rach prelude op 23 #5

[Sekoul]

i just started learning this piece and im having difficulty nailing the right chords when playing fast! ive been practicing for hours and i can only play the first 15 seconds right... and half the time i completely screw them up too! do you think i have any chance of learning the piece with more practice or im just doomed? i feel like i just cant keep up with the song mentally... i have to think before i place my hadn on the next chord.. i guess the automisation should come with repetition.. anywayz, does anyone have any tips on this piece?

[shatteringpulse]

This piece is dear to me. Please don't prostitute it!  

Rachmaninoff's chords are what make him so physically pleasureable to play. And this alla marcia is fantastic! Before you even begin to play,  I'd map out the rhythm.  Make sure you hear the rhythm clearly, and tap it over and over again, hum it, etc. until you ARE the rhythm. Don't practice this piece at all wc/o pedal...it's one of those you should practice always with pedal (that's not to say you ALWAYS use pedal in it--but always use pedal where you will use it in performance) because you will run into trouble if you do not later, when you go to finish it up, and the pedal muddies every chord you worked so hard for. The chords in this piece come with time--they become a reflex, like most Rachmaninoff playing, rather than a conscious effort. If you're having trouble with the first 15 seconds, it can be expected, b/c this is a physically taxing piece, a nd it's a lot of notes that must be honed. I'd recommend some of his lightweight, chord-frenzy prep pieces before this one if you haven't played many of his other pieces. Play t hose first and come back to this one--the middle section has a terrifying amount of voices and details that shouldn't be attempted until you have a handle on different voicings of textures with the same hand. Leave this one alone and play Op. 3/1,2,3 perhaps Chopin's Military Polonaise, o r s ome of his other lesser polonaises. Get comfortable with chords.

And don't play this if you don't have an affinity for it. It's really for the  Rachmaninoff-minded. Otherwise it'll be just aggression and in the case of the middle sentimentality. There are other grand, gorgeous pieces out there too that you might be able to learn and pull of much better than this tricky piece. You get angry at this one in the end! haha...trust me!  

Good luck, whatever you decide.

[rubleski]

First thing about this song, is it's not as fast as you might think. To me this song is incredibly easy to rush. I played this song at one of my competions and one of the comments that the judges gave me was  that i played it faster than Rachmaninoff . But for the chords, i guess all i can really say is practice it a ton, unfortunatly. The hardest part for me to learn though was the left hand in the middle section. It took FOREVER! Don't cheat yourself in this part and make up a bad fingering, take the extra time to learn a good one so it sounds smooth. Another thing to help with this song is listining to recordings of this song. It helps alot! But one of the negatives about listining to recordings is that sometimes you begin to estimate rythems and not play it actually how it's supposed to be. Once you learn this song, you will love it. It's a great "showy" piece and the middle section is one of the most emotional section of music i have heard in my life.

[Motrax]

Actually, I would advise against playing it like Rachmaninoff. If you haven't heard his recording (he only made one of this piece I believe), he plays it with a dotted rhythm for some reason. Instead of 8th 16th 16th 8th, he plays Dotted8th 32nd 32nd 8th. He also extends the ending, adding a few chords before the single staccatto G in both hands.

I haven't heard a great recording or performance of this piece by anyone, really - I've always felt most pianists rush between sections, either forcing the "marching" rhythm to the point where the music is lost, or playing the whole piece too sentimentally with excessive pedalling... etc, etc.

Anyway, to answer your question... for me, this took many hours of painstaking work, measure by measure. Play SLOWLY (about 80 8th beats/sec on the metronome), and play no more than four measures at once. It is extremely important to play slowly - your hands will simply not feel the piece reflexively if you practice at even a moderate tempo. When you get to the point where you can play with your eyes closed without missing any notes, move on. It's a very slow and boring method, but it makes the piece a breeze once you practice it this way.

[janice]

Will you guys PLEASE stop calling this a "song"?  It is a "piece".  You Sing a Song, and you Play a Piece.

[rubleski]

it's actually a "prelude"

[Sekoul]

Posted by: shatteringpulse- Leave this one alone and play Op. 3/1,2,3 perhaps Chopin's Military Polonaise, o r s ome of his other lesser polonaises. Get comfortable with chords.

are you sure that i could play that before this one? the middle section sounds scary and the emotion is very deep as well...

[Sekoul]

im talking about op3 #2... sorry i didnt specify

[Spatula]

Um..yeah that's a pretty big difference between op 2 and 23...I'm doing Op 23 # 5 now...that "song" haha (poking at janice  )

Everything rachmaninoff should be taken VERY slowly like a Chopin etude.  BTW this is my 100th post
HOORAY!  

[rubleski]

lol, big diffrence b/t the g minor and the c-sharp minor. I always played this too slow i thought  

[zhiliang]

Posted by: shatteringpulse- Leave this one alone and play Op. 3/1,2,3 perhaps Chopin's Military Polonaise, o r s ome of his other lesser polonaises. Get comfortable with chords.

are you sure that i could play that before this one? the middle section sounds scary and the emotion is very deep as well...

For the middle section or the "emotional one", you have to keep the LH perfectly calm like a "lake" and make it as your background, with no turmoils. And then at the beginning its PP, so imagine how soft you LH should be, so that the RH melody can be voiced out. And also the RH chords will have to be given "contour" voicing. And also do take note of the many different voices to bring out, some in the LH with the tenuto marks. And do practice your LH just by itself making it very legato even without the pedal before doing 2 hands together. Yes and like rubleski have mentioned, do map out a good set of fingerings for it.

Hope this helps, Rachfan has given me some really good  coaching on this piece and it has helped a lot. I thank him for this and other things too.

Zhiliang

[benbenben9752]

this is a great piece!!! i started it in 6th grade competed with it in 7th...
INCREDIBLY easy to rush taht was my biggest problem
if u dont take it slow ull murder it... those chords are hard to get rite... lots of practice
the chords are not the most important part tho make sure the melody comes out a lot
in the middle section the left hand isnt that difficult theres only like 7 different things it does and if you play it right itll be going slow enough to get all the notes in just watch for all the lh notes to be quiet and even (except for when the tenor melody comes in, bring that out it sounds reely nice)
reely fun last page thats when u reely have to work to bring out the melody and tone down the chords
when u do everything rite ull stun ppl with it its a great great great piece
atcually u can stun ppl if u  dont do everything rite... i palyed it for some ppl on a crappy piano missed half the notes and the guy thot i was like a pro

it takes a year to learn at least tho so be patient... lots of notes fun song tho!!! i hope u learn it  

[larse]

It should'nt take a year to learn. However, I would agree that the chords could be difficult. I think it's somewhere in the arm and your own reflexes. I used to rehearse very slow, but in between the chords, I moved my hands very fast(while relaxing the arm...no arm-murder!!), as if I were playing it fast. I guess it trains the reflexes so that you'd do it automatically when you speed up. But that's just my way of doing things.

When there's lots of the same chords fast, I learned a tip when playing the Toccata by Khatchaturean. If you hold a pen over your desk, then release it, you should not hear one 'whack' as it hits the table. You shoujld hear two or three. It's a natural cause that makes this pen bounce really fast. This you can use while playiong the piano as well.