The inspiration
I’m an avid Terry Pratchett fan and recently read the book ‘Truckers’ from the Bromilad Triology. Cutting a long story short, a group of Gnomes needed to ‘appropriate’ a full sized Heavy Goods Vehicle (hence the title Truckers) and drive it away from a Department Store Depot. This clearly would be Impossible – or is it ……? Their solution was to chop the Impossible Task down into a number of merely very Difficult Tasks, then breaking each one of those into a group of Horribly Hard Tasks, and each of these into a series of Tricky Jobs …
It’s a little ‘off topic’ but I’ve linked a couple of Terry Pratchett’s books here for you. Clearly, inspiration can come from anywhere!
The impossible task
This got me to thinking as to whether we can do this when we practice the piano? Like many, I can’t resist tackling music that is beyond my current ability. Sometimes, there might just be a couple of parts that feel truly Impossible. Today I’d like to share how I’ve been approaching the second Cadenza in Liszt’s Liebestraum No. 3. This post is to go with my YouTube video
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For me, to play this cadenza at all (never mind well) definitely falls into the category of an Impossible Task. I watched some tutorials on it by Paul Barton and he gives some great advice on approaching it. Paul basically recommends thinking about the first part of the cadenza as two sets of descending chromatic scales in thirds (major thirds in the right hand, minor thirds in the left). He basically says that if you can manage to play these as double thirds scales at around 100bpm, then you’re well on your way.
Finding tricky jobs
However, even taking his advice into account, I’m still left here with something closer to either very difficult or horribly hard task. I’d be unlikely to be able to achieve this straight off. Therefore, the only solution was to break it down into something closer to a set of ‘tricky jobs’.
First tricky job
I decided that my first tricky job would be just to learn the fingering before even starting to think further about it. Paul very kindly provides his suggested fingering via his Facebook page.
I downloaded this as my starting point and started working through it. I ended up making one small change to Paul’s suggestion – which was to use ‘5’ ‘1’ in the left hand on the b natural/d natural in the same way these fingers are used on the e natural/g natural just before.
Overall, it took me about 2 hours work spread over 12 days just to complete this one ‘tricky job’.
Next tricky jobs
The next tricky job was to play the Double Thirds Hands Separately in groups of 2 for one octave. At first, I’d leave myself plenty of time between each group of two – thinking more about consolidating the fingering and getting a nice change within the group but not between groups.
Once I thought I had got this job OK, for the next Tricky Job, I moved on to groups of 3 for one octave
After each Octave, I’d start again, but from one half step down. This way, each group is starting from a different point
Then finally still in groups of 3 but now from two half steps down in each Group of 3. All in all you practice one octave in groups of 3, 3 times.
Once I was satisfied that this was OK, time for the next tricky job – as you might be expecting, now to repeat the process but using Groups of 4
And then again, starting each octave progressively from one half step down – again so that I started from a different point in each group of 4 (so here, you practice one octave in groups of four, four times).
I’m sure you’re picking up the pattern now? My next tricky job was to repeat the process again but now in groups of 5, then groups of 6 and finally groups of 7.
Only once I could master these did I start to try and play an entire octave in one and then move into the second octave.
This process took me around 8 hours spread over about six weeks
Next difficult task
Once I had got to this point of being able to reasonably control two octaves of double thirds around 100 bpm I decided it was time for my next Difficult Task – actually playing in separate notes as written.
To do this, a couple of Horribly Hard Tasks with associated Tricky Jobs came to mind before seeing if I could indeed manage the ‘impossible task’ of playing the entire run with both hands that I had originally set out to achieve.
More tricky jobs
For the first Horribly Hard Task of getting one octave under control, I decided to follow the same principle of Tricky Jobs as I did for practicing it in double thirds, start with the groups of two:
I then progressed with these separate notes exactly as I had done for the double thirds. First moving on to groups of three, then groups of four and onwards to groups of four, five, six and up to groups of seven. Again, with each set doing one octave from one step down.
My final Horribly Hard Task was to actually do the entire two octaves without any break.
Again, Tricky Jobs were required here … the first was to use a ‘lilting’ rhythm (so a sort of dotted quaver, semi-quaver affair).
I practiced this with both variants – dot on the first note
and then dot on the second
As you increase the speed, you gradually remove the rest as you practice.
My final tricky job here was then to play the entire two octaves accenting the first note in each group of four. This splits each octave into 3 pieces.
Putting hands together
You might have noticed that so far I’ve only mentioned Hands Separate Practice which, whilst vital here, isn’t enough on its own. What I actually did was, once I had managed a ‘tricky job’ hands separately, when I moved on to the next hands separate tricky job in the series I started to practice the previous tricky job hands together.
So, after having learned the fingering Hands Separately, when I was working on getting the double thirds faster (so my first tricky job of groups of two), I also spent a few minutes of my session just practicing the fingering with both hands.
Then, when I was then practicing in sets of three hands separately, I spent a few minutes practicing the pairs hands together.
As you can guess, then when doing in sets of four hands separately, I practised in sets of three hands together and so on until sets of 7.
My theory was borrowed from Chuan C Chang in his book ‘The Fundamentals of Piano Practice’. He states that you don’t really make progress with technique when practicing hands together. Hands separate practice is the order of the day. However, I think its pointless not also practicing hands together. Once I feel OK hands separately with one tricky job, I then practice that particular tricky job hands together whilst I’m working on the next tricky job hands separately.
These two Difficult Tasks (with their associated Horribly Hard Tasks and Tricky Jobs) actually took over 20 hours. This was spread over about four months of patient work.
Remain vigilant
I also noticed that even with this approach, it was really important to stay extremely vigilant because, if you don’t, odd errors start creeping in. For example, when playing from the F Sharp in the right hand with a group of 5 or more, my left hand started missing notes and getting itself confused (even though hands separately the passage gave no problems). I finally worked out that it was because this is around where the second octave starts and it has a slightly different pattern than when you play these same notes at the end of the second octave – so I upped my practice time around this set of notes for quite some time until the problem started to resolve (I feel it still occasionally happens though).
Now for the almost final stage …
My last horribly hard task that I have split into two more tricky jobs to tackle in parallel:
- Practice One Octave Hands Together
- Practice Two Octaves accenting every 1st note in four
It’s interested that playing just one octave hands separately now feels like a ‘tricky job’. At the beginning, it would have been an Impossible Task in itself – proof of progress!
I continued these two tricky jobs for more than 5 hours. Then I finally started to work on the Impossible Task itself … and that is to actually play the two octaves without any accents or rhythms.
Stick with the exercises
This now is perhaps the most dangerous time. Sticking with the Impossible Task alone isn’t a good idea until it’s possible to play it perfectly the vast majority of the time. I believe that if it takes two or three attempts to get it right once, then it’s not yet ready as you’re actually practicing the ‘wrong’ notes more often than the ‘right’ ones. I did a YouTube video on the dangers of practicing wrong notes that you can watch.
To avoid this, I now practice the entire run it a little each day. Just once or twice and then go back to tricky jobs wherever I notice something not quite right.
However, there is one additional thing that I wish I had focussed on more during my tricky jobs. Basically, I always played to the first notes of the next set when doing something hands together:
I should really have done the two variants to get my fingers more accustomed to the point at which they come together:
This ‘miss’ is now causing me issues with putting it together Hands Together as I keep getting ghost notes and so I’m needing to work a little harder here.
That said, I’m quite happy with the progress I’ve made with this Impossible Task. I know any pianist watching my video will certainly spot that when I play this section of the cadenza my hands aren’t perfectly synchronised and it’s not as smooth and uniform as it needs to be. My target was to try to get it sorted by the end of 2018. I think I should make it! [Updated in January 2019, I achieved my goal!!]
Which Impossible Task do you want to achieve? Do you think this approach will work for you?
