How to bring a piece up to high speed

Personally, I believe that a piece should be brought up to speed as soon as possible once the fingering has been established.

If you look, in several of my posts, I illustrate the way to accelerate a piece through the fermata with and without repetition. Let me know if you have found them (to avoid repeating myself)

pianoexpert unfortunately I didn't find them, you should tell me the precise topic in which you wrote them, I wouldn't want to make you repeat them and cause a disturbance.

TheSimon is exactly what chang also says in his book.

The problem in bringing it up to speed is doing everything precisely (all notes equal, not with one having a longer or shorter duration than the next) and playing without creating tension

Chang also suggests “cycling”.. it works.

I fragment the piece into blocks, I study them separately and never in order of succession.

I cycle where possible and commit the toughest parts to memory right away.. sometimes one repeats hundreds of times while still looking at the sheet music when the fragment could be done from memory immediately. Other times, however, we do it from memory but it is just mechanical.. this doesn't work.

bye,

Thanks Kklaus, I read the passage where you talk about cycling. But it's not even clear to me. Why do you state that "90% of the time spent cycling should be at a speed that can be maintained with ease and precision" and then say to increase it "to 20% higher than the final one".

The problem is... if I cannot go beyond a certain speed... how am I supposed to go even beyond the final speed without creating stress? How do you increase this speed?

Consider that we are studying a fragment; after you cycle it a bit, the speed increases... the hands fixate on the movement and the brain learns the notes and coordinates everything. If it doesn't work, which happens, leave that fragment. Do another one, you can pick that one up the next day..

sometimes the hands throw themselves when doing "volate" [runs/flurries] of notes (someone will tell me I'm crazy)... in my opinion, at speed there isn't time to articulate the fingers much and so you use the wrist, arm, and weight..

but I will tell you what you asked: what do you all do? :-)

The problem with the second prelude of The Well-Tempered Clavier (in the first 23 measures) is that they are groupings of four that must all be performed at a constant speed.

I can reach a maximum of 80 for the quarter note (and I am still playing hands separate). If I increase the speed even slightly, I feel my wrist tiring and I have to stop.

I have tried cycling various fragments and the situation does not change.

is it the one in C minor? I don't remember..

Exactly, and I dare not imagine what difficulties I will encounter when I have to bring the "Presto" up to speed from measure 26.

It seems to me that this prelude is well suited for cycling.. don't rush, the speed will come

I hope so, it's been more than a week that I haven't been able to go beyond that speed.

But do you loop individual measures or like "one line at a time"? And what if your wrist starts to hurt even when looping?

it depends, if the last note of the cycle lends itself to restarting with the first one seamlessly, it's fine..

if it hurts, it is likely that you are running too much and this creates stiffness

Eh... and how do I know, while I'm looping it, if it's the right time to increase the speed or not?

But isn't there a very precise method for bringing a piece up to speed?

But you have to hear it for yourself.. we are not all the same.. when you can control everything without effort

I will briefly repeat what I have said in other posts. Accelerating towards the right tempo is indispensable. It is advisable to alternately use the two methods of "stop with repetition" and "stop without repetition". The first consists of playing the notes quickly from one beat to another, starting again from the arrival point. The second involves starting again without repeating the notes of the arrival point. In both methods, it is "forbidden" to stop between one accent and the next. Observe how our micro-movements change! During the stop, any inaccuracies made can be evaluated. Gradually, the stop will become shorter and shorter, but one will begin playing fast immediately between one stop and the next. At the beginning, one will start from the stop (with repetition) only when certain of reaching, at the correct speed, the accent of the next beat. The advantage lies in observing immediately what happens at speed, i.e., what will be necessary to do during performance. If, therefore, we have four beats with a passage of fast sixteenth notes, one will start from the first sixteenth note of the first beat to arrive at the first of the second. Then one starts again from the first of the second to arrive at the first of the third... and so on. And it's... easier said than done!

Happy studying

The presto of the aforementioned prelude is extremely fast.. also because it presents some rather uncomfortable positions.. you must work well with the pauses as Paolo says, taking care to pay attention to "resting" and releasing the tension in the wrist (like all useless tensions) at each one.. then eventually after having stopped every four bars, one stops every two (always paying attention to "returning to condition"), then every four (start of the measure)

and so on..

As far as increasing speed is concerned, for a long time (as suggested by my teachers) I used the metronome, but sincerely I never felt comfortable with this procedure.. it is true that at a certain point one hits "walls" as Chang says, then the execution seems too "mechanical" to me and I find it unsustainable...

currently I prefer to relax well after each cycle repetition, let go, breathe, listen to the "condition" of the hand and let it "give" the speed it can give at that moment (always stimulating it toward an ideal goal), it seems like a more "natural" system.. (sometimes you notice that by doing this for a few repetitions, it stops at a certain speed.. then without forcing, a breakthrough occurs)

With the pause, one can also observe fatigue. This must not be present, especially at speed. One may discover that to perform the piece at speed, one must ask for help from the large muscles which will often employ rotation. It will be discovered that the "gestures" when playing slowly and the "gestures" when playing fast are totally different. The pause allows one to observe these micro-movements, almost as if searching for them, discovering them, and internalizing them, making them natural. All muscles must be tension-free. Exceptionally, for a few "twitches," the muscles may be "more explosive," but the phase of relaxation must immediately return. One can play loudly even in relaxation. Gravity, especially at the beginning of study, helps to feel the bottom of the key and how the fingers manage to govern themselves, bearing the weight of the forearm and the shoulder. One must start from a "point zero" as Monique Dechausser well describes in her book (in French) L'homme et le piano. The Maestro should supervise this constant, initial, sincere "approach" to the keyboard, correcting any artifices employed by the student to escape the rules—which may even seem uncomfortable at first—of the "setup" phase.

Personally, I found the videos by Graham Fitch from Pianist Magazine very useful. They are available for free on YouTube. As far as 'fast' is concerned... I believe every pianist has their own opinion on how "fast"?

In my opinion, if you feel stress, it means you haven't yet mastered the notes at a textual level. Often, it is very useful to play the piece very slowly to reset and help the brain clearly understand where the notes actually are. You will see that playing very slowly is not much easier than playing fast. With speed, the brain skips over everything and creates wider blocks with different cadences and timings. Have you studied everything with variations?