Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum How to play fast, accurate arpeggios?

Then go thumb over.

Just as thumb under is good for slow legato scales but thumb over is necessary for fast scales, thumb over is needed for fast arpeggios. Watch closely when a good pianist rattles off fast arpeggios - they might say they are doing TU but if you watch you'll see they are not.

TO arpeggios are harder than TO scales but the principle is the same.

By the way, this is one of the problems with the incremental speed up method. If you start slow you'll have no problem doing these TU, but as you speed up you'll come to a point where it doesn't work anymore.

If the span is the problem, you might look into what chang describes as the cartwheel method. I can't vouch for this one as I haven't used it myself. TO is described by chang but is well known by most pianists. cartwheel seems to be chang's term.

There certainly is a misunderstanding!



Ah!!! I see what the misunderstanding is. No, it's not the arpeggion that is the problem. It's ANYTIME the music gets difficult that you are allowed to claim rubato and play it how you want.

PS that is supposed to be irony but sadly it often is true instead.

What cheek coming from someone I'm convinced has no real understanding about anything real on Planet Earth. The insolence of the willfully ignorant is insufferable.

Steven

Oooooo - I wanna steal this quote sometime I promise attribution

Cathy

PS I haven't downloaded them to see, but this page is supposed to have videos of TO and TU.

http://www.pianopractice.org/

Slow practice is always essential, but I've found that when you need very fast speed, you also have to practice getting your hands in position quickly. An excellent teacher suggested the following method (not as a stand alone method, but one practice technique among many). Play the first few notes as quickly as possible, just building very fast speed for only 3 notes if necessary. Then add another note. Alternatively, play the first few notes, and then chunk the next few together. Then play them all together. In these small chunks you aren't really thinking about the notes consciously but getting your muscle to move quickly and accurately. It's important not to chunk up the notes so that you avoid the hard jumps. For instance, if you have a thumb under or 3rd to 4th finger jump, they have to be included in a chunk. I hope that makes sense.

As for Gyro, maybe if he is ignored he will just go away.

Great insight.

Rick,

Knowing (or perhaps exploiting the convenient false belief) that I am too old to learn proper technique, I resort to tricks. For a major chord, say, C major, it is fastest for me to play it in a modified hand-over-hand way, starting on the second C on the keyboard, like this:

LH: C G E
RH: G C E G
LH: C E G
RH: C E G C
All this with pedal down.

Here's why. First, my teacher is a strict constructionist when it comes to the low interval limit, which means he will rap my knuckles severely if I play an interval smaller than an octave in the lowest octave, or smaller than a fifth in the next, with pedal down. This means 1 5 10 is a good way to start, and fortunately with a bit of pivoting I can reach the tenth.

For hand-over-hand, I think I get best speed if I minimize the number of hand-over movements, which means cover more real estate on the keyboard with each hand position. That's why I play 4 notes with the RH. However, my LH is not at a good angle in the middle or upper reaches of the keyboard to play 4 notes, so I settle for 3.

Anyway, this may not be pretty, and it has the disadvantage that you are not playing the same notes in each octave with LH or RH; but for me it is easy to play.

Ed

I think you might like this one...very fast harp-like arpeggios on piano:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdg_xLqbfAc&feature=PlayList&p=B64F6BB0AD203969&index=7

Wow, this is an older thread that got resurrected.

Thanks for that YT video, JohnnyVegas. I did enjoy that very much and got to see and hear a wonderful professional pianist, Oksana Kolesnikova. She makes it look so easy.

And, I reckon I lost track of this thread and didn’t realize that Gyro had come down on me so hard. Based on my original question about how to play really fast arpeggios he concludes that I don’t know a damn thing about music. Well, Gyro, you’re right, my friend, I don’t guess I do. Do you? Fact is I’ve never, ever heard any recordings from you on these PW forums, ever. I’d honestly like to hear you play. Maybe you can teach me something about music.

But, in the spirit of Christmas, I’m going to let by-gone’s be by-gone’s.

Thanks to Steven, and all who defended me against the infamous Gyro.

Take care, and Merry Christmas!

Rick

If you have a Czerny 40 exercises handy. the 3rd exercise is on ascending and descending arpeggio's, left and right hand. There are other studies in there on arpeggio's but I haven't gotten to them yet.

To clarify, what Chopin is saying is don't ulnar or radial deviate but glide smoothly keeping the hand and forearm aligned.

I'm curious: when Gyro types at his computer, does he have coins on the backs of his hands?

Which if you are doing multiple octaves means you'll need to lean to the side to keep the forearm and wrist perpendicular to the keys. It's the twisting that causes trouble.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Tgkji6i5KA

was a fun link so I didn't mind the zombie thread

hi
that was my problem too
the solution for me was this
dont flex the thumb under palm
play c.e.g lik a chord 4 octave slow motion then increase gradually you have to use arm motion and shoulder muscles
then play the c.e.g in four octave very fast
never play it slowly because it is dangerous for thumb tendons
thank you