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Well here's a live fire demonstration I made. I've never seen this piece before, and only practiced it for about 10 minutes before I made the video using the techniques you see. I tried some random practice methods, and yes I did have to go through some manual repetition just to familiarize myself with the notes. In the end I try to play it full speed, but normally I'd still practice at a much slower tempo until I felt I had absolute control of every aspect.
It's a bit unfair though to compare times and efficiency though, because I've played piano for 20+ years and have already achieved sufficient hand dexterity that makes this process more streamlined for me than a beginner.
I apologize for the random audio clipping but I figure that's rather irrelevant for our purposes.
A critical practice method I forgot to include in the video is to practice the left hand figurations with BOTH HANDS. This is less about learning the technique, than it is about figuring out how exactly you want the accompaniment to sound musically, and obviously it is easier to achieve your "ideal" interpretation with two hands simplifying the difficulty than one. Once you figure out exactly how you want it to sound with two hands, then you can begin the work of learning to "replicate" your two-handed work with just one hand.
Wow that's really interesting and thank you for sharing!
Can all the variations be condescend into just a few specific types that address memorization/speed/accuracy/musicality individually or all at once since some of them seem unnecessary?
I'm not a piano teacher, but I'm going to give my opinion on what I think are the necessary elements to achieve a fluid technically secure performance in this piece, which is probably what you should focus on at the moment, as it will be difficult to improve on the "musicality" aspect without acquiring total technical control (for this particular piece, at least).
-Strong independent fingers -Support of the arm/fingers/back behind each individual note -Ability to quickly shift hand positions -Minimizing superfluous body/hand movements
I might suggest the following forms of practice: 1. Staccato/legato at piano dynamic played absolutely rhythmically. Practice from the knuckles down. This will encourage basic finger independence. You will not be playing only from the knuckles down for the final performance. 2. Staccato at forte dynamic played absolutely rhythmically. "Bounce" from one note to the next using your wrist. The "bouncy" motion should feel effortless. 3. Legato at forte dynamic played absolutely rhythmically. Exaggerate lateral motion of your wrist, in order feel the support of your elbow/arm/back behind each individual 16th note. When you progress to playing at full tempo, the motion will be much less, but you should still be able to feel strong support. Be careful not to injure yourself by playing forte for too long! 4. Practicing in dotted rhythms. If you want a shortcut, the 2 basic Long----Short-Long---Short, and Short-Long-----Short-Long patterns may be enough. Practice more the dotted rhythms on the notes that must be played with the weak fingers (3,4,5). 5. Mentally group all the notes into clusters, where each cluster represents all the notes your hand can comfortably play without switching hand positions. Then practice blocking all the note clusters. After you block one cluster, move your hand as fast as physically possible to the next cluster. Then practice playing again with clusters but this time playing individual notes. Same principle, once you play the last note of a cluster move the entire hand as fast as physically possible to the next cluster. Make sure even when you play individual notes, that your new hand position encompasses the ENTIRE cluster, not just the one note you're trying to reach. When you practice with this method, you'll notice that your accuracy and physical comfort will improve, because the notes will feel like they fit inside your hand like a glove, and all you have to do is shift the hand position once in a while.
Lastly, I want to give a special shoutout to the concept of symmetrical inversion, which is a really useful practice hack. You can neatly divide the keyboard into 2 symmetrical halves from middle D. The position of black and white keys will exactly mirror each other on each side of the keyboard. This is useful because you can take difficult left hand passages and "mirror" them with the right hand on the other side of the keyboard. For most people, their right hand is much more nimble than their left hand, so all you have to do is learn the same difficult passages with the right hand, and then "copy" the exact motions with your left hand. I personally have had experiences where previously difficult left hand passages became trivial once I learned the motions with my right hand, and then applied them to the left hand. Conversely, this is also a great way to build your left hand technique, if you play pieces with difficult right hand passages.
There is one thing I'll say that might appeal to your desire for "efficient" practicing. The key is to practice repetitions MINDFULLY and introduce feedback loops in yourself. Figure out which goal you are trying to achieve with this repetition BEFORE you set your hands on the keyboard. Evenness? Dynamics? Phrasing? Articulation? A combination of certain elements? Practice the passage ONCE, stop, lift your hands off the keyboard completely, and REFLECT on what you just heard and experienced.
If you did not attain your goal satisfactorily, identify it right away and try to figure out why it was bad, and what steps you'll take to improve them the next time. Example: I wanted to achieve total evenness with this take. The 16th notes played by the 3rd and 4th fingers on the left hand sounded uneven. This was probably happened because my wrist rotated outward and caused the hand position to collapse. Next time I'll try to fix this by moving the elbow outward more as I'm playing the notes, taking care not to rotate the wrist away from me.
Practice like this until you are sufficiently satisfied with the passage. When you finally get a good take, take the time to MEMORIZE every condition that led up to that perfect take. Where were you sitting on the bench? Which movements did your fingers/hands/wrists/arms/elbows/back/head make? Where were your eyes directed when you played that passage? What were you mentally focusing on as you played that passage, etc. Now practice a few more times until you can replicate that perfect take and all the conditions surrounding it.
If you do this you can minimize the number of mindless repetitions and greatly increase your efficiency. The only drawback is that you have to be disciplined to take this approach, and you may also exhaust your brain faster than your fingers, haha.
4. Practicing in dotted rhythms. If you want a shortcut, the 2 basic Long----Short-Long---Short, and Short-Long-----Short-Long patterns may be enough. Practice more the dotted rhythms on the notes that must be played with the weak fingers (3,4,5).
Small correction here. 3 is, of course, normally a very strong finger. Only when it immediately paired with 4 does the combination tend to become weak.
This is a very uneven performance. While there is certainly room for some rubato in this work, your performance has no sense of basic rhythm; it slows down and speeds up at random without any musical reason. There is so much pedal that much of the melodic lines and the accompaniment dissolve into a blur.
It will be a while when I get to that etude, i'm working on 25.12 now
Here is how I play it. Unfortunately it is audio only. Please play the notes in groups of 4 and not as groups of 3-3-2. Clearly articulate the repeated notes.
Thank you for posting your performance. From your performance, I suggest that you learn something else first before you even start learning Chopin etude. Try, for example, Bach WTC Book 1 No. 2 in c minor. I think it is more appropriate for you level now.
