Maintaining Structure In Fast Staccato?

Hi all, As the title suggests, I'm wondering what's the way to play (and more importantly, to practice) very fast passages with staccato. May be this has been covered in "the Craft of piano playing" book indirectly, but anyway I'm not aware of any direct coverage of this. As this appears a lot in the literature, can someone shed some light on this? I am struggling with this important technique and is playing hard with obviously very inefficient ways; yet this is one of the few important techniques that I can't find in the book. Thanks for any help. Alvin

What piece are you practising? I think that biggest problem is that people stiff their hand and forearm. when playing.If you play stacato notes or chordes with a limp hand,you will have the speed but not the acuracy!so, try to find a balance in your hand that allows you to play at the right speed and with exact touch! You noticed that when you grab the chord or ocatve your hand is tensed but only a few miliseconds.than you have to relax it but to maintain that feeling in your hand.In stacatto,you don't have time to do all that,so to "tune " your hand in order to play fast. that's what i would do.I am interested what prof.Alan has to say about this! Let's wait for his answer! Jovan

Thanks. I'm playing Schubert's Impromptus Op 142 variation 2, the last four bars. But anyway, such passages are everywhere, and this one is certainly not one of the fast passages. As you've said, when I relax I have the speed but the accuracy is then lost. The sound will then sound not focused at all (not to say some missed or wrong notes....) The fingers are easier to handle. But when it comes to the thumb,everything falls apart. And by the way, I wonder if I should still played my thumb notes under my palm. Look stupid to do so if I'm not trying to connect the notes.....

Alvin, are you talking about single notes, repeated notes, repeated chords, or moving chords in staccato? Each one of these deserves detailed attention. One possible place to start is in repeated notes with the fingering 4-3-2-1. Have you tried these using my 'out the back door' technique? Then there is the whole question of how to relax the hand without losing accuracy. You will succeed more in this the more you discover the kind of relaxation that originates further towards the core of your body. There are lots of tensions through the shoulders and back that, unbeknownst to us, interfere with the free function of the hand. Address these, and many things I write about concerning hand function directly start to make a lot more sense... I hope this helps, let me know some more specifics... AFF

Actually, all are problematic for me, though repeated notes and single notes are more urgent for me since they appear even in the not-too-difficult pieces. But I have obvious problem with the sound in repeated chords, too. What is the "out the back door" technique? That's in your book, I guess?

Aha, you haven't read my book! It's a hyper-curling of the finger where it starts totally straight, hyper-extended, and then you curl it until the tip clamps itself tightly NOT to your palm but even tighter, to the base of the finger, the underside of the metacarpal-phalangeal joint. If you do this on key, the finger tip goes "out the back door" so to speak. It is very important that you keep some moveability in the forearm when you do this - if not, you can overstiffen. Hope this helps, AFF

I remember that now. (I lent my copy to one of my friend who is considering buying it. ) But as far as I remember there's no mentioning of where to apply this technique, that I thought it was only as "exercise" and not a technique to use in real playing. (though I found it very helpful to make my passages playing more articulated) By the way, did you mean it as a technique to be used in our final playing/performing, or just in practising?

It can be used while practising and also while playing and performing but in less intensity than practising i guess!

um, just try it on the piano to recall what my problem was on using this technique; the biggest problem comes when my thumb plays. There's To produce similar sound of the finger, some swinging of the entire hand seems to be needed, which I don't felt comfortable nor effficient enough. So it's very difficult to maintain the same sound (and/or structure) when it's the thumb's turn. The second problem comes when the thumb passes under the palm in a scale. As far as I could remember, the book didn't address this (at least not in that chapter).

I wouldn't swing a thumb, i treat it like a hand itself.A simple excersize would be to just put your hand on the keys and try to build up your thumb.Maintain the structure and practise your thumb. yeah , you can not swing a thumb when hand is low, so try to build your thumb up, make it stronger, more musculate. YOu know the feeleng when you are slaming your thumb againist the kitchen table?Try to use that to build up your thumb. 2.Have you tryed to play over the palm in scales? Anyway ,each of those excersizes i mentioned are individual , and eventualy might not help you! You can try and see how it works! What i figured out after working with Prof. Alan is that you can apply any of his ideas to any piece.As you will see in DVD it's so easy!