Playing at speed is probably the one thing that I’ve always found the most difficult to do. This is why I think it is so important to mention it specifically in my approach on how to practice piano effectively.
Short bursts of notes (such as in mordents, turns and the like) aren’t so difficult to pull off, however, anything that involves longer passages is something I’ve always found both difficult to manage and extremely prone to tension. I have shared some of my theories on what might cause tension and a potential practice technique (staccato practice) to help with building speed. Here, I’ll be sharing some additional ideas to that I have found very helpful.
Traditional advice
You’ll see multiple questions on different social media groups about how to get a passage faster. This is obviously a topic that concerns many aspiring pianists. It seems to me that 80% of the time, the response is to practice it slowly. Slow practice definitely has its role at certain points in the learning process. However, to rely on it as a means to build speed on piano seems counter intuitive to me.
We’re also advised to practice the metronome and then gradually crank up the speed over time. I’ve tried this in the past and it doesn’t work very well for me. As a result, I have done lots of research on other potential methods.
Other possible approaches
The first time I saw the view that Slow Practice was not appropriate to build speed on piano was in Chang’s book ‘The Fundamentals of Piano Practice’. I know the general consensus on this particular book is a little mixed. However, I’m a believer in logic so if an argument or approach makes logical sense, I’m happy to investigate it further. Chang’s book aside, I have subsequently seen various techniques that didn’t involve ‘slow’ practice and then finally I heard Graham Fitch in one of his videos asay that practicing slowly won’t prepare you to play fast in ‘a month of Sundays’.
Often, it’s not only the advice itself but how you interpret and implement it. I liken it to joining dots or making connections. To show you a couple of different approaches that I’ve been experimenting with, I’d like to use two very different pieces as examples – Debussy’s Golliwog’s Cake Walk and Chopin’s Study Op. 25, No. 2 – The Bees. Both of these pieces need to be played fairly quickly but require of course very different techniques.
Applied to Chopin’s ‘The Bees’ study
Looking first at ‘The Bees’, slow practice is ideal for thoroughly learning the notes and choosing a fingering. This we can definitely do Hands Separately initially.
However, once we have a section leaned, rather than continuing to practice it ‘slowly’, we put the hands together using a dotted rhythm. This gives you two very different variants:
Dot on the first note of each pair
Dot on the second note of each pair
This helps in that whilst we are still practicing this significantly more slowly than full performance tempo, every other note is being practiced at speed. This is starting to build in ‘fast’ reflexes both in the downward keystroke and the release. Also, as there are two patterns, effectively you are practicing every individual pair of notes at speed.
This approach is good for practicing in longer sections so that you keep the context of the music much better. I basically first learned up to Bar 9 as being my first ‘long’ section.
Small bits fast
A next approach is then to practice ‘small bits fast’. Again, the Bees lends itself very easily to this approach. Taking the right hand, this is written in 8th note (quaver) triplets. Therefore, a good starting point is each to take each set of triplets.
Using this technique, you simply drill 2 or 3 measures (bars) at a time. The gap between each set of notes really isn’t important … it can be as long as you need. Following Liszt’s advice to Think Ten Times and Play Once, make sure you consciously think about the next set of notes you’re going to play before you play them. Over time, you will feel that the gap closes itself naturally – but don’t need to try to close it completely just yet.
Slightly longer bits fast
When you’re perfectly relaxed practicing in this manner, you can then elongate the set of notes. A pattern that I found workable for this piece was to play one group of 4 then followed by groups of 6
Using this pattern, you always finish on the first note of the next set of triplets. Again, the same rules apply … consciously think about the next set of notes before you play them.
Next, as you get these groups fast and relaxed, try with even longer groups. Practicing in this manner effectively means that you’re not working on building ‘speed’ – the speed is there from the beginning. Rather you’re building the number of notes that you can play in one go at speed. Working gradually in this way, it won’t be long before you can do the entire first 8 bars in one go.
Use Left Hand Patterns too
We can do small bits fast grouping them on the Left Hand pattern too.
Again, focus on both remaining relaxed and thinking properly about the next set of notes before you play them.
Using pauses
As are able to get longer and longer sequences of notes, we can move towards the idea of putting a ‘pause’ on a given note to play the same role as the gap you used earlier. For example, we can pause on the 1st left note in each group of 6.
Then try pausing on the 2nd, then the 3rd, then the 4th, 5th and eventually 6th note.
Other patterns you can use are only really limited by your imagination. However, the key here is that we are always practicing fast but in relatively smaller groups of notes that we can properly control, keep fully even and without developing tension.
We can then put a pause every 2 or 3 measures and very gradually get to the point we have all 9 measures under our fingers.
Then its simply rinse and repeat for the remaining section.
Golliwog’s Cake Walk
If we now look at the Golliwog’s Cake Walk, then the challenge for me is that it needs to remain light, whilst my hands are moving fairly quickly around the keyboard (including crossing over each other).
Clearly, this is nothing like The Bees in its structure, however, you can still practice it in a similar way. Here, of course, Hands Separate practice is unlikely to help us as the problem is coordination of the hands. This we can start with individual jumps or even pairs of jumps as I explain in my full tutorial on this great piece.
Next, we can start to take an entire bar (or two bars) and the first note of the following bar.
After we have played these notes, stop – we may even remove our hands from the keyboard. As we did with ‘The Bees’, now take a break to think about the next set of notes, but this time we start by repeating the last note we played (i.e. play the first beat of the current bar until the first beat of the next.
As you can see, in both pieces we let ourselves be guided by the actual structure of the music in terms of grouping notes and using rhythms.
Problem solving this technique
To get the most from this technique, where we have errors, it’s best to resist the temptation to ‘slow down’. We need to keep a focus on the aim – to build speed on piano. Rather. we take a smaller set of notes (say, up to the point we make the error) and work on these until comfortable. Next, adding notes gradually one at a time until we get back to the full segment.
Another thing we can build into this (and the same would work with The Bees), is to physically shake out your hands between each group to remove any tension … this is something Josh Wright advocates frequently.
I’ve been practicing in this fashion for some time now and, whilst I’m far from being able to totally master ‘the bees’ which is in perpetual motion, I can now play comfortably at speeds of which previously I would only have dreamed and, more importantly, maintain that speed for much longer without tension. The natural ‘pauses’ in Golliwog’s Cakewalk make this much easier play.
This core idea of splitting things down into sometimes extremely small chunks is a fundamental part of my Four Step Piano Process for learning new pieces.
For more tips on improving your playing, check out my full guide on how to practice piano effectively.
