Piano Practice : Master tricky passages by taking two steps back!
Channel: Tommy's Piano Corner
Date: 2019-07-15

This video looks at some ideas for mastering tricky passages on piano.  I'm sure I'm not alone in that sometimes there might be a tiny part of a piece that I'll fluff through rather than take the time to learn it properly - especially where most of the rest of the music feels easy to play. As an example in the video I use the 32nd note (demi-semi-quaver) section of Fur Elise.  I've heard this played probably thousands of times over the years and it's surprising how many people simply fluff over this section because it's significantly more difficult than much of what surrounds it.

It's also one of those sections that I believe is where you actually build new technique - forearm rotation and fast scale passages.  To make this possible, it's advisable to break it down into smaller exercises of course and make these exercises progressively more difficult.  However, unfortunately, errors have a tendency to keep creeping back so we need a way of getting rid of them. This is where my two steps back idea comes in ... rather than trying to brute force my way through, I revert to simpler exercises.

The video has a final tip of how to fix the problem when we're finally getting around to dealing with something we've played badly for years!

Let me know what you think below.

EQUIPMENT:
Fully details of all equipment used are available on my blog at the address below:
http://tommyspianocorner.com/youtube-equipment/ 
Filmed on an iPhone 8+ - using the Filmic Pro app
Audio captured on an iPhone 6S using a Shure MV88 Microphone
Vocals captured on a Rode SmartLav microphone plugged into an iPhone 4S
Video editing done using iMovie
Audio editing done using Garageband

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