fast runs

[flapdragon]

one of my long term goals is to be able to play any given melody—or basically any series of notes—as fast as possible, or at least as fast as, say, keith jarrett or art tatum. i've been playing a lot of their pieces, plus bach's keyboard works, but i'm not sure what else i can do. what's the most efficient way to learn this skill?

thanks

[mcdiddy1]

Playing fast is a skill of the mind rather than the fingers. If you can tap your fingers and making a percussive rumbling sound with your fingers then you already have all the velcity and finger speed to play like Art Tatum already.

In order to play fast music you have to be well ordinated and able to follow the music very well mental;y. Go over the piece in your mind and learn the piece well enough you can hear the piece in your head. You should be able to anticipate upcoming patterns changes, skips, leaps and rhythm changes.

Once you can comprehend all the notes mentally, you can work on dexterity by practicing hands separately, up to  speed, with muscle relaxed, fingers close to keys, with the goal of eventually getting to end of piece with out pain to increase endurance. Practice using uneven rhythms ( long short, or short long patterns) to help keep the runs evens. Do the same with the left hand and then you can drop in the Lh chords in rhythm section by sections until you can do the whole piece.

 If you are really systematic with your practice, you can achieve some very quick results. But keep in mind if you cannot say the rhythm or audiate the sounds in your mind, you probably will not reach your maximum speed ....Hope that helps...

[keyboardclass]

You got to loosen up.   And I wouldn't tap the fingers - play from the surface.

[drkz4ck]

You got to loosen up.   And I wouldn't tap the fingers - play from the surface.

Could you be a little less subjective ,please? 

[flapdragon]

Playing fast is a skill of the mind rather than the fingers. If you can tap your fingers and making a percussive rumbling sound with your fingers then you already have all the velcity and finger speed to play like Art Tatum already.

In order to play fast music you have to be well ordinated and able to follow the music very well mental;y. Go over the piece in your mind and learn the piece well enough you can hear the piece in your head. You should be able to anticipate upcoming patterns changes, skips, leaps and rhythm changes.

Once you can comprehend all the notes mentally, you can work on dexterity by practicing hands separately, up to  speed, with muscle relaxed, fingers close to keys, with the goal of eventually getting to end of piece with out pain to increase endurance. Practice using uneven rhythms ( long short, or short long patterns) to help keep the runs evens. Do the same with the left hand and then you can drop in the Lh chords in rhythm section by sections until you can do the whole piece.

 If you are really systematic with your practice, you can achieve some very quick results. But keep in mind if you cannot say the rhythm or audiate the sounds in your mind, you probably will not reach your maximum speed ....Hope that helps...

thanks, that helped a lot. for some reason i kept thinking there was something else i should do in preparation for playing long runs, but the answer is just keep playing them over and over i guess. i seem to just 'get' them after a while.

[brogers70]

I'd say work at it from two ends. Spend some time practicing relatively slowly, for evenness and precision. But don't try to speed up from there. Instead, also spend some time trying to play them blindingly fast. Don't worry about missed or uneven notes, just pay attention to how your hand moves. You'll notice that you need to do little wrist rotations and move your hand towards or away from the black keys. When you play very, very fast, you'll perceive the pattern of these hand and arm movements more easily. Then slow down again, focusing on precision and evenness, but keep paying attention to the larger patterns of how your hand had to move at high speed. Eventually you'll be able to play both fast and accurately.

[mcdiddy1]

I'd say work at it from two ends. Spend some time practicing relatively slowly, for evenness and precision. But don't try to speed up from there. Instead, also spend some time trying to play them blindingly fast. Don't worry about missed or uneven notes, just pay attention to how your hand moves. You'll notice that you need to do little wrist rotations and move your hand towards or away from the black keys. When you play very, very fast, you'll perceive the pattern of these hand and arm movements more easily. Then slow down again, focusing on precision and evenness, but keep paying attention to the larger patterns of how your hand had to move at high speed. Eventually you'll be able to play both fast and accurately.

Thats good advice. You would want to learn how efficient your body can play with the least movement.  Practicing in slow motion is essential to develop accuracy in your notes.

[rmbarbosa]

You may also use parallel sets (PS), often mentioned in many posts. You may wish have a look and try. They do work very well. But without forgett all the other aspects here mentioned by the other fellows.
Rui

[naumdar]

Brogers advice is excellent.

For myself, I spent my early musical life and the majority of instrumental time in college as a percussionist - I took piano concurrently but stopped after a few years to focus on percussion - in any event speed was always a point of focus and I absolutely swear by the metronome as to being the only way to get your speed up.

It's not always very pleasant, especially after doing it for an hour or so, but the systematic and disciplined way it teaches you to practice is invaluable.

When learning pieces now, I would say I practice with a click about 90% of the time, since usually I am just trying to practice getting the speed up to tempo because I suck

But one thing I do, is that I actually practice my scales during the piece. For instance, if I am trying to get the piece to 112bpm, I'll start at 60 or so and play the scale of the key it's in to warm up over 4 octaves or so, then sight read the piece. Then take it up to 62 bpm, play the scale again (or scale related excervise), the piece,  and so on.

Of course that's not sufficient to learn a piece and you always have to focus on trouble spots and plus you aren't always going to play in straight time, blah blah blah - we should all be aware of the things that go into completing a piece.

But as far of a systematic and disciplined way to get your fingers fast and accurate, I really can't suggest the metronome enough.  

There are a couple of interesting programs out there for free too that do speed trainers with a metronome - Guitar Tab Pro is a program that you can load midi files in, or write your own run, and then make a selection and start it at 50% of set tempo, increasing 1% each repeat and it will repeat continuously.

So you can be creative with how you practice - it doesn't have to be just start slow and go in one direction.

Sometimes I'll practice a range, like 75-bpm and work up to 100 bpm, then stop and go back to 80 bpm and go to 110 bpm. Then stop and got back to 85-115bpm. This is a good way to reinforce what you were doing at the moderate speeds instead of just going faster and faster and getting less and less accurate.

Sorry for writing 235823958 lines and hope this helps