First thoughts
Are you like myself and find that if you try to play things quickly, you get a lot of tension in your hands, arms, shoulders and even back sometimes? If so, read on and let me know whether or not you think I might be on to a possible significant contributor. You can also watch my related YouTube video here.
My theory is that a significant amount of tension in piano playing might be because we subconsciously ‘brace for impact’ when we think things will go wrong. A little like when we fall, we automatically tense up in the anticipation that this will better help us manage the fall, if we expect to play something wrong, then perhaps this also causes us to tense up in the (mistaken) belief that it’ll help us better eliminate wrong notes. If we could get to a point where we don’t expect to play wrong notes, will this help dissipate tension?
One thing I’m sure is true of great pianists is that they look totally relaxed and at ease when playing. I’m sure it’s equally true that they don’t expect to play wrong notes. They have practiced so much that individual notes are no longer much of a concern. Their major focus when performing will be nowhere around the notes but around the interpretation (at least, that’s what I imagine and certainly that’s how I feel when playing pieces I can easily control).
Some known causes of tension
There are certainly lots of things that have been identified as causing tension in piano playing, things like locked, open hand positions, stretching, continuing to apply pressure to a key once the note has sounded etc. I believe that all of these things are true and I’m not disputing them. However, when learning something like Chopin’s Etude Op. 25 No. 2 (The Bees), there’s little or no stretching involved, no long held notes, no locked hand positions. So, why, when I try to play it quickly, do my hands start to tense up.
It would appear that speed is not a challenge for everybody … during an old interview with Martha Argerich, she said (paraphrasing) that, if anything, being able to play things at pretty much any speed she liked was more or a problem to her. In the same interview, she did admit though to getting ‘nervous’ when approaching large octave passages.
In fact, in my earlier years, I avoided any music that was ‘fast’. I never learned any of the faster movements of the Beethoven Sonatas. Equally, I avoided things even like Rhondo Alla Turka or the Allegro from Mozart’s C major Sonata because there were too many fast passages. I’d learn the occasional piece that had faster little bursts within it (such as Claire de Lune) but in general preferred to learn slower music – reassuring myself it was a choice based on what I liked rather than an inability to cope with the speed.
Why I need to fix the problem
A piece on my current hit list is the Fantaisie Impromptu by Chopin and I’m absolutely determined that I’m going to get good enough to learn this. So, in order to do it I will need to get over this ‘technical’ or ‘mental’ block on playing things at speed.
I have done hours and hours of research on how to deal with tension, how to increase speed, leggerio technique and so forth. I’ve found lots of helpful resources on YouTube (my usual favourites of Paul Barton and Josh Wright for example) and I’ve tried implementing their suggestions, including combining different pieces of advice where this seems sensible.
Before tackling the Fantaisie, I decided to tackle two main pieces that are (to me at least) fast:
- Chopin’s Minute Waltz
- Chopin’s Etude Op. 25, No. 2 (The Bees)
During this process, I started to notice that in fact, often for certain passages I could manage the speed and, more importantly, did not feel any build up of tension in my hands. On occasions where a little tension developed, I could drill the passage and focus on ‘relaxing my hands’ at the same time and this would generally clear it.
However, in other passages, there was always tension creeping in – sometimes to a debilitating level.
Second thoughts
I then noticed that my hands stayed mainly relaxed during this sections where I didn’t expect to play either a wrong or an uneven note. Whereas the parts that were less smooth and prone to wrong notes were precisely those parts where my hand started to tense up.
Therefore, if I’m right, if I can eliminate the expectation that I’ll play wrong notes (or uneven notes) and the tension should largely take care of itself.
I think this is where the combination of ‘technique’ and ‘practice’ come together. If you are prone to playing a wrong note (and here I include missed and uneven notes), then generally this will be because of an underlying technique problem. Do I need to slightly angle my hand, slightly rotate my wrist, move slightly towards the fall board or away from it. Do I need to focus on the downstroke, the release and so on.
Whilst practicing slowly, it’s generally possible to play all the right notes easily enough once you’ve learned them to a certain level. Therefore, the approach I’m taking is basically the ‘small bits fast’ approach where I split these passages into a smaller number of notes and gradually increase the number I play in one go. I can then really hone in on where wrong and uneven notes creep in and then try to diagnose the reason and fix it. So far this does seem to be bearing fruit (if very gradually).
Further reading
I first came across this in Chuan C Chang’s book ‘The Fundamentals of Piano Practice‘ – which I think is worth looking at. She refers to them as ‘parallel sets’ and I have seen variations on this theme by other teachers such as Graham Fitch.
What do you think? Is it possible that the main cause of this particular tension is that I’m ‘bracing for impact’? I you used to suffer from this problem, how did you overcome it? Also, if you never had any particular problem with speed, did you do any specific type of practice when approaching faster work? Please let me know.
