Transcription
I think many people find it very impressive when pianists play really fast. How can you move your fingers that fast? That's something I hear a lot.
In today's video, we're going to talk about how you can practice to develop faster and lighter fingers. First of all, your fingers need to be light in order to move fast. But how do you make your fingers light? They need to be relaxed, which means there's no extra weight or unnecessary tension. So how can you achieve that kind of relaxation? It's such a big and complex topic, but today I'll try to explain it as simply as possible.
So the key is your wrist. The wrist can move up and down, and it can also move side to side. And if you do both at the same time, it looks like you're drawing a small circle. Let's talk about the up and down motion. When your wrist drops down, it feels like you're putting your weight into the keys. Almost as if you're hanging from your fingers. And when your wrist goes up, notice how high my wrist is. My fingers are here, and my wrist is all the way up here. It feels like you're lifting the weight out of your hand.
Now, let's talk about side to side motion. If I play C, D, E, F, G, I can easily play them with a fixed wrist because the notes are so close together. But as you can hear, it can sound a little stiff. And the problem is, right now I'm playing it very slowly, so I'm not feeling any tension in my arm. But if I go faster or, um, play a longer passage, my arm will feel a little heavy and even sore. That's why it's important to add a little bit of side to side movement. Try to position your wrist behind the finger that's playing. So as you move from finger to finger, your wrist shifts slightly. Not like dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, but as if you're drawing a continuous line.
And if you combine the up and down with the side to side, it will look like this. So you drop your wrist as you play the first note, then slowly lift it as you move to the right. And it should feel like you're drawing the lower half of a circle.
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Since I was going slow, my arm doesn't really hurt. But if I keep practicing like this at a slow tempo, I'll end up playing the same way when I go faster. Even though it feels okay now, it will not work at a faster tempo. So, we're going to add a little bit of wrist movement. If you look at the score, Chopin put an accent on every four notes. But that doesn't mean you should press harder to do the accent. Instead, just let your wrist drop as you play that note. Um, that adds weight naturally, and the sound becomes stronger on its own. Then, as you play the next three notes, let your wrist gradually rise. And because the notes move downward, your wrist shifts to the left as well. And you repeat the same motion as you go down.
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This is a little bit different because the direction keeps changing. So for the first three notes, we go up and down. So it'll be just a tiny circle. Then for the next four notes, we are going upward. So you drop your wrist on the first note and let it rise again as you go to the right, and a little rotating movement, and then a small circular motion again.
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I always tell my students to practice slowly. And I know a lot of pianists and teachers, they emphasize how important that is. But if you practice only at a slow tempo, you'll not be able to play fast. To increase the tempo, you also need to practice fast. My favorite practice to increase the tempo is rhythm practice. So you start by playing two notes very quickly and stop. Stop. Stop. Like that. And then four notes. Make sure you're completely relaxed at each stopping point. And then maybe try eight notes. This is more difficult because of the arpeggio. If this was a slow piece, I might try to connect F# and A like this. But because this is a fast piece, F# should be played very short, like a staccato. And as soon as you play F#, your thumb should already be moving to the next position. So practice just these two notes to smooth out the shift. And then gradually add the notes after and before.
Now, the last thing I want to share is something you can apply after you've practiced the first two exercises. Usually, when one hand is busy, the other hand is less busy. Here, the left hand still moves. But compared to the right, it's slower and has fewer notes. So instead of focusing on the busy hand, focus on the less busy one. It helps you feel more relaxed and prevents rushing. So here we have 12 notes, but I focus on just two notes. They're on the beats, and I almost treat them like my internal metronome. And that does not mean they're going to be louder than the right hand, but I just use them to feel the beat. Same thing here. I'll just focus on the B flat because that's on the beat.
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So again, instead of focusing on my right hand,
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I try to feel the beat with my left hand.
And so the techniques and exercises that I share today, um, might not be easy to apply right away, especially if you're just starting out. And to be fair, most beginner pieces don't have this kind of fast passages. But if you're intermediate or above and have been struggling with playing fast, I hope this video gave you some helpful ideas. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.