I can sight-read. Why bother with fingering?

Tags

damper pedal, music education, pedagogy, pianistic fingering, piano reductions

Source: Pixabay

This is a question I encounter so often!  

Short answer:  Because if sight-reading is all you ever do, then that’s the best you will ever play.

Today, while learning a Mozart piano reduction (violin concerto), I had to stop myself from switching between fingers on a single key several times.

We have two options:  sight-reading and improving.  (One is more fun than the other!) The pic above accurately represents the way I feel when I have to write fingerings in my music.

The problem, for me, stems from three sources:

1.  Sight-reading (both music I need to learn and music that’s put in front of me in work situations);
2.  Organ playing; and
3.  Playing for chorus/opera/dance/musical rehearsals.

To elaborate:

1.  Sight-reading is a great skill to have!  Without it, there would be far fewer work opportunities.  The problem is that when one relies only on sight-reading, fingerings are random and so is the resulting sound.  The playing will be slower and have considerably less finesse.  In addition, when sight-reading is the only game in town, the music benefits from very little thought.

2.  Organs and pianos both have keyboards, but they are completely different mechanically.  To sustain a pitch on the organ, the key must be depressed. On piano, the damper pedal is available.  Organists are trained to play a key with one finger, then switch to another while still depressing the same key.  That’s how they navigate around the keyboard while playing legato.  Playing the piano in that manner, however, is not helpful except in cases where the fingering cannot be solved in other ways.

3.  When playing piano reductions (chorus, opera, and concertos where the pianist acts as the orchestra), pianistic fingering is not possible.  There are too many notes included in a piano reduction to fit under the hand. (Reductions are not “pianistic.”)  So “bad” fingering often results.  The object is to get to the next location on the keyboard however you can, ahead of time.

So, what is “good” fingering?

• Good fingering is pianistic (comfortable);
• Good fingering enhances the flow of the music;
• Good fingering makes use of different parts of the hand for intended results.
  • The thumb is heavy;
  • The pinkie gets a bright sound;
  • The 3rd finger can imitate French horn;
  • The 4th finger is guaranteed to be softer; and
  • 2 and 5 are great for flute solos.

Try playing Mozart.  Unintended accents will be immediately disruptive. Making good fingering decisions is the shortest route to playing appropriately.

Schumann, Verdi, and Prokofiev sound distinct from each other when played by good orchestras.  Why not play them with different sounds on the piano, too?

Why spend valuable practice time eliminating accents produced by the thumb when you could find a better fingering?  Practicing for hours attempting to produce an accented downbeat with the 4th finger is similarly a waste of time.

What do you think?  Is fingering important to you?  How many practice sessions do you spend playing the same music before writing in fingerings?

How do you get around the keyboard?

Source: Pixabay

★ ☆.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.• ヅ★

Please take a look at my ebook,

Goal-oriented Practice.  Now available at 50% off, only $10!

Free of musical jargon, it will save you time.  By identifying practice goals, you will soon be able to learn music more accurately, resulting in confident playing.

Click on the link to see reviews, book intro, and table of contents!

Thank you!

Back to top

Mozart takes the speedway

Tags

arts, Mozart, recording

Audi_Rosemeyer_Modell.jpg ~ Image via Wikipedia

Recently I heard a recording of a widely respected pianist playing a Mozart concerto.

This provided an enjoyable listening experience… until the last movement.

This being one of the most famous Mozart piano concertos, many listeners know the melody lines.  Had it been possible, we might have been singing along.

Singing along was, however, not to be.  Why?  The soloist got the speed bug.  The result, instead of ascending, melodic scale passages, was an accent on each high note of the scales, followed by a blur.

Yes, his playing was even.  But where was the expressivity?  No one can discern the shape of the music when the playing is unclear.

So I’ve been wondering.  How did speed playing become popular?  Must everything be played as fast as possible as if it were a competition piece?  Why is speed rewarded?

Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Summer Concerts

See complete details about Rocky Hill Concerts. 2 remaining  Sunday afternoons in July in air-conditioned comfort!

E-books

“Goal-oriented Practice: How to Avoid Traps and Become a Confident Performer” gives every musician a fresh perspective!

My book frees up time to learn more music, memorize, or do something else entirely!

“Goal-oriented Practice” is also available in print!

Goal-oriented Practice

sold in 8 countries!

Review by pianist Robert W. Oliver

Back to top

Isn’t an hour better than nothing?

Tags

Children's Corner, Diane Nichols, Mendelssohn, Messiaen, New York, Songs Without Words

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Credit for this quote enthusiastically goes to Diane Nichols, a psychotherapist in New York who spoke at a performers’ seminar I attended.

Diane had practiced psychotherapy for several years, but had begun specializing in work with performers only recently.

In talking about her work at the beginning of her presentation, she said that hearing the same thing over and over from various musicians had made an impression: 

“I only had an hour, so I didn’t practice at all.” 

Immediately after setting the scene, her memorable line was delivered while peering over her glasses.

Things get in the way and derail our plans: the maintenance crew shows up unannounced, an important phone call comes at an inconvenient time, we are needed at the last minute to play for a rehearsal.

And there goes our practice time.

At other times, we just don’t want to practice.

That is the way I felt on Thursday.  Contributing factors included:

• Not sleeping well the night before.

• Having an early departure time for an appointment, making a longer  practice session impossible.

• Knowing that I would arrive home after 9 or 10 p.m., so there would not be any more practice time available that day.

• Thinking that watching tennis would be more fun.

• Looking out the window to see a gorgeous, sunny day.  It would have been fun to be outside right then.
  

But I did it. Going back to sleep would have been so nice. I even considered postponing the appointment.

What can we accomplish in only an hour?

I’ll start by talking about what my hour looked like:

• Good, focused, effective warmup.
• Practiced 2 piano parts for Sunday’s flute solos.
  • A Brahms Waltz required right hand work on harmonic 6ths with an inconvenient leap mid-phrase.
  • Another piece is not difficult, but moves quickly. It needed a few fingerings to be added and practiced.
• Mendelssohn Songs Without Words, which I last performed 7 months ago. 3 of these are also planned for Sunday’s service.
  • I needed to play through all 3 pieces.
  • Most of the music was fine. So I focused on a few phrases with difficult fingerings.
• Solo piano music for my July 22^nd recital:
  • 3 Messiaen Preludes, difficult passages only.
    • To reinforce fingerings.
    • To double-check a few accidentals.
    • To smooth out a transition between 2 sections.
    • To practice the end a few more times.
  • Debussy’s Children’s Corner.
    • Omitted slow movements today.
    • Focused on evenness and transitions.
    • Did not practice complete movements.

How can we decide what to practice for a one-hour session?

I am including this question because I used to feel rushed. When we  are convinced that an hour will never be enough time to do anything, the game is over.

• Eliminate panic at having too little time. (Take long, slow breaths, for one thing.)
• Look at the music you need to do.
• Eliminate the music that can wait a day, whether that be complete pieces or sections of pieces.  You’re not going to make it through an entire program.
  
• Focus on the passages that need the most work.
• If playing at tempo isn’t working, or if the music isn’t ready for that, slow down! Playing faster is not a time-saver. You’ll only miss more notes, play worse, feel frustrated, and have a lousy day.
• Watching the time can be helpful if you are able to leave a phrase before it’s perfect and move on.
  

By paying attention to your goal, getting some good practice done in one hour, you will find that it can be done.

Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Summer Concerts

See complete details about Rocky Hill Concerts. 4 Sunday afternoons in July in air-conditioned comfort!

E-books

“Goal-oriented Practice: How to Avoid Traps and Become a Confident Performer” gives every musician a fresh perspective!

My book frees up time to learn more music, memorize, or do something else entirely!

“Goal-oriented Practice” is also available in print!

Goal-oriented Practice

sold in 8 countries!

Review by pianist Robert W. Oliver

Back to top

SLOW! CONSTRUCTION ZONE

Tags

effective practice, Music, piano, time crunch

Image by RobertFrancis via Flickr

A taxi driver in New York told me that on Amsterdam Avenue, all the traffic lights are synchronized.

Every cab driver in New York knows exactly what speed to drive uptown in order to hit only green lights.

You are probably asking, “What does this have to do with playing the piano?”  Based on a lesson I taught this afternoon, I’d say, “more than you might think.”

Are you a good driver?

As it happened, my student was immersed in homework and forgot about her lesson.​  When I called her, she said, “I’m not in my concert clothes!”  She sings in the chorus, which left campus shortly after her lesson to be videotaped for a TV show.

She dressed so quickly, it’s amazing that she looked so good!  She arrived for her lesson breathless from running.

What happened next probably happens to most of us.  It certainly describes what I do when rushed, unless I am focusing on the process rather than the lack of time.

My student began playing immediately.  She played faster than her comfort level, crashing after two bars.

Isn’t that like a “hurry up and wait” driver?  You know, floor it to get to the next traffic light, then screech to a halt and wait for green?  We could all get whiplash!

How we calmed things down
and saved the lesson

Rather than crash and burn for the 1/2 hour we had left for a lesson, I interrupted in order to slow down the pace.

1. I asked my student to take a deep breath.
2. We talked about the importance of looking over the entire piece before playing the first note:
   1. to look for key, meter, and tempo changes
   2. to look for repeats
   3. to make a mental map of how the piece is constructed
      1. repetitions and sequences
      2. similarities and differences in chords (sometimes just one note is different)
3. We settled on a tempo that could be kept steady (hint:  not fast!)
4. I made sure my student understood that she will be able to play fast ~ it’s just not the best choice right now.  Having her feel frustrated at playing slowly would not be helpful.
5. My student played an entire page, hands together, perfectly!
6. We discussed her success!

What we reinforced

Leave rushing outside the door.​  If you don’t interrupt it, your practice session will be compromised.

When you have less time than you’d like, choose one difficult passage or movement to concentrate on.  Then, if there is time to spare, choose another.

This is not a good time to play in a fast tempo or perform your program.  Having too little time is the perfect setup to learn mistakes, feel frustrated, and crash.  That’s not progress.

Take a minute or two before you begin playing.  When you feel grounded, you will be thinking more clearly.

Chill out, sit back, take a deep breath, and look at the piece first.  If a New York cab driver can slow down, I know you can, too!

When you feel rushed, does fast playing creep into your practice sessions?  How do you deal with that?

Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Back to top

SALE!!! “Goal-oriented Practice” $3.oo off!  ONE WEEK ONLY!!! Click for great reviews and comments.  Check it out!

Finding your tempo

Tags

Angela Hewitt, Glenn Gould, Messiah, Music, tempo

Image via Wikipedia

The many performances of Händel’s Messiah during the Christmas season bring to mind the necessity of finding an appropriate tempo.

What does that mean?

Well, let’s look at a Messiah aria.  It provides a wonderful example of good vs. unfortunate choices.

“Rejoice Greatly”

It would be difficult to find a better aria to cite for this discussion.

As you know, there are different types of soprano voices.  The differences that are important in relation to this aria are the weight of the sound and the relative ease of lyric or coloratura singing.

A lyric soprano would need a tempo that accommodates her passagework, sung clearly.  She would most likely sing the aria more slowly than a coloratura.

Why?

A coloratura has the ability to do fast passages easily, and perhaps needs to sing lyrical passages a little faster.

On the other hand, a lyric soprano’s legato singing is her calling card.  Coloratura singing may be a little more difficult for her, so that needs to slow down a bit in order to be clear.  She doesn’t want to gloss over the notes, nor should she.

Obviously, there needs to be one tempo for the entire aria.

“But the tempo on the recording…”

… is faster?  slower?  IT DOESN’T MATTER.

Every soloist needs to find her/his own tempo.  The tempo must be comfortable for you. If your tempo comes from someone else’s recording, you will always sound like you are imitating the recording.  How can you internalize a tempo and “own” the piece unless you find a tempo?

“But the tempo marking…”

… is what, presto?  Scherzando?  Allegro molto?  (This is a random list, not from the score of Messiah.)

You can honor the spirit of the tempo marking and have a reasonable tempo at the same time.  That might have to do with lightness or gravity of sound, feeling the pulse in 2 rather than 4, in 1 rather than 3, facial expression, even the way you treat the words.  It’s about the way you convey the piece.

These comments are valid for mezzos, tenors, and basses as well.

A recent experience

While learning a Bach prelude a few months ago, I was having a hard time settling on a tempo.  It seemed to me that there were at least 3 ways to play the piece!  After several practice sessions, I finally decided to listen to two recordings.

Angela Hewitt‘s tempo, I felt, was too fast.  It just didn’t have enough clarity for me.  And, in that I respect Glenn Gould‘s playing and imagination so much, I expected his tempo to be perfect!

Gould’s tempo was so slow, I was shocked.  It sounded as if he had been listening to Wagner for a month.  Every little nuance was heard, certainly, but where was the line?  The sounds lasted so long, they faded from note to note.

Every change of a 1/2 step is not a high point!  How many can there be, 10 per phrase?  In this recording, everything about the harmonic changes was clear, but there was no arc to the phrases.

So there I was.  Now what?

That experience reinforced for me the importance of finding my own tempo and making it work.  By that I mean finding a way to communicate the piece with conviction at my chosen tempo.  I no longer felt the need to agree with anyone else’s ideas concerning the tempo.

Two more thoughts:  a fast tempo must be your fast playing, where you don’t have train wrecks or feel out of control.  (Although when you know a piece extremely well, sometimes it’s fun to just take your chances and “let it rip.”)  And by contrast, a slow tempo has to sustain the sound from note to note.

How do you find tempi?  What choices have you encountered?  Please share your experiences in the comment section below!

Related articles

• Reader Q & A: how to get students excited about learning tempi (gretchenspianos.wordpress.com)

“Goal-oriented Practice” is both an E- and a Print book!  Click link to see great reviews and wonderful readers’ comments.  Purchase it here!

Back to top

Increasing the tempo

Tags

increasing tempo, metronome, reliable practice methods

Image via Wikipedia

When you have a piece that needs to be substan-tially faster in a week, how do you accomplish that?  Seems like quite a leap!

What is your method? Hit and miss?  Cross your fingers?  (It’s hard to play that way…)  Guesswork?

Having a plan helps. Not only is it more reliable, but having a way to proceed gives you something to hang on to, keeping nerves ~even panic ~ under control.

You may have your own reliable method worked out.  Please comment!  What follows certainly is not the only way to go.

This is what works for me:

First Day

1. Find the passage you play the slowest.
2. Experiment with the metronome until you’ve found a comfortable tempo for that passage.
3. Write the number, like this, in your practice log.



4. Play the entire piece at this metronome marking.
5. When this tempo is comfortable throughout, increase the tempo by 2 clicks.  Or, if it’s very slow, you could increase by 4 clicks.  Jumping up 10, however, is inviting crackups.
6. Keep upping the metronome by 2 as long as you feel comfortable.
7. Write the ending tempo for that day in your practice log

Subsequent Days

1. Try starting one level below the previous day’s ending tempo.  You will feel more comfortable, and will be better able to continue with the top level in a few minutes.
2. Continue to increase the tempo as before.  (Don’t just wing it now, it’s working with the metronome!)

Starting with the entire piece at the comfortable tempo for the slowest passage ensures that your efforts will proceed smoothly.  You don’t want to have a portion of the piece that requires you to slam on the brakes!

Notes: the more you increase the tempo, the closer the metronome numbers will be to each other.  (i.e., if you being at 60, 64 may be easy, and you may reach 72, all in the first day.  As you near the final tempo, however, large increases in tempo become more difficult/less reliable.)

The metronome is a tool. A reminder and a guide.  Be sure to keep your playing expressive as you continue to speed up.  (See “Your metronome:  tool or tyrant?“)

When I was a student at the Aspen Music Festival, I arrived early for a lesson one day.  My teacher, Irma Vallecillo, was practicing Hindemith, increasing the tempo in the manner described above.  She performed the piece wonderfully just a few days later.  After witnessing her success, I tried it.  It works!

Also, just this morning my adult beginner student had a lesson.  She tried increasing the tempo of a piece with the metronome for the first time, and was so happy that she did it!

How do you increase the tempo?

If you’re trying this for the first time, how did it go?

Please comment!

Back to top