EASY EXERCISES TO IMPROVE YOUR TREMOLO ON THE PIANO // How to Practice Beethoven Pathétique Sonata

Hi, this is Danae, and today's video is all about tremolos on the piano. Some of you asked me how I would suggest to practice Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata, which has this very famous tremolo passage in the first movement. So I picked this out as an example, and today I'm going to share with you how I exercise tremolos, what I look out for, and how I place my hand in order to ensure that they sound as light and as fast and effortless as possible. The first very important point to mention when talking about tremolos is the hand position and general hand posture. I find that the biggest mistake that you can make is to have your wrist too high. The tremolo is something that really happens down here. It's a movement that comes from the wrist, not the fingers. So I believe, especially when talking about octave tremolos, like we are in this example, that your fingers are more or less in the same position. And it's your wrist that is doing the tremolo movement in order to ensure that you're pressing the one and the other note. So the wrist should not be stable and the fingers moving, but the fingers should be stable and the wrist should be the one doing the moving. So generally when playing the tremolo, definitely make sure that your wrist is at a lower position where it can really control the entire posture of the hands. If you're like this, then the wrist cannot control anything. Your finger has to move and it's going to be very difficult and you're going to also have a lot of cramps and it's going to actually hurt you after a while. So make sure that your wrist is low and is doing the moving. And this is going to ensure that you feel very comfortable when playing the tremolo. The very first exercise, which I would also recommend if you're just getting into tremolos, is one that is an exaggeration, a very big exaggeration of what you will be doing in the end. Basically, I play the fifth finger in a position where my hand is almost upside down, just to really emphasize that this is coming from the wrist. And then I play the thumb in a position where my hand is also almost upside down. So it's a very extreme tremolo, very slowly. And in this exercise, you don't even need to really put pressure on your fingers or really activate your muscles. You can have very loose fingers and you can also press more keys than just the key you want to press. It's all about simply doing this movement in a very healthy, relaxed and loose way. Once you have done that, I would then continue by isolating very, very little chunks of tremolo. So for example, just four notes and playing those as fast as possible. Personally, I think it is important to get the tremolo as fast as possible from the start, because it is a different technique playing the tremolo quickly, as I said, from the wrist, compared to playing one octave split back and forth in a slow tempo, because if you do it in a slow tempo, you will activate your fingers, which is also correct. But if you do it as fast as possible, you have to play from the wrist and not do this movement. This is why I think it is counterproductive to practice a tremolo slowly, because you're actually practicing the wrong technique. So take the fastest tempo that is possible to you at that time and play very, very short sections, four notes, for example, to really practice that feeling and to get used to how it feels, that hand position, and how to control the fingers using this movement only. Another thing that you can do is to alternate the extreme slow one and the very fast little sections. Then you can increase the small sections of four and make them bigger and bigger in order to get in the end the entire movement. Now, coming back to Beethoven's Pathétique, I think that the difficulty doesn't only lie within the tremolo, but it actually lies in playing both hands together. This is why, of course, first I will practice the right hand separately, and then I would definitely recommend practicing the left hand separately. while the right hand is playing its voice silently. For me, when I play the right hand silently over my tremolo, I start noticing all the strange little things that I do. I start noticing where the tremolo goes wrong, which note exactly is still not quite right. This is why I think that this is a very powerful exercise and one that I would definitely recommend when you have any kind of hard passage, not only tremolos. Play the technically difficult hand as you would normally in your run through and play the melody hand silently on top of it to see what goes wrong when you put them both together. Another important general point is that those three fingers should be as relaxed as possible. So try not to have them up here, like this, when you're tremoloing, try to have them relaxed. Of course, it's fine if they move a little bit, but they can actually be a help for your tremolo. They are not playing, but they could be a kind of foundation for you from which you move your wrist back and forth. So try to have them lying on the keys very naturally and relaxed. Another point that I find very helpful is to make sure that your hand is in a position where it is completely naturally relaxed. This means that when you play the octave, you should look out that your fingers are not exactly in the middle, just because this would look nice, because this is not really the natural hand position. The natural hand position is for the fingers to be slightly more towards the fifth finger. So in the left hand, for those middle fingers to be slightly more to the left, kind of like this. So play the tremolo in a position where this is exactly where your fingers would naturally lie instead of forcing yourself to play them completely straight, because that will only increase tension and make it harder for you to get a fast and very loose and effortless sounding tremolo. Another tip that I would suggest, especially in this passage, is to have the fifth finger lead the tremolo. Because in this passage, the octave always changes, starting with the fifth finger. I also like to practice the fifth finger separately. So I really make sure that the fifth finger is the one leading and the thumb is kind of just going with the fifth finger. Also, the fifth finger is the one playing on the downbeat, so it is really the reason why I try to focus. If it was the other way around, then I would probably have the thumb lead the tremolo. But in this case, I have the fifth finger lead the tremolo. And I really make sure to consciously, also when I put both hands together, think fifth plus right hand and the thumb kind of just automatically is following. And then finally, I put both hands together and make sure to try to create some kind of divide in my brain where the right hand is totally focused on phrasing and melody and the left hand is effortlessly doing the tremolo. I really hope that you enjoyed this video and that you found it helpful. Let me know if you have any other questions regarding tremolos that I did not answer in this video, and I'll see you again in the next one. Bye.