Tonal music, fundamentally, consists of agreed upon shapes, sounds and figures that are used to articulate and express ideas.
These ideas are constructed using diatonic scale shapes.
I find it astonishing that anyone can claim to play the piano and not understand and rehearse scales and arpeggios.
Literally, every tonal composition has a key centre based on a particular scale, even if for a few notes.
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Maybe you can amplify a bit on how you apply that.
There are some composers where scale fingerings work, some composers where correct fingering isn't crucial, but Bach is neither, and we're talking about a Bach piece here.
@timothy42b: Define correct. My hand is different from yours. Everything is correct if it is performed convincingly and without a doubt. Scales are often referred to incorrectly (i.e. mindless repetition to learn fingerings). Not what I refer to; I teach scales in groups, with similar shapes based on the geography of the keyboard. Essentially the fingering is the same, but it is never about fingers, it is about the obstacle the learner is navigating. Of course, one would need to not be thinking about pieces, and more the tool used to ‘unlock them’, basic technique.
In the age of instant gratification, this is never the case.
The music the OP presented is hardly more than an exercise in arpeggios, shared between the hands. If they really wanted to, they
could play the entire thing using one hand and pedal if they so wished.
Both artists are part of a bunch of people who say they never practiced scales and even say it's useless.
Despite this, I think they are able to navigate the keyboard quite well.
Their ability to play complex works at sight (and improvising in Volodos' case), with a wonderful interpretation, suggests to me that they can do this navigation without complete reliance on finger numbers.
Thus, in my opinion, neither are stuck in one of the two camps you claim one always will be stuck in if they avoid scales and arpeggios.
…
It's like learning to paint circles if you can already paint wheels perfectly.
@toughbo: Clearly, you like cyclic arguments; that is ‘chicken or egg’. I will ask you directly,
do you rehearse scales? I do, which is evidenced by my bias in persuasion to thinking they are necessary. Understanding diatonic scale structures means when I read music, I have an awareness of key, chord, melody, and harmonic progression without the need to stop and study, simply because I rehearsed those things at length at some point in my life. If you are in contact with Argerich and Volodos, please ask them to explain WHY they do not rehearse scales. I think you might find that they DID, but do not anymore because they understand them completely.
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“I don’t need to do X because [Famous Outlier] did not”
Or
“I don’t need to go to music college because Beethoven did not”
Or
“I don’t need to wear concert dress for my recital because James Rhodes wore jeans and a T-shirt”
Or
“I don’t need to learn the most efficient method that has developed over hundreds of years, I’ll just write all the notes in … because that’s so much easier”
Unless you are a savant, you need to rehearse scales to unlock the synapse in your brain for motor skill. You need to play LOTS of music to understand how music works and see associate patterns and shapes. You need to take it slow so you can think during your practice.
Fingering is not that big of a deal if you spend a little time with a keyboard without notation.
[sarcasm]
If only there was a way to learn keyboard shapes and sounds, without notation … to understand finger patterns … in a variety of keys …
I really wish someone would create such an exercise …
[/sarcasm]