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Are there any shortcuts to increasing speed while maintaining control.

I just can’t seem to get a few different pieces up to speed while maintaining regulation.

Is it just literally I just have to hope with practise and time I can get my speed up and maintain regulation. Perhaps even put these pieces aside and come back to them after time with other pieces and work with scales and arpeggios?

It's hard to answer without more specifics. Is this just a small percent of your pieces? Which pieces in particular? If it's most of your pieces then you may be trying pieces that are too difficult for you right now.

I think developing speed doesn't have a single solution because the passage or piece that's hard to speed up could have different kinds of passage work, i.e. scalar, jumps, chords, arppeggios, etc. Each of these pose a different challenge.

If you would like better suggestion I would ask a more specific question. For playing faster with control I do not think there is any quick fix. None at all. We have many people suggesting quick fixes for all problems from tension to technique to speed. I see many people suggesting many quick fixes online. My conclusion now is I do not think there are any quick fixes and we should stop searching. I suspect you will get many irrelevant suggestions. I hope you do not get a video of josh wright but I think you will get at least one. Or the miyagi technique which I've seen suggested as suggestion for all piano problems. Rant. Over. X

Sorry for my rant. Nothing personal Kevin. I hope you get some suggestions. As long it is not Josh Wright. THen I will rant again. x

The first piece here from this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YI7s-c7k3So is by far the worst for me.

1 minute 50 seconds and I am 4 minutes.

There are definitely a lot of jumps but it just isn’t those. I just seem to play the left hand loud when playing fast which is what I mean by losing regulation.

I do get it Moo. Just sometimes I get impatient and I don’t want to accept I have got as much out of learning these pieces as I can for now and just have to wait until I have developed better skills before coming back to them.

How about this video from Josh Wright?

Sorry Moo, you made me do it.

Thank you John. That is 7 minutes of my life I wont get back. Poor mitchell and marilyn !

I think this problem happens at all levels whatever standard you are. I think it is fine to keep it slow if you have everything else secure and you really cant get it up to speed. I tend to work at everything at a slower speed and get it speed up gradually during the process of learning but often the piece at the end is often slower. I think rushing to get a piece up to speed is normally a disaster so I would try to avoid having target times for pieces.

I've found there is no quick fix. There was no skill that I had to achieve. No John Wright Video magic. Sometimes it is a skill problem so in some pieces I kept it slower and moved on. Sometimes I have just had enough and picked another piece but trying to avoid this now. Generally I try to be patient and persist and just accept it takes a long time. Good luck.

It is very possible that these pieces are beyond you right now. If they were at your level, you should be able to play them at a tempo that is at least a close approximation to what's being asked. I don't like to hold fast to metronome markings, even if given by the composer. However, it sounds like you may not be close enough.

How long have you worked on these pieces, and how much very slow practice have you done? Are you able to play any fast pieces?

As we were reminded in music school all the time....

Speed develops on its own. Practice slow and precisely and when you feel you've nail the tempo you're at kick it up a notch and repeat it slow and precisely. If you try to push the speed you're going to make mistakes that will take even longer to eliminate from your playing. The scariest thing the teacher would say was.... If you make mistakes practicing, you're practicing making mistakes.

For even playing when playing faster passages, and I don't know whether this is what Josh Wright is talking about in the above video (might be a different one) but I was always taught to practise distorting the rhythm, so play it with a dotted rhythm and a reverse dotted rhythm.

That's about it really, simple old fashioned tip - works a treat in my experience.

The piece just needs to get entirely in the fingers really, then you can play it at any tempo, any rhythm, no problem. Might have to slow it down if anything. I'm sure there are some fine sight readers out there who can play things just about up to speed on first read, but I find the process occurs just about overnight once I've done a bunch of slow practice and gotten all the motions down, then I speed it up sort of out of boredom more than anything.

+1
I start by setting the metronome at a pace that I know I can play the a piece comfortably at. I play it at that tempo, with the metronome, several times then bump the speed up a couple of clicks and play the piece, again with the metronome, at the new tempo and repeat it until comfortable at that new tempo. Rinse, lather repeat, until you're ultimately hitting the tempo want. As you go up in tempo, some passages with problems will start making themselves known and this is the time to fix those. You may even find that fingerings that worked okay at slow tempos don't work at well at faster tempos. Again, this will systematically reveal those problems. You will likely find that the next day, you can't just sit down and start playing the same piece at your top tempo of the day before, so you do the whole process again, but, you likely will find that you are comfortable at a faster initial tempo than the day before. Obviously, the ultimate goal is not to play metronomically, but with feeling. However, if you can't play a piece correctly with the metronome in charge, you're not yet ready to add your own interpretation.
One thing that I overlooked for a long time and I don't see mentioned was learning to breathe. I know, it sounds silly. Breathing is automatic, right? What I found years ago, was that when playing extra fast or difficult passages, I was, literally, forgetting to breathe and of course, when you don't breathe, your brain quickly starts starving for oxygen which only makes playing that much harder. Working on breathing naturally, which also helps relax one, helped my playing. It's not a fix for challenges , but one more little way to stack the cards in your favor.

The dotted rhythm works really well for me too.

I think you are being too skeptical, Moo. I found many wonderful tips online in all areas, one of them exactly by Josh Wright, and I'm very grateful to people who spend their time sharing their experience for free online. I'm sure Josh Wright's videos have helped many people.

The point is that solutions are being found by those who search for them. A solution may not suit everybody, it may be necessary to try several ways to find out what works best for a person. But if one is not searching for ways to improve, he will not find it, or at least it will be a very slow process.

And this is my rant.

Josh Wright has his doctorate in piano performance from the University of Michigan School of Music, which is a top tier school of music, and he is an assistant professor of piano performance at the University of Utah. That is higher credential than anyone who posts regularly on ABF, except perhaps Dr. Rogers who hasn't told us what his doctorate is in. I am annoyed by the vogue of people who have no credentials arguing against experts within their fields of expertise, whether in climatology or piano. Oh I understand it - it's an offshoot of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It just annoys me.

Good article, Lt Slothrop....very interesting.

What's wrong with Josh Wright, Moo? I've learned quite a bit from his videos. Agree I wouldn't expect to watch a video on increasing speed and it magically occurring....it takes a lot of time and practice, years really. That said, I think he's a fine educator.

Regarding the question at hand, A good teacher can help you with the specific aspects of speed in the piece you're looking for. There are techniques to improve jumps, arpeggios, scales, fast passages....everything. It just needs proper guidance and a lot of practice.

Not a ‘quick fix’ for speed, but ensuring optimal fingering is set and consistently used is critical for me.... and I haven’t seen this mentioned in these comments. Without it, I am doomed

Yes, they are called practice, time and patience.

And I love Josh