Evenness when playing scale passages

[pianorookie]

I am having issues with evenness when playing longer scale passages. I have talked to my teacher and she told me that "it takes time" and patience and practice to achieve evenness. This is my third year of taking lessons and I think that I should step up my practice strategies to "smarter practice" methods to tackle issues that make my music sound sloppy. I am practicing scales and exercises in rhythms. My teacher typically assigns some exercises, an etude and 4 pieces from 4 different periods of music. I would classify myself as an intermediate player who practices 5 days a week.
Is there anything that I can specifically do to fix the uneven sounds when I play longer passages? Thank you.

ETA: the unevenness is when I play long passages. Some sounds are unintentionally loud.

[adodd81802]

Do you mean faster passages? or longer passages as in... more notes?

Furthermore, do you mean even as in, getting an equal sound from the keys with all your fingers or even as in, sloppy playing where your fingers don't play notes in equal time and the notes start to blur?

If you mean faster passages creating an uneven sound, slower practice is probably the answer here

if you mean more notes, then arguably, breaking it into smaller sections and working on those bit by bit is probably the logical step

In either case, don't think that mindlessly making your fingers just do the exercises will achieve results. Your fingers don't think for themselves.

One thing you have to be consciously doing, is thinking about what you want to achieve before you attempt to achieve it.

For example, kicking a ball into a goal, we don't just look down at the ball and kick randomly. We look at the goal, the ball, visualise where we want the ball to go when we strike it and we kick. if it goes terribly off, we know we kicked the ball wrong, either the power we put behind the kick, or the part of the foot that was used.

The same can be applied with the piano, don't assume just because we can all put our fingers down onto the keys that there isn't more refining that can be achieved with intentional practice to achieve a certain goal, if that's a finger that is playing to light, a finger that is playing too heavy or a combination of fingers that are not doing what you would like them to do, the more you consciously think about what you want to achieve, the more easily your brain can achieve it.

[beethovenfan01]

I think the best way to even out scale passages is to stop thinking about each note individually.

Maybe I'm off base here ...

But if you have, say, several measures of fast running scales that skitter here, there, and everywhere, I say, break it up into chunks and find a "goal" note in each chunk, usually a downbeat. Then practice playing to that chunk--slow enough that you can get every note perfect, then gradually build speed (but don't force it--with slow, mindful repetition, the speed comes on its own).

Take, for example, the famous 16th-note motif from Fantasie Impromptu. I would break it into chunks of one or two beats and play to the next downbeat. And there are different ways of increasing security on something like this--playing it in dotted rhythms, playing with a metronome, alternating extremely loud with extremely soft, ghosting, staccato-legato, etc. There's a ton of tricks out there you can use.

I'm going through hell with this right now ... Waldstein first movement is insane in the number of scales one has to deal with, and the final tempo just makes one want to wither!

[rmbarbosa]

With scales, the best way to achieve eveness is playing them stacatto. First loud, then soft.

[dogperson]

With scales, the best way to achieve eveness is playing them stacatto. First loud, then soft.

 Does playing them staccato get you to an end result of being able to play them evenly as  legato ?
 I would think if you have a problem with legato scales being  even, you would need to practice them legato.   That does take time, but the entire purpose  is to learn to apply even pressure from note to note so that it sounds seamless   

[adodd81802]

With scales, the best way to achieve eveness is playing them stacatto. First loud, then soft.

Actually I think this is very good advice. This makes sense in my mind and I have heard this suggested before.

My thought behind why it works is:

1 - If you're playing staccato, you have no assistance from the motion of the previous finger or hand to aid the movement of the finger that's about to strike a key.

When playing 5 notes c-g for example in a legato manner, doing this quickly you will notice your fingers and hands aiding the striking of the keys.

This is maybe more noticeable in the 3/4/5 fingers

Staccato removes that and forces each individual finger to press a key from a single motion, allowing you to learn to create an even sound with each finger. (hense the suggestion to do it both loud and quiet so that your brain understands how to achieve the different sound)

2. The biggest hindrance for most when playing scales is that dreaded thumb under. A motion that hugely differs at low speed than it does from high. Staccato practice removes that altogether and teachers you to shift your hand up the keyboard in a loose and free way. You may still want to tuck your thumb under in a motion that minimises the gap between the previous finger and following thumb under shift, but there is no obscurity from the previous finger causing that contortion movement that is so obvious at slow speed.

What you end up at high speed is something that looks legato, sounds legato but is still more a staccato process from the hands but very refined.

It should be noticed that this is not a replacement for slow-medium speed passages where the longer notes will still need the legato technique

[keypeg]

That answer happens to help me.

[bernadette60614]

Coming in late, but here's what my teacher suggested:

Mentally count:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, playing the note with each number.

We tried the metronome, which wasn't achieving our outcome, but mentally counting requires me to really focus on the count and to notice if I"m speeding up my mental count.

[timothy42b]

This will seem obvious and maybe it is, but...........

To play scales evenly, your hand cannot move evenly. 

The notes must be equidistant in time, but your hand does not move the same distance for each note.  Some note changes require the hand to shift rapidly, while others don't. 

Read Bernhard's Pearly Scales thread again. 

[keypeg]

This will seem obvious and maybe it is, but...........

To play scales evenly, your hand cannot move evenly. 

The notes must be equidistant in time, but your hand does not move the same distance for each note.  Some note changes require the hand to shift rapidly, while others don't. 

Read Bernhard's Pearly Scales thread again. 

In fact, this was a tremendous insight that I got from my teacher a couple of years ago.  That the sound you produce may not be equivalent to the motions needed for producing those sounds. It was quite a thing to wrap one's head around, and quite powerful.  That is not just scales.

[pianorookie]

Thanks everyone for your detailed responses.