Hi Bernhard..
What do you play?
You got recordings?
Wehre do you teach ?
Your advice is always good to hear...but are you just a sweet talker??Or do you actually use all the advice you write down...
[continued form the previous post]Now for speed.3. You will never be able to play with both hands together as fast as you can play with hands separate. So if your aim is to increase speed, it is useless to do so with hands together. This is what happens if you try to work on speed with HT. Let us assume that your weaker hand is the left. This means that as you try to push the speed, the LH will really be finding hard to keep up. Most likely it will be tensing, doing the wrong movements and generally f***ing up. Most likely, if you persist you will get an injury. Meanwhile, at the same speed that the LH is falling apart, the RH is very comfortable. In fact it is not even challenging. So the LH is getting punished, but the RH is not even getting a work out. Moreover, because you are working on both hands at the same time, you cannot really pay proper attention to either. This means that most of your movements will be subconscious. And if you have been ingraining the wrong movements, these are the ones you will be repeating without being aware that you are doing so. Even worse, HT practise is what ultimately creates hand memory, so all these inappropriate movements will be with you for life. So, if your aim is speed, you must work with separate hands. Here is the rule. Your final speed HT will be ultimately be defined by the final speed you can achieve with your weakest hand, and it will be around 70%. So if you want to play a scale run with hands together at MM – 120, you must practise so that your LH can do it at MM - 172. Maybe you cannot do that, maybe you have a physical limitation and all you can get the LH to do is MM = 150 (even though the RH may be able to do MM= 192). If that is the case, when you join hands you will never be able to go faster than MM = 105 (70% of 150). The consequence of the above is simple. You can only increase HT speed by increasing your speed limits on HS. Once you can do that, you can join hands straight away at the final speed. I will repeat this last statement in case it has escaped you: Once you achieve your speed aim with hands separate, you do not need to practise hands together: you can simply join hands at the final speed.4. Now how do you get each hand to perform at top speed? Not by doing it slowly. Instead you must start at the fastest you can manage. And this is together. Since Spatula has asked about the 3rd movement of the Moonlight a couple of posts above, I will use the first few bars as an example.Let us consider bars 1 - 2 (right hand). We have the arpeggio of C# minor ascending over over three octaves and going through all the inversions. This make for a total of seven arpeggios, climaxing on two chords (C#m, 2nd inversion). Disregard the grouping of the semiquavers, and instead group them according to the arpeggios, ie, instead of G#C#E – G#C#EG#, etc., group the notes as G#C#EG# - C#EG#C#. This regrouping is essential. Do you understand why? Having regrouped the notes in this fashion, you should now have seven arpeggios, the last one with only three notes, the others with four notes. Number them 1 – 7 (this will come in handy later).Now instead of playing these arpeggios one note after the other, play them as chords. By playing the notes together you are already at the fastest possible speed, since nothing is faster than together! The only difficulty you will encounter at this stage is to accurately displace your hand from chord to chord.Once you can do this comfortably break these chords into arpeggios, by “wiggling” your hands (ask your teacher to show you the movement, or experiment at the piano until you get it). As you go from “chord” to “arpeggio” you are actually slowing down, and yet at the end, when playing the passage as originally written you are far, far faster than the final tempo for this movement. So you must keep slowing it down until you get to the final speed. This is the gist of it. Now you must do this procedure (start with a full chord and keep breaking it until you arrive at the passage as originally written), for the whole passage you have chosen to work on, as well as for the other hand, and finally with hands together. 5. Acquiring unbelievable speed within the notes of each of the seven arpeggios is easy enough: just apply the chord procedure above. Moving from arpeggio to arpeggio is the real difficulty. The accurate lateral displacement of the hand to the new position is what needs extra practice. How fast and accurately you will be able to do this lateral displacement will be the single factor limiting your speed. It is as simple as that: you will play this passage as fast as you can accurately displace your hand between arpeggios. So practise just the two notes in between arpeggios to start with: G#-C#; C#-E; E-G#; G#C#; C#E; E-G#. Then do the whole arpeggios as chords, and finally break the chords back into arpeggios. Then slow down the speed of the arpeggio to match the fastest speed you can displace the hands between arpeggios. As you do so, observe (and experiment) to find the most efficient movement to negotiate this passage. To make sure you are even in tempo, use rhythm variations. To develop evenness in tone, use accent variations. When you are confident that you have the correct movement, and have ingrained the notes, the fingerings and the overall movement, do the repeated group routine I have described several times already.6. This means playing arpeggios 1 to 7 one at a time several times, until you develop the facility to do them comfortably at speed. Then do pairs of them: 12 – 23 – 34 – 45 – 56 – 67. Notice the overlap. Now do three groups: 123- 234 – 345 – 456 – 567. Again notice the extensive overlapping. Keep increasing the groups: 1234 – 2345 – 3456 – 4567. Keep doing this until you can do the 7 arpeggios in sequence at top speed. By the time you get to the full two –bar passage, you will be amazed how your fingers are flying. And yet this whole procedure should take no more than 15 – 20 minutes.7. Follow the same procedure with the left hand (in fact you should alternate RH and LH from the very beginning).8. Finally join hands, following the same procedures outlined above. And extend this process to the whole piece, always working inn manageable sections of 2 – 3 bars.Now repeat. Speed often increases just as a consequence of the familiarity that comes from endless repetitions.Finally remember that speed is really an illusion. If you can make each note sound clearly, the ear of the listener gets overloaded with information and this is perceived as speed, even though you may be playing at quite a slow tempo. So pay attention to the details and the speed will take care of itself.Best wishes, Bernhard.
im well aware this thread is ancient and that it is highly unlikley bernhard will reply, so this is for anyone else who can answer this question, lets say we do practice pieces in the way as bernhard mentioned, for simplicities sake we'll say moonlight 3rd movement. some one spends all that time practicing HS and at the end the pianist is very capable at playing it at proper tempo, because we played in chords, then arpeggio's etc, and how much bernhard emphisised on NOT playing slowly, what is one to do when actually trying to play with both hands? are we just meant to play HT at full speed for the first time? surley not.. or does joining hands after mastering them seperate make everything easier? i am somewhat confused.
well according to chang, after sufficiant HS practice we should all just dive in hands together at the final speed.. Fantaisie Impromptu Section:Here we use the "cycling" method -- see "Cycling" in section III.2. First, cycle the six notes of the LH continually, without stopping. Then switch hands and do the same for the eight notes of the RH, at the same (final) tempo as you did for the LH. Next cycle only the LH several times, and then let the RH join in. Initially, you only need to match the first notes accurately; don't worry if the others aren't quite right. In a few tries, you should be able to play HT fairly well. If not, stop and start all over again, cycling HS.