Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Chopin Nocturne number 2 HOw do I get those octaves forte?

So towards the end of the e flat nocturne number 2... my teacher said i needed more sound with those octaves right before that huge line of sixteenth notes.

I know your supposed to drop your weight on to the keyboard to get a good forte instead of attacking the piano in an inefficient way but..

To drop my arm in to those octaves makes me feel like I have to turn my hands in to this tight claw to assure I'll only make the two notes in the octave and my pinky hurts a bit too if i do that.

So then I was looking at a video for some other ideas to try. see link elenakuschnerova if you go to the videos section and watch her performance of chopin's 3rd ballade, towards the end where it gets all crazy you can see how she kind of brings her wrist higher and everything else from the wrist down to the finger tips is kind of limp and way lower than the wrist she hit's the octaves... (sorry for this terrible wording, it's hard to explain) but anyway is that the way one should play octaves, with this high wrist or?????....

Relating back to the nocturne we then have some chromatic descending octaves to and i understand it's marked decrecedo but still how does one get a good sound with a good firm but not tight / effective technique??

suggestions much appreciated

I use a high wrist in octaves. In fast octave passages I keep my wrist high all the time. In more melodic passages like this one I drop into the notes and then lift my wrist while my fingers hold the notes down. It seems to give a more full tone and helps me emphasize the top note. You really have to bring out that top note more, especially in melodic passages like this one. Practice it slowly at first, and for each octave work on bringing out the most full and beautiful tone you can get, and then gradually bring them up to speed. You will probably want to exaggerate the motion more at first and then reduce the amount of drop-lift as you bring it up to speed, or not.

Hope that makes sense,

Ryan

thanks Ryan for the advice. We'll see how it goes

thanks Ryan for the advice. We'll see how it goes in practice :rolleyes:

Why use your pinky unless it's absolutely necessary?

Apple,

I'm sorry, I don't understand your question

Ryan

Um...because if you don't use it, it'll never get better.

Ryan, I was responding to Decibel's original question, not your advice. My pinky is weak and small, and I rarely use it when playing a 'melody line', especially with consecutive notes or on a showy top note. In that passage particularly, it is important to play the highest notes with as much umph as possible, and to play with as much legato as is possible. It sounded like Decibel was playing all the notes with 1-5. My #5 is beginning to give out.

Also, remember that anything voiced in a way so that the top note gets most of the attention, will always sound louder to an audience. Experiment with bringing out your pinky more in those octaves and you'll get a much more penetrating sound. If you watch videos of Bolet or Rubenstein, you can physically see that in a slow octave passage, they curve their hand and straighten their pinkies completely so that the top voice rings. If your hands are large enough, experiment with that.

Mike

Ah, I get it

I tend to use 1-5 too, except sometimes 1-4 if the top note is a black key. I wouldn't use 1-4 all the time, though, because I would be nervous of the stress it caused. Even more so if I had a small hand.

I like Kreisler's answer better though

Ryan

Thanks for all the comments, the only time in that particula passage that i would use a 1 4 octave would be the part where it's coming down chromatically. then my teacher says it's important to do 1 5 , 1 4 , 1 5 .... to connect it all and keep the legato going..

Another place where i'm having touble keeping the intensity of the sound.

with time.... time, work, listening, and patience.

You don't have to use 1 5, 1 4, 1 5 - you can use pedal to connect the octaves and nobody will ever know the difference.

Ryan

in response to Ryan's suggestion above:

THAT'S WHAT I SAY!!!!

My teacher though seems totally bent on the idea that it will effect how you play the next note, or chord how you move between them, regardless of wether or not the pedal is down and holding the sound...

which makes sense but sometimes i feel like, well... no one will know the difference anyway, and i'm not going to the van cliburn competition anytime soon so.....

granted, she's probablly just trying to instill good practices

hehe! If you use the drop-lift technique with a flexible wrist you can smoothly move between the octaves, achieve great tone quality, and nobody will even know! That said, you can achieve the same results with 4 on the black keys, which is what I used to do by habit. Now I tend to like 5 better in louder passages - I think it's better suited to that role. When I use 4 on top I sometimes notice twinges underneath my wrist when I really press into the keys.

Ryan