If I had a shekel for every time a student said 'it's too hard' I could probably retire soon enough! However, part of my job as a teacher is to make sure that this is never true. The music needs to be a challenge to ensure progress, but never to be too hard that it feels unachievable.
If you are practicing regularly (and properly) and are in book 1 or 2 you should be completing a piece a week, and a tricky page might take 2 weeks. Once we progress to Book 3 and 4 (or in the Faber series, book 2A or 2B) it could take 2 or 3 weeks to really master a piece, with the added challenge of longer pieces, dynamics and articulation.
Once we have finished using the books and have moved on to the Grade 1 pieces, up to a month per piece is reasonable. More than that is an alarm bell that either the music is too hard, or more likely that the student is not practicing, or even more likely, is not practicing effectively. Only once we get to a much more advanced stage (Grade 3,4,5) we will be spending extended periods of time on one piece.
So back to the original statement that gets chanted so often, 'It's too hard'. I would like to change the statement by just one word, 'It is hard' . To which I can happily answer, 'Yes, your right, it is hard, because it is new, but by the end of the week you will feel very differently about it!' Learning an instrument is a constant challenge, as soon as one piece is learnt a new one appears. This is what is so exciting about the process, there is no greater achievement than overcoming a challenge, and in my job I am lucky enough to get to help young people to do this day in and day out. Each piece that they learn makes them a better musician and a better pianist and hopefully sets them up to take on the challenge of the next piece.
