Quick Octaves?

[steve jones]

Is it recommended to play fast octaves from the arm or the wrist?

By this I mean, is the technique mainly using the wrist up and down quickly, or is it more the arm in control?

I can get better speed using the wrist, but this causes way more tension and I cant keep it up for long. Something tells me there is a major fly in my ointments!

Cheers guys,

SJ

[kriskicksass]

Wrist octaves and arm/shoulder octaves serve two entirely different purposes. Light, detached octaves come from the wrists, and heavy, legato octaves come from the arms (and fingers, though a lot of pianists don't have the luxury of a wide enough span).
As for speed, think of octaves horizontally, not vertically. If you think of playing along the keys rather than into them you'll be able to pull of much faster, more legato octaves. And remember, there are no truly legato octaves, so you'll have to play around with the horizontal idea until you can create the desired effect.

[steve jones]

Cool, thanks for the advice!

Just to clarify, what do you mean by using the fingers aswell as the wrist and arm? Do you mean 'pinch' down using 1-5, 1-4 or 1-3 (depending on the particular notes)?

Cheers,

SJ

[ryan2189]

Cool, thanks for the advice!

Just to clarify, what do you mean by using the fingers aswell as the wrist and arm? Do you mean 'pinch' down using 1-5, 1-4 or 1-3 (depending on the particular notes)?

Cheers,

SJ

I think that he means that if you have a wide enough hand span (say maybe a comfortable 10th) then you would be able to curve you fingers enough on an octave to allow them to independently give power

[steve jones]

Ah, got you.

Yeah, I can do that quite comfortably. Infact, I was experimenting with something similar just the other day, by trying to almost 'pinch' the whites. Not great on its own, but if you combine it with arm and wrist movement it can be useful.

SJ

[ted]

I almost always use a mixture of third, fourth and fifth fingers for any sort of octaves. Obviously, the fourth and more so the third will usually be on the blacks, but not always. Doing this usually allows me to play very rapid octaves with no leaps greater than around a major third between any consecutive pair. Once bigger gaps come into the picture I still use third and fourth but split the passage up into little groups in such a way as to minimise the number of unconnected "bounces" I have to do. It may involve quite pronounced lateral wrist swivels to get the right sensation, very hard to describe in words. However, for me this is much less tiring than than pure wrist or arm movement, which I'm not very good at. Of course this could just be because I have never been trained properly and don't know any better.

For the octave basses in ragtime, stride and swing I just let my unconscious decide, except where rapid groups of consecutive octaves occur. As rhythmic effect is considerably more critical in this type of music than in classical I usually think the latter situation out pretty carefully in advance.

[steve jones]

Actually, the 1-3 fingering is quite good on some black octaves. I hadnt tried it until recently, but it does makes matters easier in some passages.

For example, to play C, Db, Eb, F using the fingering 1-5, 1-4, 1-3, 1-5 seems pretty efficient.

SJ

[jas]

I wish my hands would stretch that far... My octaves are pretty much just reckless hand-throwing, especially in the left hand.

[steve jones]

Really? My LH octaves are far better than my RH!

Maybe we should get together and between us we might just manage the Op25 No10? 

SJ

[jas]

Good idea. I think it's pretty safe to say that's the only way I'll ever manage to play that one!