Secret to Playing FAST Scales - RELAXATION

[Music] hey everybody give me two minutes i want to show you a simple concept and exercise to go with it that i guarantee you will instantly begin to transform your playing of scales and melodic lines regardless of your level beginner to pro scout's honor stick around hey welcome to darma jazz so today i want to talk about what the obstacle to playing fast actually is the obstacle to speed with scales and lines isn't that we're not strong enough or fast enough studies have shown don't ask me for the footnotes i read it somewhere that a normal person can wiggle their fingers pretty much as fast as even a professional pianist so the problem isn't sort of the way the hands are built or something like that it's that we have too much tension in our hands a kind of tension that impedes what we're playing so this exercise is designed to just weed out unnecessary tension it's really simple but it's deceptively challenging even maybe especially if you've been playing for 20 30 40 years and i've hung on to some i say bad habits we've taught scales to students or you may notice when you're practicing sales your fingers are doing things like this it's really obvious in super young students when they're just starting out they just it can be a challenge to just put your fingers in the right places and as teachers a lot of us have let them get away with it oh they'll eventually get it well the problem is they don't eventually get it and they carry that into adulthood this kind of thing i see it all the time i see it on youtube channels of otherwise good teachers cats with great harmonic ideas melodic ideas and just honestly a little bit of sloppy technique that can be cleaned up really easy and i know it would just improve their their playing as once i started working on this instantly cleaned up a lot of my lines problems i was having executing just simple melodic ideas all that kind of stuff is cleaning it up even though i'm still bobbling a bit but so let's just dig in here so we've all seen this playing a scale and we're people are the student or us we're doing this and we're trying so we're trying to get around and our fingers are just a jumble it's a mess or playing with like super flat fingers and before you say oh yeah but what about monk and stuff i would say yeah well what about bill evans and keith jarrett and chick korea and gonzalo rubicaba and these great technically proficient pianists uh you know virtuoso pianist that do have because they're classically trained they've got that that technical thing down you watch these guys watch their hands in those videos they're not all flat finger sloppy fingers up in the air you know so let's just take that off the table so here's the fix for that the issue is tension let's get rid of the tension all right so it's a five just the five finger exercise one through five and we're just to play it by keeping all of the fingers in contact with the keys that's all there is to it simple you think but watch you're doing this and i know you're going to be like oh shoot a finger goes down and then one pops up and okay you got to get it back down and it oh there where's that pinky where'd that come from this is going to happen it's part of it so every time a finger comes up that's not being played that's tension in that part of the hand that's grabbing part of all of this connective tissue that's slowing things down so let's make those other fingers that are not actually playing notes inert so here's the this is in three three steps two let's say a preparatory step the exercise and then it's kind of an advanced thing if we need to if we want to get an extra level of articulation so the first part of this in weeding out tension is getting just deliberate control over the motions of the fingers so i'm going to put a metronome on and we're going to make each click is going to be on or off and it's up [Music] up down up down [Music] up [Music] okay when you can do that when you've got control and you can do that then leave all the fingers on the keys if you can do this right away and you've got all your fingers on your keys and this is happening already just turn off the video and go watch something else because you got it and not a big deal click like subscribe sign up to the mailing list and then leave the video okay but if you're still fingers are up in the air just keep that slow keep this slow [Music] until you bump up the clicks you know bump a few clicks up after you got it you're going to get it that was at 60 let's say so we're at 60 and then you go to 65 70 all that kind of stuff making sure that your wrist is level and as the fingers come up be careful that they don't flatten out when they come up you want to keep hitting on that magic sweet spot not right on the tip the skin's too thin there we bruise our fingers we've learned that by now there's a little pad there but not fingerprints no fingerprints so right on that little pad right there and the and think of the joint coming from here when that finger comes up all right not just this you don't want to bend back too far let the whole finger kind of counter lever out sort of bird beak style right keeping a curve in it gentle curve and then with the thumb you don't want to hit this knuckle obviously remember i know we're going longer than two minutes but believe me this will improve your life i guarantee it we want to hit on that same sort of shoulder of the joint right of the finger right there huh middle finger straight up boom again think of the joint moving from here fourth finger this is tough i know don't force it to try to get too deep up there just let it clear the key that's all you're going to get away with just because the way the hand is constructed and the pinky can come up in the air back down pinky don't let it flare out flat just try to do the same motion with the other fingers and then as you as that feels comfortable [Music] then all fingers on the keys all right so like four times there what i would suggest is rotate do the other hand four times and then move to another combination so we want to cover all the black white combinations now some of them are repetition so we don't have to do them all for instance we don't have to do c and g because they're all white white white white white white combinations right so we're not we're not we're not going to do g we don't have to do a and d because they're white combinations with a black note in the middle with the same geometric shape as the a right so we don't have to do both of those likewise we don't have to do a flat and d flat because they're the same geometric combination two blacks a step two blacks two blacks a step two blacks right so we don't have to go crazy with this but we do want to get all the other black white combinations so we're going to do a b-flat black here all right now using all those different black white combinations will make our fingers have to raise in different sort of proportions to each other and when we're playing music we do that anyway here's a cool like like workout routine way to do it so earlier i said you don't have to do there's some that double up and they're the same shape but for the sake of just like hitting autopilot and focusing on the the technique but also making sure we got some time to build some consistency with this i like to do the kind of dokhnayi patterns if you play the dok9y patterns finger exercises different levels and things he'll take a simple pattern and he'll modulate every or switch hands every major third so that means you go to the major third you switch hands major third switch hands major third switch hands etc and then pretty soon you're back where you started so you get all 12 starting points all 12 chromatic starting points in both hands with a bit this is really important a built-in rest interval between each hand now if you were so let me just demonstrate that so put the metronome on where you're at as far as being able to execute perfectly and if you're coming up in the air if you're noticing that back off the tempo make sure you're playing cleanly so we do let's see four times a half step up a half step make sure to keep clear of the black keys don't get up and lost in the canyons at e i switch hands all right 4 times 4 times 4 times 4 times g sharp back to c now on the left hand e in the right hand and g sharp on the left hand and then i'm back home to see get it so we get all that repetition built in we can kind of turn our part of our mind off and just launch into some gentle warm-up stuff to get things moving in a really helpful way so what we know is speed always comes with repetition and that works in our favor and it also works against us because when we get used to playing something it starts to go faster it just does we've all felt that and what happens is if it's a longer phrase or a longer piece there are parts of it that are learned or absorbed into the hands quicker than others so those parts want to go lickety-split and then the parts that we don't have at that same level we're going to stumble there and so we're practicing mistakes so be mindful that just because in one key feels comfortable and it feels good don't just let it speed up rely on that metronome to keep you honest keep in the pocket when you get the gist of this when you like you get the core of it the crux of the biscuit as frank says then you will notice everything else everything else involving linearity in your playing is going to improve chords too cause well that's another episode that has to do with voicing chords and having control over the various colors inside the cord right so that's the key to playing fast scales it's not tried and play fast it's weeding out the tension speed will come with repetition i guarantee it please like subscribe follow share and comment let me know what you think take care everybody see you soon hey don't go away just yet check the description below for a link to my free ebook the scale workout checklist that's a powerful practice plan for mastering scales for improvisation thanks for watching and happy practicing you

Channel: Dharmajazz

Views: 850,172

Keywords: how to play fast scales, how to play faster, piano technique, play piano fast

Id: SoGdohMhlm0

Length: 13min 11sec (791 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 05 2021