strong & weak skills in playing.....

[go12_3]

While I am practicing, I wonder about the *strong* and *weak* skills that we have as pianists in the forum, in all levels,  in playing piano.  What parts of a piece we struggle with and that comes easy.

My strongest skills in playing piano which would be doing runs, and scales and arpeggios. The weak points of my playing piano would be playing several stacked notes with the LH and the RH doing something else entirely. I love playing sonatinas and pieces with arpeggios are easier than doing pieces with left and right hand doing diverse passages at once.  I don't like complicated pieces, however, I love to play Bach.  I am probably more of the classical era pianist. If  a piece has several repetitions, then it becomes easier to play for me.  Of course, playing slow pieces is enjoyable and yet, I like the challenge of fast pieces also.     But the pieces that leaps around, oh no!  That's not for me!   

Anyhow, just a thought I had today.   

best wishes,

go12_3

[iroveashe]

The weakest skills are the ones that should be trained more. As obvious as that might seem a lot of people choose ignore that. For example you're playing a piece from the start and you get to that part where you know you'll mess up, so you play it badly, like you use to, sort of get it over with. Since that part is hard you dislike playing it (how could you like it if it sounds like crap when you play it?), but you enjoy playing the rest, easier parts of the piece, and you play those parts more because of that same reason. So you over-practice the easier parts and you don't practice enough the hard ones.

Same with pieces, maybe you don't like pieces that leap around because you're just not familiar with them, if they were as easy to you as the sonatinas you play I think you'd like them the same, or even more. With that in mind, you probably like playing pieces that are simple, with scales and arpeggios because those are the skills you've studied the most with Czerny and Hanon exercises. In my opinion, that's not right, because exercises could be determining your repertoire, when it should be the other way around.

[go12_3]

I am not talking  about me and my skills here.  I am indicating what I can do best with a particular set of skills that I have acquired. And so my runs and so forth is what I do best in playing piano.  That's all.  I don't need advice or anything.  I am merely pointing out what weak skills I do have and of course, it will always be a challenge to learn....

best wishes,

go12_3

[perfect_pitch]

Actually this is a good topic for a thread.

I personally have fantastic skills aurally and memorising music... despite the fact I can barely remember a class of 4 kids names... thats the brain for you. I seem to have good control over large, fast leaps thanks to the Ravel Toccata from Le Tombeau de Couperin I had to play last year.

I have good skills at playing fast passages, and starting to fine-tune my ability to voice perfectly (Like in Stravinsky's Petrouchka where you have to voice the C in the chord (Ab, C, Eb, Ab) which is a BASTARD to try and get... but It's slowly coming.

I have fairly poor skills at complex crossrhythms such as in the Brahms Paganini Variation where it is 2/4 against 3/8 time and you have 8 notes against the time of 9... That is a PRICK to play.

[ramseytheii]

"My - fifteen up till now - Etudes are thus the result of my own inability.  Cezanne had trouble with perspective.  The apples and pears in his still-lifes seem about to roll away.  In his rather clumsy depictions of reality the folds of the tablecloth are made of rigid plaster.  But what a wonder Cezanne accomplished with his harmonies of color, with the emotionally charged geometry, with his curves, volumes, and weight displacements!  That's what I would like to achieve: the transformation of inadequacy into professionalism."

G. Ligeti






Walter Ramsey

[ted]

I suppose one has to be brutally frank to answer this question properly. My measurable musical abilties seem close to insignificant. My ear is poor to average and my sight reading is hopeless. I know next to nothing about theory and have had zero training in technique. I have serious doubts about my being a pianist or musician in the accepted sense of the words. Fortunately, this doesn't appear to have had any bearing on the creative aspects, and I have composed and improvised fluently for forty years or more. I also seem to be able to play and quickly memorise any piece I decide to, so obviously there is more to it. I have always had a particularly acute sense of rhythm and visual and tactile imagination regarding the keyboard. So I suppose I must do it spatially somehow, rather than serially and aurally, as most others do. I don't really know.

If the original question pertained only to physical technique, then I probably just fluked a very good, although not perfect by any means, command of all movements and have no specific weaknesses. 

I think I must compensate for lack of ability with stupendous imagination, determination and complete absence of inhibition and self-doubt. Just as well for me isn't it !

[arumih]

I think I'm the opposite of you go, I'm no good at runs and scales and arpeggios. I think I've managed to avoid pieces like that at my level by avoiding classical pieces. At the stage I'm at it easy to get away with playing romantic music because pieces like raindrop prelude, or mendelssohn's venetian boat songs don't have long semiquaver runs etc. I know I don't like practicing scales and arpeggios which obviously is part of the problem.

For these reasons, I decided to bite the bullet and get down to learning the third movement from Kuhlau's sonatina in A minor. So far, it's going good, but slow, the real challenge would of course building up speed and working on the scale passages/broken chords where they occur.

I know I'm much more comfortable with playing slow to mid-tempo pieces which are a bit emotional and you can get away with rubato and pedalling, or simple baroque pieces like Bach's inventions or little preludes.

Another weakness...sight reading...specifically looking ahead when sight reading. It seems all the progress I've made with sight reading is reading just as bad, but only at a higher grade lol so no real progress in other words.

It's good to recognise our weaknesses of course. The difficulty is coming up with the determination to overcome them.

[clara.schumann]

My strong skills are pretty fast progress in terms of technique. Mostly in fast runs, scales, etc. everything that requires so called "fast fingers" (less in octaves, tremolos and arpeggios, but these are fine too). I almost never a situation that i struggle with a piece too much in the technical level.

My weak skill is sight reading. It's not *that* bad, but i always wanted to be one of these people who can sightread everything perfectly I try to work on it, but I always feel like there's no progress. Is there someone who had this problem and solved it here? Please tell me that it's not "lost cause"...

[weissenberg2]

I think my strongest skill is dynamic versatility and technical security. I think I also have a nice tone but I am not that musical (not robotic but not exploding with emotion). Also I am not great rhythmically.

[philiplu]

Weak: thirds.

[jepoy]

My...

Weaknesses: Blazingly fast scales and arpeggios, doubles notes (3rd, 4ths, 5ths). Baroque & Classical period pieces. Sight-reading very rhythmic pieces. Cross Rhythms.

Strengths: Octaves, big chords, slow, expressive playing, repeating motifs. Romantic & Modern period pieces. Good memory.

[franzliszt2]

I find 6ths my biggest weakness. Like Chopin 6ths etude, Brahms paganini variations 2nd variation etc... It's just the shape of my hands, they are not suited. It has never stopped me playing a piece, just if I want to perform Brahms Paganini variations I know I'll have to practice the 1st and 2nd variations a lot! That's why I will only perform the 2nd book, because I don't think the musical value of the 1st book is worth the hours I'd have to spend on those variations (on top of the hours I spent when I was 16 working on them.) There will always be many people who can play it better than me, so I might as well not perform it....my teacher just tells me to say I prefer the 2nd book and don't like the first haha. 

Biggest weakness....nerves!! I never used to get nervous when I was young, but now I have to fight with myself to play. If it's a new piece it can be very difficult, like a few weeks ago my Chopin concerto was very nervous for the first few minutes.

I used to find 3rds very hard when I was younger, but my teacher made me do all scales in double 3rds, and technical work on them, so that problem was solved. 

[tds]

strong and weak skills are relative. its true that my weak skills can be found in just about every n any aspect of piano playing. but my strong skills are in my continuous attempt get slightly better. tds

[nanabush]

I've gotten quite good at double notes and octaves after obsessing over that technique for the past few years 

My biggest weakness would probably be FAST arpeggios and scale runs in a piece.  I try to stay away from Chopin's D minor prelude, because the right hand in that pretty much sums up my weakness.  Once I sit for a while and master that specific passage I'm ok, but I'm sure that some people can nearly get that kind of stuff down on a sightread because they can play the fast passages like beasts.

[philiplu]

I think I might do scales in thirds or something, or play pieces with lots of thirds!

[jgallag]

Strengths: Memorization (I think the key is simply not to be afraid of forgetting.), jumps/leaps (I know how to practice them, and so I'm not afraid of them), and learning music (At my level of course. I mean that I can get a piece into my fingers. Interpreting it is the challenge.)

Weaknesses: Interpretation (Sometimes it comes out nice, sometimes it doesn't. I need to make conscious decisions about interpretation and understand my choices.), runs & arpeggios (Have made SIGNIFICANT improvement over the past few months (I can play scales HS at 144), but there's still a long way to go), voicing (Isn't it always?), and, ugh, alberti bass (Spent all of last semester tackling this one. Really hammered it, too. It's time to take a break.).

For me, it's a matter of knowing how to tackle a given problem and not knowing. Thanks to my teacher, many problems can be solved, but I'm assuming there's more for her to teach me in the next three years of my degree.