Very slow and relaxed practice

[brogers70]

I'm a reasonably advanced amateur, can play some of the less difficult classical sonatas and WTC Preludes and Fugues, and some Brahms and Schubert Intermezzi and Impromptus fairly well. My new teacher has been having me focus a lot on hand relaxation and position, posture, and weight. So i decided to spend at least a week just doing ultra slow practice of scales arpeggios, trills, and the pieces I'm currently learning (Bach WTC G major P&F and Brahms Intermezzo 117/3) focusing on relaxation, on finger position, wrist motion, on doing the most efficient movements (per my teacher), and keeping perfect posture. Without ever playing any music up to even 50% of tempo.

Of course it only costs a week, so I'll see whether it does any good soon enough, but I wonder if anyone has tried anything similar and if so what your experience was. I'm not so interested in descriptions of what good position, motion, etc should be as I have a good teacher to demonstrate for me, I'm just interested in whether anyone has good or bad experiences with just working on it in this way.

[nyiregyhazi]

I'm a reasonably advanced amateur, can play some of the less difficult classical sonatas and WTC Preludes and Fugues, and some Brahms and Schubert Intermezzi and Impromptus fairly well. My new teacher has been having me focus a lot on hand relaxation and position, posture, and weight. So i decided to spend at least a week just doing ultra slow practice of scales arpeggios, trills, and the pieces I'm currently learning (Bach WTC G major P&F and Brahms Intermezzo 117/3) focusing on relaxation, on finger position, wrist motion, on doing the most efficient movements (per my teacher), and keeping perfect posture. Without ever playing any music up to even 50% of tempo.

Of course it only costs a week, so I'll see whether it does any good soon enough, but I wonder if anyone has tried anything similar and if so what your experience was. I'm not so interested in descriptions of what good position, motion, etc should be as I have a good teacher to demonstrate for me, I'm just interested in whether anyone has good or bad experiences with just working on it in this way.

It's impossible to give a meaningful answer without reference to technique. I see some students practise with the general intent you describe in a way that encourages ultra-lazy fingers that don't connect well to the piano well. The arm gets stuck in a held position and becomes stiff as a result and the entire thing is totally dysfunctional- in the name of "relaxation". Musical clarity also goes out the window and the whole thing is a just a vague soup of meaningless sounds with no real musical context, energy or depth.

That said, another pianist might make such a description yet capitalise on the chance to feel extremely vivid quality of connection between an active finger and each depressed key- freeing the arm up and allowing the fingers to move easily from a stable position. This can breed clarity energy and genuine ease in the arms- but the hand tends to need to be extremely active, if it's to go down this route. When I do this kind of the thing, the challenge is to do enough with whichever fingers are depressing keys (to keep the arch between 1 and 2 open and the knuckles high) not to relax.

There's no way of making meaningful guesses without seeing you. I would say that I see more people slide down the former route than the second, but it depends what your baseline was before though.

[hmpiano]

If you're going that slow make sure to relax even between the notes (despite what's been said above).  It make take more than a week though.  Also, it's better to start with new pieces.

[nyiregyhazi]

If you're going that slow make sure to relax even between the notes (despite what's been said above).  It make take more than a week though.  Also, it's better to start with new pieces.

like this?

&list=UL

[p2u_]

I wonder if anyone has tried anything similar and if so what your experience was.

Rachmaninov did that (I believe he took something like 15 seconds on average to stay on one sound combination before going to the next one), so you're in good company. I take 5 seconds per sound combination; I guess I'm a bit too restless to wait any longer. Of course, what you do and don't do is paramount, but since you don't want any details, I'll respectfully skip that part. I think this kind of practice is A LOT more effective for your technical development than hunting for speed. I also think you are lucky to have found yourself an excellent teacher.

Paul

[hmpiano]

like this?

&list=UL

Why yes.  I think if you're going to practice your thirds slowly that's a good way to do it. 

I see you've conjured up your mate!  As usual, after a post of mine.

[nyiregyhazi]

Why yes.  I think if you're going to practice your thirds slowly that's a good way to do it. 

I see you've conjured up your mate!  As usual, after a post of mine.

So why can't "my mate" play anything quickly and why is he so tense in the rest of his videos? Going from a tense dysfunctional position to a relaxed dysfunctional position does not help. Slow practise has to train the actions that are needed for fast practise, or it simply creates two altogether unrelated worlds that very little can be transferred between. That video shows the kind of thing I speak about in my first post of this thread. If you don't settle into a simple sustainable position in this style of slow practise, but instead droop into lazy lifelessness, you don't learn transferable skills.

[pianoman53]

The difficulty is not really to play fast, in a sense. I mean, everyone can move their fingers, right? What's difficult is to make the brain know what to do, and when to do it.

If you really go through playing it slowly for a week, don't forget to think what to do. Practicing slowly only for the sake of practicing slowly is quite useless. Obviously it will have some effect, but it wont be as effective as people like to think.
What I find helpful is to think the phrase in a quick tempo - the sound, direction etc. - and then playing it slowly. The important thing is to not change the movement while playing slowly. So don't do like those young kids, when who you tell to play slowly, and they add a lot of motions they will never use.

Someone here might say it's a load of crap, but this is how I work, and it works very well for me.

[hmpiano]

So why can't "my mate" play anything quickly

Wrong mate, mate.  As for the guy in the video, I do believe he plays some Grieg...

[nyiregyhazi]

The difficulty is not really to play fast, in a sense. I mean, everyone can move their fingers, right? What's difficult is to make the brain know what to do, and when to do it.

If you really go through playing it slowly for a week, don't forget to think what to do. Practicing slowly only for the sake of practicing slowly is quite useless. Obviously it will have some effect, but it wont be as effective as people like to think.
What I find helpful is to think the phrase in a quick tempo - the sound, direction etc. - and then playing it slowly. The important thing is to not change the movement while playing slowly. So don't do like those young kids, when who you tell to play slowly, and they add a lot of motions they will never use.

Someone here might say it's a load of crap, but this is how I work, and it works very well for me.

Actually, I agree entirely. As I stated before- I agree/disagree with points, not people.

[j_menz]

The difficulty is not really to play fast, in a sense. I mean, everyone can move their fingers, right? What's difficult is to make the brain know what to do, and when to do it.

If you really go through playing it slowly for a week, don't forget to think what to do. Practicing slowly only for the sake of practicing slowly is quite useless. Obviously it will have some effect, but it wont be as effective as people like to think.
What I find helpful is to think the phrase in a quick tempo - the sound, direction etc. - and then playing it slowly. The important thing is to not change the movement while playing slowly. So don't do like those young kids, when who you tell to play slowly, and they add a lot of motions they will never use.

Someone here might say it's a load of crap, but this is how I work, and it works very well for me.

I agree. I think that there is also a risk that one uses a different motion when playing slowly than when playing fast - that must be avoided or the slow practice will be worse than useless.

I personally practice pieces or passages slowly interspersed with playing them just above my comfort zone. What constitutes "slowly" is not so much a particular speed, or fraction of the ultimately desired speed, but rather that speed where the notes are 100% accurate and/or the motion is 100% controlled/observed consciously.

[sucom]

If your teacher believes you are holding any tension then I think relaxation exercises are going to be very good for you in the long term.

I don't think I would be tempted to lift my wrist after every third, as in the video. It doesn't feel totally natural to me to lift the wrist quite so often and I don't think it is likely to speed up the playing of thirds, although I must admit, playing thirds is quite tiring for the learning pianist.  Thirds can really cause some tension!

For relaxation, I would be more tempted to use a drop, roll technique over a group of two or three notes rather than individual notes, which could even cause a subconscious nod of the head with each chord played (definitely not recommended). I would suggest leaning into the first of three chords and then gradually reducing the weight as the other two chords are played, imagining the hand continuing on into the air as a feather would float upwards, the wrist leading the way and a very relaxed hand following it.

[hmpiano]

I don't think I would be tempted to lift my wrist after every third, as in the video. It doesn't feel totally natural to me to lift the wrist quite so often

Interesting.  I see 'hangs the hand from the wrist'.  I suppose it's a glass half full/empty thing.

[lostinidlewonder]

I'm a reasonably advanced amateur, can play some of the less difficult classical sonatas and WTC Preludes and Fugues, and some Brahms and Schubert Intermezzi and Impromptus fairly well. My new teacher has been having me focus a lot on hand relaxation and position, posture, and weight. So i decided to spend at least a week just doing ultra slow practice of scales arpeggios, trills, and the pieces I'm currently learning (Bach WTC G major P&F and Brahms Intermezzo 117/3) focusing on relaxation, on finger position, wrist motion, on doing the most efficient movements (per my teacher), and keeping perfect posture. Without ever playing any music up to even 50% of tempo.

Of course it only costs a week, so I'll see whether it does any good soon enough, but I wonder if anyone has tried anything similar and if so what your experience was. I'm not so interested in descriptions of what good position, motion, etc should be as I have a good teacher to demonstrate for me, I'm just interested in whether anyone has good or bad experiences with just working on it in this way.

This is a perfectly fine idea (which I would do for many years not just a week) using J.S Bach is wonderful to do slower practice with since his tends NOT to lose cohesion when you slow it down (especially his Fugues) and I find this an excellent stage for developing sight reading. Bach's WTC is also wonderful to study fingering, key signature, musical expression and technique with at slower tempos unlike other music which when slowed down you can lose sense of a lot of these things. It is his part writing which allows one to be able to practice at various slower tempos and is an invaluable resource for pianists.

When playing slower however we can certainly do actions which we can get away with but at faster tempos we would have problems but Bach's pieces tends to dampen this effect. If you are appropriately relaxed,comfortable and using the correct fingering (which in Bach can be ambiguous) when playing slow, increasing speed doesn't become an issue. It is important to not go too slow, you need to play at a speed you can comfortably sight read and play with correct fingers but not have too much time and make things too easy, you need to find that mid point where you are slightly challenged but overall playing with good control.

[nyiregyhazi]

Interesting.  I see 'hangs the hand from the wrist'.  I suppose it's a glass half full/empty thing.

Unless it translates to the ability to play faster thirds in fluid movements with control over tone (which you, the pianist, have never shown any evidence of), it would be better described as a glass that is not only entirely empty, but also in pieces. The film doesn't even offer a terribly good example of extreme relaxation practise- given that you don't succeed in fully releasing the wrist (which ends in highly inconsistent positions that are often still bunched forwards, rather than in consistently relaxed positions). When I give a tense student that type of exercise, I expect them to relax the wrist properly after every depression and find a settled position that they could happily maintain- not to sort of relax a bit, sometimes more sometimes less, and to generally be going on before you've settled yourself. There's a scarcely a single third on which you've actually settled into balance before you're going on to the next. There's simply no point doing it, if you don't set such a standard. It shouldn't be about a string of constant bobbing movements, but about using the release as a precursor to finding a quality of balance that can be entered and passed through when going fast. You're simply repeating a habit of bobbing on autopilot- not usefully exploring the quality of balance or monitoring the sensations with any awareness.

As another poster suggested, thirds are better practise in twos or threes- so you're actually working at the finger activities that can put them into a meaningful context. Any tool can collapse onto lifeless fingers. It takes a whole lot more to find something that is transferable to reaching even moderate speeds with both ease and control.