Accenting A Note

Hello, I'm a self taught piano player and I'm wondering the correct technique for playing an accented note with one finger while playing another note softer at the same time, on the same hand. I hope that makes sense. I've learned liebestraum no. 3 by liszt and I'm working on Chopin's Etude op 10 no 3. I can't seem to get this technique down. I end up accenting both notes. Any help would be appreciated. I apologize if this has a simple answer but again, I'm self taught and I've never had the benefit of a true instructor. Thank you.

Great question! Many who've had years more lessons than you struggle with the same problem! The basic underlying challenge: to develop true finger independence. This term has been bandied about for generations but what does it mean? To my mind it must arise from skeletality. The most telling image: stand securely on one finger and waggle, jiggle a key lightly with another finger. Most likely the movement of the active finger will somehow disturb the stable standing of the pylon-support finger. When you can waggle one key without undermining your standing finger's structural-functional security, you are well on your way to solving the voicing problem. A more practical method is simply to separate the two notes in time in practice. 1) Play the accented note loudly but delay the sounding of the soft note enough in time that you have full control over the dynamics. Notice the difference in feeling between the two fingers. 2) Play the soft note first, delaying the note now in time until you can fully master the dynamic differentiation, again noticing the differences in sensation between the parts of your hand. These two variations solve a problem by dispensing with it. By doing away with the perceived difficulty (simultaneity of two attacks of different dynamic), you bring the underlying difficulty to light and give yourself a way of addressing it. 3) Once you have mastered steps 1 & 2, simply shorten the time lag - BY DEGREES. Play the two notes closer together in time, maintaining the clear dynamic differentiation. Finally you will surprise yourself by playing them together. At that point, NOTICE THE FEELING IN YOUR HAND. It should be radically different from your habitual. By the way, when you voice like this, the two notes are never truly together - the louder note always comes a little before the softer note, because if you begin the attack simultaneously, the louder key descends faster and arrives first. This is good, because it helps the difference in voicing be perceived clearly. The separation is not big enough to be perceived as such, the orchestration just gets clearer. AFF

Mr. Fraser, Thank you so much for your reply. I've looked and looked for something like this for a while now and this technique you've described is fantastic. I've been practicing all day I can definitely feel a difference in my hand. I finally feel like I have a chance to learn and do fairly well on a technique that I felt previously I would never capture. I'm definitely ordering your DVD. I can't image the wealth of information contained there in! I've had the suspicion, based on my failures with this technique, that it was really not possible to play both notes at the same time. Subconsciously I'm sure my suspicion was more to excuse my poor playing. Thank you again and I look forward to learning more with your DVD.

Cool, glad to be of help! And like I've said before, I enjoy the challenge of reformulating ideas as succinctly as possible - it's a good challenge and a great exercise: how well do understand it? Enjoy the DVD! AFF

can you explain more detailed?

Imagine a piano key descending. Let's say that if you play the note it only takes 0.025 seconds: half the time. If you now play two notes simultaneously, the upper one , the two keys begin their descent at the same instant but the louder note sounds 0.025 seconds sooner. Although this may seem like a very small time difference, it is enough to drastically alter the tonal relationship of the two notes. The louder note becomes highlighted, more defined, clearer, more "chiselled" in its sound. I work in digital sound editing where we do edits with a standard crossfade of 0.005 seconds - five one has a large impact on piano sound. AFF