I just started worked on this recently. Is my hand supposed to hurt? I think it's a muscle below my 5th finger on the outside edge of my right hand. Normally, I would think that pain means I'm doing something wrong, but this Etude has such an awkward hand position that it's possible a muscle needs to be developed before playing it.

Your hand is never "supposed" to hurt! The fact that it does means that you are doing something wrong in how you are playing it. We play with tendons, ligaments, and effective use of gravity, not muscle.

This particular etude (although I have not played it) appears to focus a lot on having to use fingers 3-4-5 -- the weakest of the hand. They are impossible to move independent of one another, and so special care must be taken to keep the wrist free and to allow the fingers to relax as much as possible when not being played.

The way this piece is written, you cannot consistently do this, but any relief you can give to the RH should be taken. For example, in m.1 beat 2, the LH can play the Treble E along with the 3 Bass notes easily. This will allow the Rh to play only the A, using the thumb. You can then play the upward stem notes doing something like 2-3-2-3. The more you can do this redistribution of hands to allow relief for fingers 3-4-5 will be helpful.

I would also practice the whole piece softly and slowly, being sure to relax fingers in between each note.

As I am sure you are aware, this etude is infamously difficult - in my opinion and in those of many other pianists I know, easily the hardest one Chopin wrote.

Because of the difficulty, and because the stretch involved to play the notes can be considerable, the risk of injury from playing this composition is (again in my opinion) much higher than average. I don't believe the quality of the music in this particular etude warrants the risk if you can't figure out what is causing the pain.

Now, given that you are reporting pain, there are a few possibilities. One possibility is that your hands might not be large enough to play this. Another possibility is an incorrect technical approach, something very easy to do with this etude even for very accomplished pianists. For example, unless you have huge hands, trying to hold the lower notes past the first of the upper notes in each group of four can result in lots of repetitive tendon motion at extreme angles - such pain would manifest as a burning tightness on the top of your fingers from the knuckle to the first joint. Another possibility, as you noted but I suspect isn't likely, is simply muscle soreness from use of muscles that you have not used before - if that is the case, the pain will go away once the muscles are developed.

I think the whole purpose of the etude is to play it as written and one should not redistribute the notes. Would one play an etude for the LH alone using both hands to make it easier?

This is a piece that maybe 1 in 500 or 1000 can play well.

I meant to add in my last post that this other response is excellent advice. In fact, I think I did not emphasize enough how unlikely I thought the muscle soreness explanation was. While such things can occur, they are rare, and in the case of this etude (which consists of mostly very light playing), highly unlikely.

Morodiene, are you absolutely sure that this piece does not require atypical muscle use? Play a few measures of just RH, even at a slow tempo, and see what happens. As far as reassigning the fingering, I'm not really sure that would help, and since the purpose of the exercise is to focus on the chromatic scale with 3-4-5, it may be a bad idea.

My hands are of above average size, so I don't think that's the problem. Also, the problem occurs even while I'm playing only the top voice (just the scale). It feels more like "fatigue" rather than "pain." Normally, if I'm experiencing fatigue in piano playing, I am doing something wrong, but this etude is just so strange that I can't really find a comfortable way of playing it, even at a really slow tempo. This leads me to believe that it might require some muscular development.

I have to chime in here and say that, while your statements effectively makes a good point to students (you shouldn't FEEL like you're using your muscles), it's of course false - tendons connect muscle to bone, so tension on a tendon is basically equal to the tension generated by the connected muscle. I'm sure you know that, and I don't mean to be pedantic, but I couldn't let an obvious untruth remain uncorrected



Agreed completely. It's probably necessarily to play it very softly and slowly for months before you begin speeding it up. If pain continues even with soft, slow practice, I'd recommend shelving the etude and returning later.

Just to be clear, this etude is not about executing stretches and awkward hand positions; it's about how one goes about it without stretches and awkward hand positions.

Many people play Chopin Etudes not as 'etudes,' but as pieces that are musical in their own right. I think that if you play this piece for the purposes of simply learning how to play such a thing, then redistribution would not be a good thing to do. In that case, playing this piece at all may not be a good thing to do.

If you want to play it because you like it, then it really doesn't matter how the notes gets played, as long as you can do it with ease. And in either instance, if you are experiencing pain, then you are either not ready to play this and should work on other things or need to reconsider how you are playing it. It is possible just the slowing down and concentrating on relaxing in between each note will be all you need to do. But there is nothing 'wrong' with redistribution. You would only be doing it in certain places where possible, alleviating some of the stress on the weaker fingers. All the others would still be using 3-4-5, and thus you would still benefit from the purpose of the etude in that case.

And yes, of course you're using muscles, but unless you suddenly go from not practicing much at all to doing an hour or two a day, there shouldn't be soreness.

If one is playing any piece purely for one's own enjoyment than besides redistribution of notes one could leave out notes, play the piece at 3/4 speed, etc....anything goes. But if one is attepting a Chopin etude, I think one should very seriously attempt to play it as written and only simplify things after trying very hard to avoid this.

It's not necessaily a choice between enjoyment and something else. One could love the piece and also choose to play it in a competition. If one rediributed the notes under those circumstances, I don't think the judges would approve.

There are plenty of other Chopin etudes to choose from. I think anyone attempting one of the hardest 1-2 minutes around should be ready to seriously attempt to play it as written.

No, emphatically not.

Fingering is everything here. I'm not suggesting any "redistribution" to make it easier, simply that one can decide (1) to use 4 and 5 as much as possible in the chromatic line, or (2) to use 3 as well whenever possible.

There are consequences to that choice, especially on the primary beats: the shape of the hand will be different depending on whether those chords are played with 1-2-3 or 1-2-4.

Finally, the fingering choices you make when playing it slow are not necessarily ones you will keep when playing fast. Pain means tension; plenty of slow practice of only the chromatic line without the chords is essential.

Steven

I'm not familiar with this, but I just now tried playing
a few measures, and that was enough. Good luck working
this up in 10 yrs. if you're a garden variety
amateur player. If you're trying to take it a near
full tempo right from the start, you'd likely get
pain. That would be normal for a piece like this.
You might want to take it a little slower for starters.

And speed is not going to be your only problem. This
is Chopin, and Chopin means rubato. A 4-16th note figure
in Chopin implies rubato, that is, the 4 notes are
not supposed to be played in strict time. Even at this
blazing tempo you're still going to have to give those
4-16th note figures the rubato treatment in order to
get an impressive performance.

The treble staff notes in this are all played with the r.h.

i don't think your fingers are supposed to feel hurting playing this, and in fact i felt the (standard) fingerings for this etude are quite comfortable and suit RH fingers well.

however, your just have to try to find the ease with your hand/finger movements to be able to play this fast. the main problem for me is getting it to the speed, and i wasn't able to speed it up. i put it aside for a while since, but will get back to it some time this year.

Application of tempo rubato plays such a small role in this etude as to be practically non-existent, IMO.

Furthermore, playing it at "a near full tempo right from the start" would be such a near-impossibility that there's practically no chance that's the cause of pain; there's really no alternative to "taking it a little slower for starters."

Steven

One common bit of advice for this piece is to shift your body to left (maybe 6-12 inches), so that your right forearm and wrist are not quite perpendicular to the keyboard. This eases some of the tension caused by the awkward crossovers in the RH (3 over 4, 3 over 5, and 4 over 5).

For what it's worth, my new piano teacher (who is awesome!) "cheats" at the end by using the traditional chromatic fingering and playing the right hand chords with the left hand. He doesn't recommend it for anyone that's trying to learn the etude as an etude, of course, and he has no trouble playing it the other way, but he says that it does make it significantly easier

This piece is all about the independence and strength (power) of fingers 3,4,5 - independence from one another and independence of the outer fingers (345) from the inner fingers (12). Most likely the pain you experience is exactly what you suspect it is - lacking development of the muscles that allow one to play the 4th and 5th fingers independently. Such development is essential for an advanced pianist, but it must be developed gradually over a long period of time in order to avoid injury.

I would recommend you either stick to the Etude but limit the amount of time you spend practicing it, or explore other, easier studies that focus on developing the independence and strength of the 4th and 5th fingers first. Also, for each chord spend time figuring out the most comfortable placement of your fingers by adjusting how far in or out of the keys the fingers play and by slightly adjusting the hand's angle to the keyboard. Think of the word "comfort" as a mantra as you go from hand position to hand position.

One very effective way of practicing this Etude is to transform it into a holding exercise by holding the thumb and 2nd fingers for the duration of each quarter note while 3,4, and 5 play the upper notes, letting go of the 2nd only where holding it for the entire beat is not possible. Holding exercises are the most effective for developing finger independence.

I agree. When I had a lesson with Tommy Otten (piano prof from UNC), he said he taught a guy that came to him with Op. 10 No. 1 and had split up the arps with right and left to make it easier!

Matt

It can take the hand a while to get used to playing this etude, especially if you haven't done much work on the outer fingers. I think the real trick, just like the other Chopin etudes, is to keep the hand and fingers utterly relaxed. And to do that (at least for me), you have start at insanely slow speeds, usually less than half the indicated MM, and have relaxation as basically your only priority other than hitting the right notes.

It isn't correct to say that it impossible to move the outer fingers independently of one another. Learning how to do just that is the purpose of the multitude of "holding" exercises written by exercise and etude writers from Clementi to the present day. And anyone who learns this etude of Chopin's is going to have to have a at least a modicum of that finger independence in the outer fingers, or they simply won't be able to play it.

Exactly right, wr.

Here are two more ways of practicing this etude which I found very useful for developing the independence between outer and inner parts of the hand. The third exercise is what I described in my earlier post - turning the etude into a holding exercise to develop the independence of fingers 345 (at first it may seem impossible, even a prescription for straining the hand, but with proper concentration on relaxing as much as possible it becomes very manageable. If your hand is particularly small just hold onto the thumb.)

This is one Etude where the student can really benefit from the many preparatory exercises that Cortot presents in his study edition of the Chopin Etudes. They concentrate on various exercises for fingers 3, 4, and 5 in chromatic passages. Of course, as with many of Cortot's Etude exercises, if one tried to do them all in all the ways that Cortot suggests, one would indeed spend a great deal of time on the preparatory work. In this case, though, that might not be a bad idea.

His 10th exercise is almost identical to JerryS88's third exercise, except that Cortot asks for a very marked staccato for the sixteenth-notes in this particular instance.

Regards,

In the new biography of Friedman, the author also has several chapters on Tiegerman, who was Friedman's favorite pupil and lived in Egypt. Tiegerman said "Don't play Cortot's excercises for the Chopin Etudes. He wrote them because he needs them."

Tiegerman's opinion, not my own.

I've got Cortot's exercises, Bruce - undoubtably a lot of useful ones. I like to devise my own based on my own understanding of the problems each etude poses for the very reason you point out - playing all of his would take an enormous amount of time. By writing my own I get to concentrate on what I feel is most exigent and tackle it in as efficient a way as possible. Still, I bet practicing his would help a lot. I would say that in general my excises are inspired by Cortot's and Dohnanyi's.



Sorry - I don't see the logic in this. I don't need them just because Cortot did? Wouldn't I need them even more?

Here's one more way of practicing I find very helpful. I transform it into a holding exercise while concentrating on one beat at a time, repeating the upper line forwards and backwards a couple of time:


Incidentally, this is one piece in which I find it very helpful to count not quarter note beats, but rather 16th notes in groups of 4 (Groups of 6 in this last prep. study I just posted. See this thread about not rushing for explanation.)

In case my earlier post wasn't clear, the sequence B-W-W (black key, white key, white key) in the ascending line must be played 3-4-5.

But when two white keys do not occur in succession, B-W can be played by 3-4 or by 4-5.

Cortot chooses the latter fingering:



In my opinion, the importance of this fundamental choice—and its consequence to the shape of the hand, particularly in the chords on the primary beats—cannot be overstated.

Steven

Slightly off topic: Several months ago, I got the chance to go to Beijing with a choir I sing in. While there, we visited a rehearsal of one of their most well renowned children's choruses. After we sang together, they had one of their members play the piano for us. It was a 10 year old girl, and she played this etude! I was suitably impressed, but much more so when I got home and looked at the sheet music!

Which just goes to prove Murphy's law of piano playing: No matter how good you are, there's someone half your age in China who's a lot better.


Considering I'm about 10 years away from playing this myself, I'm afraid I can't give you any useful advice.

Thanks for the advice, everybody. My teacher assigned this to me for the purpose of working on my 3-4-5 fingers. I do have Cortot's exercises, and they are very helpful. I think the thing to do is practice this slowly over many weeks, and see what happens. It actually has gotten a bit easier, the more I've worked on it.

That's a good point, Steven. I never thought about it like that. I wonder if most people are consistent in their preference of 3-4 or 4-5 or if some people prefer to vary their choice throughout the piece.

Could you please explain how that exercise is supposed to accomplish finger independence?