Why Can’t One Finger Simply Speed Up Repeated Notes?

When one note must be repeated quickly, adult learners often concentrate on making the next downward movement faster. Yet if the key has not returned sufficiently, the piano action cannot repeat reliably. The real movement is not a series of downward blows. Depression, release, key recovery and the next entry form a cycle. Driving one finger faster can leave the forearm continuously engaged and send the finger down again before the key is ready.

Alternating two or three fingers, such as 3–2 or 3–2–1, lets one finger leave while another prepares to enter. It distributes the repeated action, but alternation alone does not create evenness. Research on rapid alternate keystrokes shows that skilled performance depends on coordination among the finger, wrist and arm joints changing with tempo. Work on repetitive keystrokes also finds that muscular load is affected jointly by tempo and loudness. These studies mainly involved professionally trained pianists, so they do not prescribe one fingering for every adult learner.

At a slow tempo, first listen for a clear and comparable attack on each note while feeling whether the key has returned to a position from which it can sound again. Increase the speed gradually, but do not lock the wrist in pursuit of evenness or make every note equally heavy. What must become stable is the continuing relation of sounding, releasing and re-entering. Whether 2–1, 3–2 or 3–2–1 works best depends on keyboard position, loudness and musical context.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2011.00050/full
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.humov.2011.01.002

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