Music Video Lesson: How Much Music Should You Keep in Shape?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I'm Robert Estrin. The question today is, how much music should you keep in shape? You know, this is a really delicate subject because you practice and you want to learn new music, but you always want to have something to play.

And the challenge is, the time it takes to keep your music in shape can take away from the time you have to learn more music and vice versa. So you have to strike some kind of balance.

And here is what I suggest for you.

First of all, any pieces that you've learned recently, you should absolutely keep in shape.

It's a real mistake to get to the point where you finally can play a piece on a high level and then you drop it. And the mistake is that you might not realize that you, first of all, can take that to a higher level if you live with it a little longer. The other problem is that if you've just learned it and just got in shape and you drop it, you're going to forget it as quickly as you learned it. You need to live with it for a while to have it solidify so that it stays with you, so that you can bring it back without much effort later on. And so that you can still play it, you know, weeks or months after you've learned it. And you can do this simply by playing it on a regular basis and solidifying from time to time with slow practice. But how much music should you keep in shape? I generally say you should keep the last three or four pieces in shape depending upon what the pieces are. If you have, for example, a sonata with three movements, that's almost like three pieces right there. So that and maybe one other piece and the piece you're working on, maybe plenty of repertoire.

What else? Well, you should always have music that you have ready to go that you can play on a high level in case you ever want to play for somebody or somebody wants to hear you play. Isn't it sad if you've been playing the piano for years and you've been practicing and somebody says, oh, you play the piano. Could you play something for me? Oh, no, no, I don't have anything I can play. I'm learning on something new and the old and I haven't finished it yet. And what I learned before, I already forgot.

That's a worst case scenario. You want to always have something you can play and people will appreciate hearing you. They visit your home, they see a piano.

They might want to hear you play something. Have something that you always can play that you've played a million times, something that you've played, you've gotten on a high level, you're comfortable with. Keep it in shape.

Certainly a piece you love, a piece you've worked hard to learn and you want to be able to play it. Keep that in shape along with the most recent pieces you've learned.

So that's key. Keep the most recent pieces you've learned in shape and anything that you really love as well as anything that you want to be able to play for people, something that other people will really enjoy hearing. Because maybe the piece that you really want to keep in shape is not really appropriate to play for most people. It's maybe too subtle or it's a musical style that is not as popular with the general public but you just love it. So that's why there's three categories. The most recent is one, things that people will like and music that you really love that you want to keep in shape are the three areas of music you should keep in shape but not overwhelming with so much time that you don't have time to constantly carve out new repertoire for yourself.

I hope this is helpful for you and if you like these videos you might consider giving a thumbs up and ringing the bell for notifications after subscribing. And you can subscribe also at LivingPianos .com and you'll get rich articles accompanying all the videos with things I forgot to put in the videos. Thanks again for joining me. I'm Robert Estrin. This is LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/how-much-music-should-you-keep-in-shape/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

Thank you for your comment, question or request!

Comment/Question deleted successfully.

Post a comment, question or special request:

Comments or questions must be between 3 and 10,000 characters long.

You may: Login  or  

Otherwise, fill out the form below to post your comment:

Add your name below:


Add your email below: (to receive replies, will not be displayed or shared)


For verification purposes, please enter the word MUSIC in the field below

---