Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum New Guy- I need speed

Hello everyone, I'm new here!
This is my first post.

I was wondering if there were any exercises I could do to practice speed.
I know the key is practice, but there must be some drills and exercises I could do. Practice doesn't make perfect, but perfect practice does.

I'm an intermediate player, but I can't get down the speed part.

Particularly songs like Moonlight Sonata 3rd movement, alla turca, and some scales that pop up in songs (yeah pretty cliche and overrated stuff, I know)

I am a beginner but it has worked so far for me... I take it very slow at first and then gradually increase the speed as I learn the piece. When your fingers know perfectly fine where they are supposed to go next it becomes easy to play at full-speed.

For practice you could try Hanon exercises. They seem to promote speed...

^Yeah, I guess I should listen to my signature then.

Luckily, I do have 2 hanon books.

Definitely. I am very new to piano and in one of my first lessons my teacher was watching me struggle through a piece that required the two hands to play at different times, slightly different melodies. She kept telling me to slow it down, I was tryin to play it full speed all along... A few days later when I sat down and tried to learn another piece, I took her advice and went really slow then on the next day I was able to play it almost up to speed without even trying hard, two days later I could play it faster than required. I'm taking about the first 20-30 seconds of this. It was complicated for me at first but gradually became easier:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBsoTjcCGP0 (that's not me playing)

Well that's not even fast but for a beginner you can imagine how it feels to try and play it...

Welcome to the forum, Jake! In addition to Teodor's suggestion (which is probably the best and surest way of increasing tempo that I know of), another trick that sometimes helps is to play the piece through at an even faster than desired tempo... then when you drop it down to the target tempo it will seem much easier and flow smoother. That's the logic, at least.

The "going faster than desired... then it's easier the next time" approach only works for me once I get it to where I can actually get all the right notes... then blazing through it several times at stupidly fast, non-melodic tempo seems to break me out of the tortoise mode, then when I play it up to tempo, it does usually seem easier.

If I just blast through it early on, when I hardly have the fingerings down... well it sounds about like you'd expect - a mess, and it's not easier (for me) the next time, it just reinforces me playing it sloppily.

FWIW -- my teacher advocates (and I obey) learning the hands separately, and getting all the fingerings to feel natural. Then, after I literally have both hands memorized separately, I can go through the piece, slowly, hands together and my eyes and attention can go to the most difficult part while muscle memory handles the rest. That has worked well for me the 2nd time around.

I have the same problem and am still frustrated by it. Can't get enough speed! Everyone says just keep practicing and it will come but I sometimes wonder whether it ever will.

It feels like I can't move my fingers fast enough, like I am unable to do it.

However, I guess with time and practice, it'll come??

I guess there are two types of struggling, speed and sight reading.

I have trouble getting fast fingers for Alla Turca, and then I would have trouble reading Canon in D or Fantasie Impromptu (which is fast as well!)

One key to speed, for me, is lack of tenseness. I can't play fast unless I play relaxed/easy. That's one of the things that slow practice helps with - it becomes easier the better one knows it slowly, and that helps one stay un-tensed as one speeds up.

I use the "faster and then slow down" on short hard parts, but I don't continue to play it way beyond my capacity. I play it once faster than I think i can, and if that goes well, or close to it, I play it again a couple of times at that speed. Sometimes, as Cary says, we can get in the habit of playing/hearing it slower than the tempo we want to play it at. But I never play it blindingly fast more than once, because obviously I blow it. But several notches above where I'm comfortable, yes. It helps me focus, it helps me figure out where the problem areas are, or if I need to change fingering. Then I slow down and play it well many times.

Left hand jumps took me the longest time to bring up to speed, and I did those LH only, and sometimes only the jump many times. There are a variety of ways of practising them that help, but they were the hardest for me.

Cathy

Cathy's right - find the source of tension.

Cathy and KBK state the key issue: tension is your worst enemy. I could never get a piece up to speed until I concentrated on reducing tension as I practiced.

There are lots of ways to practice to get a piece up to tempo - practicing in rhythms, played very slowly with arm drop on each note, accenting different notes, moving the bar lines, flipping rhythms, etc. Most of this is done in small sections - 1,2,or 3 measures - or even 1/2 measure - depending on the piece.

All of that practice should be done with the objectives of establishing and maintaining muscle memory, lack of tension, playing musically, playing evenly and clearly at whatever tempo.

I don't think you should be doing much in the way of running through the entire piece up to tempo if the notes are still being learned. That just leads to bad habits, and memorizing mistakes.

The slow - fast - not as slow - fast - even less slow - fast, etc. way of practicing is one technique that can work, but it's better for short sections.

Tension is normal if you try to play things that are beyond your level.

The difficulty you describe, Mr Rosman, indicates that you are undertaking pieces that are too difficult.

No problem, but don't be too hard on yourself, enjoy it for what it is worth, which is above all probing and understanding music and not just hearing it.

Meanwhile, don't obsess yourself with this piece. Play others things as well, that present different problems, maybe that are closer to your level. Progress will come in your Moonlight.

And don't forget your scales!

Also, in music this well-known dictum doesn't apply.

Like any other generalization, it is both true and not-true. I would say that the key is not that it doesn't apply "in music", but that it applies no more or less to music than it does to any other field.

Perfect Practice is in more than one sense an oxymoron. If the goal of practice is to identify and correct mistakes, then perfect practice is not truly practicing. If you don't identify the mistake, then it lies in wait to come out at the most inopportune time. On another level, we can never truly be perfect, so how can someone practice perfectly?

Mindless practice (just playing through the piece) is the longest way to learn a piece. Perfect practice by itself increases the chance of playing a piece correctly, but does not eliminate mistakes. Correct practice is aimed at identifying and eliminating mistakes.

Rich