My chopin op10-4 old vs new

[johnmar78]

Hi pianostreet,

I have spent a several  months doing research on metronome vs non metronome. And here is my conclusion on my own findings.

First 8 weeks I use metronome for 90% of my practice time 130-174.
10% played without metronome.

Last 5 weeks 95% played WITHOUT metronome( 175-184) Only 5% used to double check my tempo. yes, I am doing it in reverse to use my internal beat. Only played once slow at end of each practice session. Each session =approx 20 minutes =15 reps.

Bear in mind, the new recording was done AFTER I rasied my piano pitch to concert pitch by 20-30%. See if you notice the difference. Enjoy

In old =https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riXYkuN38QU
out with new =

[pianoman53]

Sorry, if this seem rude, but... Why are you doing this? Obviously it's a very difficult study, but the differences you achieve are less than the difference it should be from day one to day two, if you were ready for it.

Really, you're not doing yourself a favor by practicing this. Your basic technique is so far away from this study and you would learn anything from playing it.

Here comes the concrete stuff:
1. You play with the middle part of your fingers, and it shouldn't be like that.
2. You can't play any of the notes evenly.
3. You still, after all these months, play billions of wrong notes.
4. You don't really have a tempo
5. There is no phrasing
6. There is no tone.
7. There is simply no musicality in what you're trying to do.
8. Your left hand can't play any of the notes it's supposed to play.
9. The balance is obviously not there.
10. You don't listen to what you are doing. If you were listening, you would hear it's not good enough.

These 10 points took me less than 10 seconds to find. Everyone has already said it in your previous posts, but I say it again... I don't know, maybe you just didn't read it carefully enough last time.

This study is too difficult for you. You're doing no one a favor by trying to play it. Start over, and find some sort of teacher who can tell you where to start.

[starstruck5]

The problem with posting a Chopin Etude, is that you are going to be compared to people like Pollini and Agerich -who have set the standard -a performance of an etude needs to sound polished and effortless-and this Etude needs to take a listeners breath away -it needs to be a spectacular display of virtuosity -else you are better off attempting something which can reach a listener on many different levels -

I don't think you are incapabable of playing this study -but you are not ready to PERFORM it

 -I don't get why the transition from bars 5 to 6 is causing you problems for example-the pattern is only slightly different -but you are not adjusting quickly enough -then you lose your tempo -

I wonder if you might be wise to begin a thread on it the Student Room -there you can perfect small extracts and hopefully attract other pianists who are learning it and are willing to give tips and advice -

I admire your tenacity -and I wish you well - I really hope you can make a performance which will take our breath away -it just isn't there yet -

[johnmar78]

thanks gents, my God, what have I done here. Do you think this etude is too hard for me.... I found it quite easy to be honest. Both RH and LH played without efforts, it meant to be firly. The RH should sound like water so as LH. I am not sure why my hearings is so much differnt to yours, with out any biased or decisions. I am enjoying play this etude. I dnt know about billions of wrong notes. May be its your imagination. About the evenness, this can be still improved for sure but no one else will ever happy with ones performance.
No tonality or musicality, sorry mate, this is my interpretation that does not suit you.  my aim here is to achive the lightness of the touch thru muscle relaxzation but as far as I concen I have reached it. May be you can point out exact spot where I need to FF or pp, which I already did.

[mikeowski]

thanks gents, my God, what have I done here. Do you think this etude is too hard for me.... I found it quite easy to be honest. Both RH and LH played without efforts, it meant to be firly. The RH should sound like water so as LH. I am not sure why my hearings is so much differnt to yours, with out any biased or decisions. I am enjoying play this etude. I dnt know about billions of wrong notes. May be its your imagination. About the evenness, this can be still improved for sure but no one else will ever happy with ones performance.
No tonality or musicality, sorry mate, this is my interpretation that does not suit you.  my aim here is to achive the lightness of the touch thru muscle relaxzation but as far as I concen I have reached it. May be you can point out exact spot where I need to FF or pp, which I already did.

Hahaha what!? Come on you can't be serious. Yeah maybe it's easy if you play everything wrong. The tempo is completely off at some times and the notes are totally uneven. The way you play sounds like stuttering unconnected sentences one after another.
If you want to really play this etude to sound good, I say you should start from the beginning over again. Or play something easier, that's probably better.

[danhuyle]

If something is too difficult for you or not, you're not going to hear it from me.

In this situation, I would bail this piece and play something else. You have the technique to play it, however, insufficient technical capacity to make it art.

I know this hurts, even for me, you gotta know when to stop playing a piece. The more time you spend playing Etude 10/4, the worse it becomes and the cycle becomes much more vicious.

The good - You can play this at speed, faster than me anyway (I play at 2:30-3:00)

For your situation with the etude, it's not about the speed, rather, it's about phrasing.

Like I said, this is what I would do.

[perfect_pitch]

John... I have to ask you one question - do you have a piano teacher?

If so, I'd get rid of them.

Hahaha what!? Come on you can't be serious. Yeah maybe it's easy if you play everything wrong. The tempo is completely off at some times and the notes are totally uneven.

To be fair, that may not be his fault. I used to play like crap and had teachers who let me play the concert repertoire like crap, and I didn't know any better because I was young and dumb... and because I didn't have a really good piano teacher at the time.

(I do now however).

[ajspiano]

Everyone seems a bit blunt rather than encouragingly constructive, it does seem like a certain level of blunt truth is required though.

For starters, I commend you for being able to "get through the notes" in this piece, and any of  the entire opus here really, they are real tough pieces that push you to the next level when you have a proper crack at them. I know that you have put in a lot of effort here already and on other works in the set.

It is however not enough for a purely congratulatory reply. This idea that this is your interpretation the way you want it is a cop out. Its just not. That attitude is you failing to make the effort to think about and improve in a variety of areas. That's not an attack on you personally though. You (and many pianists before [and more after]) have been and will continue to be blind to areas in which you can improve. Be aware that I'm not excluding myself from this shortcoming either, pushing through these barriers is part of the musical journey.

You need to keep your mind open to what can be done to get better, the possibilities are limitless.

Do you think this etude is too hard for me.... I found it quite easy to be honest. Both RH and LH played without efforts, it meant to be firly.

You are not finding that it is difficult because the level of control exercised in your playing is significantly lower than would be expected of a professional performer. You are sacrificing sound/tempo/fluidity to maintain a comfortable sensation in your body rather than learning to be comfortable while producing a desired sound.

No tonality or musicality, sorry mate, this is my interpretation that does not suit you.

You are entitled to your opinion regarding interpretation. However, and I don't mean to criticize you, I would encourage you to think about your performance in comparison to other performers. How would you feel entering this in a competition where an array of established professionals were to all play this etude one after another? where do you think you would stand?

I don't mean this in that I'm disapproving if you can't play it like pollini, but if you can't - then you should maintain an aspiration to improve rather than be saying things like "as far as I concen I have reached it." in regard to the performance. Nothing is ever finished. AND, when I say "play like pollini" that does not mean produce an identical interpretation to his record, it means match his level of control and fluidity - an entirely different idea to simply mimicking his performance.

If you think your interpretation is great thats fine, why not put out a recording. Try and sell it? are you comfortable with that? sticking your name on that performance as being worth a global audience, rather than being one of a student still learning?

I have spent a several  months doing research on metronome vs non metronome

You stated that you did research, and what exactly you did..  you however did not actually state an actual conclusion. Additionally, such a test is flawed..  both the metronome and non-metronome practice will impact your performance, which destroys the validity of any tangible conclusion. Infact, any test of this nature in relation to piano is very difficult to execute scientifically. It is far too hard to isolate a single variable.

.......

As far as your practice, it sounds as if you have essentially just ran through the piece at whatever pace 10 times (or some other number) each day. This is completely inadequate for this level of repertoire. Really its inadequate at any level but you can get away with it a lot better with low grade material.

In this instance you need to form an idea of sound - know what you want to sound like, record yourself and then honestly gauge whether you are achieving that. Do it in tiny fragments, individual lines. Speed and right notes is not enough. There must be a feel, a pulse, a musical direction within every tiny phrase.. work in single beats, there are so many semi-quaver passages throughout that you must have every group of 4 notes worked on as a fluent fast attacking pulse - driving the music forward constantly.

On the first note within every beat you need to imagine there is a slight resistance in the air as you play the note, this creates an musical pulse accent and drives the entire interpretation forward. As you play the entire thing should be raging through your body, this piece is so exciting you should literally be ready to jump out of your skin with the musical tension (not physical tension). It goes from your head to your toes.

You may say otherwise but I strongly doubt you are adequately feeling the music inside you while you perform this. I'm certain from the performance and your comments that you are far too caught up maintaining a physical sense of comfort. This is challenging to balance, because of the nature of the work (difficulty level, extreme technical proficiency required) what happens to most people here is that as soon as they focus on sound they build physical tension, so much so that they can not continue to maintain tempo. The piece forces them to focus on physical comfort and forget sound. The 2 ideas rage against each other for anyone that hasn't developed a very effective technique.

As has been said, if you have a teacher - get a new one (or pay attention to the current one? ).. If you don't have one, get one, and be prepared for them to say "No, I will not teach you chopin etudes" - which is fine, you can do it in your own time, so long as you are getting some guidance in regard to how to approach a piece in general that you can apply to the chopin.

.....

I know that you don't want to hear the kind of stuff that has been posted here by myself and others..   but the reality is that music is open to judgement, and if you're going to post here (a kind of public performance) then your going to attract criticism whether your performance is good or bad. However, no matter how good a performance is by anyone, that does not excuse them from consciously observing their flaws and taking on board constructive suggestions.

Being defensive about criticism here is not helpful to you, even if people are sometimes perhaps a bit more blunt than is pleasant to hear. I hope that I have been as constructive for you as possible.

[johnmar78]

Thank you, to my piano street members and my aussie fellows,,, . never mind, sack my teacher who is my old friends for a long time . And I will aim for higher level of control = evenness. As for constructive feed back by AJ. I liked your honest opnion rather destructive.
As matter of fact, I am also working on other pieces(easy ones not Chopin, but melody wise) in conjunction with chopin studies. Asking me to stop practice Chopin is like cutting my arm off, so I need to raise my level of control and musical expression. The aim I took out metronome is to focus on musicality with my own interpretation. Obviosly it is still inprogress not "finished"-never?? I do not make a living out of my recording, because I need to restart my life over again to be a full time musicain. Also, I play piano for my own enjoyment and so as my guests/friends. Thi sreallyn encourges me further to work on my Chopin project.

[nyiregyhazi]

Thank you, to my piano street members and my aussie fellows,,, . never mind, sack my teacher who is my old friends for a long time . And I will aim for higher level of control = evenness. As for constructive feed back by AJ. I liked your honest opnion rather destructive.
As matter of fact, I am also working on other pieces(easy ones not Chopin, but melody wise) in conjunction with chopin studies. Asking me to stop practice Chopin is like cutting my arm off, so I need to raise my level of control and musical expression. The aim I took out metronome is to focus on musicality with my own interpretation. Obviosly it is still inprogress not "finished"-never?? I do not make a living out of my recording, because I need to restart my life over again to be a full time musicain. Also, I play piano for my own enjoyment and so as my guests/friends. Thi sreallyn encourges me further to work on my Chopin project.

I think part of it is that you really have to forget trying to impress others. Apologies if this sounds rude and assumptive, but I feel sure that you're cutting corners because you want to impress people with speed and panache. I say that, because I know what it's like to be in that kind of situation- where you're pressing harder to squeeze out the notes and putting a lot of mental effort into it. This simply doesn't work in the long run, though. You have to completely stop any thoughts of impressing and just listen to every sound in a slower tempo. Even the slightest sense of pushing will take you backwards.

What you need to do is both listen to the sense of line and the physical sensation. If a note comes out unexpectedly quiet, you stop and explore why. If the arm feels slightly tight, you stop and explore why. You're forgiving the unforgivable, right now, because you're too set on the end product. All of this must be done almost solely in a slow tempo, or with no more than five consecutive notes in a faster tempo, for now. It's the only way you can get rid of your internal mental picture of how you would like to think you are sounding and start objectively assessing how you ACTUALLY sound- in order to improve on it. Forget the idea of impressing anybody. You have to be interested solely in coherence of the line and the sense of physical comfort. At the moment, you're allowing yourself to ignore the moments that should be causing you to stop- because you're too interested in the idea of impressing people with how the finished product would go. I know that's a performance, but it speaks volumes of what you're pressing on through in practise- when you ought to be stopping immediately and making fixes. You can't allow the long-term goal to get in the way of doing proper preparation for that. You need to be interested in the details- not in trying to force things out.

[quantum]

ajspiano has written some excellent ideas here.  

This idea that this is your interpretation the way you want it is a cop out. Its just not. That attitude is you failing to make the effort to think about and improve in a variety of areas.

I would second that point.  


You have a good piano and a decent recording setup.  Make full use of these tools.  For starters, you stated that you did ff and pp.  There is a difference between thinking you did them and actually hearing an audible result.  Listen carefully to what you played: did you hear a dynamic contrast of appropriate magnitude that you can honestly label the points ff or pp?  Asking questions and subsequently seeking the answer for yourself, will lead to growth in your playing. 

[ajspiano]

nyiregyhazi makes some great points about what needs to be done, confirming much of my thoughts and adding a few things I didn't really say much about. Pay attention to his words, details are important, they must be worked out meticulously. Its not like "this section soft" and thats the end of the dynamic thought for a passage. Every single note has its own volume and tone colour, you can control it in ways you don't even realize are possible yet (and ones I don't know about either).

When your technique is good enough there is no fighting to stay comfortable, or trying to relax - there is only control; just doing exactly as you intend. Getting there must be worked out either in tiny fragments (notice how N. said 5 notes, and I said one beat - same thing, different wording) OR, as N. pointed out, larger sections slowly.

.........

Following is at least in part speculative on my part, because I'm not enough of a chopin buff, but it may provide some food for thought - its also how I'd have gone about it is I was chopin and tasked with the challenge of writing a set of etudes that would re-shape how people thought about piano... (not to suggest that I'd be able to write such a set at all, especially without having been presented with chopins set to study beforehand)

.......

Take some time to consider what this set of pieces mean to a pianists development. They are not regular studies like those that are often encountered in earlier development. They are meticulously crafted to cross certain lines as far as physical/musical demands on the pianist.

As you know doubt realise, many earlier studies had been created using non-musical technical ideals, such as a finger study that takes your hands through different combinations of scales or arpeggios, and using different fingerings..  works that were aimed quite plainly at 'exercising' the pianist through a particular set of commonly occurring types of lines.

Chopin's studies are different as the first of their kind to be powerful impressive music founded on a technical principal. The works are musical, like any other piece..  yet they target a specific understanding that chopin had about how to play the piano, things such as "the hand must remain in its natural shape". Then he has crafted lines that prove the ideal, he has made it impossible to play the works musically without also discovering and applying the underlying principal in play.

This is the key to their study, you must play them as musically as is at all possible, for if you do not you will not learn what has been set out for you in the work. Instead, you'll merely get a bit of a workout.

The physical construction of the lines throughout both Opuses appears to be founded on one main idea (despite their being very varied musical configurations), that being that musical playing requires a balanced naturally shaped stress free playing mechanism. Chopin then proceeds to write lines that displace your playing apparatus in ways that make balance, control and a natural position a real challenge, and that are practically impossible to play well without doing exactly what they make so difficult. You know you've got it right when you have control over the music AND comfort. - both immaculately refined.

[johnmar78]

thanks AJ and Nyzai. I will think harder and try play a slower tempo one with all notes even. Trying impress people is not a good way to go, but rather to improve for a long term goal. You guys are fantastic, I dnt think my teacher will or WOULD ever come up theses valuable inputs. I am not dissapointed, but rather excited for a new start. Thank you....(slow control even).

[pianoman53]

Aha... But maybe, since you feel it's so easy, you could maybe start with Rach 3. You should be able to get it up to standard in less than a week -.-

[perfect_pitch]

Aha... But maybe, since you feel it's so easy, you could maybe start with Rach 3. You should be able to get it up to standard in less than a week -.-

OH COME ON... There's no need for that. Considering how John has taken everyones advice with an open mind and appreciation, there's no need to sound like a condescending twat!

 

[costicina]

AJ and N. reply are an excellent example of constructive criticism. AJ's observations are very precious for me too, and can be applied to whatever much or less challengin piece you are trying to learn.
Thank you!!!!