pieces. (At and before Christmastime I manage to work on about 10 pieces, but these are all Xmas songs and most are fairly easy, and very familiar).  Oh, and I have a repertoire of about 6 pieces that I play regularly enough to keep them current.

So finally, here's my question: Excluding Xmastime, and taking into account what I've just said above, how many pieces do you think I can/should be able to work on a month with a 90 minute practice routine?

Who says YOU need to work on 10 pieces per month? Bernhard just gave an example, and mentioned nothing about the difficulty of pieces. Easier shorter pieces will take a shorter time to learn, so 10 pieces per month is quite realistic. However, if your 3 pieces are of moderate length and contain various technical difficulties, it might take a month or more to learn them all.

90 divided by 15 is 6, so you could probably work on 6 pieces everyday. As mentioned above, how long they take to learn is dependant on each individual piece and your skill level.  But you must remember the 7 repeats rule: if you repeat a passage 7 times and still cannot get it perfect, leave it until the next day. I could easily play 7 repeats in a minute or 2, so my practise session may take just 2 minutes! Make the most of your time and work efficiently and intelligently - remember Bernhard's advice on this forum is quite general, so you have to adjust his methods to your needs.