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Topic: Zoom Zoom  (Read 13251 times)

Offline shh its kaya

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Zoom Zoom
on: June 15, 2004, 08:56:32 AM
I'm not that brilliant at the piano... but what I do have is determination and passion to become brilliant at the piano.  Right now I'm working on Chopin's Nocturne No. 15, Op. 55 No. 1, and Beethoven's Sonata "Pathetique" Second movement.  I've had lessons for about hmm... I think 4 or 5 years, and for about the next 5 or 6 years, I've been self taught (though I was never serious about teaching myself until 2 years ago, thanks to inspiration).  I'm 17 too, incase that makes a difference.  However, I can't help but also try and learn the first and third movements to Sonata "Pathetique," but I realized how fast certain parts are played.  The difficulty in playing the quick parts so quickly in this Sonata isn't as bad as say the third movement in the "Moonlight" sonata (which to me I still can't even come close), but they are still frustratingly quick.  I have difficulty keeping up with the pace.  I practice the parts slowly, making sure I have them down, then I try to speed them up gradually, but I seem to hit a limit.  How long does it take to reach the right Zoom when playing these pieces? and is there another better way to practice?

-Kaya
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Shagdac

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Re: Zoom Zoom
Reply #1 on: June 15, 2004, 11:51:07 AM
Kaya,

I've been searching the posts for some time and I still can't find it, however I had the same problem as far as getting a piece up to speed and playing it correctly when going fast,...but I can't find it. I have it printed out at home. Bernhard had replied with some excellent advice which for me, worked great.

I use to use SLOW practice always, then would go alittle faster each time trying to increase speed. I was having trouble with a part in a piece where I had to to do jumps with my hands far apart, then together, apart , together....I could do it slow or average speed fine, but fast I would always mess up. I even tried using the metronome and increasing it little by little. The piece is The Banjo, by Gottschalk.

Bernhard had replied about (and hopefully someone will have the original post and give you the thread for it, forgive me for not quoting verbatim)...instead of using SLOW practice and going faster....start by practicing as fast as you can, don't even worry necessarily about hitting the right notes, just get your arms, shoulders, hands used to being in the right "position" at the right time. You can even close the cover on the piano and practice this method on top, since you're not concerned about hitting the correct notes at this time.

After practicing this way, then begin to practice very FAST on the keys, (yes, you will be making many mistakes) and slow down just alittle each time, until you get to where you are playing it correctly. I can almost guarantee if you start fast and slow down until you can play it, instead of starting very SLOW and speeding up until you can no longer play it....the first way you will have more speed.

The SLOW practice is good for learning the notes...and again not necessarily worrying about counting, dynamics, etc...just getting the notes down really really well. It's best if you only practice what you can "get" down in about 15-20 minutes. If it's only 1 measure, that's fine....take a break for atleast 10-15 minutes...then practice different part when you return. By the next day, you should be playing the notes to those parts really well....THEN work on the speed, by starting as fast as possible...and slowing down just alittle bit each time until you are playing it correctly. If you continue to practice at this speed, you should be able to get it up to tempo in a relatively short period of time.

Again, I apologize if I did not explain it exactly the same. Hopefully someone will have that post and can give it to you. It was remarkable at how fast this method seemed to work for me, and how several of his teaching methods improved my practicing/playing ability within a very short period of time. Good luck with your piece, hope this helps. Pathetique is beautiful.

S :)

Offline Antnee

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"The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead." -  Stravinsky

Offline janice

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Re: Zoom Zoom
Reply #3 on: June 16, 2004, 06:29:28 AM
Shagdac offered some excellent advice!  Ok, this will seem like a weird way to learn something, but bear with me.  I learned these things when i was attending Physical Therapy after I had injured my leg.  Anyway, the theory is the same.  My therapist put me on a treadmill to increase my walking speed.  Rather than slowly  increasing it one notch at a time, she set it so that I felt like I was going 100 m.p.h.!  I looked terrible!  I could barely keep up with it and my form completely fell apart!  I did this for several sessions.  However, she went back to my previous maximum speed--it actually felt slow, plus I was very much able to "look good" when I walked.

Sooo.....as Shagdac said, instead of starting slow and slowly increasing the speed, take the plunge and set the metronome at a high speed and DON'T think about wrong notes.
Co-president of the Bernhard fan club!

Spatula

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Re: Zoom Zoom
Reply #4 on: June 17, 2004, 05:16:41 AM
WOW, but then should you do this when you are somewhat familar with the piece?  LIke for example if I've never seen the score for Moonlight 3rd movement then how can I go super fast then?  I surely can't sight read that fast, lest play it.

Offline janice

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Re: Zoom Zoom
Reply #5 on: June 17, 2004, 06:42:37 AM
I would only recommend the ultra-fast practice of the 3rd movement of Moonlight Sonata only if a student a) kept messing up on certain notes, certain finger combinations, etc. or b) when they have hit a "wall", with the speed, but they still needed to go faster.


If the student was continually messing up on certain notes, you could have him practice it for a week or whatever by doing it at the ultra-fast speed.  THEN after the week or month, have him play it at the speed that he had ended up.

Oh, I forgot to add--don't focus on the accuracy of the notes when practicing it at the ultra-fast speed.  (It's torture to know that you made a mistake but aren't allowed to correct it! lol)  This "theory" (and I don't want to have to debate or defend this theory--lol) is ONLY addresses speed.  Accuracy isn't important--for now.

Again, this is JUST a theory!  But I think it's worth a try.  (It did wonders for me!!)
Co-president of the Bernhard fan club!

Spatula

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Re: Zoom Zoom
Reply #6 on: June 20, 2004, 01:45:56 AM
Somehow the ultra slow method worked for me for Fant Impromptu op 66.  The fast method helped to get over the whole rhythm issue and let me get a hang of what goes where, sans the mistakes of course.  

Ultra Fast practice = aim for increasing speed

Ultra Slow pratice = aim for increasing accuracy and memory

8)

Offline bernhard

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Re: Zoom Zoom
Reply #7 on: June 20, 2004, 02:59:02 AM
Ok, here is how to go about speed.

1.      Forget all those deeply ingrained notions about slow practice. People wax lyrical about slow practice, but usually they have no idea of what it is all about. Is slow practice important? Certainly. But important for what? There are only two reasons to do slow practice and each reason requires a different kind of slow practice.

i.      Slow practice is essential to check your memorisation of the piece. Please notice: it will not help you memorise the piece, it will simply verify if you did. Basically you play slowly, very, very slowly.  Set the metronome at 32. Then play each note every four beats of the metronome (you do not need to use a metronome, this is just to give you an idea how slow is slow). Go even slower. Stay 10 seconds on each note. You see, when you play this slow you destroy hand memory. There is no way you can trust your fingers to do the job. You must have a true, complete and exhaustive memory of all aspects of your piece if you are going to play this slow. You must know the harmony, the motif development, the form and structure, everything. So by playing this slow, not only you stop hand memory form interfering, as you give yourself enough time to recall all these different aspects of your piece.

If you find that you cannot do that – even though you can play the whole piece form memory at the correct speed – you have a problem. You will be relying completely on hand memory. That is when the black out occur, and you have of start again from the very beginning. So if you cannot play the piece form memory at a ridiculously speed, it is a sure sign that you have to work a lot, but a real lot more on your piece before venturing into performance. On the other hand, if you can play it slowly without mishaps, you can be confident that even if something goes wrong you will be able to swiftly recover.

In several threads people keep mentioning how Rachmaninoff (an din some versions Glenn Gould) have been overheard practising excruciatingly slowly. And the implication is that this is the way they develop their exquisite touch and acquired their formidable technique. Sorry. This is complete nonsense. They were simply testing their memory of the piece. No more no less. And it was not a regular thing either. They did it occasionally as a memory test. This is plain common sense. Take the Hammerklavier sonata. It takes over 40 minutes to play it at full speed. Play it at this ridiculously slow speed, and you end up using ten hours just to get through it once. A good idea if you are going to do it one single time to check that your overall memory of the piece is fine. Do it everyday as a practice routine and you will not have time not even to eat (besides I doubt very much that anyone in the universe would have the necessary powers of concentration). But humans are easily conditioned. They unquestioningly accept the most absurd propositions and will violently defend untenable positions simply because their teachers said so, or because they read in an interview that such and such famous pianist assured us all that this is what s/he did (and let us not forget that Gelnn Gould was renowned for being a prankster, so anything he said in interviews should be taken with a large pinch of salt).

ii.      The second reason to do slow practice is to make sure (by performing it slowly) that you are doing the correct movement. This is what I call slow motion practice. This is far, far faster than the slow practice discussed above  - and for which the correct movement has no relevance. This second kind of slow practice can be pretty fast, but it is always slower than the final speed of your piece. It is as slow as you can manage in order to have perfect accuracy and in your movements and not loose hand memory. This is a bit like tai chi speed. It is slow motion, but the complete movement is there. While the slow practice I referred to above is more like a series of snapshots.

This second kind of slow practice – slow motion practice – assumes and presupposes that you already  can play the piece at speed; that you have already spent a sizeable amount of time investigating different movements/fingerings and that you have already arrived at your optimal technical solution.

The purpose of slow motion practice is to make sure that as you repeat endless times your passage/piece you only ingrain the correct movements/fingerings. It is as simple as that. As the famous reply of Wilhelm Backaus to an interviewer who asked him how come he never played any wrong notes: “I only practise the right notes”.

So now, you are going to slow down while keeping the same ideal movements as when playing fast. How are you going to figure out this ideal movement? We will get to that in a moment. The important point here is that slow motion practice cannot and should not be exploratory. That is, the worst you can do when faced with a new piece is to practise it slowly. Why?

It seems reasonable that if you do not know a piece, you should approach it slowly, so that you can figure out how to play it. And what is the alternative? To play it at tempo? How are you going to do this if you do not know the piece?

So here is why, and here is how something that makes perfect sense can be utterly wrong. (After all the earth is not flat).

If you go to the music shop, buy your copy of a piece you have never seen before, rush to the piano and start to slowly work on it straight away, you will be doing all sorts of wrong movements, fingerings, etc. and because you are doing it slowly you are going to get away with it. Unfortunately, these movements, fingerings, etc. will never work at speed. But your body does not know that. It just imprints all these inappropriate actions in your motor centres and there they stay forever. And as you keep repeating time after time slowly all these wrong movements, they get more and more ingrained.

Why not use a metronome? Make sure you go up just a notch, so that the increase in speed is almost imperceptible. By the time you get to half speed, you will have repeated slowly (and getting away with it) so many times the wrong movements that by then they will have become a) habitual; b) comfortable; c) natural. But as you increase the speed, those movements will start to become inadequate. At faster speeds you will not be able to get away with them anymore. In fact when I say faster speeds, I am talking about pretty slow speeds, speeds that are nowhere near the final speed of your piece. You have successfully created a speed wall. You can practice for as many hours  as you please, you will never go beyond that limit speed that is nowhere near the final speed. Yet people insist on using and suggesting just such a methodology to acquire speed in passages. It may make sense, but it cannot produce results.

But worse is to come. Because now, if come across a good teacher who watches you play and can immediately pinpoint the wrong movements and direct you to the correct movements, you will be unable to do them, because the wrong movements have become a) habitual b) comfortable and c) natural. This means that you will be always fighting a battle you cannot possibly win. Ultimately you will never be able to play the piece. Yes, that is correct. You will have to give it up. So, go ahead, all of you who wish to learn Rach 3 with 6 months of learning the piano without a (good) teacher. Just do a lot of slow practice and you will get there! He he.

So what is the alternative?

2.      When you come back from the music shop with your new piece, approach it the same way porcupines make love: carefully, very carefully. Do not even think of rushing to the piano to sight-read it. This was understandable one hundred years ago, when sight reading was the only way to figure out what a piece sounded like. But today? Get a CD of the piece and listen to it! Then start working on the score. Divide the piece in sections. Figure out which sections are going to give you a lot of work. Rewrite the piece separating the voices (if it has several voices). Tap the rhythm, sing the several voices. Do a harmonic analysis, work on the motifs. In short know your piece back to front without ever going near a piano. Once this preliminary work has been done, then select a small section (depending on the piece this may mean just two notes) and finally go to the piano. But before playing it, rehearse in your mind how you are going to do it. Feel the fingering you have decided on in your mind before actually doing it. Then and only then, press the keys. In short, make sure you are never ever practising wrong. Like Backaus, only practise the right notes.

[given the size of this post, it will continue in the next post]
The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side. (Hunter Thompson)

Offline bernhard

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Re: Zoom Zoom
Reply #8 on: June 20, 2004, 03:19:04 AM
[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.


The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side. (Hunter Thompson)

Offline Terry-Piano

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Re: Zoom Zoom
Reply #9 on: June 20, 2004, 06:34:38 AM
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...

Offline benji

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Re: Zoom Zoom
Reply #10 on: June 20, 2004, 07:24:26 AM
Kaya, I had the same problem late last year with "Pathetique". Listen to Bernhard--I practiced HS for a week or two, put it together and was very pleased with the results.

[/useless post]

Offline bernhard

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Re: Zoom Zoom
Reply #11 on: June 20, 2004, 01:11:53 PM
Quote
Hi Bernhard..


Quote
What do you play?


I play the recorder and the piano.

Quote
You got recordings?


About 3000 CDs and about 200 videos/DVDs (at the moment of writing).

Quote
Wehre do you teach ?


At my home.

Quote
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...


Sweet talker? I hope so.

Yes, I use all my own advice. I wish my students did too.

;D ;D ;D

Best wishes,
Bernhard
The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side. (Hunter Thompson)

Offline frank_48

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Re: Zoom Zoom
Reply #12 on: October 07, 2008, 12:59:12 PM
[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. :-\

Playing Piano is the easiest thing in the world, All you have to do is have the right finger on the right key at the right moment.

Offline scottmcc

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Re: Zoom Zoom
Reply #13 on: October 07, 2008, 02:47:27 PM
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. :-\



yeah...this is a huge question I have regarding bernhard and chang's advocacy of hands separate practice.  suppose, for instance, that I have a piece completely memorized hands separate, and up to an even faster than desired tempo.  now what?  how do I manage to put my hands together, especially for pieces which require a good deal of independence of the hands?  for me, that is one of the hardest parts of learning a piece, and I currently have to slow way, way, way down the first time I try something with both hands, and then ratchet up the speed later, which seems contrary to bernhard and chang's advice.

also, incidentally, I find some pieces easier to learn hands together, especially those in which the melody isn't entirely carried by one hand.

Offline frank_48

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Re: Zoom Zoom
Reply #14 on: October 07, 2008, 03:09:39 PM
well according to chang, after sufficiant HS practice we should all just dive in hands together at the final speed.. :o


Fantaisie Impromptu Section:

"Now practice HT. You can start with either the first or second half of bar 5 where the RH comes in for the first time. The second half is probably easier because of the smaller stretch of the LH and there is no timing problem with the missing first note in the RH (for the first half), so let's start with the second half. The easiest way to learn the 3,4 timing is to do it at speed from the beginning. Don't try to slow down and figure out where each note should go, because too much of that will introduce an unevenness in your playing that may become impossible to correct later on. 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. Since almost the whole composition is made up of things like the segment you just practiced, it pays to practice this well, until you are very comfortable. To accomplish this, change the speed. Go very fast, then very slow. As you slow down, you will be able to take notice of where all the notes fit with respect to each other. You will find that fast is not necessarily difficult, and slower is not always easier. The 3,4 timing is a mathematical device Chopin used to produce the illusion of hyper-speed in this piece."

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Offline richard black

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Re: Zoom Zoom
Reply #15 on: October 07, 2008, 06:23:36 PM
FWIW, I disagree with Berhard on the subject of sight reading. Put the piece on the piano and play it as a real piece of music - both hands, up to speed, with expression, rubato, the lot. Just force yourself to do it. Why are pianists so often pathetic at sight-reading? Because they don't have to do it! Orchestral instrumentalists have to, and can. Obviously if it's rock-hard difficult it will fall apart now and then in sight reading, but battle on. It's the only way to get any good at it. Before you ask, I earn part of my living sight reading, occasionally in front of an audience and often in situations that are quite critical for other people. I'm not as good as it gets but I'm fairly handy. It can be done!
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Offline db05

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Re: Zoom Zoom
Reply #16 on: October 08, 2008, 03:18:18 PM
well according to chang, after sufficiant HS practice we should all just dive in hands together at the final speed.. :o


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.

This is similar to what bernhard calls "dropping notes":
https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,3085.msg27140.html#msg27140

I also have problems with playing HT, now I'm doing 2 things to solve the problem:

1. sight-reading ridiculously easy pieces - to get used to coordinating the 2 hands + eyes + ears while playing music.

2. on pieces I'm learning, trying HT as soon as possible - remember it's not only about coordinating the 2 hands but also the hearing the sound (I do not always have the recordings, and even if I do it's hard to imagine sometimes how things come together). But I go back and forth HS and HT. If we get up to speed HS by learning it in chunks, why not learn HT in smaller chunks? That's my idea. So how I currently do it is learn a few bars with one hand, learn the corresponding notes on the other hand, then divide it even further and learn those little bits HT. Then repeat.

Great way to annoy people  :P but I have avoided criticism by doing this privately. All they know is that somehow I manage to learn a piece in chunks as I am not very good at sight-reading (and I hate butchering nice pieces that way).
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Offline sephethus

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Re: Zoom Zoom
Reply #17 on: May 23, 2011, 03:00:48 PM
What if the part played at a high speed are only partially arpeggiated but mostly scales?

For instance the last quarter of Bach's Prelude no. 2 in C minor.
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