New Year, New Approach - 40 Pieces Challenge 2025

Pallas I think in 2025, I will be lucky to get 2/month.

You may be surprised. Especially if you work on more than one piece at a time.

I have a "40 piece" tab in my spreadsheet practice diary more as a record of pieces I've completed than a goal. I generally have 4 pieces at various stages:

1) Lesson book
2) RCM repertoire or etude piece
3) Non-classical piece of my choice
4) Quick study to improve my reading

The list starts off at a snails pace, but by the the end of the year, they've accumulated and I'm always amazed.

As far as learning time, I'd say 3 weeks feels like my average, although one piece took me a whopping 4 months and occasionally I'll get lucky with a quick study and get it a single sitting instead of a more typical few days to 2 weeks,

BartK I'm not saying this to discourage anyone but just to point out that it's completely untrue that the more advanced you are the fewer pieces you can do. It's very easy for someone advanced to pick easy pieces; so easy that it's no problem at all to learn them in a few days. If you think you can't do it because your pieces are getting more difficult just pick easier pieces.

Also, from what I've seen on piano exam syllabus lists, smaller sections, such as movements of sonatas or other lengthy more advanced pieces are treated as stand-alone pieces.

Nightowl Animisha Anything quick that has benefits is a plus, when it comes to playing piano. Do you think that using the Synthesia app has also helped?

Not with the quick studies! At the beginners' level, it is rare to encounter more complicated harmonies, so it is very easy to hear if you make a mistake. It is when chords are called Csus2\G (C suspended second inverted on G) that I cannot hear it any more.

PS I have no idea what C suspended second inverted on G even means, and I am not very eager to find out.

Pallas I think I'm feeling discouraged at how long it's taking me to do my lesson pieces,

Don’t feel discouraged! Pieces that are at the edges of our playing ability of course take more time, but by working on them, we push those edges out.

but I don't want to do easier ones because these are beautiful and motivating

Which is a good reason to keep playing pieces like that!

Pallas I'm going to trust my teacher...

That's best advice. From everything you posted at YouTube, you made great progress. I'm sure, your teacher helped at achieving this, so keep going.

Pallas I'm feeling discouraged at how long it's taking me to do my lesson pieces

As a child, I did the first two grades in one year. For the longest time, I thought I was slow at arithmetics. I wasn't, I just had one year less of practising arithmetics compared to my classmates.
You make fast progress. That means that you haven't learned as many pieces as most students have when they get a new piece. That explains why you think it takes you such a long time to do your lesson pieces.

Pallas
It's perfectly normal for your main lesson pieces to take longer as you progress. I would say that's a sign you're no longer a beginner.

Pallas

You can both trust your teacher, and discuss how you feel, if necessary.
If I were your teacher, I would very much like to hear about your crisis of confidence!

Pallas it sounds like you’re doing really well to me.

As for confidence? Sometimes it comes from within, sometimes from with out.

Ask your teacher if she thinks you’re doing well, if she says yes, believe her.

And (back to that video), just keep at it.

Pallas I think I could use some encouragement from my peers. So over the next few weeks, I'll try to record my winter pieces

That sounds like a great idea!

iternabe I can only manage practicing 1 scale, learn 1 piece, and polish 1 piece in the same day.

That sounds very good!

As for me, how much I work on in a practice session depends on how much time I have, and what I have coming up. For example, when I was preparing for the recital or the concert, that determined my practice sessions, which were tightly focused on the recital pieces of course, and didn’t include new material.

But in general, in a regular practice session, I work on 1-2 pieces that are still in the early learning stage, then I have maybe 2-3 in the polishing stage, and then there are always multiple pieces I want to play for maintenance, so I rotate through those. If I don’t have much time, I just practice the learning pieces. When I have a lot of time, I go through all the pieces, taking one or two breaks (getting up from the piano, stretching my legs, getting something to drink…)

But I have been playing piano a long time, so I feel more comfortable working on a lot of things at once (or in one practice session).

I had my last lesson for the year (sniff). And I told my teacher about the 40 piece challenge. He thought it was a great idea!

That lead to a discussion of sight reading, which was also interesting.

But he strongly agreed with the goal of reading more, playing more, and having pieces for the 40P challenge be below the current playing level.

Pallas Are you going to pick pieces you can knock off in a few days, or try for one per week?

I didn't have any of my books with me that I intend to use for the 40P pieces, so we were sort of speaking hypothetically, but I think I will aim for 1-2 weeks per piece. Ideally less than two weeks for any given pieces, and some would be less than a week. Some I'll play for my teacher, some not.

BTW he's actually trying to rearrange some of his students so we can have an hour lesson instead of our current 45 minutes. Fingers crossed!

My next lesson is all the way in January.

Me too, the week of Jan. 6th.

@Pallas thank you! That extra 15 minutes would make a huge difference! Including for the 40P challenge.

Which brings up the question of deciding when to move on from a piece, which I know comes up here a lot. We sort of talked about this at my lesson, but one thing he agreed with was that the benefit is from reading and playing widely so I don't need to truly polish every piece.

Pallas There's a benefit to polishing pieces and also a benefit to quantity and not polishing everything

Exactly!! And there’s no reason to approach every piece the same way, and i think having some pieces that you just move through rather quickly is going to be part of the key to getting your fingers into a much larger number of pieces.

Animisha But it feels very good to start this challenge with pieces that are a bit too easy.
When the pieces get more difficult, I may increase to four or five days, and to play them at a bit slower tempo.

This also sounds like a very good approach!