Chasing your fingers

[justliam]

Hey people, I've just started looking at a Mozart Sonata.  I've been playing Debussy and Chopin for a long time and the only classical stuff I've down for a while has been quite simple Mozart etc.  Anywho, when doing all the typical Mozartian runs up and down the scales I notice occassionally my fingers are sometimes just falling rather then me strictly controlling them.  So the scale becomes uneven and faster in certain parts, an uneven scales in Mozart is a bit like just getting up and sitting on the keyboard halfway through.  It happens also going up largely in areas with F#G#A on the 3rd.4th and 5th fingers and my pinky just drops a snag too early.  Any thoughts or excercises to help? or is it just a case of practise them over and over really slowly, drilling it in? Thanks

[douxtigress]

Hey people, I've just started looking at a Mozart Sonata.  I've been playing Debussy and Chopin for a long time and the only classical stuff I've down for a while has been quite simple Mozart etc.  Anywho, when doing all the typical Mozartian runs up and down the scales I notice occassionally my fingers are sometimes just falling rather then me strictly controlling them.  So the scale becomes uneven and faster in certain parts, an uneven scales in Mozart is a bit like just getting up and sitting on the keyboard halfway through.  It happens also going up largely in areas with F#G#A on the 3rd.4th and 5th fingers and my pinky just drops a snag too early.  Any thoughts or excercises to help? or is it just a case of practise them over and over really slowly, drilling it in? Thanks

I've had this similar issue on certain Mozart pieces... I found that practicing the particular scale that is bothering you, in groups is a huge help. For example, practice it first in triplets so it's sets of 3 notes all throughout the scale (just like, C-D-E, F-G-A, -B-C-D etc.), or groups of 4 notes at a time. Develop a steady rhythm, not too fast, and keep practicing until you do sets of just 2 notes through the scale and slowly get up to tempo. I'm practicing this type of exercise with a piece right now that I was struggling with and it's really helping.... first to get my notes actually correct, but to strengthen the notes because I'm doing them in groups rather than just practice running up and down the scale a million times. Then, once I've got the hang of the notes, it's much easier for me to accomplish the scale. I hope you understand, and this helps somewhat. 

[cloches_de_geneve]

It happens also going up largely in areas with F#G#A on the 3rd.4th and 5th fingers and my pinky just drops a snag too early.  Any thoughts or excercises to help? or is it just a case of practise them over and over really slowly, drilling it in? Thanks

Funny, I have the same problem, in Schubert passage work, F# G# A on 3rd 4th and 5th is fragile, sometimes ok, but more often not even because of a "precoscious" 5th. Wish there was an excercise to iron out this annoying symptom. Any ideas??

[crazy for ivan moravec]

in slow practice, try counting out loud, like 12341234... for 16th notes, or 123123... for triplets. sometimes it takes your own self to tell you where and how steady you are. i dont mean to say that metronome practice is not impt, it has its own benfits. but working on your own innate pulse, you have to count, and out loud. this helps me a lot.

try it, hope it'll work for you as well.

[hartmut]

usually, when you have problems like that it's an issue of unequally developped fingers.
Your 5th is a little weaker than the others so it's difficult to move it with the same power even if the command of your brain tells it to strike well. You can improve that by emphasizing differently each time, for example:
the first time you emphasize every 2nd note of your passage. After 15-20 repetitions you begin to emphasize every 3rd note and so on. So you end up with having emphasized every note and every finger. This is also a good analysis method when you don't know which movement it is exactly which desturbes you. When you try to emphasize a finger which wasn't really controlled you'll realise it very easily with this exercise!

Of course, try different speeds and volumes to be sure that you got it

[cloches_de_geneve]

Thanks a lot for the ideas; will try them out and see where it takes me!

[mikey6]

Hey people, I've just started looking at a Mozart Sonata.  I've been playing Debussy and Chopin for a long time and the only classical stuff I've down for a while has been quite simple Mozart etc.  Anywho, when doing all the typical Mozartian runs up and down the scales I notice occassionally my fingers are sometimes just falling rather then me strictly controlling them.  So the scale becomes uneven and faster in certain parts, an uneven scales in Mozart is a bit like just getting up and sitting on the keyboard halfway through.  It happens also going up largely in areas with F#G#A on the 3rd.4th and 5th fingers and my pinky just drops a snag too early.  Any thoughts or excercises to help? or is it just a case of practise them over and over really slowly, drilling it in? Thanks

Welcome to the difficulty of Mozart where even a somple scale a 2 year old can play becomes tricky

[crazy for ivan moravec]

Welcome to the difficulty of Mozart where even a somple scale a 2 year old can play becomes tricky

so true! but how come? im confused...

[justliam]

I guess it's because it's simple it's difficult.  Simple things need to be perfect.  You can play some really hard techincal piece with loads of big chords and the odd bung note doesn't really matter a whole.  But when it's something like Mozart and something as simple as a scale, it really needs to be perfect, it's a bit like cooking I guess

[anda]

i believe the "polichinelle secret" to playing an even fast scale is finger articulation combined with arm drag. so: practice in slow tempo over-articulating (lift each finger as high as you can), practice in fast tempo focusing also on the arm (and esp the elbow) being constantly ahead of the hand on direction. also, practicing in rhythmic formulas can help (double dotted 8th + 32nd, and 32nd + 8th..). and focus not only on rhythmic eveness, but also on sound (dynamic) eveness.

as for particular mozart scales - maybe eveness is not the biggest problem. imho (and for me, at least), the biggest problem is obtaining that crystal-clear sound, getting that scale to sound like a perfect pearl string...

best luck