Returned to piano playing last September after a 17 year break. Officially I reached grade 6 as a child, but I had a teacher who just put me in for grade after grade with no repertoire/public performances whatsoever, so although I could play harder pieces, if I'm honest, I reckon I may have only been about grade 2/3 standard. Nevertheless, I did seem to get a good basic grounding.

After the first year or two I felt uninspired and didn't practise that much. But I can remember thinking that however carefully I learned a piece, I never felt I got it to a stage where I didn't make silly slips - even if I knew the piece inside out. Even if I'd practised something a million times, my hand would just seem to land in the wrong place sometimes.

I can see I've made loads of progress over the last year and I certainly playing at grade 2/3 standard, but reading a post from a teacher the other day about 'plateaus' got me thinking. 17 years on, I feel the same frustration - I can learn a piece really thoroughly, small chunks at a time, hands separately, really slow, careful practise - much more effectively than I did as a child - but I never feel as if I get it polished because, even if I feel I know the piece really well, when I come to play it through there'll be these 'Les Dawson' type slips! It is a bit different with exam pieces because I practised them so hard this kind of thing couldn't really happpen (got distinctions in both exams I've taken this year) but that's just six shortish pieces I've learned really well over the year. I'd love to think I didn't have to do exam style practice to play something through I know without glaring mistakes.

Is this normal at the early stages of piano playing? Is this something that tends to improve with experience? Are there any techniques/exercises which can be done to help? After reading teachers' comments about players reaching plateaus, am hoping this isn't mine!

No. You were better than you'd like to think. If you passed the Grade 6 exam then you are/were a Grade 6 pianist. You managed to play pieces at theat level of the difficulty. You just had a small repertoire, that is all!

Happens to all of us.

This has nothing to do with plateaus, and in any case you have answered your own question - which I suspect you know but don't want to admit. Yes. If you want to reliably play a piece without mistakes, especially if you intend to perform it, you have to do what you call "exam style practice"

And six shortish pieces, well-learned, in the first year back is not bad at all. Stop worrying!

It is normal. Full stop.

Yes. Every piece that you learn as close to perfection as possible makes the next one quicker and easier. Every piece that you half learn hardly helps at all.

There are no tricks or short-cuts if that is what you mean. You just have to continue to work on every aspect of your piano playing. That includes your aural skills, your ability to analyze the structure and harmonies of a piece, to recognize themes and motifs and variations on them, to maintain accurate steady tempi, to develop your memory, to develop every aspect of your physical co-ordination, to reinforce correct posture, hand position, finger action with slow, conscientious repetition - and all those little components will eventually come together to make almost anything playable - with work.

If you reached grade 6 as a child, and are back to grade 2/3 standard now, then I very much doubt that you have hit a plateau. Just make sure you are practicing correctly (plenty of threads about what that is) and gradually enlarging your technique.

Welcome back!

I can identify with this. I teach woodwind and can play many pieces without any errors. After 20 years of self taught piano I decided to learn properly and am now working on some exam pieces Grades 3 to 4, no exams yet. I also play Guitar, and can play without errors. However, I am beginning to think that maybe I don't have the right sort of co-ordination for Piano, too much going on at once!

For me, the hardest part is reading and playing more than two or three notes at once-my fingers do not automatically go to the right notes, I have to think about what they are, especially in the bass clef. However, on my woodwind instruments I see a note and my fingers go to it automatically, I don't have to think about what the note name is.

I did Grade 0 to grade 8 flute in five years, there is no way I could do that on Piano!

I don't know how 'normal' it is but it's a problem I have too. Somehow always just that bit short of total security note wise.
I'm not boring though.... I make mistakes in a different place each time which makes it a bit tricky to work out exactly which bits I need to work on most. Teacher's opinion is that it's at least partly a concentration problem.

If you have the co-ordination to play guitar, then you can (learn to) play piano

There are two elements to this.

1. Reading the notes

You say that it is worse with the bass clef. If you read the treble faster then all we have here is simply unfamiliarity with the bass clef. It will pass.

2. Co-ordinating multiple, new, complex movements

The "secret" here is to play as slowly as necessary to play the right notes, as written. It might be painfully, excruciatiangly slowly. Don't fret about what anybody listening might think. The brain needs time to assimilate the new patterns. If you are always playing a little bit quicker than is comfortable you will never master the moves

I would not be so certain. Two hours a day. One hour technical exercises and scales. One hour progressively more difficult repertoire and/or preparation of exam pieces. Sustained for 3 or 4 years. You might surprise yourself.

Yes, this does cross my mind sometimes! I find myself thinking I can do this on x instrument, why not piano? Extra frustrating as piano is what I enjoy the most!

MT - thanks for all your comments. Really useful and encouraging!

I have exactly the same problem! However, sometimes (quite rarely!) I find that my hands alight on the right notes when sight reading and I think - wow- I AM making progress I am hoping that as I get better these little eureka moments will come around more often!

I read this post and thought "this is me a year ago" except that I was grade 5 and it was a 34 year gap. I found a good teacher. 2 days ago I took grade 8. The intervening year has been VERY hard work, and I have loved every minute of it (well, mostly). Welcome to the community.

BTW: MadTom's advice is usually excellent. He is an excellent pianist and knows what he's talking about.

Thanks for your very good advice, Mad Tom.
I will keep you posted on how my slow practise is going!

I just wanted to say thank you! This is exactly how I feel and I was worrying that it was just me! It feels so much better to know that someone else has the same problem and it's not just that I'm a lousy piano player!

There's a lot of good advice here.
I don't play the piano, but I can relate to what you mean. I think at the end of the day, like most things in life, it's all down to practice and being positive. It can be a challenge sometimes, but you can improve.

I think having a good teacher helps. When I learnt the violin when I was younger, my teacher just made me play the pieces in the grade books. I was up to the grade 5 book but really, I wasn't that good. After a 10 year gap, I started from grade 2. Now I would say I'm grade 4 because I don't practice much so haven't progressed that much since last year.

The very first violin teacher I had wasn't that good, she concentrated on my "rhythm" problem and I felt like I just couldn't count, it was beyond me, I would never be able to learn to count and play properly. Then I changed teachers and I saw a big improvement in my rhythm and technique. Now I need to look for another teacher cos my teacher has moved away.

Good luck.

Glad to hear others feel like this. Feeling a bit more positive this week. When I really think about it, I'm ploughing through scales and pieces very quickly really - much quicker than I did as a child. I just hope I can reach the stage where I feel I have got my fingers under control rather than the other way round!



That's amazing progress!

I too can relate to this. I've been stuck, post-Grade 7 (having reached that stage relatively quickly) for four years now. And I can't even play a simple piano accompaniment without making mistakes. It's as if I get caught like a bunny in the headlights - as soon as someone says 'Keep going' I fall apart. I do try and practise slowly and systematically, but part of the problem is that I feel I 'ought' to be able to sight read simple accompaniments by now. And having musicianship skills far in advance of my technique is frustrating as well.

One day I will take Grade 8. Just not yet.

Dittodittoditto! But it doesn't happen on violin, so I put it down to having learnt piano as an adult. I'm sure this makes a difference security-wise.

Can I just add to Mad Tom's excellent advise - once you have learnt the piece really thoroughly, you then need to start practicing performing it to people as the performing is just as much of a skill as playing the piece itself.

The first few times you perform it it is very likely that you will make slips and this is as a result of nerves (assuming you have prepared thoroughly) and it is really important to know how you handle it.

D

In view of the last couple of posts it is worth sharing another "discovery" that I made recently, in one of the books about these things that I am studying right now because, like everyone else I get nervous performing, and make ridiculous mistakes in pieces that I play a zillion times better in practice.

The method is pretty obvious when you stop to think about it.

We tend to go about preparing a performance in the wrong way. Or more accurately we only do part of the preparation. Not only do we aim for perfection, but we expect to achieve it - and that is impossible. It is fine to study each piece with the intention of knowing it so thoroughly that memory lapses and stumbles should not happen. But it is wrong to expect to achieve that aim. no matter how brilliant you are, how prodigious your memory, how much rehearsal you have done, you will nevertheless make mistakes. And then ... where is plan B ?

So alongside that style of preparation you should devise tactics and strategies for coping with the errors when they occur, as it is sure they will. One simple method is to learn lots of "checkpoints" in the pieces - places at which you can just start playing, without having to play the notes leading up to them. Then if you have a slip up you just mess about (in tempo, and hopefully with more or less the right harmony, rhythm and style) until you hit the next checkpoint, pick up the thread, and you are off again.

Almost identical advice is in several other books I have read, but I just never noticed, until I was ready to receive the lesson.

There is a bonus. When you have prepared like this you feel more confident, your mind functions more normally, and you are less likely to go (badly) wrong anyway.

A pianist of professional standard (he was lecturing at Reading Music Department at the time and had just played Prokoviev's third P.C. with its orchestra) once commented to me that audiences don't always realise that every two-hour recital represents 400 hours of work. Of course, the ratio is that small for a work as demanding as the Prokoviev only if you are very talented and have done the preparatory 20-30000 hours to get the basic technique and muscle tone.

OTOH, when a top pianist has put the work in, the preparation becomes somewhat easier. Murray Perahia once explained, in a radio interview, how he prepared a Mozart piano concerto: he starts thinking about it when he gets on the plane; then he runs it through in his mind, deciding what he wants to change in his interpretation. I don't know how fussy he is about his instrument, but he said nothing about trying it out before the rehearsal. Presumably whoever supplies it knows how he likes it.

Part of his thinking process likely involves a Schenkerian analysis of the complete concerto!

Hmmmm. My ratio is closer to 1000 hours per 1 hour of performable repertoire. Clearly not sufficient talent and/or some way short of the 20,000 to 30,000 hours total investment (currently IRO 11,000-12,000 total)

<-- 12,001 12,002 12,003 12,004 ...

I can also recommend the book 'The inner game of music' that covers loads about this sort of thing.

Also to add to the idea 'you shouldn't expect perfection as you won't achieve it' preparing for the performance like this is vital, before Robbie Williams did 3 days at Knebworth he built up the performance and the crowd numbers with the tour, which involved starting off with some very small, private corporate gigs, getting bigger and bigger. The classical performers do exactly the same thing they have played each programme at so many little venues before they get anywhere near the albert hall.