Velocity I
This month and next I am writing about the quest to play fast: fast enough, faster than before, faster than the next person, fast and secure, fast and yet clear. This important thread runs through all aspects of learning to play music. It can also touch upon all sorts of insecurities and sensitive spots. Can I play fast enough? Will my soloist or the conductor insist on a tempo that is too fast for me—either one that feels wrong musically or one that I just plain can’t do? If I don’t play at least something—anything—fast, will listeners assume that I am not really in command of what I am doing?
No one’s self-esteem as a musician is ever undermined by the inability to play slowly enough. (Well, it rarely is. Perhaps this should happen more. Playing slowly effectively isn’t necessarily particularly easy.) But many of us worry whether we can play fast enough, either for what we want to do musically or for what we think listeners will expect of us. We also worry that if we choose a slower tempo for genuine musical/expressive reasons, people will assume we just can’t play it faster. We rarely worry that our listeners will assume that we can’t play more slowly.
Long ago I heard it recounted that Rachmaninoff had said that Alfred Cortot always decided that the really hard bits had to be played “expressively,” that is, slowed down. This was of course meant to be a withering criticism of Cortot: not only claiming that his keyboard facility was faulty when it came to velocity, but also claiming that his much-admired expressive playing was actually musically arbitrary, and just a way of covering up lack of skill. I have reacted to this by saying that often the hard bits are hard because they are musically involved and complicated, and maybe should be slowed down, for the listener’s sake as much as for the players. But not-fast-enough seems to open us to criticisms of this sort, and we often worry about it.
Fortunately this (like most things) can also be a source of humor. I recall a moment a long time ago when I was in the company of a fine young musician who was about to play in a youth orchestra concert. An older friend who was there clapped him on the back with a hearty “Play louder and faster than everyone else!”
As far as I can tell, conductors are not likely to be subjected to this sort of criticism if they are inclined to slow tempos. The physical gestures of conducting relate to the music and its speed in a different way. Also, keyboard continuo playing usually becomes actually easier as tempo goes up—assuming that the continuo part is being improvised by the player, or at least has been written by the player with the ultimate tempo in mind. This is because in general, the faster the tempo, the fewer notes or chords are needed in the continuo realization. (If the bass line itself is too difficult at a fast tempo, that can reverse this effect.)
Tempo and fingering
My decision to write about this subject comes specifically from a reader’s suggestion, in a recent e-mail, that a “discussion of fingerings that will work at faster tempos would probably be interesting.” This indeed seems to me to be a good point of entry into the topic. Is the quest to feel comfortable up-to-tempo—especially at fast tempos—best addressed at the point of choosing fingerings (and pedalings—though I am focusing mostly on manual playing here) or best addressed by process—that is, practicing, and specifically the pacing of work on tempo within practicing? The answer is “both.” But how exactly, and in what sort of proportions? Next month I will look at some specific passages and different fingerings, to try to address this aspect of the question directly.
There are different levels and types of playing “fast.” This is obvious, but worth noting. The act of getting notes right—and its important adjunct, which is having it feel comfortable or even easy—is almost always more likely the more slowly a passage is being played. That’s the fundamental fact of learning pieces: it’s why we start practicing passages slowly and then speed them up. For many pieces, speeding up will not take things past a comfortable level of velocity. For these pieces, that process will always work and is not really within the sphere of this discussion. If, however, the goal is to play a piece at a tempo that seems to tax what the player can do with velocity, then there can be different, perhaps more complicated issues.
The question is how much continuity there is across these two areas. Is the process that we use to make a “normal” piece comfortable and reliable what we should also use to get something very fast—fast enough that the velocity alone makes it a challenge? How are these two processes related? The point of any normal systematic practice is to create predictability: that is, to make us feel certain, as we play the piece, that we know what is coming up. In “normal” situations, this predictability comes from a blend of things—so-called “muscle memory,” conscious familiarity with what is coming up in the piece (whether we are using notated music or not), and the ability to read ahead and combine memory with newly reviewed information. Fingerings and pedalings that have some logic to them or are simple or that use patterns of some sort can aid in this process.
Tempo and fingering
The key to playing fast is predictability. It is natural to believe that if we have trouble playing fast, it is because we just can’t quite move that fast. However, this is rarely the case. Most organ (and harpsichord) music doesn’t tax the physical ability of any player to move quickly. However, above a certain speed—which of course varies from person to person—the conscious elements of “knowing what’s coming next” simply can’t come into play: there isn’t time. The sources of rock-solid predictability that are below the level of conscious thought become more important.
Let’s take this one step at a time. How fast can you move your fingers? The most direct way to explore this is to drum your fingers on the table, the arm of your chair, or wherever is comfortable. That is, “play” five “notes”—away from any instrument—with the fingering 5-4-3-2-1. No beat, no timing: just drum those fingers as quickly and lightly as you can. Make sure that your arm is comfortable and that your wrist and fingers are not turned too much to either side. It is OK—even a good idea—to have your arm resting on whatever surface you are using.
How fast do your fingers go in this exercise? You don’t need to come up with a number—just a sense of whether the velocity is greater than you are likely to need in playing music. It almost certainly is. See whether there is an appreciable difference between the two hands, either in how this feels overall or how fast you are able to move. There might be, but if one of them is slower, it is also probably still above the threshold of how fast you will ever need to move when playing.
Now try it the other way around: 1-2-3-4-5. This is no longer intuitive drumming on a table. It can feel a bit awkward, and the ceiling on velocity might be just a touch lower, but still comfortably above any real-life musical speed needs. It feels awkward in part because the thumb is more comfortable as a point of arrival than as a starting point: releasing the thumb almost infinitely quickly to go on to 2 is tricky. How does it feel if you just do four notes: 2-3-4-5? With just non-thumb notes, is the difference in feel between one direction or the other less noticeable? How about the difference between the two hands?
(5-4-3-2-1 drumming is basically the same gesture as closing your fist. However, 1-2-3-4-5 does not correspond to any naturally shaped hand gesture.)
Now try the same thing at a keyboard, (ideally an organ or harpsichord), so that you won’t be distracted by thoughts of dynamics. (If you are at a piano, play near the very top of the keyboard where the touch is lighter.)
(Or whatever notes you want.)
See if you can let the fact that you are actually playing, not just drumming on a surface, not change the feel of what you are doing. Go through the same sequence of directions and hands. Predictability is at 100% through all of these slightly different ways of performing this exercise, but physical naturalness varies a bit.
One next step in this exploration is to try up and down, or vice versa. That is, play (on the table at first) 5-4-3-2-1-2-3-4-5. Then do the same, but keep it going for a while, several times back and forth. Then try starting on the thumb: 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1-2-3, etc. Is it easier to do this ongoing repeated table-drumming starting on 5 or starting on 1? After the first pass through all of the fingers, they resolve into the same thing, except for perhaps an underlying sense of where the strong beats are—even though in the absence of a musical context there aren’t exactly beats. (For me personally doing this, taking only one pass at the notes, 5-4-3-2-1 is easier, quicker, and more natural than 1-2-3-4-5; the repeated drumming seems easier and faster when I start on 1 rather than on 5. This difference is more pronounced in my right hand than the left. But, again, the fundamental point is that as long as it is utterly predictable, the possible velocity of any of these patterns is greater than the demands of repertoire.)
Another thing to try in exploring predictability and comfort is using the same five fingers, each playing once, but changing the order. You should decide clearly on an order before trying to play and then do so as quickly and lightly as possible. This is meant to be the opposite of improvisation: do not take yourself by surprise. So try, say 1-5-4-2-3, or 2-4-5-1-3—or anything. But again, know before you trigger the five notes exactly what you want them to be. Try this both drumming on a table and poised over five adjacent notes on a keyboard. Try to let those two feel as similar to each other as possible.
As you play around with this, you will probably notice that one time or another through a non-adjacent finger pattern of this sort you will feel a tiny hesitation or notice that the overall speed is less than you thought it would be. If this happens, try to recognize the feeling of whatever it is that is introducing that hesitation. It is probably a split-second of uncertainty about what is supposed to come next. Go back to straight (5-4-3-2-1) drumming for a time or two, then make double-sure of what you want your non-adjacent pattern to be. (Perhaps you will notice a hierarchy of non-adjacent finger patterns as to how easy it is to make them as predictable as scalewise patterns. For me, 5-1-4-2-3 is not appreciably different in feel from 5-4-3-2-1, but I need to think and prepare a bit more to make 2-1-5-3-4, for example, feel that predictable.)
Another useful variation is to plan and then play non-adjacent note patterns with adjacent fingers, for example:
(or any note pattern that you like).
You can take all of this through the stages described above: each hand, both directions, back and forth once, back and forth repeatedly. Just never do anything that you haven’t mapped out in advance; use predictability to make very high-velocity playing function easily.
So far, predictability has been achieved—and physical ease of movement preserved at the same time—by using patterns in which the hand maintains the same five-finger position throughout. A further step is simple gestures that involve moving the hand. Think of your favorite (for this purpose, easiest) such gesture. For a lot of us that is a scale with the traditional modern fingering: 1-2-3-1-2-3-4-5 in one direction and 5-4-3-2-1-3-2-1 in the other. Try playing this—just in one direction for now—with exactly the same feeling that you used for the five-note exercises. Know for certain in advance what you are planning to do and execute it as one very fast unmeasured gesture.
There are intermediate practice techniques that you can use to prepare for this—for example, drumming on the table with 5-4-3-2-1-3 without changing the position of 3, or drumming 1-2-3-1-2-3-4-5, again without changing the position of the fingers on the table. Then 5-4-3-2-1-3, moving 3 over 1 for the last “note.” You can play around with this and invent new permutations, as long as the predictability, quickness, and lightness remain. ν
To be continued . . .
