How to Play Accents on Piano
On the piano, I often make one active arm movement over a group of notes. It gives the first note of the group a little accent. How long that one movement lasts, over four notes, eight or sixteen, decides where your accents fall, and you choose it by what you want in the music.
In May a student played Exercise 37 from my Super Fingers course for me, in one of my live lessons. I said, "Okay, it's good," and asked: "What is your question here?"
The answer was: "Do I really have a question about this? No, I think it goes well." Three questions followed.
The first was about "the movement over eight notes". I played the movement over four first, and said: "That works very well when you want to have a little accent on every four notes."
One Arm Movement Over Four Notes
In the course video, the second phase of Exercise 37 has the arm movements, and "we can do them in different ways". The first way is one movement per group of four notes, "like the waves in four notes, down and up down".
Then the second question: "Yes, I had a question about that, too. Because in the score you have noted that movement downwards should be active."
I answered: "Yes, because otherwise you don't get the speed … You will not see the difference now in the tempo you do. But when you do it quickly, like a real trill, then you need a little bit of activity to be in time."
If you want the up-and-down movement of the arm from its first step, I explain it in my post on the arm movement towards real control.
Accents in Piano Passages
Then the third question, about what the student had noticed: "But the activity causes the first note of every four notes to be accented. Is that what it should be like?"
I said: "In the four notes, yes." Over four, the accent on the first note belongs there.
In the video of Exercise 37 I put it like this: "Sometimes we, actually quite often we need that, we organize our arm movements so that these accents become very, almost by itself, in the right place."
So, fast or slow, the arm movements place the accent at the start of each group, and you don't always want it on every four notes.
Four Notes, Eight, or Sixteen
"Otherwise, that's why we have over eight notes. That is different," I told the student. Then sixteen came up.
The student had seen it: "You played it in the video as well." I had: "Over 16 or the whole two bars."
In the video I say about it: "That is even the third step, which is not written in the score, but it is in groups of 16 notes."
"Yes, depending what you want in the music," I said. You can "accent the first note of four notes, or the first note of eight notes, or the first note of 16".
What each length gives:
- Four notes: the shortest, with the most accents.
- Eight notes: "a longer line and less accents in between".
- Sixteen, or the whole two bars: "even a longer line".
Then I said: "We see that also in passage work … And if you want an accent more often, then it helps to make an arm movement … When you want to make a longer line of notes, then it's good to think about a longer arm movement."
About the longer movements I say in the video: "This will be more difficult in the beginning to really organize your arm movement, to divide it nicely over the notes and to make it effective."
And: "But when you manage, then it gives you much more possibilities of phrasing in music, because in music we choose the arm movements, what it technically needs, but also what it musically needs, how it should be phrased, how it should be divided to divisions, because it's also a musical decision, not only a technical decision."
Those divisions are the lengths of the arm movement. Asking first what the music wants, and only then choosing how to play it, is also how I go about a hairpin on one held note, in my post on a crescendo on one note.
A Rounder Arm Movement
Another choice we control is to make a rounder movement: Here the downward movement needs to start earlier. The arm movement becomes less active which removes the accent.
In Exercise 31, earlier in the course, I show it like this: "we go up almost to the last note, but over the last note we're going down to the first note of each next group, so that the movements don't get too sharp."
The sharp version has its place too: "Sometimes we do that when we want to have accents on that first note … I exaggerated, but you could do that. But we want to have it round and natural and fluent." And so "we rounding the movements a little bit on that last note and down".
It is a choice of its own, next to the length of the movement.
Playing a Scale Smoothly Inside a Piece
In a fluent scale inside a piece, I try to use one arm movement. This results in a nice, fluent, quiet, almost serene scale.
Break the scale in divisions to add momentum halfway, giving the opposite effect. Which one a scale gets is a musical decision too.
What the arm does in a scale at speed is in my post on letting the arm carry a fast scale.
Try this
Take a phrase of quick notes you play.
- Find where it wants an accent, where a long line.
- Make one arm movement per four notes.
- Try one movement over eight, or the whole phrase.
- Keep the length the music asks for.
Start with four, "really exaggerated" at first, the way I ask for it in the course, and go to eight "only after you mastered in groups of 4".
And a check while you work: "When you do the arm movements good, your fingers will always tell you this feels good … then you know you're on the right way, on the right track."
In short
Let the music choose the length (divisions) of the arm movement: short groups for an accent more often, one long movement for a long, quiet line.
Where It Shows Up
One length for everything, and accents land where the music doesn't want them. Exercise 37 in Super Fingers has it over four and over eight.
In live coaching, let me hear where the accents fall in a phrase you play.
