Chopin Rubato - Both Hands or Melody Only? (Op28. no 4)

The only recording I know that does this is Kemal's which hasn't yet been released. We are actually virtually finished with a very exciting project which is to release the Chopin preludes in two different recorded versions... However it's not quite in the can yet although I've done most of the editing already. Play each chord softly but then while still holding it, begin to "press fortissimo." This will force your hand to form its shape to the contour of the black and white keys of that particular chord. When you have done that a lot, to the point where you feel your hand "knows" each chord much better and much more individually, then place your fingers on the SURFACE of the chord tones and dangle one finger into its key, then another. Play around with dangling your finger down into just one of the three notes to make it sound whisperingly on the pedal. Then try with two notes at a time, and finally use this technique to play all three chord tones simultaneously. MAKE SURE YOUR HAND DOES NOT DESCEND AT ALL, ONLY YOUR FINGERS. The preperatory exercise was good because it helped your hand actually to feel it is STANDING UP when the fingers play the chord tones instead of falling into the keyboard. Let me know what develops! AFF

Play each chord softly but then while still holding it, begin to "press fortissimo." This will force your hand to form its shape to the contour of the black and white keys of that particular chord. Let me know what develops! Day 1: playing some of the chords and then pressing hard into the keyboard has revealed great weakness of the left hand thumb. Doing a mirror image of the same chord with the right hand is very easy, but for the left hand I feel an intense effort tryting to keep the thumb in place and seperate from the hand. the thumb usually "wants" to collapse in the distal phalange, either to the outside or to the inside. Collapsing it inside makes the hand and the arch feel stronger, but the arch looks more emptied out this way and the entire orientation of the hand has to be much more carefully chosen to properly hit the black/white keys combinations. If I can learn to keep it straight like the right hand thumb I think the entire arch would feel much more stable and it will be eventually much easier to be accurate with all fingers playing the chords. After a lot of practice I feel some mild pain up in the thumb's metacarpal area - I think it's a sign some muscles are begining to work. I hope I can begin "phase 2" of this excercise soon.

Very cool! I find it so interesting that this exercise led to such a "discovery." I like it when the practice is intelligent enough to uncover the hidden flaw, and the practicer is attentive enough to notice it too! Go easy on it, though... I agree with you that this particular pain is probably a "good" pain, but still, don't overdo it! Onward and upward! AFF

Day 2: The left hand thumb already seems magically better. I was surprised to see such improvement in 1 day, but I guess that all the "good" pain paid off and after some rest the thumb muscle find more easily the coordination of a standing straight thumb. It is still not perfect in all the chords, but it feels like I have made 80% of the way in one day. Do I tried a little bit of phase of the excercise and now I notice that the 5th finger is where I have the least amount of control and independence. For example when playing CEB (135) or CD#B, I hear the middle note the loudest. I think that my 3rd tends to take over being more developed than the 5th. So I am trying now to work just with 3rd and 5th, drop them as genty as I can to the keyboard, even in Fortisssimo. I want to be able to voice 5th loud and 3rd soft and the other way around. This excercise requires a lot of concentation and I cannot do it more than a few minutes at a time. I am trying to cultivate the "bones" feeling that Alan is talking about in his second book, but I am not there yet. Many times I find that I am using way too much effort up in the arm and shoulder, in an attempt to stay "controled" and use less effort. Also, I have tried playing the piece again - and it sucked. It sounds worse than it did before I started those experiements. I think I am too focused now on the chord voicing and the sensations in different fingers of the left hand and distracts me from the music. I think I will stop playing the piece for a while and focus just on the technical part and then I will forget about the technique and just focus on feelign the music for a while. I am going to perform it in a recital in the beginning of Decemeber, so I hope I have some time to gain some improved voicing. Zack

Wow, very glad to hear it! I have the opposite problem. I've noticed that my 3rd, precisely because it is biggest, is the laziest. Because it is so big, it tends to let its size do the job instead of activating itself. Often it feels like there's hardly enough room for it to move, so it just doesn't bother. I have to make a special effort to aliven it to the extent that my other fingers achieve naturally... It's excellent that you do it with such concentration that you sense you must stop after a few minutes. Keep it up, this means that it is very rich for you. You will definitely reap the rewards later on. If you still feel too much effort further up your arm, go back to Step 1 more often. That's where you'll learn to let that effort go. This is NORMAL! Don't get discouraged! I am actually HAPPY that this is happening, because it means that your work is evoking a profound change in your brain. Strangely enough, you've gotta be happy that it sucks! Yes and no. Jumping back and forth between practicing and performing is useful. It's the transition that helps an eventual integration of the new ability to take place. You have to have the courage to face that "sucks" experience. Keep heart, it IS possible to "just play" but to remember what you learned from the exercise, and to feel you have more control over what you're doing. But DON'T KEEP DOING THE EXERCISE when you go back to playing the piece. THAT will never get the music going. Remember, the exercise is designed to give your hand a new ability. It will then know better HOW to achieve the musical result... I remember a student playing some Chopin etudes for me and I could see he was exerting a kind of "keystone of the arch" pressure on his hand structure. It cramped him and really inhibited things. "Why are you doing that?" I asked him. "You showed it in your film!" was his reply. I told him, "The exercise is DIDACTIC, designed to give your hand a more potent feeling of itself. But don't do that when you play, it'll screw everything up!" I hope this helps! All the best, AFF

Day 3: some more practise of the same things - the left thumb sometimes goes back to it's hold habits and needs to be "reminded" of its optimal alignment. I have the opposite problem. I've noticed that my 3rd, precisely because it is biggest, is the laziest. Because it is so big, it tends to let its size do the job instead of activating itself. Often it feels like there's hardly enough room for it to move, so it just doesn't bother. I have to make a special effort to aliven it to the extent that my other fingers achieve naturally... Perhaps it's the same with my third. I don't know if it is more developed than the 5th or if it is simply more heavy, I just know that when I try to play soft chords with 1,3,5 I often hear the 3rd the loudest. I am trying to gain the control to play any finger louder or to play them all evenly at will. This is NORMAL! Don't get discouraged! I am actually HAPPY that this is happening, because it means that your work is evoking a profound change in your brain. Strangely enough, you've gotta be happy that it sucks! I am happy that it sucked - I actually enjoy learning new ways of doing things and I am aware that in the short term you feel more incompetent when trying something new. I think for this specific piece it sucked because of a combination of several things - the first is that I focus too much on the left hand fingers and what they are doing instead of listening to the music I am making, especially with the right hand. I need the get the left hand control consistent and instinctive enough so I can eventually feel the freedom of making music again. The second cause is that I have actually started LISTENNING to the left hand. I used to perceive this piece mostly as "melody and chord accompaniement" type of piece, but the posts of this thread made me pay more attention to the complexity of the left hand and it's relation to the right hand. I have had this experience in the past with other pieces of music and I find that the "ear is always ahead of the hand" - wheneven I succeed to train my fingers to produce a certain sound, my ears suddenly start to notice even more subtlties (rhythmic unevenness, unsmooth connection of notes, etc.). Yes and no. Jumping back and forth between practicing and performing is useful. It's the transition that helps an eventual integration of the new ability to take place. You have to have the courage to face that "sucks" experience. I played the piece a few more times today. It mostly sucked but I did have one very good performance experience. I decided to try to imagine that I am only a listener and my fingers are playing themselves. I let them do whatever they want - uneven chords, out of time, whatever - I tried to be just the audience of my own show and enjoy the surprise and variation of whatever random artistic interpertation comes out of it. It was quite a change from my usual way of playing and I found it quite a liberating psychological trick. I hope I can reproduce it when actually performing in a recital - I sometimes get so self conscious that my hands start to shake. Thanks a lot for the supportive comments and the detailed feedback. Zack

This is a great challenge and it is great that you are rising to it. As recently as this year, when I had some lessons with my old guru Phil Cohen, he had me zero in on one of those amazing Chopin left hands (the F major Nocturne Op. 15 #2) and I found it just as challenging as you do to REALLY be present to every delicious detail of the voice leading - and just as rewarding... A very nice exercise, keep doing it! I am glad that this has been so rich for you, it is always stimulating to find new ways of working (and playing!). AFF

Thanks for the encouragement. Day 6: I was away on vacation and haven't practised for 1 week. Yesterday it seemed like my left hand had gone back to it's old state with tension and inactive fingers, but this morning things start to seem better. I noticed that I have a tendency to curl the left thumb at the distal joint in order to avoid hitting 2 keys at once. I am trying to get rid of this habit and train the thumb to move "from the wrist", like the right hand's thumb does, but the coordination is very new and weird for the left hand so I get a lot of occasions where I hit more than 1 key or play too loudly. I still use my "old" way of moving the thumb when I perform the piece (curling), but I hope to replace it eventually with the new way of keeping the thumb straight. I find it challenging to straighten the thumb without stretching and tightening it, but I do sometimes get there. Overall, my chord timing has improved and I usually hit most LH notes together. The voicing is still not satisfactory though - notes still get loud or soft randomly, or sometimes don't sound at all because I try to play too soft. I want to play a recording of it and get some comments on my playing. Which way do you think is better to record: video camera recording the acoustic piano, or direct recording from the digital? I think this kind of piece would lose a lot of detail on a digital piano, but I am just not sure those details can be properly audible to a video camera mic. Zack

I am impressed with the intelligent way you are going about retraining your thumb. Yes, have it learn to stay straighter and move from its base, but no, don't force it to do so. Perhaps you are ready to go through the exercises in this article: Some of these are expanded versions of those found in . They will help your thumb "learn how to learn." As for recording, try posting a video and if you're not satisfied, add another version on audio. I know how to paste a high quality audio INto the video, using the Vegas film editing program, but I rarely have the time to do it... I did a lot of the sound for the DVD myself that way! AFF

Hi, I have recorded myself several times and the recording quality is quite reasonable. I am still not satisfied with my performance enough to post it. I hope to post something later today - my recital is on next Saturday. In the mean time, can you tell me what you think of the following performance by Rubinstein: He seems to be a bit more conservative with the rubatos (meaning, closer to the notated strict time) but I think that it might be truer to this piece. Zack