Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum The Rach method: Practise like a snail, play like a gazelle

The Rachmaninov method: Practise like a snail, play like a gazelle - A painstaking approach could be the key to the composer’s complex and technical work.

An interesting read. And in the Irish Times no less.

The real question is how often Rachmaninov practiced slowly and how slow he practiced. Chasins' recollection is well known but is just a one time observation. The fact that Chasins found it surprising may mean that this form of practice was not popular at that time or Chasins may just have been surprised at the extreme slowness of the practice. No one knows exactly why Rachmaninov was practicing that piece so slowly when Chasins heard him.

Many pianists and excellent teachers recommend slow or even extremely slow practice. But in the many PW threads about it I have not seen many convincing reasons to explain why.

An old, old anecdote told by teachers ascribed to any famous pianist you care to mention.

I try and mix my practise up with about 2/3 of the time on slow practise, but from my parsing of the comment not as slowly as described above, and the other 1/3rd at the limit of what I can play at. It is often not the more wrong notes but my lack of control makes the music more muddy, stuff blurs into each other. My limit at what I can play at is still often too slow as to how fast a piece should be played.

I feel as an adult returner my skill has returned unevenly. My ability to read the music, play the notes, recognize how the music should be played is far beyond the raw speed I can actually make my fingers move, especially with decent regulation. If I play K545 at the speed to match the fastest that I can play the trills, the rest of the piece sounds like a funeral march. It turns out it isn't the best piece to practise to get the fingers moving faster.

Amazing article! As many consider Rachmaninov to be the greatest piano performer there is a define lesson there for everyone.

Thanks for sharing that Tyrone.

Well, slow practice alone is not enough to play like a gazelle. Slow practice can lay a foundation, and resolve technical difficulties, but you also have to practice at other tempos.

Sam

There is no lesson unless we know how often Rachmaninov practiced very slowly and why he chose to practice very slowly. This kind of practice might have been rare for him. And without knowing why he chose to practice this way, whether often or rarely, it is of little value except in raising the possibility of practicing that way. I think practice techniques should be used if one understands the ideas(s) behind them.

+1

I'm pretty sure someone reportedly heard Richter repeating the same passage ad nauseam ad infinitum (if that's possible) at exactly the same dead sloooooow tempo, devoid of nuances, for hours (apparently). Was he in a zen trance? Who knows?

One thing is for sure - he didn't learn to play fast (like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ-NAgDpRVs ) by merely practicing everything slowly.........

I disagree. The lesson is that there is value in practicing very slowly. Otherwise why would the greatest pianists in history bother to do it, especially for over an hour late in their careers when they have already mastered the piano? It also suggests that less talented players should probably doing it even more.

This is a nice segue which reinforces some of my favorite piano quotes:

“Slow practice is undoubtedly the basis for quick playing” — Josef Hofmann.

“Slow practice does not guarantee concentration, but concentration—especially on problems to be solved—necessitates slow playing” — Egan Petri

“The worst possible thing is to start practicing too fast: it invariably leads to bad results and lengthy delays” — Ernest Schelling

“Beware of lazy, automatic repetition of passage without thought or meaning, totally lacking in that concentration without which nothing can ever be learned or understood” — Tobias Matthay

I need to keep reminding myself of this in order to improve.

A teacher that I know has this succinct motto tacked to the wall above the piano where she gives lessons, for all her students to see:

"Slow Practice = Fast Progress
Fast Practice = Slow Progress"

Sam

One should be careful about interpreting another person's motives for doing specific things, and applying blanket statements to everything.

These are some of the things that all pianists should do (and which all concert pianists do - when appropriate):

1) Taking pieces apart and working just on the tricky sections.
2) Trying out various fingerings to find the one that suits them.
3) Slow deliberate practice.
4) Practicing hands separately, whether fast or slow.
5) Counting beats aloud. Using a metronome.

Do they necessarily do all of the above with every piece they learn? Well, no - except for No.1, which is a given. There has to be a reason for everything they do.

Funny, I was taken to task yesterday for playing too quickly during my lesson.

My teacher asked me if I had the courage to play much more slowly.

Today, I’m working on finding that courage.

I think your reply sounds like you didn't read what I said. Do you know if Rach used this method frequently or only rarely? Doesn't that make a big difference? Do you know exactly why he thought it was useful for this piece? If not, just "practicing slowly" as a blanket approach seems to make little sense to me.

Re:
Hofmann- OK, but how slow?
Petri- I think he's wrong that concentration necessitates slow playing. Concentration is required at all speeds although I agree in some situations slow practice is required to work on or figure out something.
Schelling- It goes without saying that practicing "too fast" at the start is not good. This is different from "slow practice" which is often meant to be very slow practice.
Matthay-Doesn't mention slow practice.

None of what I have said means I'm against slow practice. But

1. When this topic is discussed we need to be specific about how slow we mean. Most everyone practices most pieces below performance tempo at the beginning but that can be very different from what others mean by slow practice.
2. We should be very clear about why and when we think slow practice is important. As I've said before, there are lots of different opinions on this and in previous threads about this topic people did not agree about why they thought slow practice was valuable. It's much better to use some approach if one has a clear rationale for doing so.

I hope those who are big fans of slow practice will use this thread to remind us of some specific reasons they think this approach is valuable and how slow they mean.

Well I don't know whether the anecdote is true, but slow practise definitely works for me. I do a lot of incremental metronome practise as well.

I think it's simply a case of each individual working out which practise methods suit them the best. There are, after all a few different "schools" of piano playing. There are for example, those who like metronomes and those that don't.

I agree basically with everything but especially with your last paragraph.

Was your teacher saying your tempo for the piece was too fast or talking about how you should practice? Why does it take courage to play slowly?

I would say yes to both of your questions. Given my skill level, my tempo was too fast and I practice too fast when I am at home. I think these are common mistakes for students.

I think it takes courage to play slowly because I believe students tend to equate practicing quickly with success and they equate practicing slowly with failure. I need to change the way I practice so that I work through pieces slowly and only increase the tempo when I really have a piece down.

We live in a fast paced society. We all want fast results and we think that if we play fast, we will see fast results, but I don’t think that is true.

I don’t know the answer. But in Gyorgy Sandor’s excellent book On Piano Playing he offers the following advice:

“Slow practice is very helpful; it enables us to execute every aspect of the motion effortlessly and with absolute accuracy. We advocate slow practice because the mind requires sufficient time to make the mechanism execute and control the motions. When a passage is new and difficult, considerable time is needed for these processes. Sometimes we have to spend extra time on a group of notes, or even a single note. Then again, the next note may be easily manageable, and consequently it requires much less time. Our aim is slow practice, not for its own sake, but for the sake of executing the required motions with sufficient control and awareness...We must make the seemingly contradictory statement that practicing should be as fast as possible while completely controlling the intended motions.

If we follow these suggestions and give the necessary time (no more or less) to each note, we will find ourselves playing totally uneven metric values because the amount of time it takes to master each note or passage varies with its difficulty! This unevenness is quite different from mechanical practicing, in which the poor victim repeats everything with mechanical regularity. It is not that I advocate unevenness in performance, but if the needed time given to each note while learning a work results from the continuous watchfulness of the mind, it is a most welcome sign of intelligent practicing.”

He goes on to talk about how the conscious mind tires quickly and that concentration cannot be maintained for extended periods and that for most people the limit is about 20 minutes. Interestingly my piano teacher emphasizes this same point, strongly recommending taking a short break every 20 minutes.