4 Strategies to Play Faster at the Piano (w/Live Demo)

Getting a piece to go fast at the piano can be super frustrating. Sometimes it can seem like you can get faster to a certain point but not be able to push past it. You practice with a metronome, you work it up gradually, and then you just get to a point where if you try it faster, either you start missing notes, your hands stop being coordinated, or

your hands stop being coordinated, or you have to keep pausing in order to find the next notes. This is a common enough issue that I decided to make a video about it. I'm going to use a piece that somebody requested because they're having this exact problem with it. butterfly from Grig's lyric pieces opus

butterfly from Grig's lyric pieces opus 43 number one. It's a piece that goes very fast. It's light and ethereal and it's a perfect example of the piece where you can practice for a long time and hit a ceiling on the tempo. Now, I don't play this piece myself. So,

what I did was right before I started recording, I practiced it for about 15 minutes to get it up to a barely acceptable tempo where I can now show you the process that I'm going to use to increase the tempo. From here, you're

increase the tempo. From here, you're going to see exactly what I'm doing as I practice to increase the tempo. By the end of the video, you'll have four specific strategies you can use to push past that tempo ceiling, regardless of what piece you're working on. So, let's

start by looking at the beginning of this piece. Now, remember, I just started it a few minutes ago. , but this is how it goes. I'm just looking at the first six measures.

There are a few preliminary steps that I

There are a few preliminary steps that I think are really important if you're trying to increase the tempo. The first thing is you need to know your goal tempo. A lot of times people are just trying to increase their tempo, but they don't really know what their goal tempo is. And what by you have to know

is. And what by you have to know it is write it down. Like use your metronome, listen to some recordings maybe or figure it out and then write down the number. So for me, I've written down the number 120 as a goal tempo. There's no way that's a quarter

tempo. There's no way that's a quarter note. And so like that's how fast this goes. There's no way I can play it that fast. So, right. So, there's I'm not going to do that. Currently, I can play it securely at 72, which is the second tempo you need to write down. How fast

tempo you need to write down. How fast can you currently play it? Because then you'll know the difference between the two. So, I'll just play the beginning at 72, etc. Okay, so that's 72. And then the

other thing you need to do before you start really ramping up that tempo is make sure that your fingering is super secure. I have written in some fingering just to make sure because this is a new piece for me. Okay. Now I'm demonstrating this as a

Okay. Now I'm demonstrating this as a brand new piece for me because I wanted to work on this piece for my audience. But what I'm talking about is something you might have been playing for a while and you can't push past a certain ceiling. So that's what I'm

certain ceiling. So that's what I'm going to be working on as I practice this even though it's a new piece for me. The first way that most people are familiar with is this idea of working something up with the metronome. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that, but just so you can see how this works. This is like the

how this works. This is like the traditional way of increasing the tempo. I just played it at 72. I just raised the tempo to 76. And so it'll be just a little bit faster, etc. Right? I would play that and then I

etc. Right? I would play that and then I would go up to 80 and then I would play that and then go faster and faster. And typically what happens is you get to a point where you increase the tempo and it has been totally fine up until then, but then at that point it just

falls apart. And so the question is, why doesn't slow to fast metronome practice always work? Fast playing is physically different from slow playing. When you practice slowly, you're using different motions. And so you can reach a point where those

And so you can reach a point where those motions don't work anymore. Then you need to re-evaluate your physical approach. So, what by that is I can play, but the way I'm playing that at a fast

tempo does not in any way resemble the technique I'm going to need to go something like that. It's a completely different approach to the keys. And so if I'm practicing it like punching down to the bottom of the keys and playing

like really intensely at a slow tempo, you will reach a point where your physical approach just isn't going to work anymore. When I'm working on a piece and trying to increase the tempo, or when I'm teaching my students how to do it, I employ what I call the

two-pronged practice method. Meaning, it's like a fork with two prongs. So you have one approach which is what I just described which is slow to fast and then another approach where you practice little teeny tiny snippets at a super fast tempo. You polish those

and then you start combining them into longer and longer units. So now I'm going to just do a quick practice demo and I'm going to focus on four different elements that you can keep in mind as you're working on playing at a faster tempo. Before we get to the practice demo, I want to quickly tell you about

demo, I want to quickly tell you about my brand new course, The Art of Piano Scales. It's a comprehensive course for pianists who know or who once knew their scales and want to review or level up. It's completely self-paced with lifetime

access, so you can review and access it as you wish. And there's a community feature inside where if you get stuck, you can ask me questions directly. I've been teaching piano for more than 30 years and I put pretty much everything I know about teaching scales into this