HOW TO PLAY CHROMATIC THIRDS ON THE PIANO // Simple Practice Methods To Improve Your Third Passages

Hi everyone, this is Danae, and today's video is going to be all about how to practice minor thirds. Now, I have made a video in the past about major thirds, and of course many exercises are going to be similar, but I have gotten a couple of requests to do a video on how I practice minor thirds as well, so here it is, and if you're interested in seeing my exercises for minor third passages, then keep on watching. So first of all, before I do any of the exercises that break the passage up into little bits, I play through the thirds very slowly and really emphasize the legato. I find it so helpful whenever I have third passages to really exaggerate the legato, especially when I'm playing them slowly, because I find that this really ties the fingers together and kind of prevents getting entangled and getting any knots, so to speak, in my fingers, and I find that this really gets my fingers to know where they have to go. So I do a run-through of the passage extremely slowly and really emphasize the legato wherever I can. I really make sure that both voices are playing legato and wherever I have a finger repeating itself, so for example, if I have thumb-thumb and I obviously cannot play the legato, I try to do the closest possible thing, so I really lift the key and then immediately play the other one. So, emphasize the legato. I focus on finger independence. Whenever you have thirds, no matter what it is, major thirds, minor thirds, or any type of interval where you have to play fast passages, you want the two voices to be extremely independent from each other. So I basically isolate one voice and repeat each note of that voice twice, while the other voice is playing legato like in the previous exercise. I turn this around and play the other voice with the repetitions, while the other voice is playing legato. Exercise is pretty similar. Again, I will be playing one voice legato and the other one staccato, but this time I'm going to be playing it overly, a little bit faster, and only playing the voice once, so without repetition. However, one voice is going to be staccato and the other one legato. Again, this simply ensures finger independence and it really makes sure that your fingers know exactly which note belongs to which voice, because you want to make sure that those fingers really blindly come together and know where they have to go. Then again, I turn this exercise around and play the other voice legato and other voice staccato. Now, once I've done that and I feel that the voices have become independent from each other, I completely isolate them and play them separately. Of course, using the fingering that I would in the thirds, I play the upper chromatic voice and the lower chromatic voice in the correct fingering. When I play through that voice again, whenever the fingering requires a repetition, for example thumb thumb, I try to imitate the feeling of legato as well as I can. In the next exercise, I practice the transition from interval to interval. So I start with the first third and play to the second and I really make sure that this feels very legato. Then I go from the second third and play to the third and so on. And here I try to really engrave in my brain how the transition feels from 1-5 to 2-4 or how the transition feels from 2-4 to 2-3 and I really try to remember the feeling so that when I put it all together, I remember what it feels like and it is easier for me to get there. The next exercise is the continuation of the previous one. Again, I focus on transitions, but this time I will add one more interval. So I'm always practicing three intervals at a time. After that, I will practice four slow and four fast intervals and alternate those until I go through the entire passage. So I start with four slow ones, then I do four fast ones, then again four slow ones, then again four fast ones. Now this pattern is kind of random. It is because I have a certain passage in mind where it's divided into four. Of course, you can use whichever pattern suits the piece that you're playing or whichever pattern you want to use. You can do 3-3, you can do 2-6, but in this case, I'm doing 4-4 and since the first three thirds are an upbeat, I'm kind of starting with three as the first group and then 4-4-4. Now what this exercise does is it gives your brain the chance to experience the passage as a whole without having to go through the whole thing at the final tempo just yet because you have the fast bits, but then you have the slow bits where you can relax. It is important that then you turn it around so the bits that you played fast before become the slow bits and vice versa. The bits that you played slowly become the fast bits. After that, I isolate a bigger section, in this case eight intervals, eight thirds, and I play those eight thirds in the final tempo. Then you can isolate whichever section you like. You can start with sections of four, sections of three, sections of eight, and then slowly work yourself up to the entire passage. And then one of my favorite things to do after I have practiced all of these things and after I have played through the passage and I feel like I'm really there, I've practiced it and I can play it, I go back to that very first exercise and play the passage slowly one more time and really once again feel where the fingers go. I feel like when I do this exercise I'm really guiding my fingers on the keys and I see these little waves of where my fingers are going. Each voice kind of has like a separate wave on the keys if that makes any sense. This is the visual image that I have and I feel like going back to that slow exercise in the end, doing that one more time, gives me that extra bit of security before I play through the piece or through the entire passage. So I hope that you enjoyed this video and that you found it helpful. Let me know if you have any other exercises that you practice thirds with in the comments down below. I think thirds are something that Candice encounters all the time and it is always helpful to have more exercises and more helpful tips concerning that technical difficulty. And if you enjoyed the video please like it and subscribe to my channel that would help me a lot and I will see you again next week. Bye!