I Play Piano

Watch this (the video will start a ways in) and you'll understand pretty fast xD
https://youtu.be/D5kyjnlDNZs?t=1m21s

Hahahah, wow, yeah I'd say that's pretty fast

Is that you?

Heck no unfortunately xD I'm nowhere near as good as the guy in the video. Someday I hope to be, but... there's a lot of years/hours of playing before that

Well, you have the desire.....
Are there any videos of you?

Yup :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fza59UvdU0E

Whoa! You're real!

And might I add, wow!

So you're playing grade 7 literature and you're complaining about how "fast" a piece is? I'm sorry but you should be beyond that at this level, but if you need practice on speed, scales are amazing (if you don't already do scales DO SCALES) and arpeggios are great, and then just simple finger exercises and stuff. If you're in need of technique practice I would practice the first 30 measures of La Campanella on piano as it offers a lot of position shifts (piano at its core is your hands in various positions changing to reach different scales and key changes, or octaves) if you still need to work up speed I'd say again SCALES

I play very casually, and haven't ever really stuck with scales long, so maybe that's why I struggle with this sort of stuff. I'll give it a shot again though, and try to start the habit. Thanks for the advice.

I do wanna ask though, how can you tell what grade such a piece is in? (Also, are we talking rcm up to level 10 or 8?) Maybe I'm just bad at piano, but there are some really tough jumps in that piece especially near the end, and my guess would definitely be higher than level 7... xD

I'm from England so we use the ABRAM which goes to Grade 8 and I know which grade by the piece because I know what qualifies each grade (I'm Grade 8 on piano and violin with a far better hand for violin) you play musically (songs) at grade 6 at least, but you play scales well you need to play scales, scales are important! SCALES ARE IMPORTANT! I know they suck and they're boring and everybody hates them, but SCALES ARE IMPORTANT! Besides 80% of piano is scaler passages meaning knowing your scales makes it so much easier cause you can be like "oh this is just an arpeggiated e minor, I've done that a million times" (e minor is the key of a song I'm working on currently with a lot of arpeggios in it) yeah, number one thing to improve playing? SCALES

ABRSM*

Gotcha. I'm in Canada, which goes to ten. (Idk what they call that 'version' of rcm...)

That does make a lot of sense. I guess I'm sorta half afraid of actually studying piano and getting down to scales, even though I want to be better...
This might be a weird question, but... I don't have a teacher, so it's easy for me to slip out of scales if I get bored. Do you have any strategies to stay motivated and make yourself practice your scales?

Get "The Complete Book of Scales, Chords and Cadences" it's a scale book that is absolutely amazing. Then just warm up by working on scales, then do your song, then woodshed some more scales, the goal is to be able to play the scales in crotchets (or all state pattern) for two octaves at 180 on the metronome, meaning you want to be able to play them at 200 on the metronome so 180 feels easy. They're always gonna be boring, trust me though when I say they're worth it. Besides, eventually you only do one scale exercise a day to warm up after you got them all down amazingly. And remember arpeggios are just as important as the scales themselves!

Also, you could always learn La Campanella (which in my mind is literally just one extremely long e minor scale exercise)

And The Ghost Ship is a variations on scales type piece (though it's extremely difficult)