How to speed up ? Please help!

[Garfield]

Hello !

Even if the subject of this topic might be obvious, I'll explain my problem in details :

I've found a quite effective way of practicing a piece to learn it (divide it in segments, learn all them slowly, then connect them) that leads me, when I've connected all the segments and that I can play the piece, to a slow play of the piece that works decently (in general, about half-speed).

But this is when I need to speed up that problems occurs : I speed up gradually with the metronome but when I reach a certain speed (less than the final speed), it's more and more difficult to increase the tempo, not to say barely impossible !
I've seen that this method is not the best because the motions are not the same when you play slow than when you play fast, and also that you can reach speed walls.

Well, so this is my question : what is YOUR way of speeding-up a piece once you know to play it slow decently, that works WELL for all pieces, a true method for speeding-up, in fact ?

Thank you very much for your answers, because this problem is so important for me at the moment I'd be very very happy if you give me your advises and methods.

Have a nice day ! (and sorry for my english) 

[erik-]

I guess there are many possible techniques and ways of practising that can answer your question. Not everybody agrees on the same techniques etc... So I can just share with you the way I work by describing a few principles:

- The most important I think is to relax. I always try to find the motion that make me feel comfortable and relaxed, that doesn't cause pain. Of course this is the most difficult part and I don't expect to find the relaxed motion right away. I discussed about this with a friend who practice martial art at quite high level, and he told me that you can actually achieve relaxation only after going through some pain or some stress, because only then you can understand what a relaxation state feels like. Well it's difficult to explain in words ... but what I mean is that sometimes, for very difficult motions, you have to go through some stress first before you can find the relaxed way, but you MUST always stop before it becomes painful. Do not be tempted to repeat indefinitely the motion despite pain until you can play it. Experiment other motions etc.

- Another way of finding the relaxed motion I use is the following, and this is a systematic way of practicing. I practice the whole piece by playing it "by chords", that is I look for the longest sequence of consecutive notes that I can play together, in a chord.  I practice the chord until it becomes even etc. Once the chord is mastered, I try to play the notes of the chord normally, as fast as I can using a wrist and hand motion but not using finger motions. This is difficult to explain ... For example, if you have to play on the right hand CDEFG, then first  I wouldn't try to articulate each finger, but I would try to drop the whole hand, but I tilt the hand a little bit so that the first finger would land first on the keyboard, followed by the second finger ... For very difficult passages, I would work like this but with chords of 2 notes, and I work the notes in a segment 2 by 2. Then when I can play the 2 first notes in a passage very fast, I add a third note to the sequence ...
It have noticed, but I may be wrong, that to achievee relaxation, most of the time, the hand should be parallel to the keyboard when it hits a key.
In this first process, I teach my hand all the positions it will have on the keyboard and the motions to go from one position to another, and I focus on having those motions as minimal as possible not to waste enegy and time.

- Then I practice slowly by playing the notes staccato, or very detached, and trying to reproduce the same motions as before. When doing this, I use different rythms, intensities and accents etc.

That's roughly how I practice. It's difficult to explain everything in words, and there are lots of details etc. and other techniques that would take too much time to describe here.

Hope it will give you ideas.

[Garfield]

I think I understand what you mean, but I don't understand why, in fact.
You tell me that you first play the most possible keys as a chord until you've mastered the whole thing by doing this, and then, and this is the point I do not understand, you tilt a bit the hand to play the notes in succession as fast as possible.
I really do not understand why one should bother with tilting the hand to play as fast as possible, because when speeding up it's impossible to think about how to tilt the hand to be able to play the notes in succession, etc, because you don't have time to think about that.

To summarize, the problem is that I don't see why we should do these parallel set exercises (I guess that's what you're talking about), and doing this for the whole piece : first I don't know if it's efficient and it'll surely take forever, if you do this with all the notes of the piece!
The point is that I tried them some time ago, and that it took me 10 minutes to play a 6 notes passage (with right hand) at a fast speed, and the next day I wasn't able to remake it !

Maybe I'm not doing this well, that's very possible!

[erik-]

I didn't know it was called "paralel set" exercices.
My teacher just told me to work like that, by chords. And I found out that it worked quite fine.

But now when I try to understand why I should work like that, I THINK, but I may be mistaken, that the idea is when playing fast passages, you can't play note by note, and spend time thinking what is the next note I'm going to play after this one, as you said. Instead you think in term of group of notes. And when the hand is ideally placed on the keyboard to attack the chord, then it's almost as if the fingers are already in place to hit the right keys, so you don't really have to think, you just have to "lower" the hand, or "push" the hand down, I don't know how to describe this motion, to play all the notes very fast ...

[Garfield]

Well, I do understand better now, and this method seems truly interesting.

First, tell me if I understood well your method : I have to regroup the most notes that are played in succession, to first play them as a chord, and then to position the hand so that you can play them in succession moving the fingers the less possible.

Secondly, I have some questions :

1) This method can be very fast for scales and arpeggios (because the notes are in one direction, ascending or descending) but, it often (not to say very very often !!) appears that, in most of the pieces, notes can be played only as a two-notes chord, because the third one cannot be played in succession.
In this case, should I practice everytime by two-notes chord ?
The problem is that, if I do this, it'll take forever, don't you think ?
An also, if the second note is a chord, should I practice the same way that I did before (when it only was notes) ?

2) Can you give me practical examples (refering to a piece that you worked on, for example) to let me understand well your method, if that doesn't annoy you too much   ? (if there are some difficulties in these examples, it would be even better  )

Thank you !  

[RiskyP]

Would this work for scales too?! I have no problem playing scales evenly at 216BPM when I play each note at a tick of the metronome, but when I try to play 4 16th notes for every tick of the metronome things get ugly as soon as I hit around 60BPM (approx. 240BPM with each note played on a tick of the metronome). I too have the feeling that notes should be grouped at this speed, but it is so damn hard move the hand over the thumb at this speed.

Basically, my question is, has anyone successfully used this method to speed up scales?  

[eddie92099]

One of the biggest problems with slow practice is that the fingers lift too high above the keys; much higher than they would if the piece were to played at the correct tempo. Therefore, when practising slowly it is very important to keep the fingers low, so that when you speed up there is no fundamental difference in your action.
Hope this helps,
Ed

[Septimus314]

I'm pretty much a beginner here, especially in comparison to some of those that frequent this board, but through my experience I'll learn an entire peice at a pace that I can play comfortably.  Practice with that until you are extremely comfortable playing.  Then if you want, gradually practice playing faster and it shouldn't be too difficult.  If you are so comfortable playing it at one pace, why would it be difficult to quicken it up a bit?  Also I usually have the peice memorized when I try this so I don't have to worry about sight reading, but I'm not sure how others work.  Those are just my two cents.