(26) Speed, Rhythm, Dynamics
Technique for speed is acquired by discovering new hand motions, not by speeding up a slow motion, and certainly not by "increasing finger strength". The hand motions for playing slowly and fast are different. This is why trying to speed up a slow play by gradually ramping up the speed doesn't work. That just leads to speed walls -- because you are trying to do the impossible. Speeding up a slow play is like asking a horse to speed up a walk to the speed of a gallop -- it can't. A horse must change from walk to trot to canter and then to gallop. If you force a horse to walk at the speed of a canter, it will hit a speed wall and will most likely injure itself by kicking its own hoofs to shreds. A horse has only four hoofs and a far inferior brain than a human, who has ten very complex fingers with almost infinite possibilities. What students must learn is the almost endless ways in which these fingers can be manipulated, ways that the greatest piano geniuses before us discovered.
In a typical speed session, you pick a short section to practice HS, for the RH and LH. Use the practice methods of this book to increase speed quickly. Once the segments are satisfactory, play longer sections and gradually increase speed. Do not force the hands to play faster, but wait for the hands to want to go faster when you switch to the rested hand, and accelerate only to that maximum comfortable speed.
The most important rule is: never practice anything incorrectly or, equivalently, never try the impossible. This explains why using the metronome to gradually ramp up speed doesn't work [(13) Metronome]. If you follow the procedures given here, you may be making jumps in speed, speeding up rapidly or even slowing down (!) at times. For example, when fatigue sets in, the hand will automatically slow down; otherwise it will develop bad habits; that's when you switch hands. You can't make these speed changes back and forth with a metronome. Some users of the metronome know that you can't accelerate too fast, so they accelerate slowly, which not only wastes time, but habituates the hands to play the slow motions. There are good reasons for getting up to speed quickly in addition to saving time — so that you do not pick up slow play habits, etc. Instead of speeding up at a safe, slow, pace, let the hands determine the optimum practice speeds.
It is necessary to increase speed beyond your skill level to find new motions, but keep that to a minimum for accomplishing your experimentation, then reduce speed and practice the new motions with accuracy. Note that you have to find new motions (many are listed in this book)— you generally don't know what they are until you get there; it is the teacher's job to show them to you during lessons. The need to get up to speed quickly in order to find the new motions and the need to avoid bad habits by not playing too fast are contradictory. Practice routines for speed must be designed to satisfy both requirements, a complex process, that must be developed over years of experience and experimentation.
Improving the musicality is important for increasing the speed. Very often, simply increasing the accuracy can enhance the musicality, especially for popular melodies like Für 61 Elise, for which beginners often try to add extra expression; that is inappropriate for familiar melodies because people have heard better interpretations. Getting up to speed is just the beginning. When you get close to final speed, you will be ramping down the speed! Using HS practice, when you switch hands, the rested hand is ready to go; therefore, this is the time when you can play at maximum speed with minimum fatigue and stress. But at such speeds, the hand will tire quickly. This is the time to slow down and practice for accuracy. In this way, you avoid erecting speed walls and avoid fast play degradation [(27) Fast Play Degradation, Eliminating Bad Habits]. As this ramping down, changing hands procedure is repeated, the maximum comfortable speed after switching hands should increase, because you have been practicing correctly for technique.
When you find a good new motion, you can make a quantum jump in speed at which the hand plays comfortably; in fact, at intermediate speeds, it is often more difficult to play than the faster speed, just as a horse has difficulty at speeds between a canter and gallop and will switch between them erratically. If you use a metronome and happen to set it at this intermediate speed, you might struggle at it for a long time and accomplish nothing except develop stress. Without the metronome, you can jump from one speed to another comfortable speed.
With a digital piano, acquire new technique using the lightest key weight setting. Once the technique is satisfactory, practice at the heaviest setting so as to be able to perform on acoustic pianos because, in general, they feel heavier than digitals. You may have heard that piano tuners can adjust the key weight of acoustics to any value. This is true only for the static weight. The dynamic weight, which becomes important at higher speeds, cannot be arbitrarily reduced, and reducing the static weight can actually increase the dynamic weight. Even in most digitals, "light" is an illusion because the keydrop force is not changed when you change the key weight settings. Lightness is achieved in software by making the piano sound louder and more brilliant. An old acoustic piano can feel light because its hammers are compacted, but such hammers cannot produce PP and can be difficult to play fast. When the tuner voices that hammer correctly, the piano will feel heavier, although the key weight was not adjusted. The inexpensive keyboards with extremely light (non-weighted) keys are not helpful because they are not made for speed.
Fast, Slow muscles: Muscle bundles consist mainly of fast or slow muscles. The slow muscles provide strength and endurance. The fast muscles are for control and speed. Depending on how you practice, one set grows at the expense of the other. Obviously, when practicing for technique, we want to grow the fast muscles. Therefore, avoid isometric or strength type exercises that grow the slow muscles. Practice quick movements, and as soon as the work is done, rapidly relax those muscles. This is why any pianist can outrun a sumo wrestler on the keyboard, although the wrestler has a lot more muscle. Practicing Hanon type exercises for hours, "to strengthen the fingers" might grow more slow muscles.
Rhythm consists of 2 parts: timing and dynamics, and both come in 2 flavors, formal and logical. The mysteries surrounding rhythm and the difficulties encountered in defining rhythm arise from the "logical" part, which is at once the key element and the most elusive. One important element of dynamics is the unexpected accents.
Formal Timing: The formal timing is given by the time signature, and is indicated at the beginning of the music score. The major time signatures are waltz (3/4), common time (4/4), cut time (2/2, also alla breve) and 2/4.
The waltz has 3 beats per bar (measure); the number of beats per bar is indicated by the numerator. 4/4 is most common and is often not even indicated, although it should be indicated by a "C" at the beginning (remember it as "C stands for common"). Cut time is indicated by the same "C", but with a vertical line down the center (cuts the "C" in half).
The note per beat is indicated by the denominator, so that the 3/4 waltz has three quarter- notes per bar. The meter is the number of beats in a measure, and almost every meter is constructed from duplets (tuples, duples, tuplets, also mean the same thing, two notes per beat) or triplets (three notes per beat), although rare exceptions have been used for special effects (5, 7, or 9 notes per beat). Generally the first note of each multiplet carries the accent, and the beat note carries the strongest accent.
Repetition is the most important element of rhythm for two main reasons. (1) Music works because of satisfaction which is provided by creating an anticipation or tension, and then resolving it. Repeating the rhythm satisfies these conditions; you know what is coming, and you get it every time. (2) We can't control time; no matter what we do, time marches on. By repeating the same rhythm, we can stop time! Nothing changes, the same thing happens over and over, as if time were standing still; we can even accelerate it or slow it down. Thus musicians can do what physicists can't — control time. Even music without rhythm can be considered music, in which case time becomes irrelevant.
How to practice rhythm: Rhythm must be treated as a separate subject of practice with a specific program of attack. Set aside some time for working on rhythm. A metronome can be helpful. Double check that your rhythm is consistent with the time signature. This can't be done in the mind even after you can play the piece -- you must revisit the sheet music and check every note. Too many students play a piece a certain way "because it sounds good"; you can't do that. Check with the score to see if the correct notes carry the correct accent strictly according to the time signature. Only then, can you decide which rhythmic interpretation is the best way to play and where the composer has inserted violations of the basic rules (very rare) for special effects; more often the rhythm indicated by the time signature is strictly correct but can sound counter-intuitive, an intentional construct by the composer. An example of this is the mysterious "arpeggio" at the beginning of Beethoven's Appassionata (Op. 57). A normal arpeggio (such as CEG) starts with the first note (C), which should carry the beat. However, Beethoven starts each bar with the third note of the arpeggio (the first bar is incomplete and carries the first two notes); this places the accent on the third note, not the first, a most unusual arpeggio. We find out the reason for this odd "arpeggio" when the main theme is introduced in bar 35. This beginning "arpeggio" is an inverted, schematized form of the main theme. Beethoven had psychologically prepared us for the main theme by giving us only its rhythm! This is why he repeats it, after raising it by a curious interval -- he wanted to make sure that we recognized the unusual rhythm. He used the same device at the beginning of his 5 th symphony, where he repeats the "fate motif" at a lower pitch. The reasons behind these strange rhythmic constructs in this sonata are explained in (58) Beethoven's Appassionata, Op. 57, First Movement. Another example is Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu. The first note of the RH in bar 5 must be softer than the second. Can you find at least one reason why? Although this piece is in double time, it may be instructive to practice the RH as 4/4 to make sure that the wrong notes are not emphasized.
Having carefully checked the rhythm when practicing HS, check again when starting HT. When the rhythm is wrong, the music usually becomes impossible to play at speed. If you have unusual difficulty in getting up to speed, double-check the rhythm. Incorrect rhythmic interpretation is a common cause of speed walls and troubles with HT. If there is an rhythmic error, no amount of practice will get you up to speed! In such cases, outlining [(38) Outlining, Beethoven's Sonata #1, Op. 2-1] is an excellent way to find and correct errors in the rhythm. When starting HT practice, exaggerate the rhythm, which makes it easier to synchronize the two hands. Next, look for the special rhythmic markings, such as "sf" or accent marks, because they are the guides to the logic in the music.
Rhythm is intimately associated with speed. This is why most Beethoven compositions must be played above certain speeds; otherwise, the emotions associated with the rhythm and even the melodic lines can be lost. Rhythm is often referenced to speeds that exist in nature, such as the speed of the human brain or the heartbeat. It is important to stay just ahead of the brain, so that it has no time to be bored or distracted and has no choice but to follow the music, but music should not go too far ahead of the brain so that it gets lost.
There is one class of rhythmic difficulties that can be solved using a simple trick. This is the class of complex rhythms with missing notes. A good example of this is in the 2nd movement of Beethoven's Pathetique. The 2/4 time signature is easy to play in bars 17 to 21 because of the repeated chords of the LH that maintain the rhythm. However, in bar 22, the most important beat notes of the LH are missing, making it difficult to pick up the complex play in the RH. The solution to this problem is to temporarily restore the missing notes of the LH! In this way, you can easily practice the correct rhythm in the RH.
Dynamics, Formal Accents: Each time signature has its formal accent (louder notes). We use the notation: 1 is the loudest, 2 is softer, etc.; then the (Viennese) waltz has the formal accent 133 (the famous oom-pha-pha); the first beat gets the accent; the Mazurka can be 313 or 331. Common time has the formal accent 1323 or 1324, and cut time and 2/4 have the accent 1212. A syncopation is a rhythm in which the accent is placed at a location different from the formal accent; for example a syncopated 4/4 might be 2313 or 2331.
Musical phrases generally start and end softly, but the first beat of most rhythms carry the accent. This is why so many compositions start with a partial bar — to avoid that accent on the first beat. Therefore, in the "Happy Birthday" song, the first accent is on "Birth", not "Happy".
Logical Timing and Accents: This is where the composer injects additional music. It is a change in timing and loudness from the formal rhythm. Although rhythmic logic is not necessary, it is almost always there. Common examples of timing rhythmic logic are accel. (to make things more exciting), decel. (perhaps to indicate an ending) or rubato. Examples of 64 dynamic rhythmic logic are increasing or decreasing loudness, forte, PP, sf, etc.
Beethoven's Tempest Sonata (Op. 31, #2), contains beautiful examples formal and logical rhythms (as practically any composition by Beethoven). In the 3rd movement, the first 3 bars are 3 repetitions of the same structure, and they simply follow the formal rhythm. However, in bars 43-46, there are 6 repetitions of the same structure in the RH, but they must be squeezed into 4 formal rhythmic bars! Playing 6 identical repetitions in the RH is wrong because the formal accents must be followed. Hint: the LH is "standard" and easy to figure out, so copy that rhythm to the RH. On the other hand, in bars 47 and 55, there is an unexpected "sf" that has nothing to do with the formal rhythm, but is an absolutely essential logical rhythm. Although the arrangements of notes is relatively simple, playing the dynamics correctly in this movement is complex, and practically no one would guess them correctly without Beethoven's markings. It is amazing how Beethoven cleverly used the formal accents to tell us exactly how to play it, for most of the music. The unexpected logical accents are a hallmark of Beethoven's genius and showed us that dynamics, by itself, is a powerful language, and that breaking the rules of the formal accents can produce a higher level of musical logic.