How to pick Pieces with the Right Level (Self Learner Issue)

WieWaldi · 2026-04-09T08:57:22+00:00

I am still struggling with Over the Rainbow for PIYW#7 and haven't even picked a follow-up piece for the May recital. This means I picked an arrangement that...

BartK

WieWaldi But I can't practice any slower because with 40 there are already 1½ seconds between two ticks. It is easy to miss one.

You can set your metronome to 80 and treat each click as half a beat. Then you have plenty of room to slow down. 🙂

TC3

BartK There you go, using math again ... 😂

rsl12

WieWaldi This time I decided to practice with the metronome.

Aha! Good for you. But if you're desperate to make the deadline, the answer is to throw away the metronome!

(I'm joking. The answer is to use math and slow down the metronome.)

Sophia

All this talk about math... my poor head!

rsl12 the answer is to throw away the metronome!

Eh, think out of the box 😃 There are more answers than one: simplify the piece. Or shorten the piece.
Hmm, no, I think you are right. The answer is to throw away the metronome 😋

WieWaldi

Sophia The answer is to throw away the metronome 😋

Don't tell.... youknowwho

rsl12 (I'm joking. The answer is to use math and slow down the metronome.)

Funny thing. Before OTR, my lowest tick limit was around 55 bpm. Maybe a bit more than 50. Those practice sessions adjusted my inner clock to work at about 40, now. But it cost a lot of time to get there (instead of learning the piece, actually). I'll count it as "lesson learned".

pianoloverus

BartK This is all fine if it works for you but I think it's a non standard approach and rarely recommended as a good way to judge if a piece is appropriate in terms of difficulty.

Nightowl

WieWaldi Don't tell.... youknowwho

Too late! But I've never thrown away a metronome... because I never bought one in the first place! 😂

Seriously, I realise they have their uses... (instrument of torture... killjoy...form of punishment) but as a rule I try to avoid using them because they are evil things that make me lose the will to live.

Nightowl

WieWaldi I had seen this video a while back, but I just watched it again and my main take from it is the advice to apply the general rule of "i plus 1" when choosing a new piece. So, instead of overloading the brain with too many new things at once, you aim to play something that includes no more than one new technique or concept. As Sophia pointed out upthread, this is quite similar to how the Alfred method books work, so that learners are never bombarded with pieces which are too much of a stretch. However, most method books only go to early intermediate level, so this issue of choosing the right pieces is going to occur regularly for us "self taught" pianists, unless we find a teacher to guide us. Maybe one day I'll do that. On my allotment site there is a music professor on the next plot to mine, and he mentioned that there is a piano teacher on the site too... maybe I'll meet them one day and have a chat with them.

WieWaldi

You've got an interesting allotment. If I were you, I would reach out to the piano teacher. You never played a music instrument before, you never had music lessons in your life. As a self learner, you risk to build up bad habits. The earlier you let a professional check them, the better. A teacher in a face to face session can do more than a thousand forum threads and a hundred of YouTube videos.

Nightowl

WieWaldi Good advice WieWie - so when are you getting a teacher? 😉

Sophia

Ooh I second, third and fourth the idea!!! I know we tease and joke a lot, and piano is just a hobby for most of us. But I definitely think that there is no better way to learn than with a good teacher, at least for some of the important basics. I don’t have a teacher either, so I take every morsel and crumb that gets thrown at me, plus I already had some basics. But WieWie is right: none of that is as good as a single session with a pro teacher. Now I’m positively jealous 🥰

WieWaldi

Nightowl I had one in my childhood. For two years and bit more. Every week, once.

Nightowl

WieWaldi But surely that was for playing the accordian, not the piano?

WieWaldi

But it was for several years. EVERY WEEK!!! That counts.

Nightowl

WieWaldi Yeah, it counts... as proof that your parents were committed to helping you learn a musical instrument. I wish I'd had that opportunity.

KevinM

The trauma knows.

Sophia

Awww 🙂 This is here, and this is now. Some, like you , had no opportunity and probably wished you had. I had opportunity and perhaps wished I had used it. As a result, we both ended up as beginners 🙂 It's never too late to learn!

thepianoplayer416

People with a teacher get assigned pieces that are progressively more difficult. 1 piece would focus on playing soft & loud, another would focus on legato & staccato phrasing. A self-learner would rely on online sources including video demos. Try a piece if it’s playable before putting it aside.

The first time playing the Burgmuller “Arabesque” from the “25 Progressive Studies” would need practice.

In the beginning even an easy piece requires practice to get the hands coordination. If we choose pieces that can be played through easily would make no progress. A piece that is slightly more difficult would give the motivation to keep on practicing.

« Previous Page