crawling the hand from chord to chord

[timothy42b]

Maybe you can help me think of this the right way.

I have a couple of things I play that need quick precise left hand chord changes.  One is the Doxology.  It sounds simple, but in my arrangement the chord changes every beat, and if I blow one then I'm messed up for several. 

I would like to just lift the left hand, quick and relaxed, and have it fall precisely on the next chord.  But this doesn't seem to work at speed.  What seems to work is to sort of crawl the hand, keeping contact with a common key and swapping fingers.  Like, from E minor to C major root position, L3 starts on G.  It pushes down to move the hand while the thumb joins it, then the hand crawls over. 

What do you think, is this the safer approach, or just a limiting one? 

[richy321]

I assume you are playing the piano for church, to accompany congregational singing.  Finger substitution (changing fingers while pressing down on the keys) is normal for organ playing in order to get a legato, but even then, at brisk tempos it may not be practical or desirable:  one just lifts all fingers and plunks down on the next chord as smoothly as possible.   On the piano non-legato playing is more the rule; for one thing, to be heard over the singing, one wants a brilliant attack and you can't get that playing legato.  The sustain pedal is your best friend in church playing:  Quickly raise and lower the pedal for each chord. 

[timothy42b]

That is a good point.  The legato-ness of the playing has an effect on how you move fingers that I did not consider, and it is different between piano and organ.  Have to think about this a bit. 

[ramseytheii]

Since the Doxology comes every Sunday, you really should work out an effective and pianistic fingering for the left hand chords, and not just hope they come out right!  Most church hymns, I dont know what you are using for the Doxology but I am thinking of the Old Hundredth, are written in clear four part voice writing, which makes it easy for fingering.  A lot of contemporary church music writers are more pop oriented, and dont have any experience or training in making logical piano music, and just write successions of chords.  Thats ok too, but you cant play one style as if it were the other.  Anything written in stricter four part harmony has to be worked out with fingering much more carefully.  And you may find that playing a succession of these kind of chords is much more pianistic then just playing a bunch of chords that are all the same, just transposed, which C.P.E. Bach complained about and called "strumming the piano".

Walter Ramsey

[lostinidlewonder]

Timothy i think it is a matter of practice, hold your chords as long as you want and only move when you know where to go, then limit the time that you hold the chords until you get it to tempo. Unfortunately there is no silver bullet except practice, but do not practice uncontrollably.

Always be in control of what you do even when you practice, we can never be satisfied if we haphazardly poke at notes, we can't hope we learn something from that very fast. Control your pausing and make your movement to new chords fast, just as fast as you would if you where performing the piece.

The difference when we practice is the controlled pausing, where you can consciously   think about what you need to do next (while still holding the fingers on previous position), but we make the movement to where we have to move at the same speed as if we where performing the piece. This trains our muscular memory, so we can ditch the conscious realisation of the notes and play it by feel, but first we must think of the notes and train that automated movement with controlled pausing.

[timothy42b]

Thanks for the suggestions.  I do strum, but am working to be able to do more than that.  And I have worked out fingerings, though I would say this is far from easy with wide four part writing.  My probably ignorant decision on fingering hymns is not to look for the most optimum possible, but look for a standard type most likely to work when sightreading.  So if I have a possible 1-3, 2-4, 3-5 series, I'll play it 1-3, 1-3, 1-3. 

On further reflection, I have the most problem playing cold.  The Doxology and last hymn come after sitting for a long period, and I stumble on the first verse.  After I get moving I'm better.  So it would seem what I have to practice is the cold start.