A Day by Day Journey to Mastering a Difficult Piano Piece

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to take you on a day by day journey of mastering a difficult piano piece. Maybe there’s a piece you’ve always wanted to learn, or perhaps you’re struggling with one right now. By the end of this article, you’ll have a clear idea of the process it takes to truly master challenging music.

First Step: Read Through, But Don’t Overdo It

The very first thing you want to do when studying a piece is to read through it to get an idea of what it’s about. If it’s a long and difficult work, you don’t have to read the whole thing at once. You might read the first section one day, the next section the following day, and so on.

However, once you’ve read through the entire piece a couple of times, no more than three times, you should stop simply reading it.

Why? Because every time you play through a piece, you risk reinforcing mistakes. Even small things that seem insignificant at the time can become deeply ingrained. Perhaps you overlooked a staccato marking. Maybe you used an awkward fingering you intend to change later. Possibly a dynamic is wrong. And of course, there may be wrong notes. Once your hands and ears get used to something, undoing it becomes arduous. It’s far better to avoid learning mistakes in the first place.

Memorize First, Then Build

Instead of practicing endlessly and memorizing later, flip the process. Memorize first. After your initial read through, go back to the beginning and take a tiny section. It doesn’t matter what the piece is. Choose something small enough that you can learn it very quickly. For example, if you’re working on the G minor Ballade of Chopin, you would not try to tackle a large passage at once. Take just a small phrase. Focus on a short segment and examine everything: notes, rhythm, fingering, phrasing, and expression. In other words, learn it correctly from the very first reading. Go very slowly and practice just the right hand. Because the section is small, you can usually memorize it fairly quickly. Get it comfortable and secure. Then do the same with the left hand. Once each hand is memorized and played exactly as you want to hear it, put them together slowly and memorize that as well. Then move on to the next small section, connecting phrases as you go.

Work to the Point of Diminishing Returns

Some passages, especially the most difficult ones, may not reach tempo right away. That’s fine. With each small phrase, work to the point of diminishing returns. Get the right hand secure, then the left hand, then hands together. Memorize each stage.

As the days go by, you’ll notice something interesting. Each time you sit down, you’ll need to refresh what you learned the previous day. But material you learned two or three days ago will start to feel more fluent and secure. Gradually, everything rises in level.

Start With the Hardest Sections

In large works such as the G minor Ballade, it can be extremely helpful to zero in on the most difficult sections first, such as the massive coda. If you leave the hardest part for last, you may learn the entire piece only to find yourself spending weeks trying to solidify and bring the ending up to tempo. By addressing the most challenging passages early, you avoid that frustration.

Daily Reinforcement: The Secret to Polish

One of the most powerful ways to strengthen what you’ve learned is very slow practice. Each day, refresh your memory with the score. Play slowly, without pedal, and use a metronome. Deliberately exaggerate clarity and precision. Slow practice reinforces memory and builds security in your hands.

Even when preparing for a public performance, after the music is at concert level, it can become stale if you don’t continually refresh and reinforce it. The best way to maintain a high polish is slow, deliberate practice without pedal, often referencing the score.

When you can play the piece at or near concert tempo, without pedal, with or without the score, check your work with the metronome and use progressively faster metronome speeds in particularly difficult passages until everything feels easy and controlled. Then you know you’re ready to perform.

Additional Practice Techniques

Beyond slow practice, there are many other techniques you can use. You can practice with different rhythmic groupings. You can accent certain notes to clarify where the hands play together. This is especially valuable for achieving a clean technique, ensuring that both hands strike precisely together where required. You can practice passages in varied rhythms or isolate small note groups. Hands separate practice is always valuable for polishing and refining difficult sections.

There are countless ways to strengthen and refine your playing. But the most important principle is this: learn it correctly from the very beginning.

Putting It All Together

To recap:

First, read through the piece to become acquainted with it, but don’t keep rereading it and reinforcing mistakes. Then start from the beginning and memorize in very small sections. Learn the right hand, then the left hand, then put them together slowly and memorize. Pay attention to notes, rhythm, fingering, phrasing, and expression.

Each day, refresh what you’ve already learned. Use slow practice without the pedal, and use a metronome and the score to reinforce your memory. Think of it like an assembly line. The newest sections are raw material that you’re shaping and forming. The sections you learned days or weeks ago are finished products that you continue to polish and refine. If you learn music carefully and correctly from the start, you will save yourself enormous amounts of time and frustration.

This is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource. Thanks so much for joining me.