On Teaching

Organ Method X

This follows directly from the end of last month’s column.

Take the same approach and follow the same procedures with these additional exercises. These are also four-finger exercises that allow for choices of fingering (2-3-4-5 and 1-2-3-4) and therefore for comparing the feel of different fingerings. They add different, slightly more complicated, note patterns (Examples 1 and 2).

Each of these can also be moved to different positions on the keyboard: moving to a different C as a starting place gives you a chance to practice the feel of the same patterns with different arm angles. When you start on other pitches, change the key signature in such a way as to keep the melodies the same. This will give you a chance to experience different physical shapes with these exercises. Try each of the eight short exercises starting on F, with B-flats, and starting on D, with F-sharps. These flats and sharps may very well change the feel of some of the alternate fingerings, perhaps making some of them distinctly uncomfortable—be on the lookout for this.

You can also start any of the exercises described so far on a raised key. For example, try starting on F#, with the full F# major key signature. Again, be aware of difference in the feel of the fingerings. Keep everything light and relaxed, and remember all of the points listed above.

As you move these exercises to different places on the keyboard, whether by octave or by transposing into another key, make a clear decision as to whether you should write out the new notes, or whether you can effect those changes at sight and by memory. There is nothing wrong with either approach: it is important, however, that you not be distracted from the playing and practicing by worrying about the notes. If the transposing at sight is even a little bit distracting, please go ahead and write things out. (This is absolutely crucial for a student who is new to keyboard playing, and should be done without fail at this stage in the learning process.) The same applies to trying different fingerings: write them in for now. You cannot practice a variety of fingerings effectively if you—even some of the time—don’t quite remember what fingering you are using. Again, if you are beginning your keyboard study with this work on organ, thinking about fingering is something that you can do—for yourself, in large part—even from the very beginning. Remembering your fingerings, especially different ones for the same passage, is tricky at first, though both necessary and completely feasible in the long run.

The following exercises expand the scope of the notes that you are playing: that is, the notes range a little bit farther over the keyboard (Examples 3 and 4). Each of these eight exercises suggests a slightly different approach to fingering. For example, the second and sixth exercises can be played simply by positioning the five fingers above the five different notes, and then playing those notes. (This gives, for the second exercise in the right hand the fingering 1-3-5-4-2-3-2-1; and for the seventh of these exercises—in the left hand—the fingering 5-3-1-2-4-3-4-5.) The first exercise, for the right hand, and the corresponding fifth, for the left hand, are the first pair that we have seen in which the fingerings in the two hands cannot mirror each other. This fingering works very naturally in the right hand: 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1-2-1-3-5. In the left hand the closest corresponding fingering—which would start out 5-4-3-2-1—ends up getting us into trouble (try it and see). Other fingerings will work, for example 4-3-2-1-2-1-2-3-4-5-4-2-1.

Playing scales

The last of these exercises for each hand is a scale. (In the physical act of playing, a scale is just a stepwise pattern that spans an octave. It is not intrinsically different from other stepwise patterns.) You should try playing this scale with a number of different fingerings. For example:

R.H.: 1-2-3-1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1-3-2-1 

L.H.: 5-4-3-2-1-3-2-1-2-3-1-2-3-4-5

R.H.: 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4-3-2-1-4-3-2-1

L.H.: 4-3-2-1-4-3-2-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4

R.H.: 3-4-3-4-3-4-3-4-3-2-3-2-3-2-3

(quite detached: basically eighth notes with eighth-note rests in between; light and relaxed)   

L.H.: 3-2-3-2-3-2-3-2-3-4-3-4-3-4-3 

(likewise)

The first of these in each hand is the standard (piano) scale fingering. The second is a variant of that, which might be appropriate in some situations, but is included here simply to afford more practice with a variety of fingerings. The third is a version of the sort of scale fingering that was prevalent before about 1700. 

You should also try this scale—and any transpositions of it that you want to make—playing every note with the same finger. The three middle fingers are more natural for this than the thumb or the fifth finger. In doing this, you should expect the notes to be detached—but just enough that the motion from one note to the next is smooth, no “lurching”. You should also keep it slow—again so that the motion can be smooth. (It would indeed be quite unusual to play a long stepwise passage all with one finger, however, playing two or more notes in a row with one finger is common, and this is a good systematic way to practice it.) 

The third and seventh of these exercises are the first ones in which you are asked to spread the fingers in such a way that adjacent fingers do not necessarily play adjacent notes, though this happens only briefly. The first three notes of exercise two or six and the first three notes of exercise three or seven are the same: C, E, G. However, the exercises go on to different places, which suggests different fingerings. Exercises two and six can start like this:

Right hand: 1-3-5 [-4]

Left hand: 5-3-1 [-2]

However, exercises three and seven should probably start like this:

Right hand: 1-2-3[-5]

Left hand: 5-4-2 [-1]

The latter two measures of the third exercise—right hand—could be played with the “standard” scale fingering 5-4-3-2-1-3-2-1, or, just to practice a different feel, a variant: for example, 5-4-1-4-3-2-1-3. 

Thoughts on fingering

It should be clear by now that I am asking you, the student, to think about the fingering of these fairly simple exercises for yourself, albeit with some guidance. This is, of course, on purpose. Learning to devise your own fingerings is one of the most important aspects of your learning to play organ—or any keyboard instrument. The primary purpose of these exercises is to help you begin to explore the touch and sound of the instrument. However, while you are doing that, you can begin to gain experience thinking about fingering—rather than just implementing fingerings devised by someone else. This may take more time now, but it will save you a lot of time later on.  

For the beginner

If you are a beginner—having more or less never touched a keyboard instrument before—you should nonetheless have been able to do everything that you have encountered so far, if you have taken it slowly and carefully, and paid attention to the suggestions and instructions. It is extremely important that you feel very comfortable with everything that you have encountered so far before you go on. There is no harm in spending extra time with these beginning steps.  

Articulation

There can be a very direct relationship in organ playing in particular between fingering and articulation. Simply put, if a fingering does not allow you to keep holding one note in a passage while you start to play the next note, then going from that first note to that next note will be detached rather than legato. This is simply a fact, not a judgment or even a suggestion about what to do in any situation. There are many places in the organ repertoire where a fingering that actually requires a detached articulation and makes legato impossible—that is, a disjunct fingering—is appropriate or necessary or good. There are also many places where a legato fingering is a good idea or necessary, though there are indeed places where a legato fingering is impossible. The clearest example of disjunct fingering is, of course, playing successive notes with the same finger. Note that if a fingering allows legato, it usually does not require legato: you can release notes early.

If you neither need nor want legato in a particular situation, it is not necessary to create a legato fingering. A legato fingering is often—though certainly not always—more difficult than a disjunct fingering. A disjunct—non-legato—fingering that is comfortable will allow you to create a wide variety of articulations, short of full legato.

Other considerations

Physical comfort and logistic convenience are crucially important first principles of fingering. When you are trying to come up with a fingering for a passage—whether it is fairly simple, like the exercises above, or as complicated as the repertoire gets—the first step is to examine where the hand most naturally lies, what is the most comfortable hand position, what has the fewest steps and can thus be most easily remembered. This does not give all of the answers to all of the fingering questions, but is a good place to start. 

All else being equal, it is useful to plan fingering based on what is going to come next. (For example, that is the point of the different fingerings for the notes C-E-G in exercises three and seven.) Of course, fingering is also about where you have just come from, but the more you can plan fingering based on where you are going, the better.

When either hand is playing only one note at a time, fingering choices are usually very flexible. The more notes or voices a hand is playing, the more constrained the fingering will be. It is often better to change fingers on repeated notes—that is, to play successive notes that are the same as one another with different fingers. This is important enough that I will discuss it at some length later on.

For the experienced player

If you are coming to the organ having already studied and played another keyboard instrument, and if you have previously played pieces that are in two voices—that is, pieces in which there is indeed only one note at a time in each hand—find such a piece that you already know and bring it to the organ now. Work out fingering that is comfortable and in accordance with the discussion above, as much as possible. (This may be largely the same as the fingering that you have used for the piece previously on piano or harpsichord; it may differ from it somewhat.) Then practice the piece hands separately, slowly and carefully. Look at the keyboard as little as possible; an occasional glance is fine, but by and large keep your eyes on the music. As with the exercises above, you should listen carefully for articulation, and you should listen to the sonority. 

Try out different registrations. Do not assume in advance that a certain kind of sound will be right for the piece and other sounds wrong: try things and listen. A strictly two-voice piece is always a candidate to play on two manuals. Try your piece out that way, in all sorts of different configurations. Does it feel more comfortable or natural to have the right hand on a higher manual than the left or the other way around? Or are they both equally comfortable?

(The next section, which will constitute next month’s excerpt, consists of a short two-voice piece by Samuel Scheidt, with a discussion about fingering it and practicing it. It is geared towards those students who have little or no prior keyboard experience but who have gone through the exercises and practicing described so far. That is followed by exercises in which each hand plays more than one note at a time, with further discussion about how to make fingering choices and how to practice.)

Gavin Black is director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]. He writes a blog at www.amorningfordreams.com.

Organ Method IX

This excerpt begins the section on manual playing, in which I offer guidance to the student who has already played piano or harpsichord, on how to adapt that playing to the organ. This is, as I wrote in the Preface to the method—which appeared as the October 2012 column—mostly about how to practice. One model for an approach to learning organ (manual) playing for a student who is already a keyboard player is this: sit down at the organ, play around, and see what you notice. Of course, this is potentially inefficient. There is no reason that a student should lack the advantage of some guidance from someone more experienced, in person or through writing. However, this hands-off, unguided approach is in fact the essence of what a musician/student should do. The way to learn what sounds and touch on the organ are like is to play the organ, notice everything that you hear and feel, and respond to what you notice. Although I think that at least on grounds of efficiency it is a good idea for a student to accept guidance from teachers (or for that matter from method-writers), I also think that such guidance should remove as little autonomy and initiative from the student as possible. The opening of the section on manual playing—the part included this month—is a general guide to starting the process. 

I should mention that, whereas in the column from last October I wrote that the work on playing manuals and pedals together would form part of the section on pedal-playing (the section that was printed in several columns ending last month), I have since decided to shift it to after the section on manual playing. This seems to me to make more sense, although of course in the end students can uses chapters of this book in any order that they want.

Position

Take a seat on the organ bench. If you have already begun to work on pedal playing, then remember to position yourself on the bench—and to position the bench itself—in the way that you have found best for pedal work. It is not a good idea to get accustomed to a different bench position for manuals-only music, pedals-only music, and the large segment of the organ repertoire that uses hands and feet together. (Though once in a while, later on, it might be a good idea to change position for a particular piece that presents some sort of unusual challenge.) If you are coming to this section of the book without yet having begun to work on pedal playing, then position the bench at a height that allows you to relax your legs completely either without depressing any pedal keys, or only depressing them lightly with your toes. Of course, while practicing manuals without pedal, you should rest your feet in whatever way that the organ you are playing provides. Usually there is a bar low down on the bench that is meant to accommodate the feet when they are not being used to play. 

Since the vast majority of organs have at least two—often three—manuals, there is no way to sit that gives you one position in relation to the manual keys. The higher manuals are both higher and farther away. In trying to work out the right distance from the manuals at which to sit, it is important to make sure that you do not feel cramped. If you are too close to a keyboard, it is extremely difficult to play without tension. You should never feel that your shoulders need to be drawn upwards or back in order to give your hands and arms room to address the keyboards. Your shoulders should also, however, not be hunched forward. Your posture on the bench should be as relaxed and comfortable as possible. As you get accustomed to playing, you may make changes in the exact distance from the keyboards that you choose to sit. There is no “correct” posture for your arms while playing the organ. That is, your elbows, for example, do not have to be in one particular place or one particular alignment with your torso; your wrists need not be consistently above, below, or even with your forearms or hands. These things will vary with your own physique and habits.   

Once you are seated on the bench, notice where on each keyboard each of your hands most naturally falls—the place on the keyboard at which your forearms, the middle three fingers of each hand, and the keys themselves line up straight, while your shoulders and elbows are in a comfortable place. This will probably be roughly an octave below middle C for the left hand and an octave above middle C for the right hand: a bit farther out from the center for players who are particularly broad-shouldered or who prefer to keep their elbows out from their sides. This is the place on the keyboard where it is easiest to play without tension. Therefore, it is the best place to use as a sort of laboratory for learning or trying out various aspects of organ touch and various fingering skills. 

Begin to play

Now draw a stop or two (you can revisit the Introduction for a reminder about drawing and combining stops) and play some individual notes in the region of the keyboard described above. What do you notice? What is the touch like? How does it compare to the instruments with which you are most familiar—piano, harpsichord, or others? Is it heavy or light or in-between? Try playing a few notes with your fingers as far out on the keys as possible—almost slipping off to the front—and then with your fingers in the middle of the keys. Do these different positions feel different? Try playing notes in this same region of each of the different keyboards of the organ at which you are seated. Do the keyboards feel different from one another? Try engaging a coupler. Does this change the feel of either of the keyboards involved? If you depress a key very slowly, with as little force as possible, does that seem to sound or feel different from what you experience if you strike a key with more force? The answers to these questions will vary—sometimes a lot—from one organ to another. Whatever you notice or learn at the first organ keyboard at which you sit and play is, of course, only a beginning. 

Next play some simple note patterns, one hand at a time, along the lines of these, the first for the right hand, the second for the left (Examples 1 and 2). I have located these short exercises in the region of the keyboard that I have identified as the most natural for your arms and hands to reach. However, if for you that region is a little bit higher or lower, then start out playing the same four-note pattern using whatever specific notes seem most comfortable. (Stick to natural notes for the moment.) Try the following different fingerings—right hand: 2-3-4-5-4-3-2 or 1-2-3-4-3-2-1; left hand: 5-4-3-2-3-4-5 or 4-3-2-1-2-3-4.

What do you notice about the different fingerings? Do they seem to result in differences in hand position or in where on the key you play each note? Does one feel more comfortable or more natural than the other? 

Next, try the same exercise about a fifth closer to the center of the keyboard. If you started on the notes that I pictured, move to this (Examples 3 and 4). Try the same different fingerings, and look out for the same things. Then play the same pattern near the middle of the keyboard, perhaps with each hand crossing or including the note middle C. Try this on all of the keyboards of the organ that you are playing. 

In playing this short exercise bear the following in mind:

1) Keep everything relaxed: hands, arms, shoulders, and your entire body.

2) As long as you are physically relaxed, do not worry for now about the shape or position of the hand: the relationship between the fingers and the rest of the hand; the height of the wrist; the height of the wrist or hand in relation to the arm. All of these things are individual and flexible. There might turn out to be right and wrong ways for you to approach these things, but they will be right or wrong for you specifically: they will emerge in the course of your learning—they can’t be dictated in advance. There are aspects of sideways hand position—that is, how the hand is turned or cocked side-to-side—that are important, and that tend to work out the same way for most players. You will begin to work on this a bit later on.

3) The fingers need not always be parallel to the keys. It is fine for the finger playing a note to be at any angle to that key, as long as the part of the finger actually playing the note touches the key solidly. 

4) Keep the tempo slow, and listen to the sound of each note: savor each note. There is nothing to be gained by speed.

5) Try different articulations. Some of the time, make the exercise legato: release each note as you play the next note. Other times, try an exaggerated legato: let notes overlap to such an extent that you hear adjacent notes sounding together, perhaps for nearly the full length of the latter note, even though this will sound odd. Then try it detached: release each note long enough before playing the next note that you hear a gap. Then also try it very detached: release each note as soon as possible after you play it, only making sure that you do really hear the sound of each note. (Even these very short notes should be played without extra force or tension.) 

6) In trying out all of these articulations, do not worry about precision or making everything come out the same. Just keep relaxed and listen. This will lead to the most control—and precision when it is desired—later on.

Next, add some raised keys—sharps and flats—to the exercise. Start with one of the following, and take it through all of the steps described above (Examples 5 and 6). 

Two hands together

These simple exercises are meant to be played one hand at a time. The next step is to put the two hands together, keeping the note picture simple. As always, you the student can construct such exercises yourself. Here are a few possibilities derived from the exercises above (Examples 7, 8, 9, and 10).

Concerning the fingering for these exercises, bear the following in mind:

1) Use the same sorts of fingerings for each hand of these exercises that you used for the separate-hand exercises above; that is, sometimes 1-2-3-4, etc., sometimes 2-3-4-5, etc. 

2) Mix and match these fingerings between the two hands. Sometimes use the thumb-based fingering in both hands, sometimes use the second-finger-based fingering in both hands, and sometimes use one of those in each hand. 

3) Note that when the notes are parallel, the fingerings are mirrored, or nearly mirrored; when the notes are mirrored, the fingerings are parallel or nearly parallel.

4) Before you play through an exercise, be absolutely sure that you know what fingering you are about to use. If it would help, write the fingering in—but lightly, in pencil. When you want to try a different fingering, erase what you have written and write in the new fingering. 

Keep these exercises slow: it is not useful to practice this sort of material if, in doing so, you feel that you have to scramble to find the next note, or if you actually make wrong notes, or if you have to hesitate in order to get it right. There is no disadvantage to keeping the notes very slow indeed. Listen to the sounds, and to the intervals. Savor the sounds of the registrations that you use. 

Continue to try different articulations, as described above. If you feel comfortable doing so, you may try different articulations in each hand. In doing this, again don’t expect for the results to be measured or precise: just keep the feel of the hands relaxed and natural, and listen carefully.

Using excerpts from repertoire as pedal exercises, and a bit about pedal playing

Gavin Black is the Director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He can be reached, to offer thoughts about the column or for any other purpose, at [email protected].

Organ Method VII

This month’s column starts with a discussion of the ways of using excerpts from repertoire as pedal exercises—even very early in the process of learning to play pedals. I have always suggested this to my own students, and, as long as it is approached correctly from a technical point of view, it has the great advantage of being really interesting, more so than most scales and exercises. 

We are, these days, in a kind of flux about availability of printed music, and it is not absolutely clear how to best provide students with written musical material. I am inclined to direct students to the various ways of finding pieces, especially those that are Internet-based, and thus convenient, being almost instant. That is, I do not expect to include as part of this method an anthology of pieces or to publish one separately. The wide and easy availability of music makes it simple for students to choose their own pedal passages, for example, though of course with as much guidance as a teacher (or a method) needs to give. All the passages that I mentioned at the end of last month’s column, for example, can be found through the Internet with ease. I am very interested in readers’ thoughts and experiences on this point.

The method will contain several “sidebars” or charts and explanations of various practical matters. These will include a definition of the pedaling notation—including mention of my own preference for O for heel, rather than U. (I think that it is less likely to be confused with or mistaken for V), and a description of the pitch notation that I employ (C meaning the lowest c on the keyboard, c′ meaning middle c, and so on). These are all matters that are not needed in the context of these column excerpts, and the question of where and how to include them will in the end be one of layout and typography. However, if anyone reading these columns sees something that I appear to have failed to explain, I would certainly appreciate hearing about it.

This month’s excerpt ends with a bit about heel playing, which will then be the main subject of next month’s excerpt. That will round off the chapter on learning pedal playing, though of course pedal playing will be discussed later on in the context of putting hands and feet together and learning pieces.

Analyzing a pedal passage

The key to using passages from repertoire for pedal practice in the early stages of learning to play pedals is to approach the process systematically. Working on passages like this will move your pedal playing along most quickly and lead to the most solid results.

As an example of how to analyze and practice a pedal passage, let us look at the Bach Pedal Exercitium. The opening of the piece is shown in Example 1. Through this much of the piece, and indeed for most of the rest of it as well, a pedaling in which the toes of the two feet alternate—an “alternate-toe pedaling”—is suitable. If the left toes play the first note, and the toes alternate from then on, the pedaling is very comfortable. Once a pedaling is set, then it is possible to practice the feet separately. This is often a good idea for learning any pedal part, even for experienced players. It is a crucial part of good practice technique for the early stages of learning pedal playing. 

The left-foot part of the opening of the Pedal Exercitium begins as shown in Example 2, and the right-foot part begins as shown in Example 3.

(I have written these as eighth notes. They should be played detached, since they represent sixteenth notes and, in effect, sixteenth-note rests in between the notes. Of course, the pedaling in which you use the same toes for successive notes creates detached articulation. If you keep your pedal touch light, the detached articulation will not seem choppy or artificial or abrupt. Move each foot from one note to the next with the small arc motion that you learned from the exercises above [see February and March issues]. Note that these right-foot notes would be staggered against the beat in the piece itself.)

Each foot’s part should be practiced separately—slowly, lightly, not looking at the pedal keyboard, bearing in mind all of the things that you have learned about foot position—until it feels comfortable. Then the two feet should be combined, that is, you should play the passage as written—all of the notes, still slowly and lightly. Work on a little bit at a time—a measure or two at first, then three or four measures. 

Later on in this piece there is a passage that requires a different sort of pedaling (see Example 4). With these notes it is not possible to use a consistent pattern of alternate toes. There is a common-sense pedaling that is probably appropriate musically and is certainly right when using the exercise for practice: right foot on the high notes, left foot on the low notes (see Example 5). 

With this pedaling the separate feet will play as shown in Examples 6 and 7. When the feet have been practiced separately for long enough that the passage feels comfortable, they can be put together. Notice that in this case, the intervals required of the right foot are quite normal: seconds, thirds, repeated notes. The left foot is challenged to play a very unusual and wide interval, a major seventh.

Later still in this piece is a passage that does not have an obvious common-sense pedaling (see Example 8). Assuming that for now we want to use this passage as an exercise in all-toe pedaling, a solution like that shown in Example 9 would work. In this pedaling, all the sharps and flats are played by the left foot. This will enable the left foot to remain forward and the right foot back when you put the two feet together and they have to cross one another. However, the feet should first be practiced separately, until each foot’s part is thoroughly learned.

The opening pedal solo from the Pachelbel D-minor Praeludium is a passage in which the pedaling is not completely regular, but is fairly straightforward. The passage with a pedaling sketched in is shown in Example 10. (The unmarked middle section can be played with alternating toes.) In beginning to practice the separate feet for this passage, notice that each foot goes fairly far in the “opposite” direction. Take this into account when planning for the tilt of the feet and other aspects of positioning and posture. 

The Bach Toccata and Fugue in F Major, BWV 540, has two very long pedal solos near the beginning. Both suggest extremely regular pedaling—alternating toes, starting with the right foot. (The last notes of the first solo probably constitute an exception to this.) The separate foot parts are easy to extract and to practice. Since the solos are long, it is best to use only a few measures at a time as exercises. One passage in the second solo requires the left foot to go extremely high indeed, and therefore requires a lot of attention to foot position. This passage looks like Example 11; the left foot part (assuming alternate toes) looks like Example 12. In practicing this left-foot part you must be extra attentive to foot and leg position. Many players will turn in such a way that the comfortable part of the left toe for playing these very high notes is the very outside edge, with the foot almost perpendicular to the floor. 

Ground rules

Let us recap the things to bear in mind when using pedal parts extracted from pieces as material for the early stages of learning to play pedals:

1) For working on toe-only pedaling, music written before about 1750 is an abundant source of material. 

2) For use as exercises, pedal passages should be broken up into fairly short segments: typically, increments involving about 25 or 30 notes per foot are suitable.

3) The first step is to decide on a pedaling. For the purpose under discussion here, any pedaling that feels comfortable is fine. (Of course it could well happen that later on, revisiting the same passage for the purpose of learning and performing the piece, you will want to approach the pedaling differently.)

4) Once you have worked out a pedaling, you will know what each foot’s separate part is. Practice each foot separately, noticing what intervals each foot travels through as it goes from one note to the next. 

5) This practicing should be kept extremely slow. If one foot’s part is not—in the context of the piece itself—rhythmically regular, then it is OK to practice it without a steady beat. Just practice the shape of the notes.

6) When each foot’s part is well-learned and comfortable, then it is time to put the two feet back together. At this stage you should observe correct rhythm, and keep the tempo slow enough that the notes come accurately and easily. You may have to change something about foot position in spots where the two feet come close together. If so, it is a good idea to practice the separate feet again briefly in those spots, taking account of the new choices about foot position, before putting them together again.

Mastering the exercises with which this chapter began, and then practicing—and also mastering—several pedal passages in this way will give you a strong and reliable sense of the geography and kinesthetics of the pedal keyboard: how to find notes. 

Playing with heels

The first step in becoming adept at playing pedal notes with the heels is to practice a type of simple exercise that allows the heels to play without asking them yet to find any notes from scratch or to do anything too complex. This involves finding a raised key—sharp or flat—with the toe, and playing adjacent notes with the heel. See Examples 13 and 14. These can be adapted easily to other similar groups of notes. In playing short patterns like this, observe the following:

1) When you play the first note (the raised key), if you relax your leg and foot, where does your heel naturally fall? What part of the heel? Is it over the next note that you want to play? If not, can you bring the heel to the desired key by turning the ankle, or is it necessary to change the position of the leg a little bit? 

2) What choice have you made about which part of the toe to use to play the first note? Could you change this? What difference would that make in going on to play the second note? 

3) Does the gesture of moving from the third note to the fourth feel different from the gesture of moving from the first note to the second (apart from its simply being in the opposite direction)?

4) Try playing the notes of the exercise lightly detached, as you have been doing with the toe-only exercises, but then also try making the notes fully legato. Even experiment with audible overlapping from one note to the next—though this may sound odd. Does this feel comfortable? Does it suggest anything different about foot or leg position? 

(To be continued)

Velocity I

This month and next I am writing about the quest to play fast: fast enough, faster than before, faster than the next person, fast and secure, fast and yet clear. This important thread runs through all aspects of learning to play music. It can also touch upon all sorts of insecurities and sensitive spots. Can I play fast enough? Will my soloist or the conductor insist on a tempo that is too fast for me—either one that feels wrong musically or one that I just plain can’t do? If I don’t play at least something—anything—fast, will listeners assume that I am not really in command of what I am doing?

No one’s self-esteem as a musician is ever undermined by the inability to play slowly enough. (Well, it rarely is. Perhaps this should happen more. Playing slowly effectively isn’t necessarily particularly easy.) But many of us worry whether we can play fast enough, either for what we want to do musically or for what we think listeners will expect of us. We also worry that if we choose a slower tempo for genuine musical/expressive reasons, people will assume we just can’t play it faster. We rarely worry that our listeners will assume that we can’t play more slowly.

Long ago I heard it recounted that Rachmaninoff had said that Alfred Cortot always decided that the really hard bits had to be played “expressively,” that is, slowed down. This was of course meant to be a withering criticism of Cortot: not only claiming that his keyboard facility was faulty when it came to velocity, but also claiming that his much-admired expressive playing was actually musically arbitrary, and just a way of covering up lack of skill. I have reacted to this by saying that often the hard bits are hard because they are musically involved and complicated, and maybe should be slowed down, for the listener’s sake as much as for the players. But not-fast-enough seems to open us to criticisms of this sort, and we often worry about it.

Fortunately this (like most things) can also be a source of humor. I recall a moment a long time ago when I was in the company of a fine young musician who was about to play in a youth orchestra concert. An older friend who was there clapped him on the back with a hearty “Play louder and faster than everyone else!”

As far as I can tell, conductors are not likely to be subjected to this sort of criticism if they are inclined to slow tempos. The physical gestures of conducting relate to the music and its speed in a different way. Also, keyboard continuo playing usually becomes actually easier as tempo goes up—assuming that the continuo part is being improvised by the player, or at least has been written by the player with the ultimate tempo in mind. This is because in general, the faster the tempo, the fewer notes or chords are needed in the continuo realization. (If the bass line itself is too difficult at a fast tempo, that can reverse this effect.)

Tempo and fingering

My decision to write about this subject comes specifically from a reader’s suggestion, in a recent e-mail, that a “discussion of fingerings that will work at faster tempos would probably be interesting.” This indeed seems to me to be a good point of entry into the topic. Is the quest to feel comfortable up-to-tempo—especially at fast tempos—best addressed at the point of choosing fingerings (and pedalings—though I am focusing mostly on manual playing here) or best addressed by process—that is, practicing, and specifically the pacing of work on tempo within practicing? The answer is “both.” But how exactly, and in what sort of proportions? Next month I will look at some specific passages and different fingerings, to try to address this aspect of the question directly.

There are different levels and types of playing “fast.” This is obvious, but worth noting. The act of getting notes right—and its important adjunct, which is having it feel comfortable or even easy—is almost always more likely the more slowly a passage is being played. That’s the fundamental fact of learning pieces: it’s why we start practicing passages slowly and then speed them up. For many pieces, speeding up will not take things past a comfortable level of velocity. For these pieces, that process will always work and is not really within the sphere of this discussion. If, however, the goal is to play a piece at a tempo that seems to tax what the player can do with velocity, then there can be different, perhaps more complicated issues. 

The question is how much continuity there is across these two areas. Is the process that we use to make a “normal” piece comfortable and reliable what we should also use to get something very fast—fast enough that the velocity alone makes it a challenge? How are these two processes related? The point of any normal systematic practice is to create predictability: that is, to make us feel certain, as we play the piece, that we know what is coming up. In “normal” situations, this predictability comes from a blend of things—so-called “muscle memory,” conscious familiarity with what is coming up in the piece (whether we are using notated music or not), and the ability to read ahead and combine memory with newly reviewed information. Fingerings and pedalings that have some logic to them or are simple or that use patterns of some sort can aid in this process.

Tempo and fingering

The key to playing fast is predictability. It is natural to believe that if we have trouble playing fast, it is because we just can’t quite move that fast. However, this is rarely the case. Most organ (and harpsichord) music doesn’t tax the physical ability of any player to move quickly. However, above a certain speed—which of course varies from person to person—the conscious elements of “knowing what’s coming next” simply can’t come into play: there isn’t time. The sources of rock-solid predictability that are below the level of conscious thought become more important.

Let’s take this one step at a time. How fast can you move your fingers? The most direct way to explore this is to drum your fingers on the table, the arm of your chair, or wherever is comfortable. That is, “play” five “notes”—away from any instrument—with the fingering 5-4-3-2-1. No beat, no timing: just drum those fingers as quickly and lightly as you can. Make sure that your arm is comfortable and that your wrist and fingers are not turned too much to either side. It is OK—even a good idea—to have your arm resting on whatever surface you are using. 

How fast do your fingers go in this exercise? You don’t need to come up with a number—just a sense of whether the velocity is greater than you are likely to need in playing music. It almost certainly is. See whether there is an appreciable difference between the two hands, either in how this feels overall or how fast you are able to move. There might be, but if one of them is slower, it is also probably still above the threshold of how fast you will ever need to move when playing.

Now try it the other way around: 1-2-3-4-5. This is no longer intuitive drumming on a table. It can feel a bit awkward, and the ceiling on velocity might be just a touch lower, but still comfortably above any real-life musical speed needs. It feels awkward in part because the thumb is more comfortable as a point of arrival than as a starting point: releasing the thumb almost infinitely quickly to go on to 2 is tricky. How does it feel if you just do four notes: 2-3-4-5? With just non-thumb notes, is the difference in feel between one direction or the other less noticeable? How about the difference between the two hands?

(5-4-3-2-1 drumming is basically the same gesture as closing your fist. However, 1-2-3-4-5 does not correspond to any naturally shaped hand gesture.)

Now try the same thing at a keyboard, (ideally an organ or harpsichord), so that you won’t be distracted by thoughts of dynamics. (If you are at a piano, play near the very top of the keyboard where the touch is lighter.) 

(Or whatever notes you want.)

See if you can let the fact that you are actually playing, not just drumming on a surface, not change the feel of what you are doing. Go through the same sequence of directions and hands. Predictability is at 100% through all of these slightly different ways of performing this exercise, but physical naturalness varies a bit. 

One next step in this exploration is to try up and down, or vice versa. That is, play (on the table at first) 5-4-3-2-1-2-3-4-5. Then do the same, but keep it going for a while, several times back and forth. Then try starting on the thumb: 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1-2-3, etc. Is it easier to do this ongoing repeated table-drumming starting on 5 or starting on 1? After the first pass through all of the fingers, they resolve into the same thing, except for perhaps an underlying sense of where the strong beats are—even though in the absence of a musical context there aren’t exactly beats. (For me personally doing this, taking only one pass at the notes, 5-4-3-2-1 is easier, quicker, and more natural than 1-2-3-4-5; the repeated drumming seems easier and faster when I start on 1 rather than on 5. This difference is more pronounced in my right hand than the left. But, again, the fundamental point is that as long as it is utterly predictable, the possible velocity of any of these patterns is greater than the demands of repertoire.)

Another thing to try in exploring predictability and comfort is using the same five fingers, each playing once, but changing the order. You should decide clearly on an order before trying to play and then do so as quickly and lightly as possible. This is meant to be the opposite of improvisation: do not take yourself by surprise. So try, say 1-5-4-2-3, or 2-4-5-1-3—or anything. But again, know before you trigger the five notes exactly what you want them to be. Try this both drumming on a table and poised over five adjacent notes on a keyboard. Try to let those two feel as similar to each other as possible.

As you play around with this, you will probably notice that one time or another through a non-adjacent finger pattern of this sort you will feel a tiny hesitation or notice that the overall speed is less than you thought it would be. If this happens, try to recognize the feeling of whatever it is that is introducing that hesitation. It is probably a split-second of uncertainty about what is supposed to come next. Go back to straight (5-4-3-2-1) drumming for a time or two, then make double-sure of what you want your non-adjacent pattern to be. (Perhaps you will notice a hierarchy of non-adjacent finger patterns as to how easy it is to make them as predictable as scalewise patterns. For me, 5-1-4-2-3 is not appreciably different in feel from 5-4-3-2-1, but I need to think and prepare a bit more to make 2-1-5-3-4, for example, feel that predictable.)  

Another useful variation is to plan and then play non-adjacent note patterns with adjacent fingers, for example:

(or any note pattern that you like).

You can take all of this through the stages described above: each hand, both directions, back and forth once, back and forth repeatedly. Just never do anything that you haven’t mapped out in advance; use predictability to make very high-velocity playing function easily.

So far, predictability has been achieved—and physical ease of movement preserved at the same time—by using patterns in which the hand maintains the same five-finger position throughout. A further step is simple gestures that involve moving the hand. Think of your favorite (for this purpose, easiest) such gesture. For a lot of us that is a scale with the traditional modern fingering: 1-2-3-1-2-3-4-5 in one direction and 5-4-3-2-1-3-2-1 in the other. Try playing this—just in one direction for now—with exactly the same feeling that you used for the five-note exercises. Know for certain in advance what you are planning to do and execute it as one very fast unmeasured gesture. 

There are intermediate practice techniques that you can use to prepare for this—for example, drumming on the table with 5-4-3-2-1-3 without changing the position of 3, or drumming 1-2-3-1-2-3-4-5, again without changing the position of the fingers on the table. Then 5-4-3-2-1-3, moving 3 over 1 for the last “note.” You can play around with this and invent new permutations, as long as the predictability, quickness, and lightness remain. ν

To be continued . . .

Organ Method VI

As usual, this month’s excerpt follows directly from the end of last month’s. It includes the most important practical parts of the beginning of work on pedal playing. It covers similar ground to the columns on pedal playing that I wrote several years ago, but in a way that is addressed to the student directly. In preparing this excerpt I have been reminded of the importance of explaining everything to the student in as thorough a way as possible—not simply saying “play this exercise because I tell you to: you’ll learn why later on.” This is especially true for a Method that will mostly be used by highly motivated adult students, and that may be used without a teacher. However, I also want to be sure that this thorough explanation is not cumbersome and does not make for heavy reading. I would appreciate reader feedback about this, as well as about anything else.

This stage—the introductory practicing described above—is extremely important, and you should spend enough time with it so that it becomes easy and natural, as if you had been doing it your whole life. Though it is simple—just two or three notes at a time, slow, unmeasured—it is actually the most significant step in learning to play pedals. Stay with it long enough to master it: if that occupies several hours of practice time, or if it spreads out over days or weeks, that is fine. This will save you time later on.

Playing pedal scales

When you are comfortable with this playing of small groups of adjacent notes, then you are ready for the next pedal exercise—longer groups of adjacent notes: those that we call scales. Or, really, one set of scales in particular. 

Find the note “A” nearest to where your left foot rests naturally. This is the lowest A on the pedal keyboard. Now play—slowly, lightly, and steadily—an A-natural-minor scale starting on that note. That is, the natural keys from that A up to the next A. Play the first four notes (A,B,c,d) with the left-foot toes, the next four notes (e,f,g,a) with the right toes. Observe all that you have already learned and practiced about foot position—make appropriate decisions about which way to tilt each foot, and how much to tilt it. Move from one note to the next in the kind of small, smooth arc that you have already practiced. 

Playing this scale this ways adds one new element: in the middle of the scale, going from d to e, you follow a note in one foot with a note in the other foot. Many students initially fail to move the right foot in close enough—that is, far enough left—and accidentally play an f instead of the e. If this happens to you, then be conscious of the need to move the right foot a bit farther left when it is time for that foot’s first note. Again, it is not important, and in fact not fruitful, to be too calculating about this. Just move the foot closer to where the correct note should be.  

You will notice that as the right foot moves in to play the e, the two feet need to avoid bumping into each other. This can be accomplished in a number of ways: tilting the feet enough; releasing one note early enough to allow the next note to be played cleanly; or playing the two notes at different places along the length of their pedal keys—one closer to the sharps and flats, one closer to you on the bench. This is (like choices about whether and which way to tilt the feet) an individual matter: each player has to devise a method that is effective and correct for him or her, since it can vary with the individual physique of the player. For example, the larger your feet are, the more you will have to work consciously to keep them clear of each other when they are playing notes that are close together. In general, separating the feet along the length of the keys—one forward, one back—is the approach that is the most certain to be effective. In the case of the two middle notes of this scale, try that separation both ways: left foot forward/right foot back, and right foot forward/left foot back. Is one of them more comfortable than the other? (Here in the middle of the pedal keyboard it is quite likely that both will be comfortable. This is not always the case elsewhere on the keyboard or in more complicated passages of music. Later on I will discuss approaches to figuring this out under various conditions.) How far do you have to separate them to feel sure about the feet not bumping into each other? How does it change the situation if you tilt the feet more or less, or to the other side? (In general if you are playing both feet off the big toe side, they are less inclined to bump into each other than if you are playing them off the little toe side). 

After you have practiced this scale going up, try it also going down. The technical issues are exactly the same.

To recap, in playing this A-natural-minor scale you are continuing to work on moving each foot over the distance that takes you from one natural note to the next, but through more of the keyboard, and you are beginning to experience the feeling of playing two adjacent notes with your two feet in succession. You are also continuing to notice carefully the position of each foot in all aspects. All of the distances between notes are, so far, the same. The next step, however, is to begin to introduce different distances, by changing the minor scale to a major one. Both of these scales/exercises are encapsulated in Example 1. (Note: The key signature in parenthesis means that the exercise should be played both with and without that key signature. For most exercises that I notate this way it is best to start with all-naturals, since any sharps or flats change distances and introduce irregularities, which are better dealt with after the regular pattern has been learned.)

It is important to stay with this set of scales until they all feel really solid—minor, major, up, down. It is also important not to allow this exercise to become particularly fast. The awareness of distance on the pedal keyboard that this sort of practicing is meant to develop will be imprinted on the brain more efficiently and more lastingly the more slowly you carry out the physical gestures. The half notes in this exercise should probably never get any faster than 60 per minute, and should certainly start much slower than that: as slow as necessary to allow accuracy and comfort.

Alternating feet

The next exercise is shown in Example 2. Each foot is in fact doing exactly the same thing that you have already been working on: moving up or down by step. The new elements are these: that the feet are interpolated with each other—so that you have to keep track of both feet at more or less the same time—and each foot moves farther away from its natural side of the keyboard than it did with the first exercise. The first of these differences is one that requires only good concentration. The second also requires that you plan properly for the turning of each foot and for the positioning of the feet with respect to each other as you move up and down the keyboard. As you go up the keyboard, the left knee, leg, and foot naturally move away from the bench; as you go down, the right knee, leg, and foot do so. Pay attention to this in making choices about tilting and other positioning of the feet. 

An absolutely secure sense of what the distance between two adjacent notes feels like—for the toes of one foot travelling from one note to the next through a small arc in the air above the keys—is the foundation of confident, accurate pedal playing. It is extremely important that you stick with the exercises that I have outlined thus far until they have become utterly well learned, easy, comfortable, natural, and automatic. As always, keep everything slow and relaxed, and don’t look.

Larger intervals on the pedals

The next step is, of course, to begin to move each foot over a distance greater than that from one note to the next. The first exercise for this is shown in Example 3. Here each foot takes a turn moving the distance of a third: the left foot on the way up, the right foot on the way down. Meanwhile, the other foot continues to practice what we have already learned. The correct way to begin to learn and internalize the feeling of moving the foot from one note to the note a third higher is this: simply tell yourself that you must move that foot a little bit farther than you moved it to go to the adjacent note. If this doesn’t work the first time—if you move your foot too little and only play the next note, or over-shoot to the third note or beyond—then correct the motion the next time by moving farther or less far. This way of thinking about it works. It is not necessary to try to analyze the distances more precisely than this: that will happen at a not-quite-conscious level, and trying to be conscious about it is distracting. It is necessary to avoid looking, and to avoid bumping the feet along the keys counting notes or otherwise trying to rely on physical cues. Simply move the feet from one note to the next.

Example 4 is a similar exercise with the roles of the feet reversed. As you practice each of these exercises, notice everything that you can about the alignment and positioning of the feet. For example, do you want to tilt either foot differently depending not just on what note it is playing, but on what note it is going to play next? On whether it is moving up or down? How is this (or anything else about posture or foot position) different between the “all natural” and the “three sharps” versions? Notice that in any exercise (or passage) in which the feet move across the body (left foot high, right foot low) it can be necessary to turn your body. At this stage it is a good idea to use your arms on the bench to brace yourself while turning, to the extent that this feels necessary or helpful. Later on, when putting hands and feet together in pieces of music, this is of course impossible. That will not turn out to be a problem: the need to do it will largely melt away with practice and familiarity.

Each of these last two exercises, and all similar pedal passages whether exercises or pieces of music, can be practiced with separate feet. In fact this can be quite important. It is physically analogous to practicing manual parts (or piano or harpsichord pieces) with separate hands. It differs from that musically in that the separate foot parts are less likely to make sense on their own. However, separate foot practice is an extremely efficient technique for learning pedal parts, and following the sometimes bewilderingly abstract separate parts is good listening practice, and good practice at concentrating. For Exercise III, for example, the separate left foot part starts like this: Each of the quarter notes is to be played detached—more or less as eighth notes, but precise counting is not necessary. Just make them as detached as physical comfort suggests. You can extract other single-foot parts from these and all other exercises and from pedal passages in the repertoire.

Practicing repeated pedal notes

Example 5 is an exercise for practicing repeated notes on the pedal keyboard. Notice that each foot separately is doing similar things to what it does in Exercises III and IV. The feet are moving in thirds and by step. However, the way in which the two feet are interpolated with each other is different, in such a way that it creates a repeated note pattern. The repeated notes, always played with different feet, will be detached, as repeated notes always are. Try varying the degree of detachment for the repeated notes—everything from as smooth as they can be while still repeating on time to as short as they can be while still allowing the pipes to speak. Also try various articulations for the notes that are not repeated. They can be slurred, which creates pairs of slurred notes, divided by the repeated notes, or they can be articulated in a way that exactly matches what you are doing with the repeated notes, or they can be played in any number of other ways. 

Once you have practiced these exercises until they feel easy and reliable, you are ready both to go on to a selection of pedal parts from pieces—ones that are appropriate to play with toes alone—and to begin to work on a few simple exercises for heel playing. I cannot stress enough that it is important to become fully comfortable with the exercises above before moving in these two other directions. In most pedal parts in the organ repertoire—including in hymns and other accompaniment situations—almost all of the notes are accounted for by each foot moving no more than the distance of a third. Of course there are larger intervals between feet. But something like eighty percent of the time, or a bit more, each foot moves by step, or by a third, or repeats the note that it just played. The comfort with moving each foot over these distances that these exercises develop is the foundation for learning pedal parts from the repertoire and in general for playing pedals securely. 

You the student can find appropriate pedal parts to work on as material for continuing to learn pedal playing. Almost any pedal line from a pre-1750 piece can be played by toes alone, and therefore can work as practice material at this stage. Here are a few suggestions to start you off—though the best passage to work on is one that you like and enjoy, or one which is part of a piece that you would like to learn in full later on:

J. S. Bach, Pedal Exercitium

J. S. Bach, Toccata and Fugue in F Major, long pedal solos

Johann Pachelbel, Praeludium in D Minor (Perreault listing 207), opening pedal solo

Dietrich Buxtehude, almost any pedal passage, especially from free (non-chorale based) works

Georg Böhm, Praeludium in C Major, opening pedal solo

Vincent Lübeck, pedal solos from any praeludium, especially those in C major and D minor.

Next month’s excerpt will discuss how a beginning pedal player should approach pedal passages such as these, and go on to the beginnings of heel playing.

Velocity II

Through the velocity exercises that I have outlined in last month’s issue, we have moved from the predictable 5-4-3-2-1 sequence to simple patterns, such as 5-1-4-2-3, or 5-4-3-2-1-3-2-1, which can be rendered predictable rather easily by studying them in advance. If predictability is the key to velocity, or the most important one, then one way to frame the quest to be secure and comfortable in playing fast is to ask how any passage can best be made fully and consciously predictable. This month I will continue to focus on looking at one-line passages.

Predictability 

The simple patterns that I suggested, beyond 5-4-3-2-1, were designed to be very easy to learn, where “learn” in this case means exactly the same thing as “make utterly predictable.” When we are dealing with pieces that are out there in the repertoire and that we haven’t concocted for this purpose, we have to do what we can to create this predictability for ourselves. This process can involve fingering choices and will always involve practice strategies and sometimes also various mental tips or tricks. 

I find it fruitful to approach this, in part, by building up from the little exercises of the sort that I wrote about last month. One way to make it possible to do this is to find ways of dividing passages into small, simple components. These components might then be sufficiently approachable as to predictability that they don’t feel that different from the simple exercises. Then the issue becomes, in large part, one of putting all of those components together without losing the predictability.

Dividing into components 

Example 1 shows the opening of J.S. Bach’s Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C, BWV 564, a useful laboratory for thinking about this. The two opening gestures, which we can assume are for the right hand, are very close to the kind of simple exercise that I have been presenting: more interesting musically, especially in the way in which they set up what follows, and a bit more complicated physically, but similar. You can come up with a straightforward fingering for each gesture and then execute it in the spirit of my procedure from last month. 

Once you know the fingering (maybe 1-3-5-1-5 for the first one, for example, or 1-3-5-1-4; maybe 1-2-4-1-5 for the second) you can practice that fingering on the table or the arm of your chair. Make sure that you have remembered exactly what you want to do before launching into actually doing it. Then do it in as fast a tempo, and as lightly, as you can. For this moment of practicing, it seems permissible to me to ignore the rhythm and just play five notes in a row, very fast and at the same pace as one another. Then do the same with those fingers at the keyboard. You have to add in the element of moving 1 and perhaps 5 to new (nearby) notes. This shouldn’t slow you down, again as along as you remember it very consciously before you do it. 

Notice, by the way, that the opening gestures of this piece work especially well for the right hand not just—or even mostly—because they are fairly high on the keyboard, but because the fastest notes are going down: the direction in which the right hand can take advantage of the closing-fist gesture that I discussed last month.

The gesture that begins measure 2 is longer. As he often does, Bach introduces technical elements in a way that is systematic enough that going through the passage from left to right is almost a sort of graded method. It will involve some moving or turning of the hand, one way or another, on the model of some of the latter exercises from last month. 

If you finger the first nine notes as 5-4-3-2-1-4-3-2-1, then the moment of most concern as to predictability is between the f and the e, between 1 and 4. This is a routine gesture in keyboard fingering, but for the moment the point is to make it seem extra- or hyper-routine. This can be addressed by practicing smaller units that cross this spot. Initially away from the keyboard, perhaps: 5-4-3-2-1-4, of course; but also just 2-1-4; then 3-2-1-4, and so on. Then try units that allow you to practice recovering from that moment of enhanced potential unpredictability: 3-2-1-4-3; or 2-1-4-3; or 2-1-4-3-2, and so on.

Again, all of this can start away from the keyboard with that sense of light, fast drumming on a table. It can also mean, at the drumming stage, to practice a bit at first without doing the crossings: just “playing” the fingers in the requisite order. Then of course it should be brought back to the notes themselves, always with the same process: make sure that you know exactly what you are going to do before you do it, then carry it out as fast as physically possible. 

What about the next grouping, beginning on middle c, just after the fourth beat of this second measure? The seven notes beginning on that middle c might as well be one of my exercises from last month. Fingered 1-2-3-4-3-2-1 or 2-3-4-5-4-3-2, that cluster of notes is as predictable as can be. But there is a transition coming right up. Adding the first two notes of measure 3 seems trivially straightforward if we use 1-2-3-4-3-2-1-2-1 for the nine-note pattern. The transition there is just a change of direction. But then we have to do something, perhaps 3-2-3 on the following three notes, or perhaps 2-1-2. Or we can go back and rethink things, perhaps changing the whole pattern to 1-2-3-4-3-2-1-4-3-2-1-2 or even 2-3-4-5-4-3-2-3-2-1-2-3. Which of these seems best from the point of view of seamless predictability? Which of the quite different transition points in these different fingers seems easiest to execute quickly and fluently?

Fingering and velocity

The last of these questions brings us to the matter of fingering choices as they affect velocity: that is, the question that I got from a reader and which provoked this set of columns. That question presents itself a bit differently for different musical textures. As long as there is one note at a time in a given hand, in theory the player has a free choice of any of the five fingers of that hand to play any note. And striving for speed is certainly not the only consideration in choosing fingering. In fact it is not often the main one, though it might sometimes be. However, it is always an available consideration, one that matters more or less in different circumstances. 

Concerning the gestures from this toccata that we have looked at so far, just for “getting the notes,” we could play every note with 3 (which I mention first because it is the longest and most balanced finger) or with any other finger. This is also true of the next several measures. Not that we would, of course. This would be the fingering that made it hardest to get comfortable going fast (among other disadvantages). It locates a transition moment between every two notes and is as far from drumming on the table as you can get. 

Probably the opposite—groupings that are as large as possible and that permit simply playing fingers in large groups rather than turning or moving the hand frequently—are the fingerings that physiologically permit the fastest playing. Fingerings that have many transition points—including, sometimes, more than would be strictly necessary, most likely for interpretive reasons—give the player more to think about and therefore have to be analyzed and practiced that much more to achieve flawless predictability. The lesson of last month’s exercises, however, is that no gesture of this sort is beyond the threshold of how fast any of us can move our fingers. 

Here are several ways of fingering the first nine notes of the gesture that begins measure 4:

a) 5-4-3-2-3-2-1-2-3

b) 5-4-3-2-3-2-1-2-4

c) 5-4-3-2-3-2-1-3-4

d) 5-4-3-2-5-4-3-2-3

e) 5-4-3-2-5-4-3-2-4

f) 4-3-2-1-4-3-2-1-3

g) 4-3-2-1-4-3-2-1-2

h) 3-2-1-3-4-3-2-1-2

i) 3-2-1-3-4-3-2-1-3

j) 3-2-1-4-5-4-3-2-3

Try going through each of these and evaluating the easiness—naturalness, potential for predictability, as best you can assess it—of each of the transition points. (I have indicated them by bold italics.) Not all of these fingerings would seem to make any particular sense in the context of the whole passage. (The last three don’t since you are coming from below and not going any higher.) But they are part of an experiment. You may discover that they all seem more or less equal in the respect that we are talking about. Or you may find some of the transition points decidedly easier than others. This will depend in part on your training and habits and in part on the shape of your particular hand. Never forget that your unique hand matters: if your fifth finger is relatively short, for example, you might find c) quite awkward; if your second finger is significantly shorter than your third you will probably find b) meaningfully easier than a). How do the relative lengths of fingers 1, 2, and 3 affect the feeling of executing d) as opposed to e)? If your fourth finger is quite short, you will probably find g) easier than h).

There are several layers to what is going on here. First of all, you can move your fingers over all these notes and through any of these transition points as fast as this or any piece will require you to. (That is the lesson of last month’s exercises and the central point of all of this.) Second, if one way of planning a transition point—one fingering—seems easier than others, it is worth considering using that. Third, however, it is also often true that some ways of executing these transitions are more suitable musically/interpretively than others—that is, more like what you want to hear. For example, here are some things that the above fingerings will tend to accomplish in performance:

a) easy to play legato seamlessly

b) puts an automatic subtle articulation before the note on the second beat of the measure

c) seamless like a), but sets you up to proceed differently

d) puts an automatic subtle articulation before the “and” of the first beat

e) combines the articulations of b) and e)—and so on.

Placement of sharps and flats can determine which transition-moment fingerings will likely work best—or, sometimes, which are really awkward or would be nearly impossible at high speed. For example, if the b-naturals in this excerpt were b-flats, then fingerings a), b), and c) would be close to impossible—let’s say disastrously awkward. The b-flat would also affect the relative awkwardness/naturalness of d) and e), of f) and g), or of h) and i). This will all vary from one person’s hand to another’s. And, again, this is really about velocity. At a slow enough tempo, even the thumb-on-a-flat fingering of a), b), or c) could be carried out successfully, though it might have implications for articulation. The differences between the members of those other pairs of fingerings would be minor or nothing at a slow speed.  Also, if the first note of the measure were an f-sharp rather than an f-natural, that might bring the last three fingerings into play for some people, since the third finger is longest and can reach raised keys the most easily and in the way that creates the best hand position. 

So far I have been talking about playing fairly short passages very fast and light, using the feeling of drumming on the table, and never playing more than you can plan out and remember in advance. One very good way of incorporating this idea into the practicing of longer passages is a particular form of practicing with altered rhythm. I wrote about this in some detail in the column of May 2012. I quote the most relevant part here, with a couple of examples:

Another format for altering rhythms to create effective targeted practice strategies involves speeding up not one note at a time (every other note, as above) but clusters of notes. The classic way of organizing this is to play first all of the notes after each beat very fast, ending on and then holding the next beat, then to play all of the notes starting on each beat very fast, ending with the last off-the-beat note of each grouping. The template for doing this works as follows. For a set of notes written like Example 2, you would first play as shown in Example 3, with the notes under each slur played as fast as possible, and the notes under the fermatas held as long as necessary to feel ready to play the next cluster of fast notes; then Example 4.

In this case, the notes under the slurs should again be played as fast as possible. Then the last note of each grouping can be held until it feels comfortable to execute the next cluster of fast notes.

In applying this to practicing passages of the sort that we are talking about here, once you have fingered them and analyzed the transition spots, you can relax the evenness of the groupings. Just make sure that the short fast bits cover the transition moments and overlap with one another so that you are not creating moments where you have trained yourself to stop.

In next month’s column I will continue this topic and add some discussion of multi-note or multi-voice textures, along with a few special details, like the relationship of velocity to fingering in early music.