How to Play Fast Staccato on Piano
Beethoven uses staccato scales quite a lot in his piano sonatas, and some of them go fast. You want every note short and clear, and the scale still has to sound full at tempo. That last part is the hard one.
In a fast staccato scale, the fingers alone sound thin, and the arm alone gets heavy. So I combine them: good fingers and a little arm, on each note. The small arm movement gives the notes their fullness, and the finger, going back up quickly, keeps the speed.
This is combined finger-arm staccato. You meet the same problem outside Beethoven too, in other fast staccato passages and etudes, so you don't need a sonata on your stand to work on it.
Finger Staccato and Arm Staccato
Two of my staccato types matter here:
- Finger staccato: the finger goes back up quickly after it plays, fast and active.
- Arm staccato: each note gets a small movement of the lower arm, with prepared, concentrated fingers.
Both are good techniques, each in its own place, and I use both. But a fast staccato scale asks for two things at the same time, fullness and speed, and here each one on its own falls short.
With the fingers alone, at that speed the sound comes out thin: the notes are all there, but they have no body. In a sonata you hear it right away, the scale runs past and doesn't carry. And if you play every note from the arm to get that body back, the scale gets too heavy for the tempo.
In these scales one alone is not enough.
Combined Finger-Arm Staccato
So I use both, together, in the same note. Good fingers here means concentrated fingers, as in arm staccato, that go back up fast and active, as in finger staccato. A little arm means a small movement of the lower arm.
If you already play finger staccato well, you don't have to unlearn anything: you add a little arm to it. Coming from arm staccato, you keep the concentrated fingers and let them go back up quickly.
If done right, you hear it straight away: the notes sound full, and the scale keeps moving.
How to Play Staccato Scales
In one of my live trainings a student asked me how to do the staccato in Thompson's etude number 18. Part of my answer was about the arm: "Still, also a little arm and forearm. Small, so not too big. Because it needs to be a little bit quick later."
Later is the word that matters there. That etude is an Allegretto, and a fast staccato scale needs the arm small for the same reason: a big arm movement on every note doesn't let it get quick.
So in slow practice the tempo is slow, and the movements are already the ones the fast scale will ask for: a small arm, and concentrated fingers that go back up quickly.
Staccato Scales in Beethoven and Czerny
In Beethoven you'll really find this technique a lot. Czerny was his student, a very well-respected one, and he premiered his teacher's first piano concerto. I'm sure he took the staccato scales from Beethoven, and in his etudes you practise this same technique, fingers and arm combined.
Two of his books I'd use for it:
- Opus 718, 24 Studies for the Left Hand, number 8: a staccato etude, a little bit arm movement on each staccato note combined with fingers. Not so difficult, but effective.
- Opus 335, The School of Legato and Staccato: all its etudes are focused on articulation, and numbers 2 and 18 are its two etudes for scales.
You don't need to play these books from start to finish; take these numbers. The first is a book for the left hand only. What is good about etudes is that it focuses on only one or two techniques. Plus, you can spoil a Czerny etude and you can still sleep at night.
And if you like to play Beethoven's sonatas, you should really not dismiss learning also some Czerny. I go through his scale etudes, from very easy to very difficult, in my post on the magic of Czerny etudes.
Try this
Take a fast staccato scale from a piece you play, or Czerny's Opus 718 number 8, a staccato etude for the left hand.
- Find the part where it sounds thin, or turns heavy.
- Play it slowly, with concentrated fingers.
- Give each note a little arm, kept small.
- Let each finger go back up quickly.
- Listen: does it sound full, and still light?
The first step asks for a part of the scale, not single notes: what sounds thin is mostly a group of notes. In that part, give the fourth and fifth fingers a little extra attention; they are weaker. Slowly, you also have the time to feel whether each note got its little arm.
How Much Arm to Use
A little arm means a little. With more, the scale gets heavy again.
And the mix isn't fixed. Sometimes more fingers, sometimes more arm, depending on the situation, on the sound. Your ear tells you which way to go: when it sounds thin, give it a little more arm.
That's true of short notes on the piano in general: there is more than one way to play them, and the sound you want decides. Two other short touches, a dropped one and a pulled one, and how different they feel in the hand, are in my post on staccato or pizzicato.
In short
A fast staccato scale needs fullness and speed at the same time, and one technique alone gives you only one of them. So combine them on each note: a small movement of the arm, and fingers that stay concentrated and go back up quickly.
Where It Shows Up
In the Academy the fingers come first, in the first phase, where we really focus on the fingers and how to free them: fast, strong, flexible. The arm comes later, in the second phase. A staccato scale like this one needs both behind it.
Sometimes the scale comes out full by chance. Let's make it full every time, and find your mix together: how much finger, how much arm.
