impatient with progress on Chopin op 25 no 12

[Derek]

So, I'm an intermediate-to-advanced amateur when it comes to regular classical pieces, I'm studying Chopin's Ocean Etude right now. My focus right now is to play it slowly, correctly and with relaxed hands. Every now and then I attempt to "push it," but of course that is probably rash and always disappoints with dozens of mistakes. I'm feeling impatient...how long must I practice this piece slowly before it becomes easier to push the speed? I've been playing it about a half hour a day for over a month now.

[becky8898]

Hi Derek. Here is how my teacher does that with me.  Get your metronome going and set it to the tempo your really comfortable with your piece.  Once you have that established . go to the next step. Set the metronome just 5 bpm higher.  Break your playing down into sections of four notes. The last note should be the first note of the next group. Play in those sections at the slighter faster tempo and see if you can get thru the piece with those 5 extra bpm. If you can, start running the sections together. Play two 4 note sections at a time.  Then 3 4 note sections at a time and so on until you are playing the whole piece now 5 bpm faster than you had.  Just for the sake of argument lets say that took you 2 weeks to do.  OK now repeat the whole procedure again.  Say that takes 2 more weeks and you are now playing at 10 bpm faster. 

Its different for anyone and you have to modify the system to you. But at least in my case it worked wonderfully.  Hope that helps a little. 

Cheers, Becky

[jimbo320]

Hey Derek,
It's better to play slow with no mistakes and smooth than fast chopped up with mistakes.
Remember, your going for smoothness here...

[any87]

Funny, just yesterday I had a nervous breakdown with this piece. : D I've been practicing only for couple of days first cca 12 measures, but I had a feeling it won't go down smoothly in full speed for me even in months. I get that feeling. I guess I'm not ready for superfast pieces, so I decided I'm gonna work on some less difficult (less FAST!) Chopin etudes and Rachmaninoff preludes op 3 no 2 and op 23 no 5 which are playable and also showy. I love Ocean etude but there's time... in 2-3 years maybe
Good luck to you!  

[stevebob]

Derek,

Just in case you weren't aware, Op. 25 No. 12 is one of the handful of etudes that Abby Whiteside treats in detail in Mastering the Chopin Etudes.  It's worth checking out if you're not familiar with it.

[m1469]

I have found that one of the tricky parts of this etude is the fact that, an aspect of the materially obvious elements of it --so many notes on the ascending and descending lines-- can really cloud the basic melodic idea, and hide the more simple sense of what is coming and what is going.  It's tough to think of those ascending and descending lines as simply "filler" to get from one note in the melody to the other, and the tendency is first to conceptualize it in a way that makes everything seem just as important as everything else, and it's not.  It *seems* like the point of the etude is to get a grasp on those arpeggios and while that is indeed required, I think it's rather a trap to think that way.

There are of course "tricks" in gaining speed, and Becky outlined one of them.  There are other tricks, too, of course, but other than those little parts, I think the biggest problem comes from the clouded musical concept (which is probably true of any piece under the sun).

Another trap though, is that visually, it appears that your arms/hands are moving in exact parallel and it is easy to assume that moving in parallel is exactly what we must do, but it's actually not exactly so.  Because of our bodies, because of the angle of the piano and the registers that each individual line covers, the angles are going to be "slightly" (though it can feel quite hugely) different from one another and that is another big trick, I think, to getting it right.  You really have to study each hand's motions and figure out what is really going on when you treat it as an independent idea from the other line.  And, by the way, Op. 25 no. 1 has a similar illusion, as well.

[Derek]

Thanks for all the responses. I'm kind of hoping to go in stages. I'm aware of the melodic line embedded in the arpeggios, you can hear it in recordings and it is clearly marked in the score (with those <  thingies, I forget the name). In fact I'm having an easy time bringing that out (at a slow speed), it is speed that I'm really tripping up on I think. My hope is once I get it to a reasonable speed, to more carefully refine how I'm bringing out that line. One thing at a time right? I will keep persevering. I think the main thing I need is patience!

[keyboardclass]

I wouldn't even consider the melodic line for now - play it slow as an exercise, later it'll speed up of its own.  Steve's right - read your Abby!

[pianowolfi]

I wouldn't even consider the melodic line for now - play it slow as an exercise, later it'll speed up of its own.  Steve's right - read your Abby!

If you don't have the melody in your mind, like m1469 said, all this "exercise" won't help, I'm afraid. I practice this piece very slowly and accurately, but always with the melody in mind. And I try to play all the accents exactly as they are written. And I practice it a lot with the metronome. Practice slowly, in the sense of the melody, but moving exactly like you were playing fast.

[jimbo320]

A simple exercise I do before attempting a fast piece is playing 'Tubular Bells' for about two or three minutes. It loosens up the fingers quit nicely.....

[bustthewave]

K... so I'm an arrogant jerk apparently (who has no reason to be arrogant), because the first thought that went through my mind was, "can it really be that fast?"

And then I found it on youtube...

My hands need a nap after watching someone play it.

Kudos just for attempting this!

[Derek]

I'm probably being a rash amateur attempting it at all. I attempted Scriabin's opus 42, no 5. Next to that, the ocean etude feels like a piece of cake! I can definitely say I was much closer to being ready for the ocean etude though. The advice in this thread and in general on this site is helping as I can feel that I'm already making good progress. I continue to patiently practice it slowly and with control, often with staccato. Staccato seems to be remarkably helpful for improving difficult passages. My guess as to why is that it makes the discrete act of hitting a note much more...well,discrete, in the brain. Without that, your fingers may be moving more continuously and not in a little quantifiable "burst" so your brain actually has more to sort out. Staccato tells your motor cortex: "focus just on this one important movement."

[bustthewave]

I'm probably being a rash amateur attempting it at all. I attempted Scriabin's opus 42, no 5. Next to that, the ocean etude feels like a piece of cake! I can definitely say I was much closer to being ready for the ocean etude though. The advice in this thread and in general on this site is helping as I can feel that I'm already making good progress. I continue to patiently practice it slowly and with control, often with staccato. Staccato seems to be remarkably helpful for improving difficult passages. My guess as to why is that it makes the discrete act of hitting a note much more...well,discrete, in the brain. Without that, your fingers may be moving more continuously and not in a little quantifiable "burst" so your brain actually has more to sort out. Staccato tells your motor cortex: "focus just on this one important movement."

So I just looked up Scriabin's opus 42 (I had never even heard of him before, this is how new to this I am), and it kind of gave me chills. And then I re-looked up Chopin's ocean etude, last time I didn't realize the number indicated it was his "ocean" etude... and I could really hear the ocean.

I'm wondering though, as a rank amateur to the world of classical music, what is it that makes these two pieces different in difficulty? I'm looking at the sheet music for them (at least what is on youtube), and chopin's seems much quicker. Is it because Chopin's piece, his notes flow into one another without the crazy whiplash detours and hand origami you might have to do for Scriabin's piece (Some of it looked crazy... though I'm new to site reading so I know things can look crazier than they are)?

[Derek]

I think the trouble I had with scriabin were some hand positions that were uncomfortable to maintain and an awful lot of repetitive figures. There were a lot of places where the pinky is playing some notes while the thumb, index and middle finger twiddle with fast figuration. The left hand patterns aren't so bad once practiced. It's really the right hand that gave me the most trouble with 42-5. There are some very fast repeated heavy chords as well, again while maintaining a melody in the pinky. I was able to play them at a slow pace but had trouble getting them up to speed. Perhaps I will give it another shot some day, but I've decided to take it easy for a while. Not that the ocean etude is taking it easy, but it definitely is compared to that piece.

[pianowolfi]

I think the trouble I had with scriabin were some hand positions that were uncomfortable to maintain and an awful lot of repetitive figures. There were a lot of places where the pinky is playing some notes while the thumb, index and middle finger twiddle with fast figuration. The left hand patterns aren't so bad once practiced. It's really the right hand that gave me the most trouble with 42-5. There are some very fast repeated heavy chords as well, again while maintaining a melody in the pinky. I was able to play them at a slow pace but had trouble getting them up to speed. Perhaps I will give it another shot some day, but I've decided to take it easy for a while. Not that the ocean etude is taking it easy, but it definitely is compared to that piece.

Haha "that piece" scares me to death  I am practicing the "ocean" too and I think it's really easier...