
Mastering Tricky Passages and Answering Your Questions!

Due to the popularity and overflow of questions from last month's LIVE session, Dominic is back to help you! Do you have questions about your playing, fingering, challenging passages, or musical hurdles you’re trying to overcome? Whether it’s a simple query or a complex issue, every question matters, and every solution makes a difference! Join us live today for real-time advice and solutions from Dominic Cheli—your guide to mastering music, one finger at a time!
Leave any questions below in the chat!
Follow this event link to tune in!
https://app.tonebase.co/piano/live/player/pno-live-solutions-dominic-cheli-3
We are going to be using this thread to gather suggestions and questions!
- What questions do you have on this topic?
- Any particular area you would like me to focus on?
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Dear Dominic,
for measure 190 of J.S. Bach's Contrapunctus XIV (the unfinished fugue) i'm searching for a fingering to play it fluently and musically. The challenge is to get the second C in the bass and the tenor voice sound beautiful together. It is the fourth-to-last measure of the second fuge. I love that ending (and after that the B-A-C-H theme (german notation, in english: B-flat-A-C-B) is introduced for the third fuge
). Maybe it's just one of those ‘practice, practice, practice’ moments. Any ideas on how to twist my fingers cleverly to make it work? Regardless whether you get to this i hope to join live on April 8th—if i can't, I'll catch the recording! Best wishes Rainer
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Hi Dominic, I'm struggling with how to finger a chord voicing frequently used by Rachmaninoff. It's where you have an octave played on the natural 7th of the chord, simultaneously with the 1 and the 5. For example, for a D chord: C#,D,A,C#.
Rach uses it for example in his A Major Prelude, in measures 15, 16, 17, 19 and 21. (see attached circled in Red), and in other of his Preludes, including the climactic M. 66 of the D Major, and even in the bass such as in M. 35 of the B minor .
I feel like the dissonance of the 7th and the 1 is a very important feature of the sound and that therefore the 1 should not be left out of the voicing. For me it requires a real stretch of the 2nd and 5th fingers to play the interior root (2 on the RH) and the upper 7th (5 on the RH). The 5th of the chord is less of a problem, as it falls rather naturally on the 4th finger when the other fingers are stretched like that. I can reach the voicing but in the quicker passages where it appears multiple times with accents, it can hurt.
As an alternative, I've tried sliding off the bottom note when it is a black key onto the adjacent white key with my thumb, which dilutes the effect somewhat. Someone else recommended bending your thumb knuckle to hit both the C# and D at the same time.
Can you share how you approach these voicings? Thanks a lot.