Practicing Scales and Arpeggios

     A student asked me recently about the

importance of practicing scales and arpeggios. "Do I really have to," was the gist of her plea. I was happy to oblige with the answer, no, of course not.
     Years ago, when I was a new university professor, this answer got me into some controversy with the local music teachers. Word got around that I didn't "believe" in scales, as if scales were somehow decreed in the Ten Commandments. Well, I had some explaining to do to avoid being excommunicated from the music community.
     Here's what I think. We have to know all the major and melodic minor scales as a matter of basic keyboard topography. The thumb crossings should be well worked in and the coordination between the hands second nature. After that, though, practicing scales for "technique" is a waste of time. Or let's say it's a delay tactic. It's

something that can be done without thinking, the operative root here is think. Scales and arpeggios rarely, if ever, appear in repertoire they way we practice them in isolation. When we encounter them in music we have to re-learn them anyway.  

     So, if you want to practice scales, practice them in music you want to play. We pause here for a message from the sponsor. I have put together just such a volume: The Pianist's Guide to Practical Scales and Arpeggios, As they Occur in Pieces You Want to Play. The excerpts are the result of rummaging through a significant amount of repertoire—Bach, all of the Haydn, Mozart, 
Beethoven and Schubert sonatas, as well as selected fantasies, variations, concertos and occasional pieces. There are also fragments from Chopin, Brahms and Debussy, although what was once ubiquitous in the Classical period becomes in later periods less so. 
     

The repertoire encompasses middle intermediate to advanced levels. Of course, the preponderance of material lies in the least complicated keys, although there are examples in theoretical keys such as G-sharp major, D-sharp and C-flat, keys the indignity of which only pianists bear; string players are generally excused, except in certain orchestral works by Mahler or Richard Strauss.
     Have a look. I'd be glad to know what you think. It's available here.
     

CHOPIN DEMYSTIFIED: Problem Solving in the Nocturnes

Announcing a new volume to be available soon:

 
Here is an excerpt from the introduction:
     
     

In this volume we consider the technical means by which a happy collaboration between the hands becomes second nature. In my experience, if there is an impediment to a successful performance, that impediment originates in the left hand. If the fingering and its technical logic are not well understood, the right-hand fioriture have no place to take root, and more often than not die on the vine. If you will pardon a metaphor shift, when the coat-hanger is shapeless and weak, the garment has nothing to cling to.
     

     Recently, a student brought the Nocturne Op. 9, No. 2, that expressive and, well, ubiquitous exercise that all students seem to take up and all teachers must endure. If there is fault, it is of course not with the work itself, but rather with the approach to it. My student complained of confusion as to where to place all of those “extra” notes, the ones that don’t really have rhythmic specificity. I responded, cipher that I am, that the right hand is confused because the left hand jabs aimlessly at notes in what I call a hunt-and-peck manner. (Those readers old enough to remember manual typewriters will identify with that description.) The left hand hasn’t discovered its path. It doesn’t know how to group those chords or where the bass notes belong. It, therefore, hasn’t learned to use each eighth as a direct spring-board for each succeeding eighth. This is what I mean when I say notes must proceed easily and naturally from one to the next, as if each propelled the other inevitably. When the first bass-note sounds, the hand must already know its next landing place. You wouldn’t jump off a diving board without first looking to see if there is water in the pool.
     Chopin advised that in this nocturne, in order to avoid sounding

like a waltz or worse—an Austrian oom-pah band, the “bass be practiced first by itself, divided between the two hands; and each of the chords following the main bass beats in the 12/8 should sound like a chorus of guitars…This should be done piano and in a strict time, maintaining an absolutely steady allegretto without the 12/8 lapsing into triplets.”   This is not a bad idea, and I blush at my impertinence. But the master stops short of telling his student the technical how-tos and where-fors. In this example, as in virtually all of the examples we shall examine, the technical solutions tend to be variations on similar ideas having to do with grouping notes together for ease and selecting fingering that allows the hand to move fluently, without feeling overly extended.

   

 Once the accompanist left-hand knows its job well, we shall 
introduce it to the singing right-hand. It is at this point we find ways to accommodate the seemingly arbitrary fioriture, the melodic embellishments that distinguish Chopin from all other masters of concert music for the piano. We learn how to manage an accompaniment figure that seems to tease the hand into awkward stretches. We explore ways of organizing melismas of 27 notes against 6. We learn how to interpret all those dangling grace-notes, wantonly attached to arpeggiated figures, not to mention all those other enigmatic symbols.

Chopin's Octave Etude

   

Chopin
(Resting his hands?)

 Many students have asked about  Chopin's octave etude. I'm guessing this comes under the heading of "because it's there." It seems to me that this is not a very attractive piece—that the only reason to play it is to show that you can. As we all know, Chopin's collection of etudes are not really etudes in a pedagogical sense. Rather, they are show pieces designed to display a range of facility. Nevertheless, we learn from any piece we play, so in that sense passages in Mozart might be thought of as etudes. The Chopin etudes as a rule require considerable expertise to begin with, but for showy octaves, this etude is as good a place as any to begin. You can watch me talk and poke my way through it here.