How many pieces do you work on at a time?

I get bored easily too.   I think the old school idea of spending months and months focused on a single piece is not the best way.  I can’t imagine many kids willing to do that.   So I have one or two hard pieces that I am working on. Maybe three.  and then I goof off alot with easy pop, classical, jazz and blues pieces.  

I usually have a few things going on: a piece that may end up in a recital, 1 or 2 exercises (currently Czerny 849), another study piece (currently Bach's inventions). I'll also dip into pieces I've played in the past so they remain in my repertoire. Variety is good! 

I think it depends on two factors:

1- How much (how long) you practice 

2- What’s the purpose of the practice 

if you are practicing 5/6 hours a day, you should be able to manage to work on 4/5 different pieces. But it also depends the level you are working on. If you simply want to learn the pieces or you want to explore and polish a piece for a performance 

1 or 2 and as much as I can, very precisely 

I am currently working on 3 pieces. One close to completion, one which will take a lifetime to complete (ballade 4 Chopin) and one just started. I manage only between one to two hours a day. 

I think the "right" amount is about what makes you happy with it. I found it impossible at start to focus in 1 piece, and try to master it. so my way of learning was to play as many pieces as possible, and by this to learn to read the notes better and better. nowadays i tend to focus more in 1-2 pieces. but it can always change again. just listen to your heart. and what makes you happy and keep wishing to play. and this discussion is truly intresting in my eyes. i had a teacher who forced me to play 1 piece like forever, and another who let me play a variety of pieces, otherwise i couldn't hold the lessons anymore. But- too many hard pieces make me frastration. 

See what works for you the best, and thanks for the topic! :) 

My piano teacher is adamant that one of the cornerstones of being a good musician is developing discipline. What this means for me is that I work on one new piece at a time, for 30 minutes every day. When I have mastered it (to my teacher’s satisfaction), the piece gets added to my review/repertoire list and I play through this list every day, making small adjustments and improvements as I go.

Hello! For me 3 pieces is the maximum as otherwise I find no real progress is made. 2 pieces is best for me, for instance now I'm working on Chopin etude 10 -1 and appassionata movement 3 and as these are extremely hard for me having a third piece would not reall work, although when I'm bored I dabble a bit with Chopin's f sharp minor polonaise. 

At my elderly age of 83 I primarily review selections from the past.  I only sit down to play for short periods of time.  It's amazing how much of the music has remained in the hands, but that also includes the failed notes of the past.  Working on improving those stumbles is a challenge.

   I appreciate hearing the other ieas.

You can always practice sections of pieces beyond your current repertoire, I find it's a helpful way to survey a wider range of composers. 

I have 14 pieces of music on my piano music stand some of which I am keeping fresh as performance pieces. I like to learn hard sections first so I just dip into them. I also love to play a few beautiful bars of other pieces and work outwards to include the whole piece. As I come across errors and difficulties I concentrate for short and more frequent sessions. At 71 years of age I'm searching for joy and mastery at the piano and have little time for things I don't enjoy. I also have my impossible pieces such as Rachmaninoff Moment Musical no. 4 which I have spent several months on the first page. Overall, a complex mixture so my enthousiasm never dies. 

Ideally I would work on 3 contrasting pieces at a time, which tends to keep me pretty occupied and entertained. But right now I’m down to two and leaning pretty hard into modern repertoire (my favorite) after pausing lessons for 3 months due to hand injuries. I’ll eventually get back to 3 completely different pieces but for now I’m just thrilled to be back at the piano at all, even with some pretty big limitations.  I would personally feel like i had too many pieces at once if I had more than three, but that also depends on how much time you have to practice. I max out at about 45 minutes so working on two is perfect but if you can practice, say, 2 or more hours a day I could see three pieces maybe not being enough variety.

Between work and having a 2 year old, I usually can’t get to the piano to practice until well after 9pm each evening. So, I just don’t have the bandwidth for more than 2 songs at a time.
 

I’ve recently got into learning Baroque Minuets — which are great, because they tend to be lovely and short, so it doesn’t take me ages to learn. 

My goals are to; 1) clean up technique, 2) clean up attention to details and  3) maybe, improve  memory.  I usually select 2-3 pieces (or more)  every week I would like to have polished within a few days or, at most -- the week. These pieces are at a lower level so they are more or less do-able.  In addition, I come across other music -- especially pieces Tonebase is offering training on, and do careful practicing  on parts of them, as well. These pieces are not ones I want to complete right now, but are great to work on and enjoyable.  My intention is to focus on careful practicing every time I sit down to the piano. This means that I can cover any thing from 1 to 7-8 pieces in a practice session, working from 45 minutes to almost 2 hours. Technique, scales, pieces and sometimes sight reading and/or memory are my usual "go-tos." 

I like to do an easier piece and a more difficult piece (that might take months). For instance, Chopin Waltz 64 no 1 and Beethoven woo 10 no 2. Beethoven might take a week or 2, but 64 no 2, I keep track of my progress and challenge myself a lot.

The music I am learning will dictate how many pieces I can work with. Presently I’m learning (and struggling) with the Liszt transcription of the Schubert Ave Maria. Just learning the notes is pretty much demanding all my practice time 1-1.5 hours per day). 

I usually have a few at a time, but broken up by categories of difficulty and length, so they aren't all big or hard pieces. In other words, I usually will have 1) short simple piece I've never played before for sight-reading practice, 2) a short or easy familiar piece I've played before, as a refresher and just for fun, and 3) my "stretch" piece which is typically longer and more challenging. Sometimes 4) I'll just mess around with a pop or jazz song I like, but usually by ear or lead sheet.

It motivates me to have diversity in my rotation, some easy and some challenging, so I get a "balanced diet" of repertoire. I used to crowd my plate with nothing but long and difficult pieces, thinking that was the only way I would get better, but instead it would backfire and I would get frustrated, bored, and burned out. So having only one difficult piece which I spend a few weeks or months on balanced with fun easy pieces I can rotate daily works best for me to not get too bored or discouraged.