How to play piano faster

Why forcing it doesn’t work

When a passage is too fast for you, the natural response is to try harder: press harder, lift the fingers higher, tighten the arm. All of that makes you slower. Tight muscles work against each other, big movements take longer, and a hand that’s pushing can’t react to the next note.

Speed comes from four things: relaxation, small and efficient movements, fingers that stay close to the keys, and knowing the notes and fingering so well that you don’t have to think about them. Everything below builds one of those.

Use the same fingering every time

At speed there’s no time to choose a finger. If you play a run with a different fingering each time, your hand never learns any of them. Decide the fingering, write it in where the hand moves, and keep to it from the very first slow practice.

Slow practice with the real movements

Slow practice is still the main tool, but it has to be the right kind. Play slowly with the same fingering, the same hand shapes and the same small movements you’ll use at the final tempo, just with more time between them. Fingers close to the keys, no lifting high to “make sure”.

The trap is a slow version that’s really a different movement: each note pressed separately with the whole arm, the hand repositioned for every finger. That doesn’t speed up; it has to be relearned. Ask yourself while playing slowly: would this movement work at full speed?

Step up with a metronome

Start at a tempo you can play cleanly and relaxed, then go up a few bpm at a time after clean runs. Small steps let your hands adapt without bringing the mistakes back. See how to practise with a metronome for a plan you can follow.

Practise in bursts

A burst is a short group of notes played at full speed, followed by a stop. You get to practise the fast movement itself, but only for a few notes, so you can stay accurate and relaxed. Then you grow the group.

1. Play four notes fast, then stop on the fifth and hold it. Check your hand is loose before you go on.
2. Play the next four the same way, starting on the note you stopped on.
3. Join two groups into eight notes fast, then stop.
4. Grow the group until the whole passage goes in one burst. Then bring it back to the tempo of the piece.

The stops matter as much as the fast notes. They give you a moment to release the hand and to think of the next group as one movement.

Rhythm variations on even runs

For a run of even notes, practise it in uneven rhythms: long-short (like a dotted rhythm), then short-long. Each version makes you play every other pair of notes quickly and gives you a moment of rest on each long note. Swap and the fast pairs change places, so every joint between notes gets practised at speed. When you go back to even notes, the run often feels easier.

Think in groups, not notes

Nobody plays fast music note by note. Fast passages are made of hand shapes: five notes under the hand, a chord broken up, a scale in two or three groups joined by the thumb. Find those groups and think of each as one shape the hand moves into. Instead of sixteen notes, you have four moves.

This is where finger independence pays off: within a shape, each finger has to play evenly without the others moving with it.

Pass the thumb under smoothly

In scales and runs, the thumb under is where speed usually breaks: a bump, an accent, a small gap. Start moving the thumb towards its next key as soon as it has played, so it’s already there when it’s needed, and keep the wrist level instead of twisting it. Practise just the turn, two or three notes either side, until it’s smooth. How to practise scales goes into this in detail.

Stay loose

Tension creeps in as the tempo goes up, often without you noticing. Check now and then:

• Are your shoulders up? Let them drop.
• Is your wrist locked? It should be free to move a little.
• Is your jaw clenched, or are you holding your breath?
• Are fingers you’re not using held stiffly up in the air?

Wherever tension starts, that’s your real tempo for now. Go back a few bpm, play it loose, and climb again. A good hand position helps a great deal here; see piano hand position.

Pain is a signal to stop, not something to push through. If your hand, wrist or forearm hurts while or after you play, stop for the day, and if it keeps happening, ask a teacher or a doctor to check how you’re playing.

Plateaus: accept a tempo for now

You’ll reach a tempo where the passage stops getting faster for a while. That’s normal. Pushing on through usually brings tension and mistakes. Accept that tempo for now, play the passage well at it, and come back to stepping up in a few days. It often moves again once it has had time to settle.

You can’t play faster than you can read

When you’re reading music rather than playing from memory, speed also depends on your eyes. If you’re still working out the next note as you reach it, your hands will wait no matter how good your technique is. Reading a little ahead of where you’re playing is what keeps fast music going; see reading ahead. Pianomi has reading-ahead practice that hides the next beats as you play, and its scales measure evenness, so you can hear and see when a faster tempo is really clean.