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On Second Thought ... Diminishing Returns

In today's live Q&A, Jonny May said something that stuck with me, and not in a good way:

"If a piece takes you more than two months to learn, it’s probably too hard for you."

Hoo boy. That didn’t sit well.

I can’t even remember the last time I learned anything in under two months unless it was something relatively simple, like the Chopin A minor waltz. My immediate reaction was: Wait… am I constantly working on pieces that are too hard?

My previous (classical) teachers took almost the opposite approach. Deborah, in particular, encouraged me to reach beyond my limits—to stretch, to struggle a bit, to take on things that felt just out of reach. And I do think that made me better.

But I also have to admit something: I’ve been struggling a lot.

The Case of After You’ve Gone

First of all, After You've Gone wasn’t meant to be a performance piece. It was supposed to be a training piece—a way to work on stride, coordination, and improvisation.

Here’s how that went:

  • It took about two months to get comfortable with the left-hand stride (including those 10ths) and right-hand stylizations
  • It took another six weeks to work on improvisation (though, admittedly, it was on the back burner for much of March, as I was preparing YAMS for recital)
  • It's still not at a level I would call performance-ready

At this point, we’re pushing four months.

And the honest truth is, I don’t even enjoy playing it that much. As I was making my latest video this morning, playing the song, I remember thinking, "This isn't fun. I'm so focused on striding and rolling and reaching the notes that I can't enjoy myself."

So Was Jonny Right?

Maybe he was? Maybe partially right?

Not in the sense that I can’t learn the advanced version of After You've Gone. Clearly, I can. I’ve made it this far. But in a more practical sense—how long it takes, how it feels to work on, how much progress is actually happening—he might have a point. Because at some point, this project stopped being productive.

What Changed?

At first, I learned a lot. It was hard, but worth the effort. What did I learn?

  • Playing the stride pattern
  • Figuring out the reach and timing
  • Coordinating the hands (stride 10ths + right-hand stylizations)

But it's morphed into something else:

  • Constant effort
  • Small, hard-won improvements
  • No real sense of things “locking in”

I've crossed into a place of diminishing returns. I'm putting in the time, but I feel very stalled. Is this the darkness preceding a big "Eureka!" sunrise? I don't know. I really don't.

The Real Issue (for me)

Looking back, I think I turned one piece into too many things at once:

  • A stride workout
  • A coordination challenge
  • An improvisation lab
  • A musical “piece” (Don't even get me started on my now-defunct plans to compose an intro and an outro, or to add a second solo.)

That’s a lot to ask from a single project. No wonder I can't do it in two months or less. And while each of those things is valuable, stacking them all together made it too hard.

The Decision

So, on second thought, I’m closing the door on After You've Gone this weekend. Whether I have a graduation video or not. It did what it was supposed to do, and I learned from it. I pushed into new territory. I got a clearer sense of where my limits are right now.

But it’s no longer giving me enough back to justify the time and effort. And ... maybe, just maybe, that's what I still need to learn: when it's okay to move on.

Where This Leaves Me

No, I'm not going to start only playing easy pieces. But I'm thinking about the difference between stretching my limits and living beyond them full-time. I may have been doing more of the latter.

The next step isn’t to stop challenging myself; it’s just to be a bit more selective about how I do it.

I need to consider smaller containers. Maybe set harder deadlines. Definitely stop trying to make everything a "project."

We’ll see how that goes!

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