Using recordings to push tempo

ranjit

I tend to come back to this fairly often, and it sometimes works surprisingly well. Basically, the way it works is that you listen to a difficult section in a recording at tempo, and then try to immediately play it at that tempo or make it sound like that. Then, you sort of troubleshoot the technique and try to reduce tension etc. I've found this very useful to speed up passages that seem impossible at tempo.

Seeker

ranjit Everybody is different, so I'm glad this works for you. FWIW, it's not something I would advise, because in "trying" to play something at tempo, you are "practicing imperfection", and perhaps, setting up habits that can be difficult to break once you settle into the detailed work necessary to play at speed. I do think there can be value In listening to recorded performances that include the target passage work, because you are getting an idea of how things can sound. So I'd stick with that and eschew playing quickly, taking a more deliberate approach, perhaps hands separately, at a speed at which you can be cognizant of not just what you are attempting to play but how you are playing it. I personally do the click by click increase in tempo on really difficult things, pushing just to the point where things start to fall apart then backing off. The next day, or a day later, going on Molly Gebrian's advice, things can generally start from a faster "slow" setting and proceed to a faster "fast" setting.

Hope this is helpful to you.

thepianoplayer416

Need to learn the notes well before you can speed up. I prefer to speed up gradually a few BPM at a time playing with the metronome, not aim for the fast tempo that seems impossible too early.

ranjit

I don't find clicking up to be very helpful when it comes to pushing tempo past your normal range of speed. It seems to gradually inch up, if at all. At some point, you have to play at tempo and try to figure out how to get there, since the movements at a fast tempo will be different than those at a slower tempo.

I was playing an octave passage at around 112 bpm when my ideal target was 125. I listened to a recording and tried to emulate it, at which point I managed to get it upto about 118 but pretty messy. But then, I realized that I actually had to let go of the key quicker, pretty much only go halfway down and then out, which wasn't necessary when playing at 112 bpm. So then, bringing it back to the slower tempo was easier and the tempo comfortably went up a few notches. It is difficult to impossible to find a teacher who will tell you exactly how to do this sort of stuff. A large chunk of how students learn technique comes down to personal exploration, because those tiny things are difficult to explain and vary somewhat from person to person.

This is for something that felt impossible when I was playing it at a more comfortable pace and I was stuck at a certain tempo. The target seemed impossible, and I think figuring out how exactly it may be possible to make a certain sound, even for a short burst, is really important. The fact that people don't do this probably slows down learning.

TheBoringPianist

I think there's something to this. Often while learning a piece I'll reach a point where I've roughly memorized the notes but I can't play it at speed yet because either my hands aren't moving fast enough, or my mind isn't loading up the memory of the upcoming notes fast enough. It often sits in this stage for a while, and often the breakthrough for me comes when I try to play it "performance tempo" and just plow through mistakes as much as possible rather than stopping. By alternating that with slower deliberate practice it seems to help me figure out how to actually speed up.

Another example of something that doesn't really make sense to start slow and gradually speed up are fast LH octave jumps (e.g. the coda of Chopin's Scherzo No. 3). You can (and should) practice one jump at a time and take as much time as you need to reset, but each jump has a minimum speed you can practice it at because if you go too slowly you end up with 2 drops vs. 1, and are practicing a completely different motion.

ranjit

TheBoringPianist Arguably, I have found this somewhat true for everything piano relaterd. You can't do something if you can't do it at tempo. Once you can do it at tempo, you can break it apart better and piece it back together.

I've started to take the extreme position that any effort put in hoping for a delayed reward is effort spent ineffectively. The result and the fact that you will reach a certain end goal must be evident in the now. Otherwise, it seems like you do not understand what is necessary: if you knew what was necessary, you would be able to do it.

While, in practice, you obviously need to learn motor memory patterns etc. which will take at least a few days to set in, I find that it helps a lot to think along the above lines.

pianoloverus

ranjit Arguably, I have found this somewhat true for everything piano relaterd. You can't do something if you can't do it at tempo. Once you can do it at tempo, you can break it apart better and piece it back together.

I've started to take the extreme position that any effort put in hoping for a delayed reward is effort spent ineffectively. The result and the fact that you will reach a certain end goal must be evident in the now. Otherwise, it seems like you do not understand what is necessary: if you knew what was necessary, you would be able to do it.

While, in practice, you obviously need to learn motor memory patterns etc. which will take at least a few days to set in, I find that it helps a lot to think along the above lines.

It seems like there are quite a few misconceptions here.

If "you can do something at tempo" there is no longer a need to break it apart or analyze it further or practice it more unless you think doing something at tempo means doing it poorly.
If "any effort put in hoping for a delayed reward is effort spent ineffectively" why shouldn't beginners start practicing scales hands together for 4 octaves at virtuoso speed? Why do advanced players usually practice the most difficult passages at slower than final when they start a piece? Or maybe a teacher should assign a Liszt Transcendental etude at a student's first lesson?

Player1

There are only a few variations on how we all learn. For some, a long slow gradual increase in speed works. For others, speed is the goal that's sought and errors can be repaired once the speed is attained.

I'm a speed demon. I will allow errors if it gets me to the speed I'm trying to get to. I don't like the mistakes I make and I'm aware of them so I'm not "practicing mistakes." They're just mistakes and everyone makes them without any resulting issues. I do it this way because my mind is clear on what I'm doing and it's not mindlessly pounding on the keys over and over again. What I'm doing is practicing a technique that leads to faster hands and fingers.

It's almost shocking to stop and go back to trying to play error free. It's nearly effortless to play at the tempo I was playing at because the speed exercises are training my mind and eyes/hands/fingers to recognize and respond quicker.

But, that's how I learn. For others, the slow/steady approach is what they prefer. Neither is a "bad" way to learn as long as you're learning the technique and skills correctly.

lautreamont

I think this speaks to a general principle I'm interested in, that by analogy is similar to the difference between walking and running, that while sharing some mechanical similarities (hip, knee, and ankle flexion, movement of arms), there are also major differences. I'm not sure that going full tilt is the primary way to get up to tempo on difficult work on the piano, as Seeker mentioned there being inefficiencies and inaccuracies that can become embedded in one's technique. But I do believe that it can act as a functionally effective diagnostic of your technique with regards to specific mechanical techniques at question, be they passagework, octaves, chords, leaps, etc. I have a tendency (character flaw) to play things quicker than commonly played, so this should be taken with a grain of salt, but one of the things I do in practice is play things at a decidedly quicker tempo than indicated, to push my technique to its furthest bounds with the. passage in question. Unevenness or tension palpable in the hand can make themselves known when doing this, and working to rectify this (e.g., I'm over-rotating for finger 2 when changing hand positions, I'm playing too deep into the keys, there's unnecessarily much legato for the stream of notes, finger 4 is playing more loudly in leggiero work, etc.) can be beneficial, the upshot being that when I return to tempo, I've uncovered things that I didn't fully realize were problematic, solving them at a higher level of exertion, making them easier to perform at proper tempo, the thought goes. So I'll play faster, test it out at tempo. But what I also do is slow it down much more after that to rehearse the motions, with my "findings" in mind, for maximum relaxation and simplification bearing in mind the problems that I've identified. Perhaps this can be of help, to not fix the 'bad things' inherent in exerting oneself past the previous bounds of one's techniques.

I read a book written by a student of Michelangeli's, and one of the pieces of advice that Michelangeli gave him, was to play with the hands (or, writ large, the entire playing mechanism), as the ears can be deceiving. And then, later on, not just the hands, but their relationship to the keys and the mechanism to the keys. The identical sound can be produced a lot of ways, but being aware of what you're physically doing and the physical state of your hands (and mechanism) allows for efficient reproduction of the desired sound. So while you hear an Argerich zip through an incredible amount of octaves in a short time, the sound (the tempo, the dynamics) is one aspect, but the mechanism is another. I'm mostly self taught, but it was this principle that allowed me to radically reduce my tension, and it allows me to troubleshoot what is going on at tempo in difficult works, like finding relaxation in octaves to help with both speed and control. I think it's this kind of hand-consciousness that fast practice targets. The goal being what Busoni late in life said, that only then was he able to play "without my hands," the awareness and lessons having all been transcended. It should be coupled with musical and expressive aims, but I at least find it a useful consideration when practicing and learning technique.