How do you "consolidate" a difficult part?

[vaaal88]

Hello! My questions is... let's say that, with some metronome work, you can speed a difficult part up to the desired speed, and even more, without any mistake. However, it happens to me that if I do not work on it, that same part will get poorer and poorer as days passes by. So my question... once that we "are there", we know that we can get it right, how do we "consolidate" it so that it stays right even if we do not practice it everyday?

Should I practice it everyday for weeks at high speed? Should I "build up" speed everyday with the metronome? Should I practice it ONLY slowly for some day, and only fast on the other day?

What's your technique? Please share

[louispodesta]

Great question, and one which every pianist incurs daily!  That makes it a big deal, and one which is never discussed publicly because then:  why wouldn't your "god" teacher be able to address this matter?"   Shhhh!

On point, what I have found, (using Taubman, Mark, and Rachmaninoff together), is that you take a deep breath and then first decide whether or not it is time to put this particular piece aside and come back to it later.  If your brain is fried on this piece, all the practice in the world will not work!

However, if this is not the case, then you play in clusters, thumb to last finger, from cluster to cluster (full arm weight, and then no arm weight).  Then you do the same from thumb to thumb using clusters, with the same arm weight protocol.

If that does not work, then you look for the weak note/notes, the one you miss all of the time.  Then, you remember that it is always the note directly before that causes the weight and balance to go off kilter.  With Mozart, as I have learned at the tender age of 64 in the last two days, this is everything in terms of back and forth passages.

When you combine all of these methods, once again that you have not burned out on the piece, all of this should work.  At all cost, take your time and believe, that these techniques that have worked for over a hundred years, will work for you!

[brogers70]

I find practicing slowly helps a lot. I practice slowly and think about relaxing as much as possible, playing with as little stress as possible. Once I've done that for a week or two. or to the point where it is physically pleasurable to play the piece, speeding up is pretty easy, even speeding up a great deal all at once. I've never found gradually ramping up speed to be helpful.

[briansaddleback]

I find practicing slowly helps a lot. I practice slowly and think about relaxing as much as possible, playing with as little stress as possible. Once I've done that for a week or two. or to the point where it is physically pleasurable to play the piece, speeding up is pretty easy, even speeding up a great deal all at once. I've never found gradually ramping up speed to be helpful.

right here.  thanks. End thread.
seriously, it is all a matter of experience in practice and not concerning about absorbing it into oneself's technical tool belt but have it increment it slowly, keep practicing w focus and slowness and it will be a part of you even after not touching a piece or part for a month or weeks. You may have to brush it off a bit but in a few hours the technical aspect of it will return quickly and it is ther once again.

[jimroof]

I think everyone has experienced this.  For me, it is usually due to a lack of patience with the learning process.  I would venture to guess that a majority of pianists battle with the underlying need to 'get the thing up to speed' and, if we give in to that pressure we are possibly falling into a trap of letting the velocity come too early, muddying up our brains and our fingers in the process.

There were pieces that I learned super fast and some that just seemed to drag on forever.  Beethoven and Mozart?  Pretty fast.  Chopin... somewhere in the middle along with Debussy.  Scriabin?  Pack a lunch... it's going to be a while.

I think a constant diet of slow practice reinforces the process and helps clean up any areas that have deteriorated. 

When I was studying in college, my instructor was someone who was an excellent pianist and an absolute gem as a musician, but she worked hard for every bit of it.  She did not possess a natural velocity and as a student had to patiently increase her physical skills that matched her musical gift.  I was the wild horse with all kinds of speed and bravura, but needing to be disciplined and harnessed in order to get it to work.  We both had different innate gifts, but slow practice was the cure for BOTH of us.

[louispodesta]

In regards the OP:

I mistook his reference to speed practicing.  What he was really referencing was the Ruth Slenczynska method of using the metronome to gradually increase the speed of a particular passage.  I have often tried to use this in my Mozart works, with fleeting success.

That is why I have found that using others methods, which I referenced in my first reply and for me are more successful:

"On point, what I have found, (using Taubman, Mark, and Rachmaninoff together), is that you take a deep breath and then first decide whether or not it is time to put this particular piece aside and come back to it later.  If your brain is fried on this piece, all the practice in the world will not work!"

However, if this is not the case, then you play in clusters, thumb to last finger, from cluster to cluster (full arm weight, and then no arm weight).  Then you do the same from thumb to thumb using clusters, with the same arm weight protocol."

To cut to the chase, if the OP continues to use the metronome to attain and then maintain speed, it will probably not succeed.  It did not work for Rachmaninoff!

[vaaal88]

Thank you all for you answer. Yes, I was using the metronome to gradually increase the speed. I have used this method all my life, and I have found it very helpful. However, this is not a brainless "increase" of metronome speed, I carefully check if I am not going to fast, I slow down if I have, sometime I take the metronome off alltogether, and practice without it.

I am really interested in your opinion on this, as I though it was a classic method used in speeding up a piece. Don't everybody use it?

What is the best way for you to speed something up then (and expecially, related to this topic, MANTAIN that speed)? Do you just play slowly until it feels confortable to play it faster? Do you use the "classic" variation as well? (chunk of note faster, chunk slower, dotted notes etc., which I do use, only when the metronome technique does not work)

Thank you for your great feedback! I am starting playing again after years (I got my diploma 5 years ago) and I am trying to "monitorize" my progress more ... scientifically, I would say?

[brogers70]

As I said, I never found gradually ramping up the speed with the metronome to work for me, even if it is a "classic" approach. I practice quite slowly until I can play the piece and feel very relaxed and stress-free, thinking more about making a good sound than about speed. Once it feels good to play, then I can speed up a great deal all at once and keep the relaxed, unstressed feel. Doing it this way works for me, at least in part, because I've had a few years with an excellent teacher, so I can tell whether a particular motion can actually be sped up; you don't want to practice slowly using motions that are too awkward to do at speed. But if the motions are such that they can ultimately be sped up, then doing them for a good while at low speed until everything feels very relaxed works for me. And speeding up is pretty easy.

[pianotv]

On point, what I have found, (using Taubman, Mark, and Rachmaninoff together), is that you take a deep breath and then first decide whether or not it is time to put this particular piece aside and come back to it later.  If your brain is fried on this piece, all the practice in the world will not work!

Yes! I've had pieces that I've agonized over and eventually learned, but could never reliably play well every time. Then, after putting these pieces aside a while (like a year) and re-learning it, it's like magic. The re-learning is quick, and I'm able to play them infinitely better than I did the first time around. I feel like some pieces really need to marinate in the subconscious for a good long while.

[louispodesta]

Yes! I've had pieces that I've agonized over and eventually learned, but could never reliably play well every time. Then, after putting these pieces aside a while (like a year) and re-learning it, it's like magic. The re-learning is quick, and I'm able to play them infinitely better than I did the first time around. I feel like some pieces really need to marinate in the subconscious for a good long while.

This is very well put, as I have suggested before, and by thousands of piano teachers.  However, in terms of speed, I once again delineate the following prior post:

["If speed is your goal then you have to understand the basic tactile nature of playing the piano, and then adapt accordingly, in my opinion.  And, it is also that of the late Earl Wild, whose teacher Egon Petri taught him to strike every key from the surface of the key.

So, this is what I recommend, and, in term of success, I have the small hand and spindly fingers to back it up:

This concept is an effectuation of combining direct keyboard tactile touch at an extremely slow tempo, and then morphing it into a Rachmaninoff-like speed tempo.  My major teacher, the late Robert Weaver, taught the first part of this to all of his students.

First, you sit very quietly at the keyboard, and that includes your breathing and whole body relaxation.

Next, you very slowly play a five finger scale in each hand, utilizing super soft staccato.  This is done by striking the key from its surface (Egon Petri/Earl Wild), with absolutely no extraneous movement of the whole hand (one note at a time).

Then, it is very important to rest for a few seconds with hands in lap between each playing because you are building positive muscle memory from the ground up.

Next, you get it to where you can do this with both hands, depending on your own individual level of dexterity.  And, when you can do this with no forced effort, you can then move on to speed practice.

Accordingly, from this point on, you view every technical section as a scale cluster, broken chord section, or an arpeggiated section.  These are played up or down, hands separately or hands together.

You then play a particular section of the piece in question as fast as you can, in other words "RIP IT!"  You play these sections up or down, in clusters, utilizing your pre-disposed soft surface strike quick staccato tactile sense that you gained from the first section of this discourse.

This is done playing from thumb to last finger, followed by the next section (afterwards in reverse).  Then, you do the same clusters and sections from thumb to thumb.  Parenthetically, it is always important to release/relax immediately on the last finger.  Don't "stick" the last finger!

Then, you alternate between full arm weight and no arm weight, very importantly resting hands in lap between each alternation (remember, you are training your brain).

I use the term Rachmaninoff-like technique because this is what he taught his students."]

[siveron]

I have to practice often to not loose my skills!

[xdjuicebox]

Slow playing and fast playing are fundamentally different motions, for the most part. You can do fast motions slow, but it's kind of difficult to do slow motions fast. If you are doing the correct motions, it shouldn't be very difficult to play fast (you need a teacher to show what the right ones are, since it can get very subtle).

I don't believe one should always start under the tempo; you should not only speed up to your tempo from a slower one, but also slow down to it from a faster one by doing "exercises" that make you play faster. Like for example, playing a run in chords, and gradually breaking up the chords. People might light me on fire for saying that, but it's just to teach your hand what "fast" playing feels like, otherwise you'll never know and will be stuck trying to speed up a slow motion, which is impossible.

The most important thing, however, is that in your head the actual part is very simple.
If you are thinking C Eb Gb Bb C Eb Gb Bb C Eb Gb Bb then you'll never play it fast nor well. But if you think Cm7b5 3 times, then you'll be able to play as fast as you want.

There's this one part in the Chopin 4th ballade where the main melody has double thirds split on the same hand, and the other hand is doing chord-jumpy stuff. I don't think of everything in terms of its note names, I think "melody on top, thirds starting on ___, F minor" or whatever chord it is, and my hands go "chord, chord, chord" etc. instead of thinking of the hands as separate things. [Though I am sure to voice them separately, but the physical motion is UNITED.]

Now for big chord runs or chord-jumpy type of stuff...you can't start faster so you better have the right motions haha

Only playing fast with both hands can get very detrimental, since you get super confused; [unless you think of the motions of both hands as one] slow practice is good, provided you are doing the right motions that are playable fast. Try mixing up the tempo; slow down and speed up and slow down and speed up. Just keep your musical brain ON

[kawai_cs]

I find all the above mentioned advice very helpful and for the most part it works for me too. The only thing that has NEVER worked for me is speeding up gradually with metronome.
Just as @xdjuicebox wrote - I have to know the motions used in speed to practice them otherwise just practicing slow with slow motions never got me to playing fast. That is why it is beneficial to try to play fast at the beginning - just sections - to "draft" the runs and the motions needed so you know what motions to practice slow to get comfortable with the notes first.

I also used the method that @louispodesta described and it worked for me very nicely with some fast runs in Mozart. However I have a question. What does it mean - practice runs from "thumb to thumb" or from "thumb do 5th" finger? Does it mean to break a run in clusters where each cluster starts with a thumb and ends with thumb or where each cluster starts with thumb and ends with 5th? Even if those clusters are very short/long? I have broken the runs in Mozart just in comfortable clusters but was not able to use "thumb to thumb/5th" rule,  because the clusters seemed either too short of too long (when ending with 5th).

[chopinlover01]

Louis is actually making a good point here. All the metronome practice in the world only gets you to a brick wall if you don't know why you're making mistakes and where.
Identify technical problems and solve them. More importantly, staying loose all the while; likely the root of said technical problems in the first place.