My new piano teacher suggested that I learn Bach's Inventio No 2 by reading it - actually reading it, with eyes on the score as I play - through many times trying to avoid mistakes and used the metaphor ... "like threading pearls to make a necklace ... one by one, slowly and carefully enough to prevent them from falling .. " or something like that.
Now this is a completely different way from how I used to learn. I used to learn section by section, maybe 3 or 4 bars at a time if I could make it until all was firmly fixed in my memory and then, when I got to the end of the piece, played the whole of it from memory without even knowing how to resume when I hit a difficult bit and had to stop ... much like a trained monkey, I am sorry to say ...
I have now done this Inventio No 2 for about 10 days and it's beginning to come a little fluently, which boosts my morale. What are your experiences in this respect and how do you - or most of you - go about tackling anew piece? All comments welcome.

I used to practice much the same way - practicing a few bars and then repeating them until you can play them, then putting it together as you said. It's fine for motor skills but it does nothing for sight reading and as you said when you make a mistake you cannot carry on, you have to start from the beginning again. The best way I have found is to play the piece incredibly slowly, making sure the melody sings watching the phrasing and incorporating the dynamics. And as I am able to speed the piece up my motor skills develop and I already have the phrasing and dynamics in place.

I am not sure whether this improves sight reading skills, I think it depends on whether you 'feel' the jumps or 'look' for the jumps. I usually look when I have to make a jump, which stunts my sight reading I feel.

Interestingly I used this approach yesterday with a very bright 8 year old who learns quickly but would much rather play by ear (she will work out any scale major or minor either form that I care to ask her, for example).

I like the threading pearls analogy - hadn't thought of that! It was I think a useful exercise and I didn't keep at it for too long, because I could see it was so different from the way she normally learns. She had enormous difficulty in not going back a note or a few to hang the melody together. I particularly wanted to avoid doing this - to try to show her that there are different ways of learning. I also wanted to incorporate the articulation right from the beginning.

It is probably much more akin to how I myself naturally learn a piece - but I am much more a sight-reader than a memoriser, and I would find the other way quite difficult I suspect. (I suppose it would be a useful exercise to try!)

I will be interested to see how my pupil's piece has taken off next lesson and whether there is a difference. I doubt whether she will be able to keep up the new approach at home, but I'm hoping that we can improve sight reading if we do a few bars of each new piece in this way; also that if results are in any way better after a few days that she might see it as worth trying now and again.

I tend to do a few bars at a time but always reading the score.
If you play through from beginning to end, particularly with something long, by the time you've struggled to the end you've forgotten what you needed to work on at the start.
As I learn more of a pieces I will start working one different sections as needed and not always go from the top.

I've found that with my students the good memorisers often don't spend enough time looking at the score so often memorise inaccurately and will be very reluctant to take the time to learn the piece properly.

I'm a much better sightreader than memoriser, so when I start a new piece, I'd just sightread through the whole thing, locate where I have most difficulties and then just practise those bars until they're relatively ok (say, 80%). Then, I play through the whole piece and again identify the next most difficult bits and practise those. I'd repeat this until I have roughly the same standard for the whole piece (let's say 80%). Only then do I start practising the whole piece from start to finish or in sections if it's a long piece.

At the first lesson with my new teacher he discovered that I couldn't start from any bar or any note, which translates as I don't "know" the piece in his view (Now I don't have to start at the beginning but I do have convenient points rather than able to start wherever.) So now in lessons, I rarely get to play from the beginning of a piece; my teacher would say something like "ok, let's start at bar 13 today" (I'm sure he has lots of fun doing this ).

Oh yes, we teachers have to get our kicks somehow...

Do I dare ask what are yours?

This describes fairly accurately the way I learn pieces as well (be it on piano or oboe). My daughter learns like Juan Carlos, a bar or two at a time and memorises almost instantly and I have to say that I find her approach totally disorientating. I don't even know where she got it from - she can't have got it from watching/listening to me and it isn't the way her teacher wants her to practise either.

As quoted - making my pupils start pieces in horrid places.
They say "Oh pleease can I start from the beginning of the line?" and I say "No"

Yes, I'm with Panthera and kerioboe on this one; that's how I naturally learn - but that's why I find it so difficult to play anything from memory. I really need a few visual cues from the score, and the only way I can manage without music is to memorise these cues (of course, I have to work out what the cues are first, which can be interesting!). I can't even remember the start note of a piece without a conscious effort to learn it!

Maybe I should try the Juan Carlos method sometime and see whether it helps me to memorise.

[quote name='kerioboe' date='Nov 19 2008, 09:59 PM' post='761561']
[quote name='Panthera' post='761514' date='Nov 19 2008, 08:18 PM']
I'm a much better sightreader than memoriser, so when I start a new piece, I'd just sightread through the whole thing, locate where I have most difficulties and then just practise those bars until they're relatively ok (say, 80%). Then, I play through the whole piece and again identify the next most difficult bits and practise those. I'd repeat this until I have roughly the same standard for the whole piece (let's say 80%). Only then do I start practising the whole piece from start to finish or in sections if it's a long piece.
[/quote]
This describes fairly accurately the way I learn pieces as well

This is also my system. After reaching the '80%' stage I then start from the beginning and go back to the beginning when I make a mistake and start again. This way I find I can usually correct the mistakes and progress a little further each time. Obviously this would not work with a long piece or I would never reach the end! If I have particular difficulty with one or two bars then I pencil a big asterisk over it to 'see it coming'. Seems to work for me.

I'd probably get notes right faster if I didn't aim to get articulation and tone and everything else right form the word 'go'. Whether the notes are right or wrong. I can't help myself. If I feel the balance between the hands, for instance, is not quite right, I'll repeat until it is.

I'm completely at odds with an excellent pianist friend in this respect; he gets the notes right first, and establishes good fingering, etc, with no regard whatsoever for finesse until the notes are all there. I've no idea which is right and which is wrong - probably neither - we both get there in the end, but I simply can't listen to myself play right notes with wrong musicality, even in practice. What I find, though, is that the finesse of the piece is there before the consistency is (with regard to notes) so it all comes together very suddenly and I actually enjoy listening to myself without anything being stale to my ear.

Six stages

1. Choose the next piece. I don't usually need to do any exploratory sight reading. I've either heard it lots, or sight read it years ago.

2. I spend a lot of time studying a piece before I touch a key in earnest. That includes reading over the score trying to imagine the sound (Rhythm easy, melodic lines not too hard, harmony very difficult), analyzing the structure, figuring out the harmonies, finding recurring themes and motifs and variants of them, mapping out the modulations and how they are achieved, listening to performance and imagining how I want it to sound, working out phrasings and fingerings, mentally playing it through, imagining the movements and sensations of hands arms and fingers

3. Only then to the keyboard and play it through slowly and carefully

4. Detailed practice on a few phrases at a time until it is fluent and accurate. Adjust fingerings as necessary. Devise exercises or find studies to deal with any technical problems.

5. Alternate between playing the whole piece as if for a performance, and pulling out small sections for intensive work. Continue until it can be performed well.

6. If it is not already in the memory, then finish the job of memorizing it

7. Into maintenance mode. Play it every week or two and repair any errors that may have crept in.

Very nice to see so many posts coming in, Forumites ... thank you!
From what I've read, it seems to me most of you are (fairly) good sightreaders and that helps a lot, I think. I believe that that is what it actually means to learn to play the piano; i.e. being able to play from any score that is put on the stand and then ... after a few minutes ... you just play. Being able to do this, as I often did with singing or the recorder or the violin (there is only one line involved as all of you know), is and has always been my dream. I am now working towards this kind of ability as my sight-reading is miles behind the level I attain in the pieces I play (exam pieces, for instance). I mean, I study a bit of a piece, then simply look away from the score and play it repeating the movements and instinctively memorising the melody and only occasionally refer back to the score and work out one or two notes I've forgotten
I guess there is something wrong with playing and learning from memory the way I do it but I simply can't help it, either because my musical memory is outstanding and takes over whatever other skills may be involved or because I am hopeless at sightreading and deep down know that memorising is the only way I can even hope to learn a piece. I think my new teacher sensed this the very first class (3 weeks ago) and this is why he asked me to read through Inventio No 2 (Bach) there and then (I was in a panic!!) and to study it following this approach at home, which I am doing at present, as I said in my opening post. His purpose is probably that of helping me drift away from this habit and thus improve my sight-reading.
My daughter has a very similar approach to mine and is at a loss every time she's given something to sight-read (she's attending the Conservatoire and teachers there demand that this kind of ability should be acquired/improved).

You sound so much like me. My sightreading is terrible which is why I force myself to play a new piece the whole way through - Because my sightreading isn't great I have to play slowly. This means I can concetrate on the tone and dynamics, fingering etc - but it is a chore. However, it is getting easier - I am getting faster at learning new pieces. My aim is also to be able to play a piece well at first sight. Its always been something I've wanted to do, I feel handicapped without this skill.

But playing a piece through to the end, even though it is a chore really helps. I get to practice my sight reading at the same time as learning about the piece, where it travels to etc. Once I've played it through once its not so scary to play it again.

But I think to improve my sight reading further I need to start feeling for bigger jumps - this would stop me from taking my eyes of the score and which will help when sight reading at a faster speed.

My main problem (as my teacher explained) is that I'm impatient - I am a good sight reader for saxophone, a new piece doesn't take much time at all - I want it to be that way for piano, but it isn't. It's difficult to accept that sight reading well, will take a lot longer than I thought.

Good advice, Mad Tom - I should really try studying the piece before hand, I'm not very good at that.

Very enlightening, Muse! All you say is exactly what happens to me and I do hope to improve my sight-reading skills sooner or later ... and, as you say, maybe I'm killing two birds with a stone by following this approach: learning new pieces and improving my sight-reading or at least getting used to it!

After years and years of playing by ear I decided to take formal lessons a few months ago. I have found learning scores extremely difficult and have tried various techniques, this is the one I seem to get best results by:

1) Firstly I enter the notes into my MIDI program on the computer, I find this really helps to get to know the score. Sometimes I do this by step record via my piano's keys, or if I'm in a different room I'll use the mouse - but they are both effective.

2) Then I try to learn each hand separately.

3) Once I'm pretty solid with each hand I will make the MIDI program play one hand while I play the other. Then when I feel comfortable I will play hands together, slowly at first building up speed to the correct tempo.

It's the best way I have found for me. The MIDI program can also be set up to repeat sections, obviously ideal for those sections that cause difficulty.

Incidentally I use a MIDI program called Notation, which I can't recommend enough!

This sounds just like my teacher. I find it most unnerving when she suddenly says "start at bar X" - I panic, then can't read the notes.

Don't worry. There are so many of us in the same boat ...
I trust it'll come easier with very patient practice!
Good sight-reading ...

He's right. If you can't stop/start anywhere you don't know the piece as well as you could! [Incidentally - by such strict criteria I probably know just one piece - maybe two]

There is a good game you can play. Get a pianist friend and each prepare a piece to play from memory. As your friend plays as you follow in the score. You call out "stop" whenever you like. They have to stop instantly. You then say "start" and they have to continue from the exact point where you stopped them. If they can't you score a point.

After ten goes you swap places.

Nice idea, Mad Tom.
Actually, Philip Johnston's book The Practice Revolution is full of such 'games' and I think they're so useful, especially if you have the time to try the numerous examples he gives (The seven steps to misery, sorry about that, I meant "The Seven Stages of Misery" for one ..... I wonder what a psychoanalyst would have to say about this slip ... actually the game does not lead you to misery but through the misery of having to play a section 7 times in a row without mistakes, then if you trip up you have to start again and return one step ... until you manage to complete all 7 attempts successfully. As you approach the 7th step your tension builds up through fear of having to return to an earlier stage and so it gets harder and harder ... it's exhausting!).
Has any of you read his Practiceopaedia by any chance? I am in two minds about buying that as I already have so many of these kinds of books.
The new approach I'm using (ie, reading through the piece awfully slowly a lot of times taking care not to get any notes or fingering wrong) seems to make practice more demanding but also to shorten the time needed to "learn" the piece, although there's lots of polishing you have to do later. It seems to me this kind of technique appleals to an altogether different skil from the one involved in training to play each bit from memory, as with this new approach I have to - yes, have to, with a Herculean effort - keep my eyes on the score, otherwise I get lost.

Don't know the book.

On practice methods - there is not one "best" method. There are lots of approaches and techniques. Sectional practice, whole piece practice, slow practice, playing at performance speed, over speed, mindless repetition, mindful attention, varying touch, by ear, from memory, from the score, diving straight into the piece, studying it in depth first, listening to performances, playing your own conception without first hearing another, transposing at sight, varying the instrument and surroundings, practicing alone, working with a partner, recording yourself, asking friends to listen in ..... A good pianist should know lots of them, their strong and weak points, when to use one, and when to use another.

I like Mad Tom's 'six stages' post, especially the last sentence of No2 . I think the first step in how to study a piece is to find a way to practise. I recall saying to a pupil 'correcting isn't practising'. She had a tendency to stop when she made a mistake, put the note right, then carry on. A strategy like this might be necessary in performance to quickly 'cover up' a mistake but something much more in depth is needed when working out how to first study a piece. I tend to sight-read through a few times to find out what is at stake, but choosing suitable fingering is so important to interpretation of the sound and also dictates how to move between the notes. There should be something new to discover every time you practise a piece - not just finding the right notes

P.S. I also try to find a recording of advanced work - listening is very valuable. I use the Naxos website.