are fast pieces harder to play and do they help with technique

[gradedpiano]

hi, im just wondering

1. if faster pieces are generally tougher than slower ones and do they help with things that slow pieces cant?

2.I dont often play fast piano pieces and i was wondering if should be as im worried i may be missing something. Am I?
 
3.Im taking a grade 3 exam at the moment, do you think i should maybe play some of the more faster pieces to help with my techinque?

[ongaku_oniko]

Is geometry harder than algebra?

[pianisten1989]

1. Fast and slow pieces have different difficulties.
2. If you don't play fast pieces, you wont learn how to play them. So yeah, you miss out on something.
3. Play both fast and slow pieces. Since you obviously haven't played fast pieces before, I'd say you should play more fast pieces than slow pieces.

Is geometry harder than algebra?

He's only on grade 3. He doesn't know everything...

[gradedpiano]

Is geometry harder than algebra?

yes, to me it is, whats your opinion because thats all im asking for

[gradedpiano]

1. Fast and slow pieces have different difficulties.
2. If you don't play fast pieces, you wont learn how to play them. So yeah, you miss out on something.
3. Play both fast and slow pieces. Since you obviously haven't played fast pieces before, I'd say you should play more fast pieces than slow pieces. He's only on grade 3. He doesn't know everything...

thanks, i guess playing slower pieces could be more difficult because if you make a mistake it is a lot more noticable.

[ongaku_oniko]

Well, my point was that it's the same thing as comparing geometry and algebra.

sometimes geometry is harder, sometimes algebra is. It depends on the piece, and what level the piece itself is at. As a general rule, a grade 3 fast piece is easier than a grade 8 slow piece, if we're using the same grading for the two pieces.

You can't really say which is harder, because there are hard and easy pieces for both. It's not that hard to figure this out from logic.

[pianisten1989]

Well, no.. Not because you can hear the mistakes, but more like tone quality and stuff

[jimbo320]

I guess I'll throw my opinion in. lol
A lot could be said for slow melodic pieces. I myself prefer soft relaxing pieces. If done right it can be so emotional to play.
Fast pieces on the other hand requires more agility and quicker thinking. (It helps to play in your head along with your fingers). Not to mention it shows off your technique better.
The important thing here is whatever you play, do it well.
Better slow and agile with no mistakes than fast and sloppy...

Musically, Jimbo

[musicluvr49]

Most people who don't play an instrument, think that faster equals more difficult.  So it kind of makes me mad if I'm playing a slow Rachmaninoff piece or something like that, and they don't realize how much I put into it. Slow pieces can be as difficult as fast I think. With slow pieces, you need to make sure Every single note sounds right, because like you said, it is very noticeable in slow pieces. If I'm playing a slow song, and I play just one note too loud or too soft, or with the wrong tone, it just messes it up for me.
So yeah, I guess it can also depend on what your strengths and weaknesses are.

[pianoplayjl]

Some slow pieces are meant to be hard when played slow while fast pieces are meant to be hard when played fast.

[1piano4joe]

It depends on what you mean by harder.  Generally I'd say yes. However, a slow piece with polyrhythms (even 3 vs 2) for a beginning student who doesn't have the technique will find the slower pieces harder.  Very difficult is legato in one hand versus staccato in the other until of course you can do it.  Playing large intervals such as tenths and sometimes tenths with a note in the middle seems to me just about impossible at any speed.   

I personally have a problem with fast pieces.  Scales, Chords, arpeggios, Hanon, Schools of Velocity, have all helped in the learning process of the pieces and of course with muscle memory but this is one area for me I still have trouble with and probably always will. I have even tried the short pulses method to "grow fast muscles" and this did improve my relative speed but I have this habit of constantly raising the bar.  I have recently returned to level 1 and level 2 pieces and method books to see just how fast I can play these exercises and pieces (a sort of race with myself trying to play them as fast as I humanly can). They turn into a different animal at speed.  The same piece is always more difficult the faster you play it. If there is an exception to this principle I haven't come across it yet.

The 3rd part of Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag with the huge rapid hand shifts in the left hand comes to mind. Over practicing (hands separate of course) helped but this still is the bottleneck of this piece. I have this part up to 44 beats per minute only with a lot of practice and so the whole piece suffers. Practicing take off and landings helped as well.

Mozart's sonata in C (1st movement) has lots of scale like runs in the right hand. Playing evenly is not the problem for me but again speed is as I personally just love the way it sounds performed faster than I currently can play it.  However, slow without mistakes is always the way to go.

Burgmuller's The Clear Stream is M.M. = 176 allegro vivace is only level 3 on this website but speed again is the most difficult part.  But so what if I can only play at M.M.=160 after lots and lots of practice slowly dialing up the metronome 40,50,60,80,100,120,126,132,138,144,152,160
(It's actually even slower than that). Yes, you can see the improvement and hear the improvement.

The three pieces above all helped my technique immeasurably.

Also, faster pieces will take longer to learn (perfect?) by the metronome approach and should make you consider things like fingerings, and economy of motions. Speed walls occur when you aren't using the optimum technique whatever that may be.

Bach Prelude in C minor BWV 999 has been called "a show off piece" somewhere on this website as it can be played exceedingly fast (just not by me M.M.= 100 is not that fast) but like everything else it's a work in progress.

In summary then, perhaps these "fast pieces" require one to learn techniques they don't currently possess or to build upon what they do.

[pianoplayjl]

Some pieces are easy to play when played slowly but really hard when played fast. Chopin etudes are like an example. They are meat to played fast so that they can improve your technique like wrist rotations, octave playing, chromatics etc.