Hi everyone

When you begin learning a new piece, do you learn a few bars first until it is perfect and then move on to the next few bars. Do youlearn the whole piece with one hand first and then the other? I was wondering how other people learn their new pieces on the piano.

Thanks

Melody

I play the whole piece through, and then see what bits need working on (in other words, I try to get the notes right first, then work on dynamics and tempo).
If it's a very long piece, I tend to work on a few bars at a time.

I used to do separate hands first, but haven't used that method for a while.

Car Expert

I keep going til it falls apart, do some work on that bit and carry on. Then I go back to the begining and try again.

i do the same as Car Expert, I tend to play through the whole piece and then learn the parts i struggled with, then just keep playing it and finding wrong parts and correcting them.

If the piece is long, I wouldn't do a few bars at a time, more like a page at a time

Keet
x

Ages ago, I used to practice hands separately...now I just try and sight read it the whole way through. For easier pieces, I keep sightreading until I can play it, and then might work on bits I find hard. For harder pieces, I tend to break it down to a line a day or so, and then just practise thse bits alone, before putting the whole thing together.

Just bash through and see how it sounds...

Love it!
(But yes, that's the first thing I do too!)

I sit down with the score and cup of tea first and study it without the piano. I then sing parts of it and try to get into the many areas that exist in a piece of music. I feel it is important to experience the music 'inside' first. When I come to the piano I already have a very good idea of what's going on and find that I have noticed things that I might miss by going straight to the piano.

I love reading scores anyway but I would recommend that you try this and see what, if anything, you discover!

I listen to the CD twice first.
Next, I play the whole piece once through to feel the standard of the piece.
Then I start to practice hands separately.
I'll usually do 1-2 page, depending on the length of piece, on the first day.
Then I'll move on the next day and so on.
I usually take me 3-4 days to get the notes secured and correct.
Another 2-3 days to feel the emotions.
Of course, I listen to the CD as many times as I can.

Study all the notes first, get them correct. I usually practise using separate hands with slow tempo to get this done. Later, gradually increase the speed of playing until the correct speed with separate hands, start to practise with hands together with slower speed. When I start to practise slowly, i pay attention to those dynamics and phrasing and others.. just practise everything systematically until you have mastered the whole thing

Dennis~~

Same with car expert. Ill sight read it and play it once through, then ill break it up into bars and work my way through. Unless its an extremely hard or long piece, where ill break it up straight away, into about pages at a time like the others.

I havent practised with hands seperately for a long time either, i did it up to grade 5, and then i changed teachers and just didnt feel the need to do so anymore.

Isn't there a danger, that by listening to the CD before you play, you end up copying how that performer has played it?

My piano teacher will change some of the emotions and dynamics for me.

Shouldn't that be part of the learning process for you? I thought you'd done your dip...

I like to get a rough overview of the whole piece first, not necessarily by playing it but at least hearing it in my head. Then I'll take maybe a page and get it to a standard such that I can play through it. If it's a long piece, I'll then make a start on the next page while tidying up the first and so on. if it's shorter, I'll try to have the whole piece at the same standard, and gradually improve the whole thing. In each practice session, I only tackle a small section at a time though - I hardly ever go through more than a page in a practice session.
I always aim to make the worst bits the best bits, and keep doing that until I can't pick out any worst bits any more. Then I know it's ready to perform.
When I get to that stage, I listen to the CD. Sometimes.

Depends on how hard the music is to learn.If the music is spread out across the page i can normaly sight read it,but if its all squashed up and hard to read then its back to basics-right hand first until you get it right,then left hand til you get it right then both hands together.Also remember all the information about the music you need to play it is in the 1st bar so study the key sig/time etc. Also practice the hard bits over and over again til you get it right

Yorkie

I tootle once through to start with, too. I then start with the first bit which gave me any bother, and work out how much of the section wants attention. If it won't work by playing through it forwards more slowly, I start learning it from the back end first, adding more and more of the front until that section is secure - including the run-up. I'll then jump to the next tricky bit, do the same to get over it more or less, and try from difficult bit (1) to difficult bit (2), to see if they will work together. If there is a particular gremlin which crops up repeatedly, such as a run of forked fingerings using the same or a similar set of notes, then I'll practise those one after the other in a group - and if there is a humdinger of a beastly bit to get round, I'll break it up into tiny sections, playing them very, very slooooowly and speeding up gradually - sometimes first breaking up the rhythm in a different way - so if it is a semiquaver passage, playing them in dotted pairs, or quaver-semi-semi, or triplets.
Another technique I'll use is to play a skeleton outline of a passage; not all the notes, but just the top and bottom note of each group of four, for instance, which is useful for pieces which have lots of jumps. Sometimes it is obvious that there are notes which are the real melody, and the others just accompanying, so playing the melody ones really loudly and the others staccato and more softly can also help to get the shape of the phrase right.
I don't get everything perfect before moving on - I get it as good as it's going to be for that session, and come back to it all next time. I've found that this lets me learn relatively quickly - each session reinforces the last, and I'm not losing concentration by having to do the same thing a million times before moving on.

Of course I put in some of my own emotions,
but my teacher will correct it or improve it if she thinks its inappropriate.
Of course that's part of my learning process! ;-}

One thing I'm never sure about is whether or not to write in fingering for a fast, awkward passage. I know it's best to be consistent with fingering from as early as possible, but sometimes what seems like the obvious thing to do when you're still playing below the proper tempo will not work so well once you've got it up to speed. The obvious answer is a teacher, but if the teacher hasn't actually played the piece in question himself, his/her suggestions may not be any better that your own!

And that's assuming that there IS a CD of the piece you're trying to learn... If you ONLY do this, you are restricted to playing only pieces which have previously been recorded by somebody else, right?

Yeah, I generally play through a piece and get a rough idea before practicing it in smaller sections (although i'll have played it through quite a bit before i do it in the sections) or, if it's a harder piece, i'll keep going until either i get bored or until it starts sounding awful. Then i'll stop and work on the smaller sections.

At the moment, though, i'm really just sight-reading loads of pieces and not properly learning any of them because i have Grade 5 theory exam on Thursday (Ahhhh!! ) so am getting in as much revision as possible on that!!

Good luck with the theory Piello.

Personally, for me it depends whether the piece is cello or piano. Cello I play it and practise the rubbish bits (which will be plentiful at the beginning - my sight-reading is not good) and piano I have to learn it hands seperately. If I'm aiming to play it from memory when I perform I end up learning each hand separately and I will have a certain number of random points where I can pick it up again should it go wrong.

In the 21st century, there is almost a CD recording of every existing piece.
However, I can still play and put in my own emotions even if there is no CD.
I don't need CDs to survive. ;-}

I often make my own recordings of pieces for pupils - but only after they have spent quite some time working things out for themselves, because I think this is important. It'a all part of the learning process to interpret what's in front of them and transfer the two-dimensional page in into music. But in the middle grades, especially (about 3 - 5) they will often only really get a feel for the "drive" in the music by hearing it. I'll give them the tape to take home once most of the notes, timing and basic dynamics are in hand, and it usually makes a very big difference to how the piece will sound when they play it the following week. (Grade 7 and 8, on the other hand, are welcome to borrow professional cds or buy them themselves...I ain't Alfred Brendel! )

I found this thread

Currently , I'm working on a Bach fugue , I can't do more than figuering out a bar a day

Thank you all for your very helpful replies. I think it is the same for me as well, Chopiniste - a bar a day. I find this forum very helpful to talk to others about musical matters which I would not be able to discuss with my friends. A while ago I posted under a different name saying that I had passed grade 8 but was unable to play anything and had some very helpful replies as to what do. Since then I have gone back to basics with a new teacher, not that there was anything wrong with the old teacher. She has given me Menuet in G from the Anna Magdalena book to learn as well as a Chopin Waltz in B minor, Opus 69, No. 2 and Invention No. 4 in D minor. The Menuet is probably grade 1 and it is so so embarrassing that I cannot play it perfectly. I am almost sitting under the piano when playing. Despite passing grade 8 I have so much to learn. I have only had two lessons with this teacher but have learnt so much already and feel that sometimes starting afresh can really help. I am a bit shy with her but she is so kind and patient and a brilliant teacher. She really makes it fun as well.

Melody

Get a recording, then listen to it. Mark in things you like and oh la la! You find you like the music. And if you don't talk to your teacher about it.

look at the music for hours on end and then decide that it's too hard

I think you'll find that that's why people have piano teachers! They know best of all!

Very encouraging...

Could be better... I suppose....

I usualy play it with both hands until it gets too hard.
I'm working on Chopin's waltz op64-2 now

How does that work... Surely you start with one hand and then another.... Or do you just sight-read the music?

I think that the hands separate thing is more appropriate for some pieces than others.

I would play through the piece until I find myself pausing, then I play that section until it's perfect, then start from the start again a very tedious yet effective way to learn

So what happens when you pause... do you continue to play?...