Do you ever feel that, despite practising each day and working hard to improve, if asked to ‘play something’ we’re often at a loss? Sure, we have learned lots of things, but how many of them remain at a ‘performance standard’? In reality, for me at least, very few. So, how do we maintain old repertoire?

I’m sure many people have a similar experience. This, I believe, is why the question about how to maintain old repertoire and keep it ‘in our fingers’ is so frequently asked.

It depends on the repertoire

Or course, as with any question, the real answer is ‘it depends’. For music that we find technically easier, then simply playing through every now and then is probably sufficient. In fact, often, we could just pull out the music and execute a very acceptable performance even after not touching it for some time. For me, things such as Bach’s C Major Prelude, the slow movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, Schubert’s Serenade etc. fall into this category.

For these pieces then, no problem. Yet, when I’m asked to ‘play something’, I want to be able to play something that I’ve recently learned. Unfortunately, 9 times out of 10, for the pieces that I’m currently practising, I don’t consider them to be ready to perform (even informally for friends). I’m no Horowitz, but I still want people to enjoy and not be distracted by lot of wrong notes or sloppy playing.

Repertoire at our current limits

Like many adult learners, I insist on learning things that are ‘too difficult’ for me. As a result, even when I do get to a point that I can play them well enough, they remain on the outer limits of my technique.

Let me explain what I mean.

For any piece that I’m learning, I always have a plan of what I need to practice. This plan is basically a set of different goals and strategies that sub-divide the piece into the bits that I find difficult. So, for Debussy’s Clair De Lune for example, I had the following set of goals:

With some of these, regular practice got me to the point that 99.9% of the time, I would not expect any issues. However, for others, I was at the point that I’d likely get them right 95% of the time. Thus, there was always that little sigh of relief when I managed to execute it in line with my artistic vision. Here are more details on my approach to Clair de Lune.

Repertoire museums

Now, there are two distinct schools of thought here. Some would say, ‘ah well, you haven’t really mastered it and you should keep practising until you have’. However, there is another school of thought eloquently expressed by Josh Wright in his video entitled ‘Repertoire Museums’ that says put the piece to one side and move on to something else. I must admit that now my allegiance has shifted to the second school.

Still, now that I have learned Clair de Lune to a point that I’m happy to play it, I would like to be able to perform it any time.

However, what I’ve noticed is that by just playing through from time to time (be it daily, weekly, monthly), errors start to creep back in. Then, with almost every time I play through the piece, it gets slightly worse than when I initially put it to one side.

Clearly, for something we’ve put hours and hours of work into, it’s a shame that we can’t properly keep it ready to play.

So what is the solution?

The solution I finally arrived at, in fact, is relatively simple. I have now decided that for one day each week I will not practice my current pieces and will devote the entire session to maintaining a few older pieces. On the whole I practice 7 days per week for anything between an hour to an hour and a half – maybe more at weekends. This then gives me around 90 minutes to devote to what I’ve nicknamed my ‘Maintenance Session’.

Using my old set of goals, I pick the ones I find the most challenging to execute. In Clair de Lune, it was these:

These then are the ones on which I focus my attention during my weekly Maintenance Session. So, before playing through the piece, I’ll spend whatever time I have allotted to each of these goals and use my old practice strategies to exercise them.

Maintain, not improve

The aim of the exercise here isn’t necessarily to ‘improve’ – simply to ‘maintain’. With Clair de Lune, there are a couple of sections where I feel more work is required. I don’t feel I fully control the C Sharp Minor section. Sure, I can play it without ‘wrong notes’, but I feel there is more that I can do with it. However, I don’t use these sessions to do that work. Simply, I try to ensure I maintain the level I had reached.

So, if for example you’d still like to get a particular run or cadenza faster, don’t try to do it here. Simply try to keep it at whatever tempo you had previously mastered.

Benefits of this approach

The benefit of doing this is that, before trying to play through the piece, we oblige ourselves to go a step or two back in the learning process. We are again exercising the technical difficulty and applying the correct focus. We’re effectively ensuring we haven’t forgotten (and, if we have, we’re reminding ourselves).

Don’t forget to rehearse

Finally, I add a new goal of ‘Rehearse’. Here, the clue is in the title. I’ll aim to play through, beginning to end. If I go wrong, then I’ll stop and spend some time exercising whatever area it was the first time I play through. Then, I’ll play through one final time without stopping (just making mental notes of anything wrong). After this final play through, I’ll quickly re-touch those error passages, but won’t make any further end to end attempt.

So far, this is working

I’ve been doing this for a while now and I have to say it is seeming to pay dividends. I’m finding that the pieces I’ve chosen to maintain are now at a ‘playable’ standard. Let me caveat that with the fact that clearly I’m not a concert pianist. Nobody pays money to hear me play. When I say a ‘playable’ standard, I mean that the average listener is unlikely to pick up on any wrong or missed note, slight rhythmic unevenness or other imperfection. Similarly, I can feel happy that, to the best of my ability, I gave a performance that whilst it wouldn’t win me a place in the Chopin competition, did bring pleasure to my listeners.

Pre-register for a copy of my Practice Companion App

If you’re curious about the screenshots above, these are from my Practice Companion app. I created it myself and it runs on my iPad. It helps me to both plan my practice and keep track of the work I’ve been doing each day. I will be making it available to download in the coming months. If you’d like to register an interest, please drop me a mail to tommy@tommyspianocorner.com with your full name and the iPad model you use. I’ll add you to my mailing list so I can let you know as soon as its ready. For anybody who pre-registers, I’ll offer a 50% discount on the purchase price when it’s released!