Well i think it is called Glissandos, i think its when you use fingers 1 and 5 to slide up the keys real fast or something like that, i find that impossible to do without hurting your fingers! How do you practice something so painful!

Do it with your nails! Don't use your fingers. Than it will work without pain.

Yeah, ask your teacher how to do it if you have one.
Anyway, always use the nail.

For right hand glissandos going up, use the nail of the middle finger.
For right hand glissandos going down, use the nail of the thumb.
For left hand glissandos going up, use the nail of the thumb.
For left hand glissandos going down, use the nail of the middle finger.

That's how I do it.

If you mean using 1 and 5 at the same time, it's gliding octaves, glissandos in octaves. That's hard.

what do you do when you use fingers 1 and 5? my nails are too short

Watch Hamelin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBygW-3f ... in%20Liszt

Somewhere near the cadenza he made you see him doing that. Watch carefully what exactly he does...

Don't know myself. Never tried glissandos with 1 and 5 at the same time.

i cant say anything about using one and five (try another fingering lol im unhelpful)..but sometimes you cant just use your nails...e.g. i had to play a piece that had a gliss from the top black note coming down...i did it quite comfortable by useing the side of my index finger (on the flesh bit)...yeh, sure it hurt a bit at first but practise is everything! no seriously! i developed a bit of a callouse (not sure if thats how u spell it) so that it didnt hurt! ...blisters or bleeding is bad, so at first when practising, dont go too many time yet!

for many years now I have been working on the glissando of Beethoven`s opus 53 in
the last movement (the thing is ...to make the C major scale with both 1 and 5)
I still don`t feel confident on my results Could some one give me some help on this particular piece ???:D

Sometimes, if I've had too much caffeine, I play the descending octaves at the end of Chopin's "Black Key Etude" as a glissando. I can't do it on a concert grand, only on my little baby grand and only if my hands are sweaty; although I don't think that's good for the piano's action or my poor fingers.

Is there a piece that uses such octave glissandos?

Pete

PJF wrote:

Is there a piece that uses such octave glissandos?

Pete

I think one of Liszt's hungarian rhapsodies has a few runs up and down the keys.

I don't know of any downward octave glissandos. These would be extremely hard to play with the RH so I doubt that Beethoven meant these runs as a glissando.

The only upward octave glissando I know is the one in Islamey. None in the Liszt rhapsodies, though plenty of single ones, up and down, in nr. 8, and also in both hands in contrary motion, bit of a novely there.

So it wasn't a Liszt Rhapsodie. Hmm I recall a piece here on the site (I think Steven Kopp was playing) and it was called "something Fireworks" but now I cant find it.

I tried an octave glissando on a Steinway-D. It's ridiculously difficult. At this point, Islamy would be a futile endeavor. Maybe I'll try that one in another life.

Would be Debussy's Feux d'artifice. No octave glissandos here, but one on black and white keys simultaneously, playes with both hands. You don't see these often either (Britten's Holiday Diary has some too).
The chord glissando in Ravel's Alborada del Gracioso are very hard as well.

Chord glissando? Was Ravel crazy? I'd have to wear gloves so as not to blister my fingers. That "chromatic glissando" in Feux d'Artifice is my favorite moment in Debussy's music. It sounds totally foreign.

I wonder, can anyone think of something that hasn't been done on the piano? I know of fists, elbows or even whole arms being used to play huge chunks of keys in some contemporary music. Another weird thing is putting screws in between the piano wires to create ringing overtones. (That was done for the soundtrack of the movie "Grizzly Man".)

How about tuning a piano in quarter-tones? Twenty-four keys to an octave? That's something George Crumb would do!

Pete

Well chords... they're only thirds, but even so, yes it is quite painful if the keys are not very light.


What about the piece of cardboard prescribed for the Hawthorne movement of Ives' Concord Sonata ! Use to press about 30 keys at a time. sometimes black, sometimes white. A really weird effect.


Earlier this year I attended a demonstration on a microtone piano. It was really weird, the pianist running up and down the (normal) keyboard producing sound waves covering only 2 octaves. This guy (Dutch pianost Maarten van Veen) is really good in this kind of thing. Must take enormous concentration to play this sort of thing.