We all have problems cleaning up fast passages. When you hear someone playing flawlessly with crystal clear passages it is something to be admired. it is a lovely thing when you hear every single note. Playing cleanly takes a player from the amateur level up a notch toward the professional.

However it seems that there is always some little problem that keeps it from sounding clean. We’ve all had this problem. I remember so many times when I was in college thinking, why can’t this passage sound clean? Why is there always a flub in the middle? I didn’t really figure that out until long after college, unfortunately. But there is always an issue with fast passages. We always have something going on and we have to figure it out. Once you’ve done the work and it’s still not clean what do you do?

There is hope. To play fast and clean there are usually three different areas that cause the problem.

Before you can fix any problems the first thing I can tell you is that getting clean fast passages has to begin with knowing your scales and arpeggios. I can’t say that strongly enough, know your minor scales, know your major scales, and know your arpeggios like the back of your hand! This is the work you do when you warm up going through all those exercise books. It’s not enough to play scales but you need to interact with your scales in different ways such as when you see scales in your Taffanel & Gaubert, or the Trevor Wye exercises or the Moyse exercises. There are many different ones out there but the important thing is learing them evenly at a fast tempo. If you don’t have them absolutely steady, then that’s where you start. We all have issues we can work on more. Pay that piper and it will pay you back! Okay?

But perhaps you are saying to yourself: I have done all that work. I know my scales and arpeggios. But those passages are still not clean. Read on!

The 3 Culprits

Once you have those skills in your fingers then you can deal with the 3 culprits that will keep you from playing cleanly:

1. Your fingers are rushing – faster than your tongue or eyes
2. You have a glitch – your finger combinations are not working together
3. Your fingers want to skip a note!

Here’s some ideas for fixing these three problems.

Rushing

The first reason I’m going to tell you for messy fast passages is that your fingers are rushing. Nine times out of 10 that’s the issue. For my students, even when there’s another issue going on, rushing is always part of it. With fast passages we often think we don’t have time to get all the notes in. It’s instinctual and it takes a lot of work to totally control the fingers. When you come across a fast run in a piece, it is difficult to evenly space those notes across the beat. Work with a metronome using various articulations to even out the fingers and to distribute the notes across the beat evenly. Each time it feels good on the fingers you move the metronome faster. The key to not rushing these passages is the metronome. It is essential! When you have articulated fast passages the rushing occurs when the fingers rush, but the double tongue is steady or the opposite.

You know the feeling when you are playing a solo and the fingers and tongue get off from each other. Most of the time the fingers are rushing and the tongue is slow. How do you fix that? Well, going back to your Taffanel & Gaubert exercises and putting your metronome on. Use the articulations in exercise 4, begin slow, use those articulations. Then get a little faster and use them all again. Continue until the desired tempo is reached. This sounds simple and I know that it’s a long process. But the process works. It takes time but it is well worth the work involved. it’s a solid way to practice to teach the fingers not to rush and for you to have absolute control.

Glitches

Time to move to the second problem: the glitch. Many times, the reason why a fast passage doesn’t sound clean is because there is a glitch. 

Lets just make sure you know what a glitch is. A glitch occurs when all your fingers don’t go down on the keys in absolute perfect unison. There are some finger combinations that are horrendous going quickly from one note to the next. When one finger lifts up another goes down and they don’t exactly do perfectly. This causes a glitch.

To fix this, your job is to figure out where your glitch is. You need to analyze where the problem occurs. What finger is moving slowly? Is it possibly a finger that goes up and an opposite goes down that is causing the problem? When you have a glitch, it doesn’t mean you haven’t done your due diligence. It does not mean you didn’t do the work to learn the passage. It only means that all our fingers are not created equal.

Once you have have determined where the problem fingers are, then you can fix them. It takes a lot of concentration. You must play that combination of fingers very slowly. Concentrate on moving those fingers. Really concentrate on moving those two or 3 fingers. Very slowly move them being sure to move exactly on time. If one finger is still slow then concentrate on that one finger. It really is “mind over matter.” When you get it to work going slowly, then move the tempo a bit faster. I cannot tell you this is an easy process. It is very slow and painful but it works. It truly is a process that teaches finger muscles to work evenly.

The good news is that when you work this slow painful process the work you do does carry to other pieces. It will make this combination as well as other combinations easier. You have to do the work, but the payoff is plentiful.

Skipping a Note

Number 1 is rushing and number 2 is finding the glitch. The third one is related. Sometimes even after doing all this work there is a note that your fingers want to skip. It is related to the glitch because your fingers just aren’t fast enough to put down that particular note. So they skip over it altogether!

I remember practicing the orchestral excerpt from Daphnis and Chloe. The opening run was not that difficult, except it wasn’t clean. Every note wasn’t heard. After a careful work through the notes I found that I was skipping one note.

There are a couple of ways to approach this. The first way after identifying which note is being skipped or delayed is to work on it like a glitch. Take the note before it and the note after it and slowly make sure that every finger does what it is supposed to do. When you fell like those 3 notes are smooth, add another note before and after. So, you start by playing slowly and then with increasing speed, those 5 notes. Eventually work through the whole run with a concentration on the note that is the problem. I also like to put a line over the note that causes issues. This makes me always remember that when I play this passage, I need to always concentrate on this note. It’s this added focus on single notes that helps to NOT skip it.

Another method to work on in conjunction with this is to play the run in tempo, but then stop on the offending note. Do it many times. Then play it again at tempo but stop on the following the offending note. In tempo you play past the culprit, but only one note past. When that is good add another note. Continue until the run is all the way up. I don’t find that this technique on it’s own will fix the problem. I need to do it with the first method. Together they work on the issues needed to clean up the passage.

When I have fixed this passage and it is going along beautifully, I find that I need to approach this run by looking at the note that has caused problems. It is not a place to psyche yourself out but a place to put your concentration. If I tell myself to aim for that note then I know that I’ll get past it and to the finish fine. Eventually, depending on how much I play this piece, I won’t have to think about this note. But I’m quite sure that the first time I perform this piece I will look at the note that has the line and aim for it.

One day you will play that passage and it will flow beautifully. It will be a wonderful surprise and only you will know the amount of work that went into fixing it.

Those are the three reasons that keep me from clean passages. When I work on these I can get every single note out cleanly in a fast passage. When I hear myself on a recording, and I hear that I hear every single note ripple up or down. It’s a beautiful thing.

You too will love having clean and fast passages. Now go do the work!

Have Fun!

DoctorFlute

Watch me demonstrate this: The Reasons Why You Can’t Play Fast Passages Cleanly FluteTips 106