Look, I will give you a general way of learning which, at least for me, works.

However, keep in
mind that might not be working for you and that every piece has it's own difficulties, so the details
of the studying can be different every time.

Anyway, here you go:

What I do, is listen to the music. That's the first step. Listen to it and preferably also several
interpretations. After you really know how to music sounds, that is, as far as your mind can handle
it, you go on and listen to it some times again, but now with the score in front of you. Depending on
the level you're at, and sometimes also not, you will most likely experience that in some passages,
for instance, you see a left hand bass-patern with very wide intervals which you didn't hear without
the score in front of you. So, listening with the score in front of you is a part of learning the music
even better BEFORE going to the piano and actually playing it.

Now that you've totally learned how the music sounds (you can test this by humming it, either in
your head or aloud), you're ready to move on to the next step.

The next step is actually the second step of the first stage of learning a piece. Remember, there are
three stages (EXPLORATORY, STUDYING, MASTERING) of learning. So the next step of the
exploratory level is finding out which passages are technically hard for you. This is done by sight-
reading through the music. Just look for the moments at which you get really stuck and which
therefore need special attention. If those moments are popping up so much that the piece is actually
one big moment of stuckness, that doesn't mean the piece is TOO hard - since I don't believe there is
something like pieces which are TOO hard at several stages - it simply means it is harder than
another one and that it needs more attention. Anyway, look for the moments of stuckness and write
down somewhere which bars/notes/passages it are. If that's done, move on to the next step.

The next step is the breaking down of the piece into manageable sections. So, let's say I have piece
X which is 30 bars long. Bars 1-5/7-9/12-20/25-30, I can already play right from the music. That's
great, forget about them for the moment. Bars 6/21-23 are playable, however, they will need some
more attention. Bars 10-11 are simply impossible. Okay, so now you can play already 23 bars of
this piece. That means there are 7 bars left which will need some attention. So look at those bars, if
you think you can do 2 of the playable bars on one day, that's fine, however, this is really something
only you can do. The way to find out which sections are good for you, is by playing one section
with one hand 7 times. If you can play it from memory without finger-faults after those 7 times,
that's one section. In this way, you're gonna have to find out which sections are manageable for you.

Have you done that, breaking down the piece in those sections? Great, you can move on by actually
learning those sections. Let's say I have chosen a section with an octave passage of 8 eight-notes
octaves in the left hand. That's what I'm gonna work on for today. I will work on it for 20-30
minutes on one day and I must have that passage perfected after that period of time. If I have it
perfected, I will not play it anymore today. I will play it again tomorrow and see if I can still play it
this perfect. If not, I'm gonna do the exact same thing as I did yesterday to perfect it again.
Herefore, you must write down how you got your section perfected. You will see that by now, the
section will not be perfected after 20-30 minutes, but after 10 minutes. Perfected? Leave it for today
again. Move on this way, until the day comes that you come out of your bed and you can play the
section from memory and flawless. Do this for every section. It is therefore also best to work on
several sections of a same piece simultaniously. That way, the technical learning will be faster.

If all the (maybe 7 days ago) impossible sections are learned, you're going to put in between those
bars you can already play. That doesn't need much explanation I guess. Just play bars 1-5 + your
recently learned bar 6 a few times until they connect flawlessly. Do this for every gaps and then
play the piece as a whole sometimes too.

After this, the mastering stage comes, that mostly involves soft passages which should be played
loud and vice versa, that sort of thing. It also involves interpretational questions: How am I going to
play this piece? How am I going to put some personality in it? Those kind of questions. After all
this kind of things are done, just PLAY the piece as much as possible so it will be ingrained into
your mind.

That's the shortest summarization I can give you.

However, learning Bach's music is a quite different progress which I will explain in a later post.

BW,
Glenn