As a piano learner, it’s natural to be drawn to beautiful and complex pieces. However, attempting to play songs that are beyond your current skill level can lead to:

• Frustration
• Slow Progress
• Loss of motivation

My Experience

I once started learning “La Campanella” by Liszt, an amazing and complicated piece. However, I have a tendency to choose pieces that are clearly too difficult for me, like Chopin’s “Winter Wind,” whenever I hear them. As a result, I never finish these pieces and end up only playing small excerpts, which frustrates me.

How to Gauge the Difficulty of a Piece

Tempo

The faster the tempo, the more difficult the piece will likely be. Faster tempos require more precise fingerwork and coordination, which can be challenging if you’re not yet comfortable with such speed.

Patterns

Check if the piece includes rhythmic patterns or techniques that you’ve never seen or played before. For instance, “La Campanella” features 2-octave jumps with mordents at one end, which was something I had never encountered before attempting the piece.

Hardest Passages

If you can’t learn the hardest passages in a reasonable amount of time, the piece is probably too difficult for you. A useful piece of advice I often ignored is to start with the difficult parts first. This way, once you’ve mastered the hardest sections, the rest of the piece will seem easier, and you’ll be less likely to hit a roadblock later on. Conversely, if you start with the easier parts, you may become frustrated when you finally reach the difficult sections, having already invested a lot of time learning the rest of the piece.

By assessing the difficulty of a piece using these criteria, you can better choose music that aligns with your current skill level, ensuring a more enjoyable and productive learning experience.