It's your speculation and need to talk.

I think one form of practice that can help with this is to practice each triplet plus the next note, with an accent on the last note of the group. Start slow, and gradually speed up. If you miss a note, slow down to the point at which you don't miss an note. Repeat it until it is safe to pick up the speed just slightly without missing a note. Part of the idea here is to get used to never messing up - you know, that old thing about not practicing mistakes.

Good suggestion. Thank you.

Fascinating topic. Beyond a casual reading of the etude, I've never seriously studied it.

But I think it interesting that a similar situation arises in the mini cadenza in Liszt's 6th Rhapsody just prior to the 'Presto'. The right hand rises and falls on all black notes.

I found it very difficult (my bloody right hand would get so confused... where AM I Jason, help me!), and only a heaping of slow practise in various rhythms and accentuations managed to salvage it for performance.

My octaves were always good -the envy of a few of my mates- but I really think that passage is the hardest in the Rhapsody.

Are you sure your finger 5 RH is centered? i.e. accurately placed? The whole etude for me is a finger 5 thing.

Centered how? You mean not too far to the left or right of its black note? And how does that apply to this passage, in which 5 is playing at the same as another finger? And what do you mean when you say the whole etude is "a finger 5 thing"? Anyway, isn't the technique required for this passage quite different from the rest of the etude?

Sorry, more questions than answers from that post.

-J

I don't know much about classical music but what I would try with this and similar figurations is:

1. Separate each pair of hand groups, in this case the triplet figures, by a small pause, or microsleep. Slowly reduce the gaps until everything is easy when continuous.

2. Repeat each position (triplet figure) two or three times on the way up instead of playing it just once. You'll probably find you can do that very easily up to speed right away.

As I say, I've never had technical tuition, but these two practice tricks usually work for me anywhere that continuous motion is a problem. Speed doesn't matter, slow or fast both seem to work.

IMHO Chopin invented the free use of the 5th finger (he got it from Hummel) as did Bach the thumb. In the Black Note he's giving an opportunity to study its use. (hint: don't use its abductor)

If he got it from Hummel, he could hardly have invented it.

free use

Oh, so he didn't get it from Hummel after all? Or what?

You'll find Hummel did not shy away from its use, unlike his contemporaries. In fact I'd say Bach uses the 5th finger more than the next two generations so there's an argument that chopin got it there.

Whatever....

I've been taught than when slow practicing, you don't play like you're slow practicing, but like that slow tempo is your performance tempo.

And nobody said you couldn't briefly experiment at a quicker tempo, and then practice what you found to work best slowly.

That's exactly what I'm saying is dangerous, and what I (at least) have found occasionally to be absolutely counterproductive -- i.e. making my actual playing of the passage worse and/or confused, and which was corrected when I recognized what had happened and went back and did it the other way, or (in some instances) started practicing the passage only much closer to the actual tempo.


P.S. See edit/clarification in my next post. I'd agree with what you said for a different kind of thing than what we're talking about in this thread -- but not for this.

I wonder if you understood OSK the same way I did. I don't think it's dangerous at all the way I understand it and I recommend it highly. What is dangerous about slow practice is when you do a lot of hand twisting (usually an attempt at finger legato) that isn't possible at high speed.

I did too, simply because I couldn't believe he was saying it. And I couldn't think of any other way to understand it besides how I did. I'll let him say if I got it wrong -- and you can say what you think he means if you feel like it.

However, it seems you might have misunderstood what I meant by "dangerous."
I didn't mean you can injure yourself.


Edit: I should clarify.....I'm talking about passages and problems like what this thread is about, and I assumed that's what OSK was talking about too. If we're not talking about passage or piece that's technically tricky, then I agree with what OSK said. But about something like what we're talking about here, absolutely not.

I didn't and I didn't either.

So what's the junk about "hand twisting"?
I guess it means you think more than about 3 people in the world actually do that...

yeah, right.

When I prepared this for an examination decades ago* I had been taught to play that cadenza with two hands, alternating hands: using the left hand for the lower notes and the right hand for the upper notes. The examiner didn't take exception to my fingering and it worked well-enough at the time, although it may have sounded a little "notey".

* or, to quote Dylan Thomas : "... before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse ...."

Regards,

In Seymour Bernstein's book "Monsters and Angels," he tells of how he did it that way when he played the piece for his teacher, Alexander Brailowsky, who marveled at it, asked Seymour to do it again and stood over him to watch. A week later, Brailowsky played the piece in a recital and did it that way.

(here it is in the book)

What a load of old tripe this thread is! Just a bunch of natterers. If you can't stay OT i'm off back to the ABF.

Well I dunno, I thought it went off topic as soon as everyone blew off the "looking" thing.

I thought you hated the Rhapsodies.

Okay, bye.