I'm learning a piece of music for a pupil concert performance but am going absolutely mad because 10 bars in particular just won't sink in no matter how many times I go over them.

I can't understand why as it's really not a difficult piece but perhaps it's something to do with fingering changes... as soon as I get to this bit I slow right down and no matter how many times I go over it, it's not sinking into my memory.

I've tried skipping this part and playing to the end which I can do without issue so I suppose what I'm asking is, what do people usually do when they have issues with certain parts of a piece? I feel a bit frustrated and a bit stupid to be honest...

What is the piece you are learning, Solari?

Play it REALLLLY slowly lots and lots of times until you can do it. Don't try playing it fast until you can play it slowly.

If I'm really struggling with something then what I usually do is leave the entire piece well alone for a couple of weeks. I leave the music at my moms so that I can't give in to the temptation of playing the said piece.

I've done this a couple of times now and I find it definately helps.

Lois

If I were you, Solari, I'd leave it for tonight. I usually find that if I've done a lot of practice, there may be little apparent improvement on the day, but the next day I can really see the difference. It must be something to do with how the brain processes what you've been doing.

Apart from that, Sarah is definitely right - the answer is to play it lots of times. Tomorrow, play the offending bits 10 times slowly. 5 minutes later, play them another 10 times. Go and have lunch. Play those bits another 10 times. Watch TV. Play those bars again! You get the idea? Eventually, they will go in.

Just play the part that you are having problems with, a bar at a time, play it 3 times correctly before moving on to the next bar. Gradually put them together again making sure that you have played them 3 times correctly.

This is what I was taught by a concert pianist. By playing it 3 times you are making sure that your brain has taken it all in, if you do it incorrect you need to start from once again.

ET

I'd suggest not playing those ten bars from the front end: practise the last bar and its runoff into the next section first, then add back a bar at a time (or some other suitable section of the music which makes sense to you) to the beginning of the chunk you're stuck on. Do it slowly, yes, but above all try to eliminate the awful, eep there comes that horrible bit feeling. Another tip is to look at the shape of the section - is it a simple melodic line plus accompaniment, is there something clever going on like three voices in two hands? If so, break it down to its musical components, and play the outlines of those individually before trying to put them back together with each other.

I find that if I've got a blind spot like this, then going over it time and time again in the same way doesn't work and just makes me more frustrated. If I'm trying to learn it from memory, then I analyse it fully and sometimes write out the score, or part of it. And I'll maybe pick a few notes in the middle of the phrase, practise those until I'm secure, and then build up notes around them. But I don't build up more notes until I'm secure. (this is on clarinet by the way but presumably the same principle would apply to piano)

Would it work to change the fingerings? There's no right or wrong fingering, is there, so maybe a different pattern would work better for you (although this might be rubbish advice seeing as I'm G0 on piano!)

Thanks for all the feedback.. for what it's worth, I am playing the 2 bars beforehand and the 2 bars after to make sure it's not a transitional problem. They just won't sink in

Sarah: It's that Preisner piece I sent you in PDF... Page 46, 4th line down up to the top right of page 47 - it just won't click despite its similarity to the rest of the piece. I think the big problem is the changes in chords and that I haven't really sorted out definite fingering for all the chord hopping

Tomorrow I'll just go through it *really* slowly ensuring no errors whatsoever and see how it goes...

The whole piece is 5 pages long and I've memorised more than this without any problems at all so this just mystifies me The pressure is on as I have a month to perfect the whole thing!

BM: This has been going on for 2 weeks

Sarah is helping me with a few bits as well, thanks

I suspect the problem may have to do with the held notes. A similar thing is happening to me with a piece by Mozart (the Courante ) which is a set piece for Grade 6 and this is the way I'm trying to go about it.
A book on piano practice I read some time ago (John Meffen's "Improve your Piano Playing") says that the worst thing you can do with bits that don't come is repeating them over and over again in the same way but more slowly. One has to find way to tackle the difficulty from various angles: doubling notes (or only some of them, the ones that really give trouble) and, at first, one should take the time to really identify what it is that gets in the way. In this particular case, I would go about it bar by bar HS (!!) and spot what the problem is and then, I'd try to see what goes wrong when I play HT. Also, I'd perhaps use different rhythms (e.g. having dotted quaver plus semiquaver for the 2-quaver groups in both hands to secure the nervous stimuli from the "stop" and the "go" nerves and also to avoid dying of boredom through hearing the same thing hundreds of times in a row ...). There is always a way round even the hardest of bits/pieces.

Thanks, JC - it hadn't even occurred to me to try HS and I'll give some of those suggestions a try.

Thanks to everyone else for their input as well, I'll experiment today...

Once I'm a bit more awake I'm going to attack it again!

Having seen the music, I'd say those 10 bars are very much above grade 1 standard, which is probably the root cause of the problem. You need a lot of technique to play them smoothly and up to speed, and it's not going to come overnight.

Did your teacher suggest this piece? If so, she must think you have a lot of ability!

Yes, especially with legato fingering :S
What is the name of the peice?

Nope, I decided to learn it as a bit of a challenge.. Legato fingering is out the window for some of it I'm afraid, I'm cheating with pedal

Carp quality but I recorded a little of it a while ago... http://solari.adsl24.co.uk/Video5.wmv

It's a nice bit of music

Wow, your recording sounds lovely!

It's great to try things for a challenge, and if you can pull off the difficult bits it will sound very impressive. If it's not happening by nearer the concert, I'd suggest you cut out those difficult bars - I doubt anyone in the audience will know the piece well enough to notice, and if there are 5 pages in all they won't be missed! The bits you know you can play properly will be fine on their own.

I'll see closer to the time... I *really* want to do the whole thing properly. The other one or two pieces are quite safe but this could potentially go horribly wrong

EDIT: Working from the back end and moving back seems to be yielding results

Wow! Solari, the bit that you posted in the video sounds fantastic!

Actually, I've been looking for this piece of music for ages but I didn't know what it was called. It's featured over the credits in a film version of The Secret Garden, but as a song for voice and piano. Do you know where to get hold of the version for voice and piano? My Mum loves this song and I think she'd cry if I sang it in a recital! If not, then could you please point me in the direction of the solo piano sheet music, as I would love to have a go at playing it myself.

x Bass Clef

No advice to offer over and above what has already been said, but I just wanted to say that it sounds lovely

BassClef - I have PM'd you as requested... I think it went through, the site is being slow

I dont understand why you are having problem as it sounds fine from here. But then again this is only a bit of it. Can you post the whole thing?

I've never heard of Presner, not my kind of piece at all but the snippet sounds nice nevertheless.

CH: I can't post the whole piece due to the obvious copyright issues.. And I think I was just having a bit of a brick wall moment in my head - coming to that particular part would result in panic whereas I am completely relaxed with the rest of the piece.

I cracked this last night - I can play the problematic section through at about half-3/4 speed with no mistakes. Just got to polish the ending and I'm done

I was doubling notes, playing through 3 times before moving on, making sure I had the changes (jumps) in chords OK between bars etc... this seems to have helped

Thanks a tonne to all who came up with suggestions.

Completely cracked that now Just got to perfect the ending and iron out one or two mistakes that crop up and I'm done with about 3-4 weeks to spare

Thanks again to all!