For Paul: repeated note groups

[Daniel_piano]

Pauls wrote:

3. Repeated Note Groups.. HOLY COW.. I tried them on this passage of fast cascading downard pentuplets (that's what you call a 5 note "triplet" right?)



It took me 57 minutes to get through the whole set of groups.

Wait a moment...
Could you please explain me how did it take 57 minutes to complete the whole set of groups?
Would you mind exaplaining which sequences of notes did you practice and also how many repetition you did for each note groups

(I've already perused the whole forum in search of old message explaining this in detail and I found nothing)

Thanks
Daniel

[mound]

I thought I outlined this somewhere, but maybe not. Lets say every note is labeled with 1-15.. Basically you are going to define a "group" as two or more notes starting with two notes moving through the whole passage.. then 3, then 4 etc.. so the whole "set" would look like this:

1 2
2 3
3 4
4 5
5 6
6 7
7 8
8 9
9 10
10 11
11 12
12 13
13 14
14 15

1 2 3
2 3 4
3 4 5
4 5 6
5 6 7
...
13 14 15

1 2 3 4
2 3 4 5
3 4 5 6
...
12 13 14 15

1 2 3 4 5
2 3 4 5 6
3 4 5 6 7
...
11 13 13 14 15

1 2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6 7
3 4 5 6 7 8
...
10 11 12 13 14 15

etc.. all the way up to:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

You can see how it's basically mastering every possible transition of one note to the other? I didn't feel like typing that all out, so let me know if you don't see the pattern.

So, for each of those groups (I dunno, what is it like 1^15 or something?) I mastered each one.. Now, something like 1 2  can be mastered very quickly.. same with 2 3 and 3 4 etc.. You can start with a "chord attack" and play both notes simultaneously, and then use what Chang describes as "phase angle" and Bernhard describes as "wiggle your wrist" to slow down from "infinite speed" by not playing the notes simultaneously.. 

and also how many repetition you did for each note groups

Play each group as many times as necessary to master it.. You can get through the smaller groups pretty quickly..  In this case, it's only when you get to the 5 note groups, where you have to shift your hand laterally that you will encounter more difficulty because your speed is limited by the speed at which you can successfully shift your hand sideways.

So - that is alot of groups in that complete set! Depending on your skills and current technique, you may be able to omit many of them (ie. if you can easilly play the quintuplet already, you may opt to do only the groups that contain the hand shift, that is a totally personal decision.. but what I've outlined is the "complete set")

You're essentially training your hand in a very methodical way to master every movement required to play the passage, and it is for this reason that the entire set has to be completed in one sitting. 

You should also find another similar passage and work your left hand as well, alternating frequently to avoid injury.

I know there are several posts on the forums describing exactly this procedure.  But do you understand now the following:

1. how the groups and set of groups are determined?
2. why it would take a considerable amount of time to complete an entire set?
3. The number of required repetitions will vary based on group size and your skills.


Did this help?

-Paul

[Daniel_piano]

and also how many repetition you did for each note groups

Play each group as many times as necessary to master it.. You can get through the smaller groups pretty quickly..  In this case, it's only when you get to the 5 note groups, where you have to shift your hand laterally that you will encounter more difficulty because your speed is limited by the speed at which you can successfully shift your hand sideways.

Okay, I understand it is kind of subjective and it depends mostly on the chunk you're working on, but maybe you can tell me what an approximate times of repetition could be
I mean: is that something as 10 repetition or more list 100/200 repetition...on average?

Did this help?

-Paul

Yes, it helped a lot thanks 
I understand now why it took you so much time to complete the whole set

Daniel

[mound]

umm. lets see. for the two note groups, I did the "chord attack" thinking more about how my arm weight was falling into them, probably 3 times. Then I slowed it down to very slow and back up to very fast, probably a total of 8 or 10 times at a maximum..  Probably about the same for the 3 and 4 note groups.. Maybe the 4 note groups had a few more and the 5 note groups a few more still.. No, never anything like 100-200! If I had done 200 repetitions of each one, starting with single notes, it would have taken me a week to complete  hehe.  We're talking 10-20 at the most (again, for me)  - the exception being the groups that included the lateral shift. The "chord attack" of course doesn't work with those, so I probably did a good 20-30 or so repetitions, from very fast to very slow..

and again, that example above is the same quintuplet repeated 3 times moving downward. I didn't necessarilly have to do a set that included all 15 notes because only the first 5 are unique, but the problem I was trying to solve (getting through all 15 smoothly) dictated it.. You PM'd me an example, where you had 6 note groups, 3 of them were exactly the same, same octave even, so of course you'd build the set out of 6 notes, not 18.

-Paul