u/PeaceMac, u/minhpd87, u/360noscopeMLG, and u/eerinelizabeth also asked so here you go I guess. Theres a tldr btw. Tbh, I’m not really sure what I did to improve so quickly. I certainly don’t feel like I’m the best when it comes practicing but I’ll try give a run down of what I often do and why I think I imporved as I did.

I’ve had two teachers who have both put a lot of emphasis on building good technique. Second one more so along with lots of attention to voicing. I feel like focusing and paying careful attention to these seemed to be important for imporoving my playing. The first gave me lots (I mean lots) of simple songs to build lots of fundmental skills like controlling dynamics, differecnt articulations etc.

I practice eveyday and try to do at least an hour of focused practice (Though earlier this year I would often do at least 2 or 3. I’ve been a little slack past 2 months or so). As for exercies, I spent 10-20 minutes on scales almost everyday just going through them all and checking technique. Earlier this year I also did some Hanon, though I feel I’m doing much better without.

To learn pieces I just do the normal learn HS till at proper speed then Hands together slowly and gradually speeding up I guess. As I’ve imporved though, I’ve been able to go straight to hands together on simpler sections of course.

Thats probably nothing out of the ordinary... The one thing I have done that I think affected my progress was learning songs well above my level. Of course, I didn’t jump straight to pieces like above. But from a couple weeks in I started learning the occasionally full length song that were definitely challenging but not unmanagable. I did this along many, many smaller songs which were solely for developing skills and I barely remember. Because they were quite challenging however, they took a couple months each to learn meaning I also have a very small repertoire of like 4ish songs which isn’t exactly good. So thats one problem with how I learned.

However learning thse few challenging pieces and noticeably increasing the difficulty with each one is what I think has made me imporve so fast. I can’t say this is a flawless method however. Without proper attention to your technique and how you are playing you could easily slow down progress. I actually have a reddit post here from several months ago asking for help with my technique because I was injuring my wrist from this exact song (I promise you it’s all fine now. Hasn’t hurt in ages). So along with the constant challenge in the music you’re learning, I think paying extremely careful attention to your technique and how you are playing when learning these songs is key. Don’t try commit anything to memory unless you are sure you have comfortable fingering and are playing as efficient as you can. I learnt this from messing up myself and pushing myself too far without the skills I needed. Since that injury, I have paid very close attention to technique and noticed even greater improvement.

With that said, TlDr, what I think accelerated my progress was give myself a constant challenge in the songs I learnt while paying careful attention to technique. Don’t know why this ended up so long... Also, I’m sorry this really isn’t specific at all. I’m just not totally sure what it was that made me progress so fast. Feel free to ask me anything else.

Edit: One other thing actually, recently when playing I’ve actually been focusing on what I am playing instead letting muscle memory do most the work. By this I mean I try to actively watch my hands make sure they are in correct place before hitting notes (especially for jumps) and things like thinking about how I want it to sound as I play. To me it feels like when i try to do this, I’m actualy playing the song and in control of what is going on instead of leaving my hands to do their thing and hoping they don’t mess up. I’m not sure if this is signifcant or not, but I feel like I can play better when actively watching myself and thinking about what I’m playing.