fast passage---EXACTLY how to practice?

[piani0player]

hi everyone
    :'(After spending a lot of time practising all this fast  passage in the Mozarts sonata ,Bachs prelude and fuge and the apperggios passage at the end of the Chopin etudes op25 no.1. i still struggle to play them up to speed evenly and equal in tone quality.could someone just tell me EXACTLY how they practice fast passage??
i think i still dont know how to practice fast passage.

     This is how i practice fast passage----play the passage with the m.m. at a comfortable tempo with different rhythm than gradually increase the speed and
keep using the m.m. until its up to speed,sometime i can play them well but the next day it all become uneven and can't play up to speed.what wrong?

     For the chopin etude op25 no.1 , i still can't play the last apperggios run up to m.m. =104 per beat . i can only play it at about m.m. = 60-70 per beat?how to practise them correctly?
 thanks for your help

[allchopin]

perhaps your fingering is not optimized ( i know theres not many ways to finger arpeggios).  I dont konw those first songs but i don know the etude #1.
with the right hand go:
1 2 3 1 2 3 5 3 2 1 3 2 repeat
with left:
5 3 2 1 3 2 1 2 3 1 2 3 repeat
This is the easiest way i know how, but then i have big hands  
the problem probably is that you just hadnt warmed up yet- everyone sucks before they warmup.

[Ktari]

Also, don't be discouraged when you finally work them up to speed one day and then loose all the evenness and speed the next, that's often how that technique works, BUT every day, you retain a little more. Say, on a scale of 1-10 is how good it is? you start at 1, you practice rhythms up to 9, the next day you're down again at 2 or 3... it's still an improvement, and you just have to keep going and be persistent ^^

*wanders off to go strangle Prokofief* (can you tell this is from experience?) DIE METRONOME!!!

[R.Q.]

Which Mozart Sonata and Bach Prelude and Fugue are you having trouble with? There are, of course, different techniques with different pieces and you may not be using the best one for your particular pieces. I can look them up since I've played all Bach's prelude fugue business and most of Mozart's Sonatas.

Also when I practice Fast Pieces I don't, as you said, start in a comfortable tempo - I stay in one. If you're uncomfortable, your going too fast. If you always play as fast as you can and still be comfortable you will eventually come out where you want!

~ Young Virtuoso  

[piani0player]

thanks to you all.

youngvirtuoso:
    The prelude and fuge is BK2 no.20 in A minor and
the sonata is in C major K330 mainly the first movement
and i also have some troble with the last trills at the end of the 1st movement.

thank you

[jeff]

try practising those passages in different rhythms. like dotted rythms. and once you use one particular rhythm, use the inverse of that rhythm for the same passage.

[Ktari]

Just wanting to share a theory that I've been accidentally (and guiltily) trying out for the past, oh, 8 years...

OK so most people say, slow practice, slow practice, and then you can suddenly go fast right? don't try to go fast before lots of slow practice or you'll train your fingers to make mistakes? Weeeelll there's some fancy dude that published something saying you just have to go for it fast, and then hammer out the problems, principle behind it is, even if you do a lot of slow practice, you're not teaching your muscles to do it fast. Anyway, if you're feeling like a daredevil, try it. God (or my teacher) knows I've been doing it for years... (and finally slowing down to slow practice)

[la_carrenio2003]

For working on a passage you have, by first, to locate the exact source of trouble -sorry that my grammar is not the appropriate, I'm spanish speaking- and by second, to divide in parts the impulse. I'll explain better. In your etude, the problem of playing the arpeggios fast is passing through the 1st finger right. The point of trouble,i.e, in the r.h. when you're going up is the fingering 3 - 1 - 2 (or 4 - 1 - 2, as you like it). You have to repeat this quickly and lightly MANY times DOING BACK AND FORWARD: 3-1-2-1-3-1-2... WATCHING CAREFULLY  THAT THE ELBOW IS IN THE RIGHT POSITION -SLIGHTLY HIGH AND OUT- in a way the hand is not VISIBLE shaking up and down or left and right, only the light  movement of the fingers. After that, you'll take more notes above and down: 2-3-1-2-3 -or 2-4-1-2-4, depends on what fingers are you using-. You have to do this many times, as much as you need to feel warm and confortable. The next step is try fast a part of the arpeggio, i.e in the r.h c-es-as-c-es-as and  add gradually the rest, because you need to accustom to the amount of initial impulse you will use, that's the key of playing a fast passage but it doesn't come by itself sometimes, you have to build it.

I hope that I was understandable, but it works, I learned this etude a long time ago this way and it was ready in 2 months practicing it 3 hours a day and I play it fast and clean, so you can trust me in this.

Let me know if it worked for you.

[piani0player]

thanks to you all

la_carrenio2003:
this sounds like a good way to practice.
i will try practice like that tonight.but how fast should i aim for .also, when practicing should i try to play them as soft as possible to ppp? how do i increase speed EXACTLY?, this is how i increase speed when practicing that passage----play the passage at 6notes per tick with a m.m. = 60 than gradually increase the speed when i feel comfortable but i still couldn't get to m.m=104(the full speed) when i get to about 80-90 with the m.m. my fingers start feeling tense and uncomfortable.is there something wrong with practicing like that?
thank you very much

[erik-]

As Ktari mentionned, I think that for fast passages, starting with slow practice with a metronom and increasing the speed gradually is not such a good idea. You will end up aquring the speed all right, but it might be a very long and not really useful process.
As the matter of fact, it seems to me that in slow playing, you don't have the same movements than in fast playing. So you may start by learning movements that you will have to unlearn when speeding up because different movements are required to play fast. And if you cannot unlearn them, then you hit a speed wall.
Another way of practicing fast passages is to start playing it as fast as possible, or at the final speed, making sure that your muscles are completely relaxed. Memorize the movements involved, and practice slowly but with the same movements you memorized when you played or tried to play fast.

[la_carrenio2003]

I ABSOLUTELY agree with Erik's explanation except for the last paragraph: for playing fast you have to practice AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. This means at the tempo you have control,relax and don't get tired. When I'm trying to play faster I don't use the metronom: I play as fast as I can, I work on the whole passage -not in ppp, maybe in some mf in the beginning- and after I feel the work done I use the metronom to check what speed I achieved. But in the same day is impossible to pass from one tempo to the next:you have to give your muscles and brain time to get used to the new tempo, it's a natural process. You can work this way, very intensively,for about 2 weeks and will be a moment when you just can't play faster. In that moment I DON'T PLAY the piece for a couple of days, giving time to the nature. After the brief break, you will play even faster. Give time to every process. After the tempo is achieved you can work on playing more piano, don't work on 2 difficulties at the same time. WATCH OUT with getting tired: maybe you're playing with the fingers isolate -separate-from the rest of the arm,or the elbows are too near from the body. Check the relax of the hand and the arm:if you can feel the palm of the hand and  the armpit while playing, you're relaxed. If you're playing relaxed, the more you play the best you feel. If you get tired, STOP, WAIT A COUPLE OF MINUTES and you can recover the state of relaxing letting the whole arm falls at the side,as a dead weight.Memorize the feeling and put the hand back on the keyboard keeping the sensation in mind. But NEVER EVER keep playing if you feel the hand unconfortable. Remember ALWAYS warming up well before you start with the etude, never work on it with cold hands.