STUDYING SLOWLY

As a pianist and teacher, I am personally opposed to this type of "diet." Not that it is sometimes beneficial to study slowly... in fact, I would say in slow motion... that is, without increasing the accents! What I mean is that studying slowly means turning a piece "into two" instead of four or eight. One risks losing the musical sense!!!!

So yes, look closely at imprecise passages and understand what the hand is doing and/or if there is a lack of mental clarity.

Important concept: the movement, the gesture, that we perform at speed is absolutely different from what we perform when playing the same madness slowly.

Therefore, good study means studying fast with a stop on the beat or the measure. First, all with repetition, meaning stopping on the beat or the measure and restarting from the same notes. When you start and arrive, YOU DO NOT STOP FOR ANY REASON. Only after the stop do you consider what has happened. When all this is clear, move on to playing with a stop without repetition. We will arrive at the beat without accenting too much!

SCALES: It is appropriate to study scales with mental concentration. Slow, yes, but also fast. We will discover that what is called the "under" thumb passage becomes a side thumb passage!!! (see SANDOR text - How to Play the Piano, BUR Ed.). Sit down at the keyboard, choose the scale and the type of motion, then enunciate the accidentals aloud and START!!!! First for one octave, okay. Back and forth WITHOUT STOPPING. Then for two octaves. Then for four octaves. Start with the contrary motion, which is easier, being symmetrical.

Studying slowly and only slowly for hours risks losing an entire motor combination that occurs between the small and large muscles; we will never know a series of movements that will be indispensable in performance, embracing only gymnastic training....which will not take us far.

P.S. It is obvious that after an hour you feel a "motor" result because you are doing gymnastics.....but that is not everything!!!!!

There would be many other things to say, but it is appropriate to do so in person, during a lesson. Your Teacher will surely be attentive to guiding you in the development of piano musical technique.

Good morning and thank you very much for the response.

I trained at the G. Verdi Conservatory in Milan quite a few years ago, and I fully agree with what you wrote; it is the combination of many things that forms the pianist or, rather, the musician, there is no doubt about it.

My first question was mainly related to the musical genre that has delighted me for many years, namely Jazz, which as we well know is something different compared to the study of classical repertoire and its canons, but even here speed and especially precision are needed in thirty-second note improvisations, which can also be quite long if there is a certain inspiration, but they cannot be prepared beforehand like a classical piece or something already written.

In this regard, I discovered or perhaps "rediscovered" that an hour of very slow scales, together with Cramer and Bach, always starting with very slow speeds and then increasing, provides great agility and "ready-to-go" precision before tackling a section with other musicians.

I don't remember exactly the reason why this happens compared to practicing by starting with typical speeds for someone who already knows scales and pieces perfectly and doesn't start as if they were reading the part for the first time.

I don't know if I explained myself a bit better... once as a teenager, I heard Kempf studying just because the window was open... he started with all the scales even slower than how I am doing them, gradually bringing them up to about 150; this work lasted about 4 hours.

Thank you very much again.