Chopin Etude Op. 25 No. 8 - EFFECTIVE EXERCISES to learn it // Practice TUTORIAL // Danae Dörken

Hi, this is Danae, and today's video is all about Chopin Study Op. 25 No. 8. This is the study about 6th, and it is pretty equal for both hands, it doesn't really have an accompaniment and a technical side, both hands are playing 6th pretty much throughout the entire study. Today I'm going to talk a little bit about how I practice this study and which exercises I use in order to get it to the final tempo, so if you're interested in that, then keep watching. The very first exercise that I do is one that is geared towards really mastering the 6th. This study is all about independence of the fingers and being able to effortlessly play 6th in a pretty fast tempo. So what I do is I try to be able to play each voice independently. So my first exercise is that I play the upper voice legato while I play the lower voice staccato. Then I turn this around and play the lower voice legato and the upper voice staccato. I do the same thing for the left hand, first I start with playing the lower voice legato and the upper voice staccato. And then I turn it around again by playing the upper voice legato and the lower voice staccato. The second exercise is basically aiming at the same thing, it's just one step further, and I play the upper voice legato and then the lower voice that I play staccato, I repeat twice. This kind of forces you to play the fingers even more independently because one finger is repeating the note while the other one is holding it. Then I turn this around again, playing the lower voice legato and playing the upper voice staccato and repeating each note again. I do the exact same thing for the left hand, playing one voice legato and repeating the staccato voice. Then turning it around and playing the other voice legato and again repeating the staccato voice. Once I've created this independence in the fingers, and I should add that I do this in the tempo that I feel comfortable, so starting out it might be a very slow tempo, and then as you progress you can increase the tempo for this exercise. So once this exercise is done, I start dividing it up into sections, and I start with the smallest possible section, which is literally just three notes, and I place those three notes in my fastest possible tempo, if you're at the final tempo, then of course in the final tempo, and I divide up the entire study into sections of three notes and play all of them separately. Then I play the entire study in sections of six notes in my fastest possible tempo at the time. I do the same thing for the left hand, and divide the left hand into sections of six notes, and again play the entire study through in these little sections. I move on to sections of one bar. Here again I choose my fastest possible tempo, usually, especially if you're starting out with a study, your one bar tempo will be a bit lower than your half bar, let alone your three note section, but that's completely normal, so just use the tempo that you feel comfortable in, or better, comfortable but is also still challenging you a little bit, so that you are going towards increasing the tempo, and play the entire study divided into Before I play through the entire study, I have one more exercise because I find that the leap between playing one bar sections and then the entire study is pretty big, and I like having one more exercise to kind of bridge that and get you there, and that exercise for me is playing six slow notes and then six fast notes, because I find that that kind of is a good mixture of practicing the fast stuff and not taking any breaks like I do with the sections, but at the same time it gives you the possibility to take a little break while playing the slow notes, your muscles and your brain can relax a little bit, and then focus on the next fast section, but at the same time you're not taking any breaks. So this exercise I also turn around, I start with the six slow notes and then for the second run through I start with the six fast notes. I play through the entire study at the tempo that I feel comfortable in. Right now this is my final tempo, but of course if you're starting out you definitely should play through it slower, and even if it's a very slow tempo I would recommend playing through it at that slow tempo, just so that you can get the full picture, so that your brain knows what the whole study feels like, and so that you also get a full musical picture of the study, and you know what you're working towards. I also really like it musically, so in any case, I really hope that you liked it and that you enjoyed it and that you found the tips helpful, let me know if you have any other tips in the comments down below, or any thoughts that you have on this study and I'll see you again in the next video, bye!