Piano Technique: Big Leaps, Crossed Hands, and shifty eyeballs (with slow motion video replay)

Prepare to exercise your eyeballs minus head movements when tackling large leaps, especially those hand over hand acrobatics that are intrinsic to many of Domenico Scarlatti’s sonatas.

In the video I’ve isolated a few of these jumps from K. 113 in A Major, demonstrating what I’ve found to be the best approach.

There’s no podium of perfection here since I’ve crashed and burned on more than one occasion but out of the ashes, I emerged with a new consciousness.

Recommendations.

1) No bobbing head back and forth when playing crossed hands.

Use your shifting eyeballs to target the destination notes going back and forth over your right hand.

There are two places that stand out in this sonata. The first involves two octave crossed hand jumps. The Left goes back and forth over the right multiple times.

In the second instance, there are jumps of four octaves, and these are the suicide trips, unless mediated by those shifty eyeballs.

2) Use an arc like motion back and forth, but not too high, or you’ll lose contact with the keys.

3) Block out the broken chord progressions in the right hand as they move in sequence. Then unblock them before adding in the left hand activity.

Be calm, relaxed, and breathe deeply but not anxiously.

Finally say a prayer..

CLICK to enlarge (page 1 and 2, Sonata, K. 113 by Scarlatti)

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