Everybody's afraid of octaves. I'm afraid of octaves. Octaves. Two notes, 12 semitones apart. You know 'em, you probably don't love them,
but they are a cornerstone of piano technique from the most expressive music
to the most fiercely virtuosic. And no matter where you find them
in the repertoire, from Mozart to Liszt, They are notoriously tricky
for pianists to play. I would say that in all of my years
of taking piano lessons, octaves inspire some of the most diverse... or you could even say
controversial opinions from teachers. I've heard lots of different tips
and tricks. For example, alternate between the fourth
and the fifth finger. Never use the fourth finger at all. Aim towards the pinky.
Aim towards the middle of the hand. Make a sacrifice to the sun
god and hope for the best. Don't worry, there's not some big octave
conspiracy going on. But they do present a lot of different
kinds of challenges, which require a lot of different kinds of solutions
for different situations. And that's not to mention the fact that
I personally have gigantic banana hands. So actually reaching the octave
has never been a huge problem for me. Whereas for people with smaller hands,
it presents a specific set of issues. Freedom and looseness of the arm
is imperative for octaves, but overstretching
the wrist is not necessary. So how do we deal
with all of this information? We will get to that momentarily. But before we do, I want to remind you all
to SMASH that subscribe button. We are getting closer and closer
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and share it with someone who you think might be interested. Perhaps your piano playing friends, Your piano students
who are struggling with octaves. Or maybe your frenemy rival
in the practice room next to you who's been playing that one part of the Heroic
Polonaise one too many times. I'm Robert Fleitz from Tonebase. And today I've pulled together
the thoughts of several Tonebase artists who are giving us their opinions
on how to practice and think about octaves from the very fundamentals to how it's
applied in actual pieces of repertoire. Specifically, Liszt's La Campanella
and the Schubert Wanderer Fantasy. Speaking of Tonebase,
the full version of all of these lessons and much,
much more is available on the Tonebase Premium Platform. Tonebase now has this really cool new feature called the Personalized Practice
Plan feature, where you take a little quiz, answer
a few questions about your current level and your current interests and struggles,
and then Tonebase will actually come up with a personalized set of piano lessons
just for you, addressing exactly the things that you're struggling with
and that you want to improve with. I myself have taken this quiz and found several Tonebase videos
that were really helpful to me as well. You can check out more about Tonebase premium at the link
in the description below or right up here. So without further ado, let's get going. We have to realize that
when we play an octave, many people are taught to play an octave
by forming the octave in the air. And in a certain logic system
this makes sense. Like if your brain says, Well, if I form that octave in the air,
I'm less likely to miss it. But what's interesting
is that the more you stretch to open the opposing set of muscles
actually pulls back. So try opening your hand as much
as possible and you'll feel in that moment where you open as much as possible,
you will feel tension. And what that tension is,
is actually the opposing set of muscles telling you you can't go any further
and it pulls in the opposite direction. But it's very interesting
that when we have something else open us, our hand can open passively. Meaning if I take two fingers of my left
hand, the second finger on my thumb, and I position my second
finger on five of my thumbs together, I can use my left
hand to open up my right hand. The moment I do that, I have no experience
of stretching in my right hand. So you can see
that if you related to the instrument as something that naturally opened up
the hand, you would arrive on the keys in a way that you don't have tension
if you're thinking already in the air to form the octave, everything behind
that, those fingers are tight. One thing that can really help you,
especially if you have small or medium sized hands, is to really focus on releasing any feeling of stretch
between the chords. Now I'll show you this
at a very slow tempo. So you see what I mean? So I'm going to do it at an octave, but you can do it at any interval. Now. I open up to play the octave. Then when I come up, I raise my wrist and because my wrist is relaxed,
my hand relaxes completely and you see how it actually closes
back into its neutral position. So when we're playing really slowly, we can come back
to that and then just open out again. It's not
a conscious feeling of closing up, it's just opening out and then coming back
to your normal position. If I'm faster, it closes in a tiny bit,
but not as much as for the slower octaves. We saw octaves the top note in the right
hand is typically going to be much, much more important. Pinky is king 99% of the time. My thumb is very light. You want to think about 70
to 80% of your energy being on the pinky. Now, I'm not saying again, pushing
and kind of exerting force and and more. I'm talking about leaning
and using your weight. You don't even need
to be near the piano to do this if you just sit elevated and let your elbows
hang close to your sides, you just snap the wrist back like you're
summoning the energy up, down, up, down, up, down. And you get used to the idea of just up. And it doesn't matter what know. I'm just getting used to relaxing the energy out that I've summoned up that energy. You could do that
if you need to just get used to that. One thing that I learned
that was incredible and I couldn't do octaves
because my hands were like, this. And it was Adele Marcus who said, Curl your second finger. When you curl your second finger
when you drop. Not only does that avoid tightness, it relaxes the hand
and it opens the hands. Just try it. Just just put your hands up like that. So the second finger,
when you get more spin, that opens your hand because you're
pointing everything out that way. And that's a wonderful trick. It's not even a trick. It's just it seems natural now. Any time I drop into and off of my second fingers curled,
it feels strange at first to do that. But after a while it's where it wants to go
because you're concentrating on the weakest part of your hand. That pinky. Finally,
the most notoriously difficult passage maybe of the 19th century, notoriously difficult now to play the octave, you have to be very short on the key, not not sinking into it, but so I would practice and you feel your whole arm travel with each octave. A little side note about octaves to find your perfect octave shape. Put the palm of your hand on the crown of your head, and you see this openness here
that's what you want behind the octave for me. I put only in the left hand
for on the on the black key, which
actually shifts my hand kind of this way. And I think that's key for getting across. My hand is sort of angled this way, at least until I get back to the way and. Each group of six octaves is one movement, one overall move out of your elbow and forearm and so the way you think about it, you only think half a measure at once. You, under any circumstances,
do not think of each octave by itself because you'll die and everybody will die
and we will all die. We have to make our brain think in bigger chunks. We need to make our brain pretend that we just play. This is the only way you can say, okay, I'm
going to survive this. You can say to yourself,
I am actually going to have a powerful right hand
and I'm going to nail all my repetitions. Thanks for joining us today
on this journey into one of the most fundamental elements
of piano technique. I hope you ATE it right up. Get it? (8ve = octave lol) Don't forget to check out Tonebase
Premium, where you can find the full version
of all the lessons that were sampled today, as well as many other lessons
on the topic of octaves, piano fundamentals
and great works in the piano repertoire. You can find out more at the link
in the description or right up here. Be sure to subscribe
so that you can stay up to date with all of the wonderful piano content
that we have coming up for you. If you made it this far into the video,
you are a SUPERSTAR! And I thank you very much for that. Again I'm Robert Fleitz from Tonebase and
I look forward to seeing you next time. See ya! :)
