Play any composition at full speed (or faster), and you may suffer "Fast Play
Degradation" (FPD). The following day, you can't play it as well. This happens mostly
with HT play. HS play is more immune to FPD and can in fact be used to correct it. FPD occurs probably because the human playing mechanism (hands, brain, etc) gets confused at such speeds, and therefore occurs only for complex material such as HT play of
Students who try to speed up HT can run into FPD problems and the standard solution had been to only practice slowly for long periods of time which wastes too much time.
HS practice is the better solution. This simplifies the music, reduces confusion and erases any bad habits that formed during fast HT play. One effective way to avoid FPD is to always play slowly at least once before quitting.
The most important thing about FPD is the knowledge that it exists, so that you don't get caught off guard, and know what to do to cure it. If you don't know anything about FPD and experience its symptoms, you can suffer psychological problems because nothing works for no known reason.
Bad Habits: Beginners start out with numerous bad habits that are readily
identified by teachers. It is the teacher's job to prioritize them and correct them one by one. Common bad habits are poor touch, over-use of the damper pedal, weak (timid) fingers, stuttering, wrong speed, lack of rhythm and musicality, uncontrolled motions, etc. Bad habits are the worst time-wasters in piano practice because, once formed, they take such a long time to correct, whereas preventing them is much, much easier, if preventive measures are taken in time.
Some beginners bang away at the piano without regard to musicality. The student equates loudness to excitement. This happens because the students are so engrossed with the practice that they forget to listen to the sounds coming out of the piano. It is important to cultivate the habit of listening to yourself, and it is the teacher's main job to show
what "musical" sounds like. The ability to distinguish between musical and non- musical is the most important skill that students must cultivate. Listening to yourself
is harder than many people realize because many students expend all their effort playing, with nothing left for listening. The best way to get around this problem is to videotape the playing and listen/watch it to find ways to improve. There is no need to videotape all your life because that will waste too much time. Do it enough times until you learn how to listen to yourself and you will be able to listen while practicing.
Then there are those with weak fingers. This is caused by not relaxing, and not letting gravity take over. The student lacks confidence and subconsciously lifts the arms, which creates stress so that speed and musicality become impossible. These students must be taught the full dynamic range of the piano, how to make use of this range and, above all, to relax. Students practicing on old pianos with compacted hammers that are not voiced can develop "weak fingers" because such pianos produce too much sound when played normally. The best solution is to hire a piano tuner who knows how to voice the hammers.
Still another bad habit is playing at the wrong speed, either too fast or too slow, especially during a performance when students get excited and lose the sense of tempo. The right speed is determined by many factors, including the difficulty of the piece with respect to the technical ability, what the audience might be expecting, the condition of the piano, what piece preceded or will follow this piece, etc. Some students might tend to
perform pieces too fast for their skill level and end up making mistakes, while others are timid and play too slowly, thus not taking full advantage of the music. Playing slowly can be more difficult than playing at the correct speed, which compounds a timid player's problems. Those who perform too fast can become psychologically discouraged because they make too many mistakes and become convinced that they are poor pianists. These problems apply not only to performances but also to practicing; those who practice too fast can end up thinking that they are poor pianists because they make errors and progress is slow. Slowing down just a little may enable them to play accurately and beautifully and, in the long run, acquire technique faster. To combat this problem, some schools of piano do not allow fast play at all. That's not optimal, because the students will learn at a slower pace.
Beginners often play mechanically like a metronome, in an effort to "play
accurately", and because they have not been taught the meaning of musicality. They need to be taught that rhythm is a language, and that the small deviations from strict timing are used to communicate musical concepts, etc..
Poor tone quality is another common problem. No one is listening during practice, so tone doesn't seem to matter; the student may not even be familiar with the concept of tone. Students must always strive for tone, because it is the most important part of the music. Good tone cannot be produced on a lousy or unregulated piano; this is the main reason why students need a decent piano and why tuning, regulation, and hammer
voicing are more important than most students and their parents realize. Listening to good recordings is the best way to wake up the student to the existence of good tone. If they only listen to their play, they may have no idea what good tone means. On the other hand, once they pay attention to tone and start getting results, it will feed on itself and they can learn to produce sounds that attract an audience.
Stuttering is caused by stop-and-go practice in which a student has a habit of stopping to replay a section every time there is a mistake. At a mistake, always play
through it; don't stop to correct it. Make a mental note of where the mistake was and
practice that section later. Fish out a small segment containing that mistake (typically a few bars) and work on it. Once the habit of playing through mistakes is established, students can graduate to the next level of anticipating mistakes and taking evasive action, such as simplifying the section, maintaining the rhythm or melody through the flub, or even speeding up just a little and using hand memory to carry you through. These skills must be practiced every time you hit a mistake. Most audiences don't mind, and often don't even hear or remember the mistakes unless the rhythm or melodic line is broken.
Slowing down at anticipated flubs can be a dangerous thing. No matter how well it is memorized, playing anything is still dependent on hand memory. Slowing down can change the stimuli for hand memory and increase the chances of flubs. Often, you can prevent a flub by speeding up so that you depend more on hand memory. Therefore experiment with both approaches during practice. Without prior practice, speeding up is
a scary thing to do during a performance.
The worst thing about bad habits is that they take so long to eliminate, especially if they are HT habits. Therefore nothing accelerates the learning rate like knowing all the bad habits and preventing them before they become ingrained. For example, the time to prevent stuttering is when a student first begins piano lessons, when a few stops here and there seem harmless. In the beginning, most students don't stutter; however, they must be immediately taught to play through mistakes — it is a skill they must learn. At this stage, it is easy to learn; to teach a stutterer to play through mistakes, on the other hand, is a very frustrating task.
(28) Jumps, PP, FF, Feeling the Keys
Accomplished pianists jump effortlessly, playing rapidly and accurately no matter where the notes are. Students with no jump training can't figure out how anyone can do that. They have trouble because they tend to move the hand along an inverted V motion that makes it difficult to hit a note accurately because the hand is coming down at some arbitrary angle that changes with every jump. These changes increase the possibility of missing the notes, and the keys are played by a sideways motion instead of straight down. Another difficulty is that fast jumps are impossible because they can never get there in time.
Jumps (leaps) consist of four motions: (1) the takeoff, (2) a horizontal translation of
the hand to the correct position, (3) feeling the keys at the destination, and (4) the actual downward motion to play. The combined motion should look more like an inverted "U" than an inverted "V". This inverted U has short legs and a flat top; that is, do not raise the hand far above the keys, at least in the beginning; the one exception is when you need to go over the other hand.
Get into the habit of making quick takeoffs regardless of the speed of the jump. There is nothing wrong with getting there way ahead of time. Even when practicing slowly, you should practice quick takeoffs so that the skill will be there when you need it. Start the take-off with a small downward and sideways kick of the wrist, launching the hand towards the destination. Unlike the downward motion at the end, the take-off does not have to be straight up, and you immediately start towards the destination.
The most important skill to practice is to make the horizontal motion as fast as
possible so as to reserve enough time to locate the keys after the hand reaches its
destination. You may be amazed at how much faster you can move horizontally with only a few days of practice -- something some students never achieve in a lifetime because they were never taught this motion.
To practice fast horizontal motions, sit anywhere with the elbow straight down, forearm pointing forward, fingers spread out in piano playing position. Quickly move the hand sideways, parallel to the floor, as in a jump motion. Move the hand rapidly away from you and stop, then immediately relax; the shoulder does not move. Then move
rapidly back to its original position. Practice these out and in motions, as fast as you can, but completely relaxing after each motion. Most of this motion is a swinging rotation of the forearm around the upper arm, with a small motion of the elbow. From day one, you should see immediate improvements in your jumps if you had never practiced this before; but in time, this horizontal speed will increase so much that jumps will quickly become easy.
Feeling the keys can be executed surprisingly quickly. There is usually plenty of
time to do this. Therefore, it is a good policy to always feel the keys because it guarantees 100% accuracy. There are a few instances in which there is no time to feel the keys, and those few can be played accurately if you had located most of the other jumps accurately by feeling them. The habit of feeling keys improves your general accuracy for locating the keys even when not feeling them because you develop a more precise map of the key locations in the mind.
Now that you know the components of a jump, look for them when watching
concert pianists performing. You should now be able to identify each component, and you may be amazed at how often they feel the keys before striking them and how they can execute these components in the blink of an eye. These skills will enable you to make long jumps, even without looking at the hands.
In order to reduce stress, relax all muscles as soon as the horizontal motion is over, and as soon as the notes are played. Frequently encountered pieces to practice easy jumps are: (1) for the LH, the 4th variation in Mozart's Sonata in A, #11 (K331); this variation has large jumps in which the LH crosses over the RH and (2) RH, 1st movement of Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata (Opus 13), right after the LH octave tremolos (after bar 50), where the RH makes jumps crossing over the LH. A more challenging passage is Chopin's Ballade Op. 23, at the end, the LH jumps in the first half of the "Presto con fuoco".
Use the easy jumps to practice accelerating the horizontal motion, stopping over the correct position, and feeling the keys before playing. The idea here is to establish a habit of always getting to the destination ahead of time. Once the quick horizontal motion is satisfactory, speed up the tempo and combine all four jump components into one smooth motion. Now your jump looks just like those of the concert pianists you envied. Better yet, jumps are now easy and fun!
PP, FF: Practicing loud or practicing on a piano with heavy action is bad for
technique. Some pianists ask their tuners to add extra weight to the action, in the
mistaken belief that this will strengthen their fingers; it certainly will, but it will also limit technical development. It is impossible to practice PP on such pianos, and FF will not be as loud because so much energy is wasted in pressing the keys instead of moving the hammers faster.
It is difficult to play softly (P), and PP is impossible, on a piano that is out of
major differences between uprights and quality grands. The fact that it looks like a grand does not automatically qualify it as a true grand. Practically all baby grands are not true grands. If the instrument can't produce PP or FF, you can't practice them! This is the main reason why so many students cannot play PP or FF; it is not the students' fault.
Except for high quality grands that are properly regulated, most acoustic piano actions are too heavy because of the difficulty of producing responsive mechanical actions that are lighter. Chopin and Horowitz's pianos are famous for their light actions.
Digital pianos do not have this limitation and therefore have lighter actions. They must have a certain minimum weight so that the pianist practicing on a digital can also play on acoustic pianos with their heavier actions. Today, they may still be too heavy for optimum weight, but this point is controversial because action that is too light is less forgiving in some respects: depending on the action and the pianist, a heavier action can give better results for difficult material because of the possibility of accidentally hitting wrong notes when the fingers are flying all over. This is one reason why quiet fingers [(24) Quiet Hands & Fingers] is so important. Therefore, the question of what key weight is best has not been settled, and probably depends on the individual; however, today's digitals, with their lighter actions, may be closer to the optimum than acoustic pianos. Unfortunately, the lighter action of digitals does not mean that they are better in terms of response, PP, and FF. The more expensive digitals have better responses. To really test them out, they should be hooked to quality audio systems, especially the speakers. This is why many digitals are sold today, bundled with sub-woofers. PP is best practiced using staccato practice [(25) Staccato Practice, Soft Practice].
FF is a new skill; learning FF and technique at the same time is difficult — learn technique first, practicing at P, then add FF. FF is produced by the force from the
shoulders more than the hands. It is a forceful acceleration during the keydrop. It is not necessary to lift the hand high above the keys; the acceleration during keydrop is the key. Relaxation is especially important for FF because any tension will siphon away the energy that you need.