Hoobler Music

It is always daunting to start a new piece of music.  You can feel the work ahead and want to learn the piece as fast as possible which can translate into "as little practice as possible".  This is where many students run into trouble.  We should strive to practice a new piece as much as possible and conquer the challenges that always reveal themselves.  You can have a goal to learn a piece in a day, a week, or a month, but how much practice is going to be involved? Will it take an hour a day or four hours a day?  For most students and their piece, if they truly put in one good hour a day, they could learn it in a week.

I recently worked up Mozart's Sonata K. 312, a modest one movement piece.  Fortunately there wasn't a dead line and it took a couple of weeks. 

A new piece needs to be practiced in sections.  Mozart's Sonata is a great example because of the three sections in most of his sonatas; the exposition, development, and recapitulation.  Why not start with the last section and work backwards?  It doesn't matter really but you probably know, the first part of the piece usually gets the most practice.  So I set a goal to learn the recap first, when it was done I worked on the exposition and finally the development.  Most days I would start on the development first, then back to the exposition.

After a couple of weeks, I decided to "finish up" learning this piece which meant a lot of practice on a couple of tricky parts.  Having a plan and goals made learning the piece a lot easier.  It went something like this...

1.  Learn the last page and a half

2.  Work on the development and play through the Exposition

3.  Finish development

4.  Play through the entire piece (with metronome!)

5.  Work out any tough spots until they were easy.

On another note, I've about finished learning Bach's Little Fugue in Gm (the one everyone knows).  It is six pages long and just goes and goes, always different like a continuous development section.  I started at the beginning and worked on two pages at a time.  I made sure I could play those two pages well before going forward.  Learning the last two pages were a challenge.  I would go into church in the afternoons and practice the last page over and over again.  My plan (and time)

1.  First two pages (2 days)

2. Third page (2 days)

3.  Fourth Page (3 days)

4.  Fifth Page (1 day)

5.  Last Page (5 days)

The time above are only examples.  I really wished I started on the last page first now because it seemed to take forever to be able to play through it up-to-speed.  Actually, I've been working on this fugue for about six weeks total.

There is a big question about "practicing slow" among students.  Here is your answer.  You should practice as fast as you can count!  Yes, 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4.  If you feel like you have to practice a piece slow at first go ahead.  Use a metronome if needed and play through the first page or two as slow as it takes.  Now speed it up a bit every time you go back through the piece.  Maybe five times.

Some parts your going to mess up on, right?  Of course.  Don't wait to fix those parts.  Do it now!  Get those parts up-to-tempo so you can play through them.  It is probably only a measure or two.  Don't think that is hard, find some key notes, make it easy!  Think first!  Then practice this measure or two five times!

Do not get tense, just feel like you are experiencing and getting to know the music. Counting or singing along really helps you relax.

Eventually you will  be able to speed up the process and learn things faster.  Of course, you'll hit a road block and have to go back to a slow tempo.

The last key to practice is using the correct fingering.  90% of the notation I put into the score are fingerings, in a Bach piece that has a tricky finger pattern, I'll have to figure out the fingering and write it in! (usually not that hard), then practice it about 10 times while COUNTING.  If you are not counting the rhythm or singing the tune out loud, you are wasting your time just going over the notes again, and again, and again, and again.  The "beat" is the framework for understanding and building motor-memorization.

Practice smarter, not harder.  Have a plan and learn that piece of music!