speed work

[BoliverAllmon]

what happens if someone can't achieved the desired faster speed that many of you talked aobut? i know for sure that I can't get 130% tempo on a certain shostakovich prelude. The tempo marking is 210. that would mean I would have to play it at 260 or something. That isn't going to happen. I mean 210 is going to be a struggle as is.

boliver

[mound]

Hey man - I don't think it's a hard-and-fast rule "130% of end speed"  - the concept is pretty straightforward, learn hands-seperate faster than end speed (as much faster as you can get) because when you join hands, you will naturally slow down, so if HS was at 130% (or whatever) of target speed, chances are better that HT will slow down to target speed.

practicing hands together faster than speed is not worthwhile as far as I'm concerned. The goal is to make HT easy.

The other idea is to practice faster than end speed HS first to determine the hand motions that will be required, which you then replicate exactly, practicing in slow motion, so that you don't learn motions which work for slow play, but will skrew you when you try to speed it up.

I just posted this same thing in a response on that "slow fingers" thread   

[BoliverAllmon]

yeah I gotcha. I don't know about others, but when I learn the piece I learn the hands seperately and when I play I am basically playing two pieces at the same time. Each hand is completely independent (well as close as possible to complete) therefore if i can reach HS at full speed, then HT at full speed is just around the corner.

boliver

[mound]

you don't find that you slow down when it comes time to put your hands together? Again, nothing in this "method" is hard and fast.  if you don't have problems with coordination and your hands come together easilly, wonderful! It's just a suggestion for those who do need a mechanism to help.

[BoliverAllmon]

nah, it doesn't really slow down to much at all. the biggest thing is memorization.