Chopin Etude op. 10 no. 4 practice

[vassoni123]

Hi everyone,i'll try to be straight forward,i need advices for practicing chopin's etude op.10 no.4 ,how to achieve evenness in both hands,especially in faster tempos,my goal is to play it at 170 bpm,i have expirience with vituosic etudes,such as etude op.25 no.12 and an octave etude in     B-Minor,i also played moszkowskisetude in A flat-Major, and g-minor, from op.72,i played all of those pieces perfect,so i thought i can take my technique to the next level, PLEASE HELP ME!

[schumaniac]

wow, you got 69 views but no replies...

So this is a hard answer to question. "How do I get faster and play more evenly?"

If you were to ask something more specific, then you would get a lot more answers. But still, I'm going to try to reply:
1) Break the etude into sections so you can practice more efficiently
2) Practice in different rhythms. For example, play "long-short long-short" dotted rhythms, and then "short-long." You can also, say, play the 1st note in each 16th note group longer than the others.
3) Slow practice is important! Don't try to play faster and faster in one practice section; it usually takes a couple of days before you can really get anywhere in terms of speed.

[kawai_cs]

The tips that schumaniac gave you are excellent and work great. Apart from that I would say that in order to play fast you need to pay attention that you make your movements very efficient and do not waste energy. That means you need to:
-> stay very close to the keyboard
-> do not play deep in the keys
-> do not rise fingers

[rmbarbosa]

Do not play deep in the keys???
May you explain better?

[briansaddleback]

There are a lot of chromatic runs in this piece that are not part of melody but are supporting notes.

So initially, when learning the etude, press deep into the keys slowly and surely for accuracy and learning the notes into the hand and knowing the feel of the arm, wrist , finger motions.

Then later when one is trying to speed up /get more refined in this etude, the technical aspect to work on is not to play deep into the keys for chromatics but to stress the beat note of each chromatic run instead.

[kawai_cs]

Do not play deep in the keys???
May you explain better?

Of course. You don't reach the bottom of the key to produce sound in this etude, as you would do, e.g. in a slow piece like nocturne or if practicing portato pesante as the poster above mentioned.
You only go as deep in the key as it is required to produce the sound you need.
My advice was on how to gain speed.

[ahoffmann]

I've just uploaded a video with exercises for it since I just learned it myself. Please let me know if this helps:

[briansaddleback]

Hi Hoffman, I have sent you a PM on your youtube account. I have not been at pianoworld lately , not interested as a mod there has chosen to be petty towards me instead of just being mature and straightforward.. anyways im debussychopin there I am still interested in sharing videos of our etudes practice.