Beginner: Does it get easier?

I've been playing and practicing now for about 6 months, and I think I'm improving regularly. However, I still need quite a bit of time to practice even the simplest pieces. For instance, my piano teacher gave me a book of very simple Christmas carols to work on, and I spent at least 3 hours total on 'Silent Night.' And believe me, this was no sophisticated piece, just two note chords for the left hand and one note melody for the right. Overall, I have been pleased with my (slow) progress, given the time my job as an English teacher takes up, but I'm wondering this: Do new pieces come quicker and more easily as one progresses? For instance, in a year or two, assuming I continue at about 30-60 minutes a day, will I find beginner pieces trivially simple where I now find them challenging? My guess is yes, but, if not, how does one EVER learn a difficult piece!!? It would take MONTHS at my current level of skill. Thanks for answering this perhaps silly post.

This is typical. Also, as you progress, you'll find yourself spending a lot of time on simple pieces (or simple parts of difficult pieces) getting a more advanced technique down.

You might find the beginner pieces trivially simple, but you might also find them challenging playing them with an advanced technique.

Your feelings are typical; there have been many posts in this newsgroup asking the same questions. Keep practicing.

As an example, my current teacher is working on Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue.' She spends lots of time practicing a measure or two at a time in order to get it right.

Hi,

It will get easier, but you probably won't notice it! Normally pieces will increase in difficulty gradually, so new pieces will always seem at least as hard as the previous ones. Yet, in a few years, when you look back at your first pieces, you will realise how much easier those first ones have become.

As you keep studying piano, you will be expected also to gradually increase your practice time per day (although one hour a day is already quite good!) and per piece. Even a professional won't learn a Liszt etude in only three hours. Playing difficult pieces takes a lot of practice (think 'weeks' or 'months' instead of 'hours'.

The biggest hurdles are psychological. ('I'm probably too old to learn this or that...' 'I will never be able to ...' 'I've been practicing this for ... hours and it won't improve' Try not to loose time thinking about how difficult a piece is, or how much effort it will cost. Such thoughts won't make it any easier to reach your goals.

Be sure to practice efficiently (ask your teacher how to approach certain difficulties: for many of them practice tips and tricks exist!). Much time is lost practicing mindlessly.

Make sure that practicing does not become a boring routine. Play for other people, even if only with 'simple' pieces: applause can be very rewarding and stimulates to continue. Having a deadline for a performance can stimulate you to practice more efficiently. Keep in mind the reward at the end: being able to play your piece beautifully and being able to entertain yourself or someone else...

You can't expect to be a pro in just 6 months. From experience, I can tell that progress will sometimes go very slowly, to the extent of seeming non-existent for weeks in a row. Never give up, though ! Think longer term.

I know it took me *more* than a year to get where you are now, yet now (i.e. *many* years later) I can play some really advanced pieces: on last year's public examination I performed (amongst others) the first etude d'execution transcendente by Sergei Michaelovich Liapunov. This piece actually took me countless hours to learn (some nasty measures in this work took at least a week to learn to play at speed) Your christmas carol, on the other hand, I could now probably play on sight... (but I can assure you it has not always been like that )

Never give up!

Oh, and do not focus too much on easy or difficult pieces:

Easyness comes with (intelligent) practice and difficulty is no measure for pleasure.

Best regards,

Yeah, keep at it: the journey is as cool as the destination! David

: I've been playing and practicing now for about 6 months, and I think I'm : improving regularly. However, I still need quite a bit of time to practice : even the simplest pieces. For instance, my piano teacher gave me a book of : very simple Christmas carols to work on, and I spent at least 3 hours total : on 'Silent Night.' And believe me, this was no sophisticated piece, just two : note chords for the left hand and one note melody for the right. : Overall, I have been pleased with my (slow) progress, given the time my job : as an English teacher takes up, but I'm wondering this: Do new pieces come : quicker and more easily as one progresses? For instance, in a year or two, : assuming I continue at about 30-60 minutes a day, will I find beginner : pieces trivially simple where I now find them challenging? : My guess is yes, but, if not, how does one EVER learn a difficult piece!!? : It would take MONTHS at my current level of skill. : Thanks for answering this perhaps silly post. :

It does get easier, but it really will take some time. I have been playing for 18 months and suddenly some pieces, or parts of pieces, become easier but new part are still a challenge.

Just keep enjoying it.

Also search the net for practice techniques. Some ways of practicing are better than others.

It most certainly does get easier. Patience, much patience is required. It is like planting a tree.

Patrick L

I agree with what you say here, I was an instrumentalist for a long time, and studied a lot of theory. Now I'm taking piano seriously, and am progressing rapidly - I nailed a Chopin prelude in the first two months of playing, and a Bach prelude from Well Tempered. They weren't totally polished mind, but playable at an amateur level.

I can only attribute it to the musical knowledge I already have. So I'm just building the muscle memory, as I already see the larger blocks when I read.

Further proof is that I'm having trouble with some Vince Geraldi xmas stuff I'm learning for my wife. This is more jazz, which I haven't studied. So it's tougher.

Dan

:> phrase of four rotating around the a, second finger on g#, moving to third :> finger on d, next four rotating around c... hmm, look, that makes an a :> minor chord.

: Before anyone gets pissy, that's third finger on c. I goofed.

You say you have been playing about 6 months? And you're now woking on Silent Night? When you first started were you able to read the grand staff? To find your starting notes? To identify components of music and know what dynamics, tempo, time signature mean? I bet not. See how far you have progressed! Isn't it wonderful? A year from now you will review this Christmas piece and most likely find it easy. Much good advice has been offered already: patience, effective practicing, good knowledge of theory - these will all work together to give you the proficiency you are after. Enjoy the journey!

Spending three hours to learn a piece is not a lot of time at all. You are right, difficult pieces can take months to learn. Of course, a piece that takes you three hours to learn now, you'll be able to sight read in a couple of years. And a piece that might take months to learn then will take only hours after a few more years. But no matter where you you are in your development, there will always be pieces you can sightread, others you can learn in only three hours, and others that will take days, weeks, or months.

Do not attempt to learn a new piece in one sitting, no matter how long you are willing to practice. The more you practice the same day , the less you progress with the specific piece. As Joseph Hoffman said, the process is similar to photography. You must allow for sometime for the 'image to develop' or, in other words, to give to the body and mind some time to adapt to the new 'signals'. Make yourself familiar with the piece. Read the notes (yes, read and tell loud the notes) away from the piano, play hands separate, divide the piece in small chunks. You may start to learn the piece from the end backwards.

It depends. If the new pieces are built from patterns you are already familiar, it might take less time. It will take more time if they are drastically different - patterns from Mozart won't help you with Chopin.

In time you will develop your practice skills (you'll find what is more useful for you), you'll acquire a larger patterns 'library' , your brain will work better. And it takes MONTHS for a professional concert pianist to learn a new 'difficult' piece !

Best luck,

Mike,

Do you have a decent sound card in your p.c. ? (if not I'd recommend a SoundBlaster Live!.. which I bought years ago for ~$100, and is probably much cheaper these days), or any other 'wave table syntheis' card that will give you good musical instrument sounds.

I would highly recommend a decent soundcard, then a MIDI program so that you can *hear* the song that you are trying to learn. There are thousand of midi files on the 'net for just about every song ever recorded ! .. and midi files are very small. Most midi programs will also display the musical notation while you listen to the song. That way you can associate the sounds with the notes. You can also repeat sections of the music, and slow it down. Even a 'simple' song like Silent Night can be made much easier (or harder) to learn depending on whether you are hearing the song before hand. An analogy is for kids learning to read. Can you imagine trying to read if you didn't know what the entire word or sentence sounded like before hand?

Using a midi program so that you can 'play along', should dramatically increase your learning rate. Just my .02 worth