student struggling w/ 3rds

[wenat]

One of my students struggles with third passages and I have used many different practice methods, but still with only some success.  Any practice suggestions or excercises to help?? Cheers!

[hyrst]

Hi,
There are lots of issues possible and it is difficult to make suggestions wihtout knowing more.  The issues can be mental - believing it to be difficult, or not separating / making independent the fingers.  It could be tension in the wrist or not sensing the weight and ease in the arm.  It could be fearing the apparent complexity of the fingering patterns.  Not knowing which part of the pattern carries the melody and needs to be brought out more.  Other things also.

My suggestion would be to look at the basics.  Slow down and separate each group of 3rds.  Practice the arm weight drop and wrist relaxation.  Strike each 3rd in loose wrist staccato.  Centre over the next 3rds and then do the same with these.  Then move onto detached 3rds without raising and dropping the wrist so much.  Try to keep the same relaxation.  The balance needs to be found between strong fingers and relaxed wrist. 

I think it is probably a more fundamental technique issue than 3rds alone - but I say this with no knowledge of the actual situation.  Is there any more description you could give?

[gerryjay]

give the chopin etude to him...



being a bit serious, thirds are the most complex technical challenge to me. so, i'd like to ask you a couple of questions, to understand better yours pupil situation:
- how much experience does s/he have? how many time of study, what pieces s/he are in?
- could you provide an example of a specific passage where s/he is in trouble? there are many different situations (as hyrst started to describe), and so, many solutions.

best!

[romagister]

In my struggling student experience:
- Thirds shifted with whole hand, keeping fingering (say 1-3) are easy, but a bit of pause/staccato or using lateral sliding on keyboard (matters more with piano keyboard than 'organ').
- The white-black-and-back shifts in a harder key signature (say E Major, 4#) are still logically easy to deduce if SLOW but feel completely unpredictable to finger-brain at a 'piece speed'. Don't know a solution, just way more rote practice ?
- The pro legato technique of 1-3, 2-4, 3-5-put-1-over-while-holding-5, 2-4... feels really hard to coordinate. It was good that I saw it well demonstrated, still far from internalizing it. Don't know how essential it is for a 'proper' sound; at my current level it results in longer pause in miliseconds than just the shifting-hand 1-3.

[mcdiddy1]

there are some really good suggestions...in addition to doing that you make want to first of all make sure the student has strong curved fingers-tips, I always ask my students to make the two fingers they want to use and stick them out slightly more. Practice going in and out of the keys very staccato using 1 and 3, 2 and 4, 3 and 5. Remember chords are played using the wrist and arm so make sure they are used as well