On another thread I was asking for advice on how to speed up my playing (currently grade 2 - 3 piano) to anything like the marked metronome speed, and one of the suggestions was to study the score away from the piano, looking at harmonies, cadences, repeated melodies etc.

I did grade 5 theory last summer to help with my playing and passed easily (in fact to my amazement I got 100%, but that's probably because I'm methodical, good at maths and have a good memory). But sadly I don't seem to be able to translate this into anything at all helpful to my playing. OK, I can look at Les Pifferari for example, and see that it's in F major, has some repeated "melodies" eg bars 5 -9, 9 - 13, scale passages and exciting ( ! ) chords in the LH (I, I, V7, V) repeated ad nauseam ... but where does that get me? I seem to be missing the vital link. Maybe Les Pifferari is a bad example (the other two pieces I am doing are Now is the Month of Maying and Top Cat).

One of the problems may be that I don't consciously think about what notes I'm playing, once I have worked out where they are on the keyboard. For example, when I started to learn bar 5, I'd think to myself - Start on F, then go up one, then up another one, then down one etc ; NOT F G A, G G Bflat, Bflat (if that makes sense). Should I actually be thinking - that's an A I am playing now, or that's a mediant / mi for example?

Or would it help me to go on with theory eg to start looking at Harmony in Practice? I'd be happy to do that as I enjoyed doing the theory for Grade 5, but was disappointed not to see some more obvious benefits in my approach to the piano, which put me off doing any more for a while.

PatC

Reading by interval rather than thinking what every note is called is much more efficient at least on piano.

I tend to take away the scores when I am away on holiday and can't get to the piano. That way I can study it and hopefully play it even better when I come back home.

My teacher used to say to me from quite early on when I first started playing pieces, to study the score first, read it like a book, at the time I never used to understand what she meant by this. It was only after doing theory that I did. And even moreso now after doing A214 I can look at a much fuller picture.

I find that I use a mixture of methods, but with intervals, I'm stuffed if i suddenly lose my place... :S

Recognising the notes easily helps too of course. As does recognising chord/arpeggio and scale patterns.

I switched to a new teacher last September and her method of helping me to increase speed is to set me target metronome speeds, gradually increasing until one day I may get close to the indicated speed. I work on each hand separately and together and only increase my speed once I can play consistently without more than 1 or 2 errors. I'm currently using this method on a grade 4 piece (Handel's Allegro in F) which is marked to be played at 104. I've managed to get it up to 80 so far. So I literally play along to the metronome. I also am trying playing one hand and singing the other to increase familiarity. I can manage this ok singing the treble line but its much more difficult to sing the bass part and play treble line.

I'm doing almost the same thing with my teacher (with a Bach prelude) but I sing the right or left hand part while playing it also. I find that, if the left hand is held on a longer note and the right hand is playing shorter notes, I notice I start singing the right hand part while I should be staying on the left hand note