perfect accuracy

[Triton LE 76]

Hey!
I'm just wondering..
Do you have any advice to get better accuracy?

thanks for your answers
Joern

[xvimbi]

I found for myself that paying attention is the key to accuracy (in other words, fighting sloppiness and laziness). This is with respect to working out the movements correctly, so as to hit the right key at the right angle with the right force, as well as carefully listening to the resulting sound and figuring out the connections between touch and sound.

[ptmidwest]

I believe that to have our brains in charge (REALLY  focus), instead of relying on "finger-muscle memory" eliminates many errors.

[whynot]

Completely agree with the preceding posts.  I would respectfully add:  being absolutely secure in all aspects of the key at hand.  The relevant major and minor scales, finding all the likely chords of the key in all their inversions etc.  Being so comfortable in that scale/key that it's almost impossible to miss a note for the reason of "oops, I forgot the A's are sharped."  Best of luck.         

[pigscanfly]

practice through the difficult sections very slowly.  Then slowly speed it up while making sure there are zero mistakes until its up to speed.  But even after its up to speed you should still slow it down once in a while to make sure its neat.

[thalbergmad]

Agreed with the above, but please do not become a slave to accuracy. Music should come first.

[Triton LE 76]

Thanks!

[cadenz]

if the problem is accuracy of missing details in the music. then perhaps you should try working on smaller sections of the particular piece you're working on, then its easier to get that as perfected as you can.
if the problem is missing notes, problems with your aiming. then perhaps you could try always sitting in exactly the same place on the piano (if you don't already). if you're always sitting in the same place, you will develop a kind of subconscious memory of the key locations, which could be helpful with certain leaps and such. if you always sit in different place (albeit probably not by far), your hands are forever having to remap the keyboard geography in relation to your body.

[ted]

It depends how inaccurate you are, Triton. There's a big difference between playing the occasional wrong note and playing heaps of them all the time. Also, if you are playing the same wrong notes in the same wrong way you've probably ingrained a bad habit and need a bit of concentration and slow practice. Or maybe you need to re-examine your fingering of the sections in question. I've often been guilty in the past of persisting with a poor fingering, brute force and ignorance because I've been too lazy to change.

[intervals]

Play slower -- much slower.  Keep a consistent slowed down tempo throughout (3/4 speed, 1/2 speed, etc.).  That way, you'll notice immediately when you don't know what note to play next, or that you're fingering is off.  Then you can figure out what to do about it.

When you get past the rough spot(s), you'll maybe feel like getting back up to tempo for the rest of the song.  Resist that temptation.  You'll be surprised how many other troublesome spots are lurking.  Plus, you don't want to train yourself to play at varying speeds.

Slowing way down like this for an entire song 'burns in' a good memory of it that you learn to trust.

[possom46]

Agreed with the above, but please do not become a slave to accuracy. Music should come first.

That was me 10 years ago. The reason I was good at accuracy was because i'm an excellent sight-reader, the problem with that is, you learn pieces really quickly (and accurately) but never really get below the surface. That's what i'm doing now 

My advice to become more accurate would be to try to play lots of different pieces and read the notes carefully everytime, improve your sight-reading (that makes it less of a struggle), that practise parts separately increasing speed gradually 

[asyncopated]

Hi,

I'm at the moment struggling with accuracy and neatness, particularly with jumps, and velocity passages.  So by accuracy, I mean performance accuracy.  Playing 100% of the notes, 100% of the time.  Or just about. 

I have tried slowing down, and have taken the effort to mould my movement, but it does not seem to stick well.  Every time I go back to the piano, i have to slow down and start from scretch.  Also, sometimes when I speed up, things are uneven, and it does not seem to be a sure fire way to do things.  My question is this :-

Is playing slowy the most efficent way of learning accuracy.  In a way, it seems like I am approching the problem backwards.  Should accuracy not stem from demands on the sound and tone?  Also, there seems to be a big chasm between being able to play accurately slow and doing the same fast.  I am usually about to do the latter repeatedly and yanking up the speed is a tedious process.  I think I'm missing a big chunk.  Is there no ther way than to grind?

al.