playing glissando in black keys

[RealPianist]

How is the best way to play the glissando in black keys, not hurting our finger, and it can sound smooth??
What should we do??
Any suggestion appreciate!

[chromatickler]

a masterclass with hamelin

[pita bread]

Iron Thumb

[anda]

i use my fist - i can't do it with fingers.

[Siberian Husky]

i toow ould use a fist like hand

[quantum]

Open palm of the hand, or maybe the forearm or elbow. 

[shasta]

What piece, and are you talking LH or RH, up or down?

[Bouter Boogie]

What piece, and are you talking LH or RH, up or down?

Good question.. I'd go for the palm of the hand, I guess..

[amanfang]

I played a piece with one going up and one going down.  The one going up I used my RH back of the hand/fingertips.  It wasn't something I could practice much because it killed after doing it two or three times.  The one going down I did the same, and if I remember correctly it was an overlapping gliss, so for part I used my finger pads on one hand and the back of the hand for the other part.  It was the lower part so I usually got blisters on the joint if I played it too much.  Can you just not practice it much once you get the motion down?

[pizno]

One pianist kept his wallet on the side of the piano to use for black key glissandos!

[lostinidlewonder]

Depends on the piano. If you are unfortunate enough to have a piano with sharp edges to the black keys you should perhaps quickly tie some cloth to your hand do the gliss then throw the cloth off. Although that stunt would be impressive for an audience to see given that you didn't dirupt the music, it is not really something you would want to practice.

The way I personally do it is like this. If we are using the RH glissing DOWN the black keys open the hand and use 34 to depress the notes and 2 to guide the gliss. What I mean is that the 2 is used to slightly depress the black notes that are to come. This means that the 2nd finger sorta pushes all the black keys down slightly so that the sliding 34 has a lighter touch to the glide. The worst thing to do in glissando is to press down too hard.

I had to come up with these things because of the Fireworks Prelude Bk2 No12 from Debussy. He has also a horrible gliss at the end black and white notes together, which you have to use 1 in the RH to play the white notes and 2 in the RH to play the black.

[arensky]

There are two ways.
1. Brush your fingers gently up and down the black keys, controlling the dynamics with the
    appropriate arm weight for the passage in question.

2. This one is harder, and requires hard fingernails, but will provide more accuracy and clarity. Line up your fingernails and put your fingers together very fimly, to make one big fingernail. Position your hand so that the knuckles are pointing towards the fallboard, letting only the big fingernail have contact with the black keys. Keep the fingertips firmly together, and your wrist loose; now move up and down, keeping your hand straight. It's easy to demonstrate but hard to describe; hope this works for you, don't hurt yourself!   

[march05]

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