Jarred Dunn on fast octaves, and why the piano can open your hand for you
The Chopin competition winner on octaves, flexible hands, overworked fingers and what listening does for your technique.
Jarred Dunn won First Prize and the Concerto Award at the 7th International Chopin Competition of Lithuania in 2018. He teaches at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music and is a Yamaha Artist.
Here are fourteen of his best tips, from his Piano Star Masterclass on comfortable playing on Piano League.
1. Listen for the sound you want
I’ve noticed, actually, the more I tell intermediate students, just listen to the sound that you want, sometimes 95% of their technical issues are resolved, because they’re already planning the next note, so they’re not tightening up before they play.
Jarred Dunn
2. Let the keys open your hand
Most kids don’t realize the piano could basically open the hand for them. They could go toward it with an almost octave position, and then when they actually want to play the key, their hand will just extend over top of the keys, and they can press it down without having to fix the fingers in a tense position.
Jarred Dunn
3. Stay flexible before you touch the key
This is one of the first things I try to teach students, is to make sure the hand is flexible before they touch the key, rather than opening the hand, freezing it and attacking.
Jarred Dunn
4. Flexible doesn’t mean floppy
It would be ideal if everyone could play in the state that they felt completely relaxed and soft, but I think in most cases that would result in just flopping down off the keyboard. So there’s a certain amount of coordination or connection among the joints that feels active.
Jarred Dunn
5. Don’t set your hand in advance
The hand is basically already set up to play, and then the finger just forces itself downward because that’s the only possible direction it can go at that point, rather than moving into a sound flexibly on each note using the arm primarily.
Jarred Dunn
6. Give your fingers less to do
I would say the big problem today is the overuse of the fingers, as you said, and I think more training can be done in the pre-college phase, with the intermediate phase, on getting students aware of all the resources that basically are from the shoulder through the elbow into the wrist.
Jarred Dunn
7. Treat discomfort as a message
That’s the thing I hear a lot, is that students, like I said, just say they feel uncomfortable, and I tell them it’s because you’re moving in ways that your body’s trying to tell you it’s uncomfortable. It’s not working.
Jarred Dunn
8. Practice octaves in real music
It’s very easy to practice octaves as long as you practice them in a piece that has musical value and quality, and also at a slow enough tempo that your hand can apprehend them.
Jarred Dunn
9. Small hands can play differently
The other issue could be that a student’s hand is just simply too small at this point and octaves have to be broken, and I think it’s a trend that’s basically accepted these days among teachers and jurors, etc., that some hands have to just arpeggiate and play differently. It’s a lot less standardized, I think, than it used to be.
Jarred Dunn
10. Exaggerate the loud note
When you want to play it louder and softer, I recommend that you exaggerate a little bit the louder volume, because then the hand will relax, and the lighter note would be much easier because it came from a much bigger place.
Jarred Dunn
11. In a waltz, separate the bass from the chords
When you play a waltz, it’s very important that the bass has a different sound quality than these chords. If they sound the same, it’s very hard to hear them as individual lines, and the music is less complete.
Jarred Dunn
12. Let the dancers breathe
Typically, in dance music, when one section finishes, people are taking a breath, because then they start another choreography, so you can’t rush that moment where they need to breathe and adjust.
Jarred Dunn
13. Keep the arm moving
If you stop the hand and then attack the next note, it sounds very lumpy and uneven, but if you keep the arm moving, it transitions the hand to the next point that you needed to go.
Jarred Dunn
14. Ask technical questions early
I, at certain points in my younger career, could have asked a lot more technical questions and made more effort to inform myself about techniques.
Jarred Dunn
Quotes are lightly edited for length and clarity. They come from Jarred Dunn’s 2020 Piano Star Masterclass on comfortable playing. You can watch the full masterclass on the Piano League YouTube channel.
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