Technique atrophying?

[Bob]

I'm thinking about taking on a more challening piece.  However, I know it will involve more time.  That means I need to give up some of the time on spend workingo on technique, such as scales.

Do you ever really lose technique?  If I stop practicing scales for awhile, I know they will get lumpy and I might not be able to play them quite as fast.  I think I will be able to "revive" them in a fairly short amount of time later.  If I'm not practicing scales and I'm not using my hands for something like manual labor, I doubt I will truly lose my ability to play them.

But I'm worried.  What do you think?

[jono]

Both my own experiences, and what i've heard from friends tells me that you lose technique rather fast, at least if your technique is on a high level. Your musicality stays, but your technique is a bit more passing. So if one want to keep good technique, one better keep on with those scales

Take care /Jono

[Bob]

I'm wondering if there is a "core" of technique that takes a long time to lose.  I think the fresh new things might decay quickly, but those long term things....  I'm not sure what to think.  It sounds like the people that take a break for years lose a lot of their technique.   But if you are still playing and just not focusing on that specific area, I wonder...  I would imagine you'd lose the "edge" but retain the "core."

[lostinidlewonder]

If you ask me, when I went through music exam I was forced to do Scales and Arpeggios and blah blah blah. I personally found them extremely useless and since then I have never warmed up or practice them. I do however practice them in pieces, and observe the quality of sound that the body should produce. I find if you maintain that, your technique will maintain itself at a more musical level rather than a "dead" feeling technical excersise.

I do find labouring on technical stuff like scales doesn't do as much as utilising them in actual peices.

Chopin at one time intended to write a piano method. The work was never completed, but fragments of it remains. One fragment was preserved and given by his sister to the Princess Czartoryska after his death.

[“No one notices inequality in the power of the notes of a scale when it is played very fast... The aim is not to play everything with an equal sound, but to acquire a beautiful quality of touch and a perfect shading of sound. For a long time players have acted against nature in seeking to give equal power to each finger. On the contrary, each finger should have an appropriate part assigned it ... There are, many different qualities of sound, just as there are several fingers. The point is to utilize the differences; and this, in other words, is the art of fingering.”]

Utilising the different qualities of sound to finger is done through practicing peices, because scale work by itself has no point, no reason, the sound is unimportant and we are stuck considering the physical nature a great deal more. But when it is in an actual peice scales have meaning and that meaning is what nourishes a good technique.

You still cannot escape the hours of practice though. But hours of practice on peices is much more helpful than hours of practice on just excersises.  If people want to listen to you play you wouldn't go off playing 24 Scales, 1 chopin etude would blow that all away.

As repetiore increases you will find that lots of the techincal aspects of piano will be covered just by playing your pieces. This is why Chopin and Liszt etudes are so valuable because they are laced with all this techique in an actual piece. Although Etude is considered a STUDY, not really a piece of music, but still they are music I think, they are so beautifully written even if they are overusing the same technical ideas. Bach 48 Preludes and Fugues as well would develop your sense of scale 100 times better than just practicing scales alone. So choose pieces to learn, dont get stuck in scales. Play them now and again but dont linger on them or get overly obsessed about perfecting them. Get overly obsesed in perfecting them when you encounter them in pieces though

[iumonito]

I totally agree, Lost.  A Mozart Sonata or a Saint Saen concerto will keep you scarles in all the shape they need to be all the time.

One thought, though: sightreading does ruin ones technique.  This a catch 22, because sightreading new music so very important for your musical development.  the thing is, though, that if you are sight-reading a lot of music and not staying with the pieces for a long time, your mechanism never gets an opportunity to minimize and Zen-in the gestures you need to play a particular piece.

So this si what I recommend; chose a couple of pieces that will stay with you no matter what and keep them in fingers in lieu of doing scales every day.  Depending on your level of play, a Mozart sonata and a few Chopin preludes sounds like a good set.

Good luck,

[Brian Healey]

Great advice so far. The people on this forum are really very informed. 

A very effective method with scales is the old reverse psychology, and this is very much connected with lostinidlewonder's remarks about fingering. Playing scales at a rediculously slow speed has helped me play them more effectively than trying to play them fast. Practice playing scales at quarter note = 60-70 and play only one note on each beat. With each note, observe how your finger strikes the note, and strive for a completely effortless drop. Also concentrate on making sure that there is no tension while the note is being held. Let gravity hold your finger on the note, rather than "pushing" your finger into into it.

I firmly believe that the only way you can really affect your technique is to practice it as the basic level, and by basic, I mean a speed at which you can execute completely without effort and thought. I never practice playing scales fast, and I would never advise my students to, because there's nothing you can learn from it. The absolute best thing you can do is keep your fingers used to the proper scale motion, and the best way to do that is at a very slow speed. Then, when you work on pieces with scalar passages, that will teach you how to use the scale, and since your fingers will already know the most effective way to execute, I promise it will make your playing so much easier.  Practicing scales as fast as you can only teaches you tension, and will actually be counterproductive if you really want to play with power and speed.

To make a long story short, I advise playing pieces over technique work. Continue to practice the scales, but don't let it absorb your time. Any more than 15-20 minutes (maybe 30 maximum) spent on playing scales per day is quite enough. Of course, that's just my opinion, but I speak from my own experience.

Peace,
Bri

[anda]

as long as you're playing, your technique doesn't atrophy. other things do - all depending on what and esp how you play, but your technical skills stay the same (and even progress).

[steinwayguy]

I can't begin to imagine you get "technique" out of playing scales?? That's one of the more pointless things you could possibly at a piano.

[dinosaurtales]

You know, in all my years I've never had a piano teacher require me to play what I call the Scale Piece (the one with 4 octaves in all the keys both hands, then opposite directions, then arpeggios, etc etc - I've heard others "warm up" with this one on lots of ocassions).  Rather, they would have me concentrate on the the scales in the pieces I was working on, and required techniques for the phrasing, or sound required, like the Mozart sonata wants a more "separated" quality, and the John Field wanted more legato.  They have all taken work of some kind, but I've never had a problem producing decent scales in pieces.  So I wonder what the point of the Scale Piece really is.  With the amoung of work it would require me to learn it, I could put together a major sonata!

[anda]

I can't begin to imagine you get "technique" out of playing scales?? That's one of the more pointless things you could possibly at a piano.

speak for yourself! maybe you are very gifted naturally - fast & strong fingers - but not everybody is! scales have helped many of my students.

of course you can't get technique from only playing scales - that would be pointless. but practicing scales while working on different works - and applying everything learned from practicing scales, you can get technique.

[Bob]

I really wasn't thinking solely in terms of scales. 

I suppose you don't really lose technique unless an enormous amount of time has gone by during which your body will physically change or if you stress your hands in some other way that cause them to change along that different line of development.  So you could drop technique work for awhile, retain the core of that technique, work on another piece, and then later come back and polish up the technique back to its original state.  I still wonder though.  hmm....

[maul]

Personally, I don't lose technique. I stopped playing for around eight months and it only took me a couple days to rejuvenate my hands. I can imagine over a longer period of time though I would see changes. I usually don't play scales. I play a lot of Hanon exercises that involve other things though.