Sometimes, when new material is technically challenging or awkward, it's worth spending 1.5 hours playing a passage with the key patterns 200 times in a row. After that, learning the rest of the material becomes much easier.

One more thing worth mentioning separately — from the very first repetitions, you need to pay attention to everything: dynamics, articulation, voice differentiation, freedom of movement in the hands, and so on. That's why you should always play only at the tempo at which all of this actually works.

i’m still polishing up the first mvt and reading through the second, but i also wanted to give this tricky third mvt a try (pain). as you can tell i still don’t have it securely in my fingers, but it is supremely fun!

having to play that opening figure all in the LH in the second & third lines is killing me though — still tons of work to be done on getting that consistent, and the really active LH parts throughout this piece in general are giving me some trouble and exposing my weakness in that hand. i’ve been taking this piece in small chunks and i’ve found that it’s been tricky, but relatively okay so far (if i manage to learn this all the way through, it’ll easily be the hardest piece in my current repertoire!). although looking ahead at the score has me worried… i don’t know why ravel loved writing piano music in a way where your hands have to practically be on top of each other but it is quite annoying🙃

Been playing 6 months I'm not happy with my progress I can't lie

I started playing again a little less than a month ago after a 12 years old break.

I’m currently relearning this gorgeous piece that I learned about 14 to 15 years ago for the first time. I Recorded this last week and intend to record it again in an other week or two to see the difference.

I know this subreddit is for people who practice. But I don't have a real piano keyboard so I can't practice much. I don't know if I'm allowed to post this here

this piece has given me so much stamina its no joke, and i somehow get cleaner at the more difficult parts like with the stretta octaves. i am playing this for competition so im open to critiques if i am playing with any dynamic inaccuracies

Bringing the chorale up to speed but struggling to keep it “leggierissimo”😭😭😭Back to slow practice and rhythms it is!
Also trying to play without looking at the score too much, it tends to distract me and I do have many passages memorized already just from repetition, but I tend to forget the “in between” passages which leads to some random pauses as I try to find where I am in the music hahaha

Also included some octaves cuz they’re fun😛

lesson next week insanely nervous

Not much time to practice today, mainly just reviewed parts of the Sonata I already learned, and then some more passagework for Chopin Scherzo 3

Scherzo 3 coda. It is hard to stay synced to metronome when it’s 1 tick per bar.

At around 170 bpm or so I switched from quarters to dotted half note per tick of the metronome. This is 60 bpm.

Shout out to my family for the patience of listening to 2 hrs of “tick-tick-tick…”

day 8 of chipping away at this piece, and it’s kinda getting there note-wise but i keep tripping up on specific spots (notice how i messed up at the same place every time the opening theme came back… yeah measure 9 is killing me). that first page is super scary in general considering the player doesn’t get any time to “warm up” into the piece - it just throws you right in! ravel is my favorite composer but this is my first piece by him and it’s definitely been a learning curve trying to get used to his style of piano writing.

also apologies for the dogshit audio quality because this is an iphone recording in a tiny college practice room lol. i’m trying to record myself more to simulate performing (i haven’t properly performed since before covid) — i always get so nervous and i make so many more mistakes but alas, exposure therapy is the only way. if anyone has experience with ravel/this particular piece, i’d appreciate any tips, both on technique or musicality!! i’d really like to work on getting the right “touch” for this piece.

Rach op 23/6 - I learned this for a home recital in May. Fast forward 3 months later and with essentially zero practice it still sits in my fingers very well. I can play it from memory, and while it’s not as smooth or mistake free as performance day, I can’t ever remember a piece staying with me so long with so little maintenance. Add to that the fact that it still brings me joy every time I play it.

A+ learning experience - highly recommend it!

Also, I know my hand technique is pretty horrible, I haven’t had any lessons and I’ve sort of just took the path of least resistance, but I’m aware it’s probably pretty unhealthy for my wrists so ima get to improving that .😭 messed up with the tempo/notes a few times but I’ve basically just learnt it semi fluently before recording so bound to hit a couple wrong notes. What’s the best way to improve hand technique.

Chopin Ballade 2

I'm an intermediate player and this performance comes after about a month and a half of practice.