I am learning this piece at the moment and I don't think I'm progressing very well.
Could you tell me how I should pracitce this piece, it is very difficult.
I can play at the correct tempo but I cannot play the piece accurately, for example I keep missing the D flat in bar 8. I've been working on this piece for two months now.
Any advice for this piece is welcome.

This is our pet piece. We know it's difficult

You should really first search the forum archives before asking an open question like this. There have been several threads about how to practice this etude.

Hi Hunwoo,

Yes Chris is right in that there are many threads talking about this piece, I just search all the Chopin entries on the forum. It seems however, that most of them are by experienced pianists as none give the level of adivce I think you are asking for.

I am in the position of just beginning this piece. Firstly, have you read Chuan C Chang's book on piano technique? I tried Etude 10:1 last year, only to give up on the first bar thinking "there is no way I could ever play this". Then I learnt about the chord attack, parallel set and gravity drop methods after reading the book over Christmas, and attempted the piece again.

I found that by practicing each bar on it's own, using the chord attack for every note, and learning the right hand with my left when the right got tired, I suddenly could make my hands stretch the full distance.

There are some bars where the chord attack does not seem to be working. The F-major arpeggio in bar 11 is troubling me, as I can't get the strech to work between fingers 4 & 5. Any advice to share on this?

I found a good method was to learn for each arpeggio when to pivot the hand to a new position. For the first 10 bars (upward runs), you pivot between the 1st and 2nd notes. FOr the F-maj arpeggio in bar 11, you pivot on between the 2nd and 3rd notes.....though I could be wrong - any better pianists have any suggestions?

FInally, for the lucky 10 weeks I had piano lessons from a Maltese student at the Royal College of Music, Manchester, UK, she taught me this method where you play slowly, and lift the fingers up high and really thump down as hard as you can on the notes, then do the same really softly and quietly, then staccato, then reapeat this a few times. THat really helped me with the G major arpeggios and gaining strength in the 4th finger.

OK Questions for you expert pianists out there.....
Do you find that if you go over a certain spped, your brain 'blacks out' and you cannot see the notes any more and the whole piece just goes to pot. I find that with the Chopin Etude
And I try and be relaxed liked Chuan Chang suggests - but I find that after playing this piece through just once, my right arm feels like it wants to fall off! How do you stop this happening?

Please help - Hunwoo and I desparetely want to play this piece well!

Best Regards,

Isaac

Well I'm getting better at this piece now .
Always practice slowly.
If your speed is faster than your limit, then you are not practicing right.
And yes, my brain does "black out" if I play faster than I can (even by a little)

welcome to the club, I hope you can stay with us and posting more recordings....

I am no expert here but can give you my guidelines in reply to your topic...


I found a good method was to learn for each arpeggio when to pivot the hand to a new position. For the first 10 bars (upward runs), you pivot between the 1st and 2nd notes. FOr the F-maj arpeggio in bar 11, you pivot on between the 2nd and 3rd notes.....though I could be wrong - any better pianists have any suggestions?

2nd and third, if you have short fingers please use third or others what ever fits the flow.
accentualte some note with practice.

FInally, for the lucky 10 weeks I had piano lessons from a Maltese student at the Royal College of Music, Manchester, UK, she taught me this method where you play slowly, and lift the fingers up high and really thump down as hard as you can on the notes, then do the same really softly and quietly, then staccato, then reapeat this a few times. THat really helped me with the G major arpeggios and gaining strength in the 4th finger.

I work this with slow F playing WITHOUT lifting fingers, but lifting is required when necessary.
Use gravity last, when finger strengths IS GAINED.

OK Questions for you expert pianists out there.....
Do you find that if you go over a certain spped, your brain 'blacks out' and you cannot see the notes any more and the whole piece just goes to pot. I find that with the Chopin Etude
And I try and be relaxed liked Chuan Chang suggests - but I find that after playing this piece through just once, my right arm feels like it wants to fall off! How do you stop this happening?

Please help - Hunwoo and I desparetely want to play this piece well!

I dnt suffer black out, pehaps, sore finger safter excessive. tranining which is carfully planned.


Good luck and ready for a continious heat session

I'm not an expert either but I think you play faster than you can visualize. (I believe in the come back of horowitz in NY he had that with some octave playing) I have that in un sospiro at page 6. hate it. will work today on it hopefully it will get better tomorrow.

I worked on this one with my teacher for a (short) while and one of her suggestions, which is apparently a common practice in Russian piano teaching, was to practice with chords. For example, you play the first RH notes not as

c - g - c - e - c ...

but as

c - gce - c ...

and then of course the variations like

cg - ce - cg ...

and

cgc - e - cgc ...

This seems to be really good as it stretches the hands even more cruelly. I must admit not having followed up on it. Just passing it on

I spent several good years of my life on this piece, I don't want to see it or hear it ever again!

Look up posts of PJF . I wrote verbosely on the subject at hand.

Good luck and don't go crazy trying!

Pete

Thanks for all the replies everyone.

I searched the internet for books or essays on Chopin's etudes. Other than the short documents I found on this site, I found a site by a pianist Alan Kogosowski.

www.kogosowski.com

There is a book which he sells which has a description of all the 27 etudes, in great detail it seems. He only had a sample on the website, the first 2 etudes, though I like the practical advice it gave.

Has anyone read the rest of his book? Is it worth buying? Has anyone ever heard any playing by this guy?

Thanks in advance

I have not read this but regarding the Chopin etudes, Malcolm Kandzia wrote a study guide for me on both the op.10 and op.25 which I have published on this site under "Publications".
Op.10 - http://pianosociety.com/cms/index.php?section=631
Op.25 - http://pianosociety.com/cms/index.php?section=632

SLOW RELAXED PRACTICE!

your totally right. It works very well and yes its russian. I have 2 russian teachers and they all do that. I thinks its very very important to practice like this

Interestingly enough, I just started learning this piece as well! My goal is to eventually learn all of Chopin's etudes. The key (i find) to learning difficult pieces includes the following steps:

1) Listen to the piece several times and look at the sheet music while you're doing this.
2) Analyse the piece. For this one I broke it up into 39 separate sections of 2 bars each. Usually you'll find several sections appear more than once.
3) Take each separate section and practise it REALLY SLOWLY for maybe 10-15 mins. This will allow you to learn the notes and practise using new finger muscles. Once you've done this, take a break for a while. Repeat as many times as needed, gradually building up speed and getting the two bars perfect. You can spread this out over 2-3 days so you won't get bored. Get each section perfect before moving on.

Hope this helps; I've been doing it for about 2 weeks and I can play the first page perfectly so it worked for me...

I'm doing pretty well with this piece.
I might record my self and post it on Audition room once I get my Grand Piano I waited for so long.