This post is to go with my YouTube video
Today I’d like to share a neat trick I found to help when trying to master a couple of tricky Waltzes on the piano. That trick is to play it in 4/4 time. You might think I’ve gone mad – a Waltz by definition is in 3/4 time – however when I put this into practice, it helped me control passages that previously had, as Eric Morecambe used to say, ‘all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order’.
I’ve been working on a few different Waltzes – mainly by Chopin but also by other composers.
The first is Chopin’s Minute Waltz (Op. 64 No. 1 in D Flat Major). Interestingly, the actual title of the Waltz (not chosen by Chopin himself of course) was minute (as in small), but is always almost pronounced minute (as in 60 seconds). You’ll find YouTube videos of people having amused themselves trying to play it in a minute … which is possible though not pretty I have to say.
The other is Chopin’s C Sharp Minor Waltz (Op. 64 No. 2). I first heard this played by Arthur Rubinstein and decided to learn it … it sounded simple enough (although Arthur Rubinstein makes everything sound simple of course). As an aside, I heard a fascinating interview with Daniel Barenboim where he said the mark of a truly great pianist was that they would make everything sound either so easy that anybody can play it (and he cited Rubinstein) or they make everything sound impossibly difficult (and he cited Michelangeli) – certainly an interesting perspective.
In honesty, I found both far from simple and they gave me a number of problems to overcome
These are both fairly short pieces and very popular with Concert Pianists as encores and recital repertoire. For me, the Minute Waltz is tricker than the C Sharp Minor – even though Henle classifies both as a Medium (5/6). If you’re unfamiliar with the Henle classifications, check it out here https://www.henle.de/en/the-publishing-house/levels-of-difficulty-piano.html … it’s a useful way of deciding whether something is likely to be within your grasp!
When learning each of these pieces, I had real problems with the faster sections. I kept plugging away, hands separately, slow practice etc. After countless hours, I found that – whilst very occasionally the stars would align and I’d play at least a good few bars perfectly – more often than not, there would be a variety of either random mistakes and other stubborn ones that refused to go away.
I’d been doing a lot of research on technique and a popular method for tackling tricky passages that I’d seen a few good teachers suggest was to play small sections at speed with a break between the sections. So, rather than playing ‘as written’, you give your brain time to catch up after one flurry of notes before it needs to focus on the next set.
This isn’t something I remember being taught. What about you? If you’re an older pianist, leave a comment to let me know if this is something you were taught in your younger years.
One day, whilst sitting at the piano thinking about this, the idea came to me to adapt the waltz to 4/4 – thereby creating ‘rhythmic’ breaks that could follow a regular time signature.
One way would be to do it like this for the C Sharp Minor Waltz
Another alternative is to play it like this:
Finally, you have:
This idea works equally well on the Minute Waltz by the way.
I’ve found that using this technique has helped me tremendously in practicing each of these pieces.
- First, that extra beat per bar give my brain just enough time to gather its thoughts
- Secondly, you can get up to ‘full speed’ in terms of beats per minute much more quickly and in a way that allows you to eliminate errors more easily
- Finally, since you effectively take your ‘extra beat’ at a different place with each pattern, you are practicing a different set of notes without a break each time
Try this out for yourself and see if it helps. If you have other suggestions, please do leave a comment – I’m always looking for fresh ideas of how to approach things.
