I sat my G3 a month ago, and since then I've been playing loads of stuff and have feel I have really improved.

Looking back at my exam prep - My 3 pieces were a pass standard around 6 weeks before the exam, so I spent 6 weeks practicing them and improving them that final little bit - which is great for an exam as nerves will always take a little bit off of whatever is your best possible performance. (or at least they will for me!)

But now I'm wondering where the real value is - given that I'm only G3 so not a master musician and am still improving quite fast. At the moment I practice a piece until I can play it through with correct rhythm/timing and reasonable dynamics but perhaps a 22/30 performance rather than a 30/30, unless I really like the piece in which case I might keep going a little further.

This allows me to spend more time practicing more pieces and so find more areas that I find difficult and need to work on. However I do believe there is some musical skill that I am learning by doing that last little bit and really polising a piece up to 30/30.

What do other people think? Given that I will do more exams - should I only go that extra mile on the pieces I choose for the exams - or maybe go that extra mile on say 1 out of every 5 pieces I play?

It is fine to sight read through lots of pieces to get an idea of what is out there, but every piece you choose to work on should eventually be played as well as you can possibly play it. It may seem tiresome, but it is necessary. Getting a piece to 22/30 is not going to help you much. Improvement comes when you are pushing the edges of your limits. So you have to do the work to get up to that 28/30 or better level! Of course it will take you ten times as much sweat to go from a 22 performance to a 28 performance as it did to get to the 22 level, but if you want to improve then that is what you have to do.

You don't have to keep working at a piece non-stop until you get there. It is a good idea to put a piece aside for a few weeks and then pick it up again after working on something else. Your subconscious or unconscious mind continues to work on the piece even when you are not playing through it every day.

There is one more point. With a handful of pieces played extremely well you can entertain your friends, or appear in a recital. With a large number half-learned you can't do much of anything - except finish learning them

I'm not sure I agree that every piece should be taken to its limits of perfection - if I'm picking you up right on that, Mad T! I do agree that we should have a repertoire of pieces that can be dug out and brought back to a high standard within a few weeks when required, but I also think there's lots to be gained from only playing things to a half-decent level and then tossing them aside. If we don't want to perform these pieces, then there can come a time after which there's nothing more to be gained from continuing to perfect. If we want to improve a particular technique that's required in a particular piece of music, and we do that, then we've gained something, even if we never perfect the whole thing - especially at Grade 3 level, when there are still so many techniques to be mastered. It would be easy to get bogged down on a few bars for weeks and weeks rather than spread out a bit.

There's also a limit to how perfect something is going to be when the pianist is Grade 3 (without wishing to cause offence, and I hope I don't!) A Grade 3 player will never make a Grade 3 piece sound as good as a Grade 8 player will, and the reason is that the Grade 8 player has explored lots more repertoire and has more experience of how to achieve the desired effects. Also - the Grade 8 player will know better what he's aiming for, and this musicality, too, comes from experience of lots of music more than it comes from perfecting every piece.

I think going that extra mile on one piece in five, plus exam pieces - at this stage - is a pretty good idea - just as long as the one piece in five isn't every two years! It's important to really get into the fine detail when you DO decide to go the extra mile, and get used to doing it.

Oops - I see you're a clarinettist and not a pianist, and I apologise for having assumed! But I'd say the same thing applies whatever the instrument. (Does it?....)

I tend to agree that not every peice should be practiced until perfect.

I would only go to that level on a piece that I actually really like.

In the past I've had to perfect clarinet pieces (we're talking around G5 here) that I really didn't like much and to be honest it just put me off playing which is never good!

As long as you do make sure you perfect some of your pieces (and not just the easiest ones) then I'm sure you'll be fine.

Thanks for your replies - I've been thinking about it and I do agree with both points of view - I know if I go back to G1 pieces now I can play them better than I could when I left them several months ago - but it was right to move or I still be super perfecting G1

I think getting some pieces to perfection is important. So maybe I should always have one piece in my 'practice session' that it aiming for perferction.

My way forward is to perfect to 'concert' standard anything I really like and get other pieces to OK/good - making sure any difficult passages are perfected and that overall the piece is a learning experience.

There's another factor to consider here, and that's time. As Tom rightly pointed out, it takes far longer to get from 'know the piece' to 'piece is perfect' than it does to get from 'not knowing it at all' to 'having the basics in place'.

I don't know about anyone else, but I found up from about G1-3 I was learning several new pieces a week. From 3-6 things slowed down a lot. By the time you're playing stuff that goes over several pages, and requires much more musicality and skill (6-8) perfecting every piece takes a very long time. Its also hard to do without external guidance.

To be honest, I think enjoying playing lots of music to an acceptable level is more important than perfecting every piece, particularly if like me you never have any intention of playing in front of anyone. That said, I do enjoy the process of slowly picking through a bar at a time, and working until its just how I want it. The thing is, as an adult learner, its entirely up to you (and your teacher if you have one) what is going to work best. No-one should turn round and say "this is what you should be doing" as you are supposed to be learning for yourself.

I try to choose my words very carefully ... but obviously not carefully enough:

"every piece you choose to work on"
Not every piece you look at - just those you choose to work seriously on. It might be 1 in 2, 1 in 5, or 1 in 10 of those that you explore.

"should eventually be played as well as you can possibly play it"
Not perfectly ... as well as you can.

The most important point was this:

"Improvement comes when you are pushing the edges of your limits."

There are all kinds of reasons why you might want to half-learn a piece, but if you want to increase your abilities - to become able to play stuff that is at present beyond you, or to improve your interpretation and truly communicate with your audience, then you have to be pushing at your limits.


On what constitutes a high standard (I don't like to use the word "perfect" - we are deluding ourselves if we think we ever play anything "perfectly") we all seem to be in agreement. A performance at 28/30 level in an AB exam at Grade 3, or even at Grade 8 is likely to be a very long way from perfection.

Tom, are you a perfectionist by any chance? I'm most definitely not, so perhaps I use the word 'perfect' more casually! Don't think I misunderstood what you meant...