How do you know if a piano piece is too hard?

if after a few weeks trying to learn or play 1-2 pages of a piece and you still cannot play it comfortably, then it's too hard. also, even if you can learn a piece, but after a few months, you still cannot play it at the tempo, then it would mean your ability of playing it isn't there yet.

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Re: How can you tell if the piece is too difficult? 424383 12:41 AM Joined: Posts: 26,282 Victoria, BC BruceD Yikes! 10000 Post Club Member BruceD Yikes! 10000 Post Club Member Joined: Posts: 26,282 Victoria, BC Carolyn : The one-word answer to the title of this thread should probably be : analysis. However - alas! - I am not a man who usually gives one word answers! Much of determining whether a piece is too difficult is directly related to the playing experience one already has. Many can look at a piece of music and immediately determine how much of a challenge it will be. That skill comes, first, from "how" you look at a piece of music even before you play it. Consider the following criteria (my list is not exhaustive, and may not even be comprehensive) when you first look at a piece of music and compare your answers to how comfortable you are with the tecniques or skills involved :

1) Is it in a key you are comfortable with?

2) Does it appear to be at a tempo that you can eventually manage?

3) Is it linear (a melody line with relatively simple accompaniment) or is it markedly chordal in structure?

4) If chordal, is it densely so; will it therefore require much figuring out not only of fingering but of voicing?

5) Is it contrapuntal, and how do you handle multiple-voice compositions?

6) Do parts or lines move from register to register gradually and comfortably or are there large leaps to be negotiated, and at what tempo?

7) Are there sections that are repeated, or are there many repetitious figures or passages in the work, or is every page different?

8) Are there complex rhythmic patterns?

9) Are there polyrhythmic sections in the work that will require (perhaps) painstaking work?

10) Are there particular challenges to my level of technique : passages in thirds or sixths, octaves, fioritura (or cadenza-like passages), octave passages, rapid scale passages, etc., etc. Others don't find that out these challenges until they start working on a piece because - perhaps - they have not studied the score sufficiently before committing themselves to it.

Looking at the Nocturne in question :

Key : B major / A-flat major

Tempo : Andante

Texture : markedly linear, typically Chopin with an arpeggiated bass but it's late Chopin and both the RH and the LH on occasion have two-part writing, meaning "voicing" of the individual lines will have to be worked at and balance of the voicing will be crucial. This is perhaps the biggest challenge of this piece.

Technical challenges :

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1) There are a few measures that contain polyrhythms : a few moments of two against three and five against two, but relatively few.

2) The Ab major section has a syncopated bass.

3) The section from measures 68 through 75 with the continuous descending trill figure in the RH, sometimes (measures 68-69) with a lower voice in the same hand as the on-going trill, may be a challenge. I think that the biggest challenge in this Nocturne for me would be working out the voicing. Note how many times when there are two voices in one - or both - hands - the secondary voice has a held note on the off-beat. The texture becomes quite complex at measures 76-81 ( a tempo primo ) with two voices moving in each hand. Your "snail's pace" may be a good thing, but only you can determine if the pace is producing the results you are expecting. If you are satisfied with what you have done getting the notes down on the last page, you should know that you have probably conquered the easiest measures of this Nocturne. As my unasked for pseudo-analysis of the piece suggests, you have much harder work in store for you that what you have so far encountered. I would think that you would want to have this piece near "performance ready" by the Summer so that the last couple of months before the recital you would be living with it comfortably and working out fine details of interpretation. Sorry for the long discourse. The final answer, I guess, is that only you can decide whether this is within your grasp, whether it will come into your grasp, if you have the time to work out all the complexities and, finally, whether the amount of work you have to put into it is worth the time required.

Good luck with this beautiful work.

Regards,

BruceD

- - - - -

Estonia 190

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