Continued
There is much more new material to practice in this 3rd movement before we should be playing Hands Together, so at this stage, you probably do not need to practice anything Hands Together, except as experimentation to see what you can or cannot do. In particular, trying Hands Together at the highest speeds will be counter productive and is not recommended. However, cycling a single cycle Hands Together can be quite beneficial, but this also should not be over-practiced if you still cannot play it satisfactorily Hands Separate. The main difficulties in this movement are concentrated in the arpeggios and Alberti accompaniments ("do-so-mi-so" type); once these are mastered, you have conquered 90% of this piece. For those without sufficient technical skill, you should be satisfied with getting up to vivace speed. Once you can play the entire movement comfortably at vivace, you might try to mount an effort towards presto. It is probably not a coincidence that with the 4/4 signature, presto corresponds to the rapid heart beat rate of a very excited person. Note how the LH accompaniment of bar 1 actually sounds like a beating heart.
It should be clear by now that playing arpeggios is technically very complex. Thrust and pull also apply to scales, and the rules for scales are the same as for the arpeggios (the strong motion is the first choice but both strong and weak should be practiced). However, with scales, the difference between thrust and pull is more difficult to illustrate for novice players; this is why we demonstrated them using arpeggios above. Note that both thrust and pull become awkward when playing Thumb under. This is another reason for avoiding Thumb under. In fact, thrust and pull are very basic motions and apply to practically anything you play, including parallel sets. Therefore, it pays to practice them well, and to think about which one you are using whenever you play anything. The complexity of arpeggios results from the fact that you can combine thrust, pull, the cartwheel motion, Thumb under, Thumb over, pronation, and supination in any permutation. This is a mind boggling array of combinations. If you did not know the various components and simply let your hand pick its own movement, the chances of hitting the optimum combination is practically zero. The result is often a speed wall.
We shall now outline our plan of attack for learning this movement. We started with the most difficult part, the two-hand arp at the end. Most students will have more difficulty with the LH than the RH; therefore, once the RH is fairly comfortable, start practicing the RH arp of the first two bars of this movement, while still practicing the LH part of the ending. One important rule for playing arpeggios rapidly is to keep the fingers near the keys as much as possible, almost touching them. Do not lift the fingers off the keys. Note that we are looking for short practice segments for both hands so that we can alternate rapidly between the two hands. Do not cycle one hand for too long because of the danger of injury. After some practice, you will be able to cycle one hand for long periods of time; however, the effects of the injury are sometimes not felt until several days later, so it is a good insurance policy to develop the habit of changing hands frequently even if you feel no fatigue or pain.
The pedal is used in only two situations in this piece: (1) at the end of bar 2, at the double staccato chord and all following similar situations, and (2) bars 165-166. The next segment to practice is the tremolo type RH section starting at bar 9. Make sure that you understand the fingering of this RH section. Then comes the LH Alberti accompaniment starting at bar 21, and similar RH parts that appear later. The Alberti accompaniment can be practiced using parallel sets. The next difficult segment is the RH trill of bar 30. This first trill is best performed using 3,5 fingering and the second one requires 4,5. For those with small hands, these trills are just as difficult as the ending, so they should be practiced from the very beginning, when you first start learning this movement. These are the basic technical requirements of this piece. If you can learn these skills, you can play the entire movement.
Start Hands Together practice after all these technical problems are solved Hands Separate. There is no need to practice using the pedal until you start Hands Together. Note that bars 163, 164, are played without pedal. Then application of the pedal to bars 165, 166, gives meaning to these last 2 bars. Because of the fast pace, there is a tendency to practice too loud. This is not only musically incorrect, but technically damaging. Practicing too loud can lead to fatigue and speed walls; the key to speed is relaxation. It is the P sections that create most of the excitement. For example, the FF of bar 33 is just a preparation for the following P, and in fact, there are very few FF's in the entire movement. The whole section from bar 43 to 48 is played P, leading to just one bar, #50, played F. Whereas the objective during Hands Separate practice was to get up to speed (or faster) quickly, slow practice becomes paramount during Hands Together play. Except when cycling Hands Together, always practice Hands Together slightly slower than your maximum speed. You will make faster progress by practicing at a speed at which your fingers want to go faster, than to force the fingers to play faster than they can. Thus the choice of practice speed for Hands Separate and Hands Together practice is diametrically opposite: the objective is speed for Hands Separate and accuracy for Hands Together. There is no need to push for speed Hands Together because (if you had practiced correctly), that was already achieved Hands Separate, so that Hands Together speed will automatically come as soon as the two hands become coordinated. In Hands Together practice, you are working for coordination, not speed.
Finally, if you have practiced correctly, you should find certain speeds at which it is easier to play faster than slower. This is completely natural in the beginning, and is one of the best signs that you have learned the lessons well. Of course, once you have become technically proficient, you should be able to play at any speed with equal ease.
Thumb: the most versatile finger, and Example of Scale/Arpeggio Practice Routine
The thumb is the most versatile finger; it lets us play scales, arpeggios, and wide chords (if you don't believe it, try playing a scale without the thumb!). Most students do not learn how to use the thumb correctly until they practice scales. Therefore it is important to practice scales as soon as possible. Repeating the C major scale over and over, or even including the B major, is not the way to practice scales. It is important to practice all the major and minor scales and arpeggios; therefore we will examine an example of a scale practice routine and point out what needs to be done and what the benefits are.
For simplicity, we will consider only the major scales here, but you should devise similar exercises for the minor scales and corresponding exercises with the arpeggios.
First, a reminder of fundamentals. Play with the tip of the thumb, not the first joint. This makes the thumb effectively as long as possible, which is needed because it is the shortest finger from the wrist joint. In order to produce a smooth scale, all the fingers need to be as similar as possible. In order to play with the tip, you may have to raise the wrist slightly. You will find the tip helpful at high speeds and for better control. Playing with the tip is absolutely necessary when playing arpeggios and chords. It is also important to cultivate the "glissando motion" in which the fingers point away from the direction of motion of the hand. Do not exaggerate the glissando motion, you only need a small amount. Play all scales Thumb over; there is little need to practice Thumb under. Playing with the tip also facilitates Thumb over. Three octaves is probably an optimum span to practice, and the RH span should be one or two octaves above the LH span; in other words, choose a comfortable span for each hand. The optimum arm position is probably not perfectly perpendicular to the keyboard, but pointed slightly inwards to compensate for the fact that the pinky is short and to also help out with the Thumb over motion. Practically all of your work will be done Hands Separate; Hands Together is not necessary, and can waste a lot of time; Hands Together should be considered just an interesting option to try once in a while. Those who practice scales Hands Together all the time will develop a strong/weak hand syndrome; usually, the RH becomes stronger. The objective of these exercises is to build these motions and hand positions into your playing so that they become a permanent part of how you play anything. It is that basic. Thus these are some of the few exercises that must be repeated many times, every day, until the motions and positions are habituated so that you don't have to think about them.
There are many ways to generate all the scales, but the simplest and one of the most interesting is to use the circle of fifths. Start with C major, practice it a few times, then go up a fifth and practice G major. You will notice that it has one sharp. If you go up another fifth, you will need two sharps, etc.; with every move up a fifth, you add a sharp. Obviously, if moving up in fifths brings the span too high in the treble for comfort, go down one octave. What is interesting is that when you add a sharp, you keep all the previously used sharps; not only that, but the order in which they appear is the same as the order in which they are written on the music staff! The maximum number of sharps comes at B major (5 sharps), and the next one is 6 flats at G-flat major. These flats decrease with successive fifths, again in the same orderly manner, until you return to C major. Thus the circle of fifths takes you to every scale once and only once, in an orderly way, which is what you want.
Note that the black keys provide some special benefits. They allow play with flatter fingers. You may notice a difference in the degree of control depending on whether the fingers are curled or flat. Flat fingers can provide more control because you simply lower the finger to play; with a curled finger, you have to lower the finger and uncurl it slightly, which is a more complex motion. Because the thumb never plays black keys, Thumb over becomes particularly easy when black keys are involved. They are also narrower, requiring higher accuracy. Practice keeping the fingers on the keys; this is particularly easy when there are lots of black keys. Practice relaxation, especially with the fingers resting comfortably on the keys. With electronic pianos, it is difficult to keep the fingers on the keys without inadvertently depressing them; this is one of the advantages of acoustic pianos. Needless to say, correct technique is essential at all times; for example, pay attention to when you lift the fingers as much as when you press down on the keys, and experiment with tone, color, and any other attributes of musical play. Do not play loud; softer play requires greater control and is more beneficial. Speed is not as much an issue as whether you can produce an authoritative scale that marches along with purpose and vigor, with attention to tone, color, and musicality. When you can satisfactorily control the musicality, you will find that the speed is already there because the accuracy required for speed is less than the control required for musicality. Working for speed without musicality is a good way to start erecting speed walls because of stress build-up. However, it can be very useful to use parallel sets to double the speed once in a while to see what type of motions are needed at the next higher level of speed. It is also helpful to use your imagination to produce musical scales. For very slow scales, they might sound like a marching army. For the fastest scales, they sound like the doppler-shifted whistle of a fast train going by.
Now you can devise similar practice routines for the arpeggios.
In summary, although most exercises are not worth using, scales and arpeggios have a special place in piano technique acquisition. Because you can use them to learn so many fundamental technical skills, they must be part of a pianist’s learning program. This section has provided a fairly complete compilation of the necessary skills.
Topic: What is Thumb Over Technique?