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I've decided to learn the Chopin Impromptu Fantasie: 45 years old, teacher-less and returned to piano playing a few months ago after a long hiatus. I don't think that the piece is beyond my abilities as I prepared for AMEB Grade 8 before adulthood and work got in the way.

Started playing this 2 days ago and am comfortable enough playing separate hands at speed in certain sections. My difficulty is in combining the two hands with the incessant three-against-four polyrhythms. I can play them very, very slowly with accuracy, but they become uneven if I try to speed things up at all. Any suggestions or practice techniques?

Thanks!

Nathan

btw - Yes - this work has become a piano cliche, but I've never had a crack at it. Please don't beat the old "overplayed' drum when responding to this thread.

You probably need to play around with 4 against 3 rhythms until it becomes second nature. Try all kinds of ways of playing it that have nothing to do with the piece.

I think playing the 4 against 3 is much easier when played fast, reasonably close(80-90%)to the final desired speed. Just make sure the first note in each group of 4 and 3 coincide and the rest will take care of itself with worrying about when to play the notes. It that's difficult for you technically, try practicing each hand separately first and then putting them together at a reasonably fast speed.

Practice each line with a metronome heavily. Eventually it'll just come together on its own. It's slow and irritating, but it gets easier with practice.

Both suggestions are good, I think. That's certainly the approach that I would take.

Yes, it's a piano cliché, perhaps, and it's often played with varying degrees of skill. I think that one of the reasons it's considered overplayed is that it is a beautiful piece when played well and so, everyone wants to play it. I, for one, wouldn't criticize anyone who would like to play it; I'd - someday - get around to polishing it off myself.

Regards,

A few thoughts. You mention you're back at piano just a few months after a break of many years. You realize that to practice pieces like Chopin's opus 66 is not reasonable before at least warming up to and/or practicing way less difficult works as well. Any teacher would recommend you work on simpler pieces for a while until you master them so they sound very well. About tricks, I recommend practicing as close as at tempo as you can as you improve the piece, with suddenly going ppp with the RH only, then LH only, so to hear the rhythmic inconsistencies you need to work on.

Firstly, I hope you realise that the difficulty of the F-I is way above AMEB grade 8 level.

As you have had a long hiatus, maybe you should get your finger technique up to speed with other pieces first before tackling the F-I, because playing a fluent 4:3 polyrhythm requires you to be able to play both RH & LH parts perfectly fluently so that you can 'break loose' and 'desynchronise' at will, in order to synchronise just the notes that need to be synchronised, while both hands are still playing perfectly evenly........

Well, it's apparently one level up - AMEB Diploma level.

It’s on the AMEB Certificate of Performance syllabus, which comes between grade 8 and A.Mus.

To those of your who question whether or not I'm ready to play F-I, thanks for your concern. I have a BMus from Melbourne University where trumpet was my instrument, not piano. From my time there I learnt enough to know that I'm not a very good pianist and will never be great. However, playing piano is something I enjoy, the F-I is a wonderful piece and I believe it's an achievable "stretch" for this point in my technical development.

I've been playing piano a few hours a day for the last few months and am capable of playing music I learned when preparing for grade 8. F-I is the next level up on the AMEB syllabus; Cert of Performance as stated by Currawong. About seven years ago I considered preparing for an AMus and began learning Beethoven's Pathetique and Percy Grainger's Irish Tune from the County Derry (sounds easy, but the voicing demands are a real challenge). I've picked these pieces up again and am playing them better than I remember them sounding in the past. That's not to say they're anywhere near performance ready.

Sorry for the "self defense" post, but I think it will give people some background when offering me more help in relation to this thread.

Thanks to those of you who have suggested practice techniques and tips already. I haven't applied these yet, but certainly will. Always open to more advice.

Another practice tip that I could add to those that I already find useful is to play, hands together, but playing only those left hand notes that fall on the beat, perhaps even exaggerating an emphasis on each beat. Doing so helps train your mind and fingers to be precise about those notes that do sound together in both hands which is a step towards playing both hands evenly when all the notes are played.

Regards,

It's training the brain that is as much a problem as the fingers. As always, I speak from experience: I started dabbling with the F-I long before I was technically ready for it, but I did manage to master the art of desynchronisation and resynchronisation at will, such that when my fingers were up to speed, my brain was ready for anything......including all sorts of funny polyrhythms, like that in Chopin's Op.9/1.

It's worth tackling one bar at a time - in many bars, the hands are playing together on just four notes in each hand. Make a strong accent on those notes, and ensure they are perfectly together, then 'even out' the remaining notes in each hand. After a while - ranging from weeks to months - it becomes second nature, not just in this piece, but in every other piece involving tricky polyrhythms. Even with ratios involving prime numbers, like 5:7 or 11:17 .

Chopin wrote an easier piece using 4:3 rhythm for method of methods series. It’s called nouvelle etude 1. Since it was written by the same composer and for a series from many famous composers that aimed to provide a method for advanced pieces I think it may help to learn alongside FI. FI is beyond me atm so no idea if it will help but good luck !

L'Orfero,

there is another well known trick for that:

start knocking the triplets rythn on the piano with one finger, just knock in whatever manner is easiest to you, when you will get it automated (Takes few seconds), play on the piano the right hand.

later on do the opposite.

as bennevis said, brain training is important and what you do here is brain training.

you just can even do it without a piano, knockin with a fist on the table, or whatever is convininet to you. The clou is to make your brain (and the finger will go after it) to play evenly triplets in one hand and sixteenth on others. Start is very very slow tempo with knocking without the piano. if you will get it right, than when you will sit on the piano, you will have no problems to play it together

and remember, absolutely necessary to set-up rythm in one hand firstly, so the other one joins to already existing rythm. If you will start with both hands together, you will not get anywhere.

Chopin did that in the intro but it's not really necessary. When played reasonably fast all one has to do is make sure the first note on each beat in both hands coincide. I don't think anyone who is advanced enough to learn this piece gives the 4 vs. 3 much thought. When 4 vs. 3 appears in much slower music it's more difficult.

If you consider it a "stretch", does it make sense to expect that you'll play it well?

it's not 4 against 3, it's 8 against 6.

If you can play them slowly but then they disintegrate with speeding up, I'd crack the metronome out and do incremental speed practice. If you notch it up really gradually, you hardly notice the speed difference.

I found that if I don't use a metronome then when I try and "speed things up", I'm actually speeding them up by ear a lot more than I should do. This is where the metronome comes in. The ear can find it hard to tell the difference beteen 120 and 124, but the metronome doesn't lie.

Also, each time you practice start on the slower speed, or at least a slow speed.

Ignore if you're already using one.

Pianists who are advanced enough for this piece do not practice it slowly hands together. This is much harder than practicing at a speed closer to performance tempo. If you consider the 4 vs. 3 a problem on this piece you are misunderstanding things. Just make sure the first note of each group of 4 and 3 coincide and the rest of the notes fit in where they should(assuming you can play the groups of 4 and 3 evenly).