Chopin Etude op. 10/12, a few practice suggestions

[awesom_o]

I've been meaning to post in the other thread but it degenerated! So let's start fresh.

This Etude is highly demanding. I studied it from age 12-13 onward, but my technique remained too underdeveloped to skillfully render it until I was at least 17 or 18.

Currently one of my best students is working on it, and she has found my various methods of study to be extremely helpful.

First off, you can forget about the pedal for now! Learn to play both hands separately, with the correct rhythm (under tempo but with correct rhythm), sans pedal.

When it comes time to put the hands together, you may find you need to go very slowly indeed to preserve the accuracy level you have worked hard to achieve with each hand individually.

At this stage, I would highly recommend you relax your right hand by your side and work on PLAYING the left hand, while SINGING the RH melody out loud with your voice.

You should be able to do this comfortably for the entire etude, without disturbing the rhythm.

If this is far too difficult at this stage, you must go back. You do not know it hands separately yet.

Go back to hands separate practice, and try using dotted rhythms. Try practicing the RH part alone using only the top or bottom notes of the octave.

You need to get to the stage where you can not only play one hand at a time with confidence, but where you can actually HEAR the other hand's part in your head with great clarity. That should enable you to sing it out loud while simultaneously playing the other hand.


Don't fall into the trap of practicing hands together with sloppy rhythm, sloppy fingering, sloppy pedaling, sloppy phrasing, while somehow expecting the metronome to fix all of these shortcomings!


Thank you and best of luck with this monster. I look forward to hearing your recordings!