What is the maximum number of pieces you will learn at once?

[nicko124]

I realise that this has been mentioned in other threads as a tangent but this is just to find out on average how many pieces peple take on at once.

At the moment my limit is 3 pieces at once because of other commitments in life such as school work etc i don't want to take on too much of a workload. These are usually 1 very tricky piece and two fairly difficult pieces which is enough of a challenge.
I would think that in a holiday in which my education work is low that i could raise the maximum to about 4 which would probably be another very difficult piece. I would not exceed this as i can't let piano playing dominate my life too much.

[BoliverAllmon]

depends on how much they are paying

[thierry13]

About 6.

[Waldszenen]

24 (I'm learning all the Chopin Etudes together ATM)

[steinwayguy]

8-10

[musicsdarkangel]

Probably 7

[BoliverAllmon]

24 (I'm learning all the Chopin Etudes together ATM)

how is that working out?

[cellodude]

how is that working out?

His finggies are probably too tired to type a reply 

2 max for me. I tried 3 and everything fell apart so I dropped Debussy's Clare the Loon (he must have composed that after he broke off with his girlfriend ), concentrating on Chopin's 10 #9 and 25 #25.

TTFN (Ta Ta For Now),

dennis lee

[anda]

depends on how much they are paying

exactly 

i'm working on 15 things right now (but only 4 of them are for piano solo, so i don't have to memorize any of the others that are for chamber music)

[Waldszenen]

His finggies are probably too tired to type a reply 

Haha, nearly.

The etudes are going splendid - they're very fun to practise. Progress is slow but I'll get there eventually.

[whynot]

8 on the high side, 6 more typically.

[squinchy]

I prefer to learn only two pieces at once, but I usually have 5 or 6 going at once. I can't stand the feeling of having a stack of new music and not being able to play any of it respectably for someone (or myself.)

[pianomann1984]

Depends on the pieces!  While I'm learning Brahms 2nd PC, I'm also studying Chopin 4 Ballades, Bach/Rachmaninoff Transcriptions, and a couple of major Beethoven works (one large sonata and a piano trio), as well as a piece of Percy Grainger, and a programme of English Song and italian aria accompaniments.  I dunno how much that is, but I guess it equates to about 20 pieces.  If you organise your time carefully and are discerning in your practice, there's no reason why you cant effectively study an unlimited amount of reperfoire at once.

[AvoidedCadence]

If you organise your time carefully and are discerning in your practice, there's no reason why you cant effectively study an unlimited amount of reperfoire at once.

How would a practice scheme for unlimited repertoire (or even, say, 4 ballades and concerto) work out?  Also, do you memorize as you study this repertoire?

This year I studied about 9 (mostly shorter - prelude and fugues, etudes, preludes) pieces, most of which I started in the first half of the year and polished in the second.  Now I'm doing the Liszt Eb concerto, and I've decided to try memorizing as I learn it, to avoid the pain of having to memorize the whole thing afterwards.  Although I learn pages of arpeggios quite quickly, the slower chromatic bits I find hard to memorize - sometimes it takes me several hours (not all at once) to memorize five or six bars.  With this kind of drain on my practice resources, repertoire, and so on, learning a number or other pieces at the same time seems unreasonable.

Is this "focus exclusively on one major challenge" approach effective?  How about the immediate memorizing?   Or should I go for a Beethoven sonata and six etudes now, too?

[pianomann1984]

It's not too bad.  Per day, I spend about 2hrs on the concerto, 1hr on the Beethoven Trio, and I pick a Ballade each day to study.  I have the difficult sections mapped in my mind and organise my practice around them.  I tend to memorise them as quickly as a can - despite a couple of problems, I think I am technically well on top of my playing, and so this is not so much of a problem now as it was, say, a couple of years ago.  The English Songs, the Sonata and the Bach/Rachmaninov are just practiced sporadically (not even every day) as in the songs I can rely more on reading, and the sonata/Bach are not needed for a couple of months yet.  I'll also have odd days where I will just dip into/read through new repertoire, getting my fingers around it and working out a few initial fingerings for future reference.  This allows me to absorb the music much quicker when I actually come round to studying it for real.  For example, I have actually been studying bits and pieces of the Ballades for nearly 2 years now, ready for when I need them (which I now do!).

[Skeptopotamus]

ONE.


cept when teacher commands.

[etudes]

before this year i used to work 1 piece at the time becoz of my skill (very bad) but u wil get better after practising hard
now i do like this
studying 1 piece the new things learning a note fingering every thing
practising 1 piece the piece that u r memorize and already learned a note
finished 2 piece  the piece u can play quite well and need to bring it up to performance stage per time normally

[rhapsody7900]

Hrm.. besides the desire/need to learn many pieces at once, is it more beneficial to learn one at a time?  I have never worked on more than one piece at a time (unless it was different movements of a sonata or something fairly easy.)

[hodi]

mostly 2 at a time, i really want to master any piece i learn

[pianomann1984]

Do you mean by this that those of us playing more pieces at once are not studying in as much depth?

[hodi]

Do you mean by this that those of us playing more pieces at once are not studying in as much depth?

well, u can't put so much attension to every piece if u study 10 pieces at a time..

[BoliverAllmon]

well, u can't put so much attension to every piece if u study 10 pieces at a time..

you can only spend so much time on a piece before you lose concentration.

[musik_man]

well, u can't put so much attension to every piece if u study 10 pieces at a time..

you can only spend so much time on a piece before you lose concentration.

Learning too many pieces simultaneously is bad.  Learning too few is also bad.  You need to find a good number for yourself.

[pianomann1984]

you can only spend so much time on a piece before you lose concentration.

Well in order to spend ample time, yu just have to practice more.  Also, by taking a stretch/break of a couple of minutes every 30mins during practice, you prevent yourself becoming physically/mentally fatigued.  You shouldn't be aiming to perform in your practice (this is directed as a general point, not specifically to BoliverAllmon), and if you are concise and discerning when you practice, you will get through much more.  In this way, I do not find problems in studying many pieces at a time in great detail (I would be happy to post a recording of a past performance for evaluation, stating what I was studying at the time).  Let me know

[jbmajor]

If one is playing for their own enjoyment, I would think it to be counter-productive to learn anything more than 2 or 3 at once.  It only makes it more difficult to grasp the technique, message and feeling of each piece.  Just enough contrast to change it up when one piece gets too frustrating or bothersome in the mind. 

It must all depend on how much information one is able to manage most efficiently and effectively at any point in time. 

[pbr2005]

One - do you understand???  ONE!!!

[nicko124]

If one is playing for their own enjoyment, I would think it to be counter-productive to learn anything more than 2 or 3 at once.  It only makes it more difficult to grasp the technique, message and feeling of each piece.  Just enough contrast to change it up when one piece gets too frustrating or bothersome in the mind. 

It must all depend on how much information one is able to manage most efficiently and effectively at any point in time. 

The advantage of doing more than 1 and say doing 3 is that you can learn 3 different genre's or styles. That way if you get bored of doing one of the genre's/styles you can switch to another which gives you a break from it.
You can also divide the pieces into different difficulty levels which could be Very Challenging, Quite Challenging, Quite Easy compared to the other 2.
This is how i like to do it but the problem is that if i do it like this than i have to place sight reading excersises over this as well.