Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum a question for intermediate level

I've been playing piano for about 7 years and have reached intermediate level. I'm really enjoying the journey, but still wonder when I'll be able to play the pieces at the correct speed or at least closer to the correct speed.

Does this happen to intermediate players -- and then do you pick easier pieces?

I posted this question to teachers and received some excellent tips which I am putting to use. Just wondered if others have had this happen. Going slow is very good to learn techniques, I just want it to sound more like the CD recording!

What exactly is 'intermediate'?

I always thought intermediate meant not a beginner and not a concert pianist.

Also, what's a beginner or a concert pianist?
Is there any internationally recognized method to level a pianist?

Well, it means not a beginner! Let's say intermediate is finishing Alfred's Level three and moving on to what is called intermediate in the piano essential keyboard lit.

Hey, nobody else has this happen? You can all play at the correct speed before moving on to the next piece?

Speed is still difficult for me after many years. I tend not to challenge myself too much and stick mainly with slow to moderate pieces. Now, 30 years ago I loved to play Hava Nagila so fast that my fingers smoked. For some reason I cannot do that any more. Probably has something to do with the fact that I did not play at all for about 25 years. I think the best way to develop speed is to use the Hanon or Czerny exercises religiously. I am too lazy for that, though.

I'm 'intermediate' also. For me, speed depends on the piece. For some the speed isn't an issue but others...... I particularly have difficulty with fast left-hand arppegios. My latest challenge has been with these in a piece called Heart at Thy Sweet Voice. I'm finding that using the metronome has helped get them even now I'm able to increase speed. Of course the next section has them on all black keys...and I keep missing ...arrghh..

I'm going to go search the Teacher's thread to see what advice they offered.

Ah - the challenge is mentioned in the last line of your post - "I just want it to sound more like the CD recording." This is the challenge for most adult beginners/intermediate players - a "perfect" sound in their ears and minds and the technical skills that don't quite enable one to reach that sound.

Keep practicing in a slow steady focused way - and pretty soon YOU will be making the CD with YOUR interpretation.

Dr. J - The More You Play the Better Your Day

Ipibahn, here is the teacher's advice:

Several suggestions to help you increase your tempo. Play easier pieces, so you're not struggling with notes, patterns, or any other aspect of the music. Use the metronome to keep your tempo steady. Begin very slowly, but make sure you are not stuttering anywhere in the piece. That is, you can play it from beginning to end without a single pause, hesitation or stop. Then slowly, over a period of weeks/months, increase that tempo. It will happen. From time to time, use a speed burst. You'll be amazed how much this helps. It's a lot like a distance runner doing sprints to increase his overall speed.

Practice scales daily. And etudes which have scale passages in them. In another post, I mentioned that your finger twitch rate is roughly five times per second, which, when you are using 3 or 4 fingers in a row, amounts to an awesome tempo. The problem is coordination and getting your brain to tell your fingers to play. That comes with time and playing.

Good luck. John V.D. Brook

I still haven't figured out how to take a post from a different forum, oh well.

This advice is really helpful and as soon as I started practicing scales and exercises, I realized my left hand is much weaker than my right. Already that is improving. Thanks for the feedback because I was wondering if others have run into this problem!

It's going to be hard because it can take them the whole day or even days to record a 10 minutes song and they are pro musician.

Maybe I don't understand your question -- If you can't play a piece in your lesson book at tempo (or close to), why are you progressing past it? Unless you can play it at tempo, IMHO you haven't learned the piece. This should be true at any level of piano playing.


Mary

Mary, what you say makes sense (thanks for your input) and that is why I am posting this question here. Here's a quick explanation: about 8 years ago I started to learn keyboard with absolutely no musical experience. So I started with group lessons and then on my own. About a year and half later I realized that wasn't good, so started taking lessons from a teacher at a local music school. I was in Book 2 Alfred's, then moved onto Book 3. From there continued with essential keyboard literature for intermediate level. But for several years I have been frustrated that often I cannot play the pieces at speed. When I ask my teacher about it, she says that is OK, it's important to learn to play it correctly and focus on technique. Now I have had about 6 years lessons and I'm still not playing at speed.

I do think I am learning a lot from my teacher and enjoy the lessons. Maybe some teachers don't want to push speed so much for adults. At this point though, I don't want to be playing pieces that I cannot get at least fairly close to the correct speed.

So, I'm going to follow the suggestions of John and work on scales, excercies, and easier pieces.

I did wonder if teachers have different approaches about this. Thanks all for you feedback.

Well, I also have the same concern as the owner of this thread although I have only one year of piano learning and consider myself as absolute beginner.

Some pieces sound awful when play at slow speed but my teacher said I should play it slowly and correctly rather playing fast and then making mistake.

I really want to keep practicing those pieces until I can play at the right tempo but it seem that my teacher didn't care, I am assigned new piece that is more and more difficult than the one that I had learned. So I believe that is the way I am moving forward on learning piano (But I feel pain when playing pieces at slow speed!!!! )

Bigcat, that is exactly what gets me. Slooooow speed just doesn't sound right. But I do think I've learned a great deal from my teacher who makes sure the technique is correct so speed is considered the least important part. Maybe in my case some arthritis might be getting in the way. But I do believe that by working on scales and exercises that will help a lot.

I am concern about speed also when I play. I use the Hannon exercices to see if I am improving. Over a year of practicing, I do the 23 first exercices and then I start to do them again and I found I can play them faster.
I am taking RCM examination and the examiners are not so concern about the speed that I am supposed to play at... And my teacher is saying the same thing as your teacher is saying. so maybe look at your improvement and not the speed you are supposed play.
Good look!!!

When you say you're not playing at speed, do you mean you're at say 90% of the speed, or even 75% of the speed, of a recording? Or is it more like 50%?

If the former, I wouldn't worry about it. If the latter, then I think your teacher is doing you a dis-service by not teaching you to play at speed. Does your teacher let the children s/he teaches "pass" a piece without getting it (close) to speed? If not, why is s/he treating you differently? That's something to ask him/her.

Not every piece needs to be brought up to speed. But SOME do need to be at speed -- otherwise, what do you perform for others?

If you're not getting the pieces you're working on up to speed, then how will you ever get harder pieces -- that you'll play in a year or two -- up to speed?? Something seems odd here to me.


Mary

Here are some things to consider regarding tempo.

The speed of a piece of music is related to the tempo indication, and not necessarily what and editor thought the metronome marking should be. Allegro means happy and joyful, and not to play so fast that there's nothing but a blur of sound.

The speed is also relative to other pieces around it. You want your Allegros to be upbeat and happy, Vivace to be light and quick, and Presto to be very quick. The same for the slow tempo markings. Grave, Adagio, Lento and others are varying degrees of slowness and feelings. Think of them as getting more serious and sad as you move from Adagio down to Grave. Andante is about a walking speed with the others falling underneath.

Remember too that these indications were on the music long before the metronome appeared. Sheet music publishers in the early 19th century added in the metronome markings so that everyone could play the music. During this time, the more prosperous merchant classes were purchasing pianos, and publishers were looking at a bigger market.

Now a lot depends upon what makes a piece of music fast. First of all think about the music and how it sounds if you can. I'm not saying to exaggerate the difference. What I'm saying is to play the fastest piece as quickly as you can, but with accuracy, emotion, and control.

There's nothing worse than having someone play something devoid of feeling because they blast through the music as fast as possible, or worse fumble in the middle because they're speed got out of control.

Another thing to consider is that music sounds a lot faster than it really is. Our ears tend to blend things together that are not written thay way. Sound overlaps and bounces off of objects in the room and within our skull. This blurring effect makes the music sound faster.

I for example always thought that I played the Movement Perpetuels by Francis Poulenc too slow, and I kept making the first part faster and faster. Well the other day, I setup my metronome to what he indicated in the music (He's one of the few composers that actually put metronome markings in his music). I was totally surprised to find that I was playing the music too fast and I had to slow down quite a bit to match my playing to 144bpm per quarter note!

Acoustics will affect your speed. A "busy" environment with a lot of reverb or a very harmonious piano will sound way too noisy when the music is played too quickly. You need to slow it up a bit in order to allow the sound to thin out. If you play too fast, then the sounds only mush together more and make things worse.

The fastest notes in the piece will determine the highest speed that the piece will be able to be played accurately. You don't want to be going too fast when you reach a run of 32nd notes. Remember these are 8 times faster than the fastest quarter note in the music. And if you're alreay playing very fast, these will be unplayable.

You can't play the same speed on all pianos. There are some where the action is too stiff to be played quickly, and there are others where the keys fly away from the fingers. Older instruments too have shallower actions, which allowed for faster playing. There are also those where the action has to return completely before the next note plays. In this case there's no way of playing too fast because then the notes won't sound properly.

There's a lot more I can say here, but keep these things in mind righh now for something to consider. Remember never sacrifice accuracy and control for the sake of speed.

John

I totally agree with Mary / John. It is absolutely right.

People will be able to play piece with speed, accuracy and control if their technique are better than the technique required by the piece. In my case, I believe, in next 2 -3 years, I will be able to play today's pieces with speed and control because at that time, those pieces will become a lot easier than now.

And why my teacher didn't force me to play at speed? I think that it may take a lot of time to practice to increase the speed and maybe adult learner like me may get bore with that process, so it is better to assign new piece as it also a good way to improve the technique together with learning other exercise like Czerny, Hannon, etc

Will anyone able to play piece with speed and control when the technique requirement of that piece is at the cap of their technique?

Bigcat, in a similar vein, my teacher has told me that, "we play better where we've been than where we're at," or words to that effect.

Nan, have you gone back and replayed some of your earlier pieces?

It is possible to develop technique by playing more difficult pieces. Each piece brings it's own technical challenges and sometimes playing technical exercises is not the be all and end all way of playing faster. Sure it is important to be able to play scales etc... but personally I get utterly bored playing Hanon and Czerny.

Another way of increasing tempo, is to play the piece at the tempo you desire to play it at, when you get stuck simply work on that little section slowly, and increase tempo until you can play the difficult section at the same tempo as the rest of the piece....

You're spot on about each new piece having a technical challenge. Well hopefully one chooses new music with the hopes of facing a new challenge along the way. This of course depends upon the repertoire. Beethoven, for example has written music that may seem easy at first, but once you get into the thick of things, it really is difficult in subtle ways. When I play these pieces, I chuckle to myself because I think of him watching me struggle with those tricky parts. His sonatas seem to take off astronmically in technical issues immediately after the first one. In fact there are some tricky spots in that one as well. Then there's the other spectrum with easier pieces by Schumann. His Album for the young has sections of very reasonably easy music with only a few technically challenging pieces in there. This is not quite the same with his other works, however which vary from very easy to extremely difficult within a single programme set.

Regarding bringing a difficult section up to speed because it lags behind. I don't recommend it for the simple reason that that section will never be the same speed as the rest of the piece. For some reason, the mind will default to a slower pace even when trying to play at tempo, or worse the section will fall completely apart when played together with the rest of the piece at the proper tempo. So having said this, I recommend learning the whole piece at the same tempo regardless if there are easy sections or not. This will ensure the piece is complete as a whole unit instead of having fast and slow parts. There's nothing worse than listening to a sonata for example, where the first part is played very quickly, but the second part is slower because it is more difficult.

John