In my opinion, no etude inherently improves your technique. You can practice Etudes with faulty technique and make your technique, if not worse, then at least more habitually bad. It's all in how the material is practiced, rather than the material in itself. Again, in my opinion.
Agreed.Any piece of music can be used to improve technique. A piece that is titled "Etude" does not have any magical superpowers. It is the discipline and work ethic of the pianist that creates improvement in technique.
I'd add "knowledge of what you need to do" to that list. If you have been taught to stiffen your arms into wooden logs and raise your fingers high and hit the keys like little hammers, no amount discipline and work ethic on top of that foundation is going to take you very far. With a lack of knowledge you might be practicing the wrong things with extreme discipline and work ethic and not get as far as somebody who is taught exactly what they need to do.
My personal opinion of work ethic is to never take anything one is taught for granted, no matter how prestigious the source or lineage of teaching. One must test and examine every lesson and every theory, for oneself. Only after a thorough battery of tests, reflections, and examinations should a lesson or technique be put into production in one's personal technique. In that regard, even if one was taught to stiffen your arms into wooden logs, a sold work ethic would catch such things in its filter and raise questions in the mind of the pianist as to the efficacy of the technique.One can take ownership of one's technique when one expands beyond a dependency on teachers to show how it is done, and deeply think and reflect for oneself the workings of one's own technique. Even more importantly, a pianist would do well to continually pose the question: how can one take the techniques passed on from teachers and make them even better.
Besides this.What Chopin Etudes help improve technique the most, I'm assuming 10 2 and the sixths have to help a ton, but, I'm just wondering which ones if you guys have tried them have drastically improved your technique since finishing?
Personally I feel that if you are studying Chopin Etudes for technique acquisition you are studying the wrong music! There is so much other repertoire out there (eg Cramer or Heller Etudes) that will build you up to this level more effectively..
The actual development of 'technique' (defined as physiological condition) is better done through things like Isidore Philip exercises.
Playing the Etudes is like performing a competitive gymnastics routine. It displays strength, flexibility and skills in a beautiful manner- but to acquire can be more effectively acquired through dull and hard exercises.
On another front--I find the best way to improve my technique is while playing things I have played for years, and can play from memory. If the music is firmly in my gut and my fingers to can focus on what I am trying to do differently.DK
Ignore all the answers here.
My teacher, who's been teaching at the conservatory level for 15+, outright told me that if you want to vastly improve and "perfect" your dexterity the Chopin etudes are the way to go; especially with op. 10 no. 2. Don't think I've met anyone in the real world who disagrees either.
Currently revisiting Op. 10 for recital next year after about 20 years playing the set for grad school at IU. Just a few thoughts having lived with these pieces for that long and improving through many other pieces:In my humble opinion I believe that the first two etudes (10-1 and 10-2) played in succession is the most difficult obstacle in the entire set of 24. If one can play these without accruing tension and tightness by the end of No. 2 then you can play all of them with proper technique. The first thing to reconsider in every etude is the idea of strength as a means to technical success. Relying upon strength will only fatigue your fine musculature and make everything after these two etudes really unpleasant to perform. Additionally, don’t rely upon No. 3 and 6 to regain the suppleness for the others that follow. The ONLY etude in which I would use some strength would be 25-10 and that strength would be isolated to the musculature above the elbow. With that said here’s what I found about my success with 1 and 2. The problem with the first two is obvious in that 3-4-5 is hammered relentlessly in the right hand. With 1, I have found a couple of things that could happen easily if you aren’t paying attention. Firstly, it is extremely easy to “whip” the hand at the top of each arpeggio in an attempt to get the 1 in position for the next arpeggio going up. This has caused my 5 to be solid thus stressing that part of the hand. In the score, Chopin has placed accents on each 5, which I believe to be misleading. The turnaround at the top is often the most tense because of this. I have also noticed that whipping the hand into position for each upward arpeggio cause my thumb to be a bit premature, causing a compression of the sixteenths and a rather undesirable rhythmic wave within each beat that was uneven. To remedy this, I discovered that consciously slowing down the attack of the thumb ascending greatly resisted the urge to rush the hand through each beat. At that point my arpeggios were clean and rhythmically accurate. Practice the piece slowly and with NO PEDAL to ensure your sixteenths are even. The arpeggios on the bottom of each chord: if you don’t move your body to retain the alignment of your arm, you will inadvertently force your position into what I call “inside-out,” which is the wrist inward and the elbow outward. Try this position with the first C-major chord and analyze what you feel. It will likely be tight. Avoid this. Avoid lateral wrist motion to accommodate the chord width. You should not need any wrist motion left or right to “shape” any arpeggio. Your arm should remain stable and “bring” each finger to its destination. Watch any modern performance of this and you’ll see what I mean. In almost every successful performance I’ve seen of this etude, the fingers are the active mechanism, not the wrist or forearm.Arpeggios with black notes on top: in descending motion, lift the hand slightly and attack the note from above with 5. For example, that annoying D# in mm. 8, or the incredibly difficult chord in mm. 22. Release the thumb while lifting gently and you’ll achieve more accuracy. In ascending motion, consider alternate fingerings. For example, I have NEVER been able to play mm. 31 correctly with the suggested fingering. It simply does not fit my hand so I have had to experiment with other ways. For that chord I use 2-3-1-3 all the way up and switch to 5 at the top E-flat. For the annoying A major chord in mm. 37, I use 1-3-5-2 all the way and switch to 3-2-1-2 descending. It works and sounds fluid. When fully warmed up, I have chain smoked this piece 5 times in a row with no break and can play it without getting tense or tired. With No. 2, the issues are the same but in a more compact position throughout. Again, if strength is your approach, you’ll never make it through. The first thing I have determined is that using 3 and 5 as much as possible helps maintain balance and clarity in the line and helps with muscle management. The first thing to experiment with on your own instrument is the difference between the feel of going up vs. down. Use 3-5 on F# through B chromatically without the 1-2 and examine the smoothness of going up and the awkwardness of going down. This is the main issue of tightness that often results if not consciously considered throughout. This etude truly is about the timing of each finger within the chromatic scale. Up is different than down and the tendency is to rush the downward scale. This entire etude is to be played with the most attention paid to finger independence from the big knuckle down to the fingertip. Avoid any palm clutching or wrist tightness at all cost. To achieve this, practice four-note groups slowly and use only the lever at the big knuckle to activate the finger. I very much dislike the term “weight” in any piano playing, but you should feel as if the wrist and forearm are being pulled downward by gravity but are level with the keyboard. These two sensations are crucial to getting through without fatigue of any sort by the end. If you can play groups of notes (with pauses between for a moment to reflect) then you are well on your way to mastering this difficult little piece. One more point about this etude: since the characteristics of ascending vs. descending right hand are so different, I have found appealing success by trying to match the ascending figures to the descending ones as opposed to the opposite. To explain further, I noticed that the descending figures are a bit more detached in the chromatic scale due to the awkwardness of the fingering and hand position. Rather than trying to make that direction match the fluidity of the rising scale (which I find quite easier) I simply replicate the quality of the ascending scale to that of the descending and things sound even. Similar to the first etude, I am able to play it 4 or 5 times in a row with basically no fatigue by the end. Just be sure to be fully warmed up and you should experience the same. Sorry for the length of this post, but I hope the points here help you achieve success I have found after careful examination of what the etudes were actually asking me to do.
Ignore all the answers here. Of course the etude vastly improves your technique, as any other Chopin etude does. If a piece contains something that you lack in then of course partaking in it will add something to your technique.I don't understand prefacing your answers with "if you play it properly..", well duh? That goes for all pieces. Even easier pieces like Chopin's early nocturnes. The assumption from OP is of course if he learns it properly, will it add to his technique? And damn right it will. My teacher, who's been teaching at the conservatory level for 15+, outright told me that if you want to vastly improve and "perfect" your dexterity the Chopin etudes are the way to go; especially with op. 10 no. 2. Don't think I've met anyone in the real world who disagrees either.And yet online, including here, it's always the same weird answer: "Chopin etudes only teach you to play Chopin etudes." I don't know why you guys are lying to the bloke? That's clearly false. lolI do agree that if your motivation to play the etudes is to simply improve your technique then you shouldn't go for it. Practicing them is really, really mundane and you'll easily get bored if you're not in love with the works. You can achieve more or less the desired effect from learning the etudes by learning his larger scale works, which all incorporate the material you find in these etudes anyways; plus they're actually fun to learn. Scherzi, ballades, fantasie, concerti etc. Good luck.
Topic: how much does op 10 2 help improve technique 