I felt compelled to post this for Beginners who might be influenced by some more experienced pianists saying piano exercises are useless. I have read numerous posts saying Hanon is a waste of time, but really it is essential for developing fingers which haven't had much/any experience playing the piano. I cannot think what I would do when I teach beginners if I didn't have some simple exercises for them to play. At least some exercises along side an actual piece to develop strength/control in their fingers/hand.
I think that once you have found your ground in playing the piano and are confident in general procedure, piano exercises become somewhat obsolete. We find it much more efficient and effective practicing difficult technical problems we face in pieces by actually playing the piece over and over again. We strive control the quality of sound rather than focusing on physical control of the fingers as beginners cannot help but constantly consider.
So for a second reason to push beginners to study Hanon is to make them start to forget about the physical action of individual notes and learn to control a complete pattern as a whole. This helps them to understand what it means to forget about the notes and just listen to themselves produce sound instead. They can apply this understanding of "automatic" playing in pieces they learn, as well as apply balance of their fingers when it it is asked for a string of notes.Any support or refutations most welcome
I felt compelled to post this for Beginners who might be influenced by some more experienced pianists saying piano exercises are useless.
I have read numerous posts saying Hanon is a waste of time, but really it is essential for developing fingers which haven't had much/any experience playing the piano.
I cannot think what I would do when I teach beginners if I didn't have some simple exercises for them to play. At least some exercises along side an actual piece to develop strength/control in their fingers/hand.
So for a second reason to push beginners to study Hanon is to make them start to forget about the physical action of individual notes and learn to control a complete pattern as a whole. This helps them to understand what it means to forget about the notes and just listen to themselves produce sound instead. They can apply this understanding of "automatic" playing in pieces they learn, as well as apply balance of their fingers when it it is asked for a string of notes.
Well, what is your definition of Beginner.
I do not disagree that exercises is important cause it is. Scales of all sorts, Chord and arpeggios should be the basis of all practice routines, especially for beginners.
The problem lies with teachers who use Hanon as some sort of bible one must master to play . This is totally wrong.
I do believe once a student is able to play some Bach minuets and preludes with some scalatti in the mix, Hanon and other sorts become more or less irrelevant and should only be used in very specific situations.
I would then leave it up to the students to decide whether they want to learn technique through exercises, through pieces, or a combination thereof. It's of no use to make a student go through exercises who absolutely hates them; other students like them a lot and thrive. It is the teacher's task to find out how to get a student to solve pianistic problems efficiently, and eventually on their own.
Here's the thing. While I'm sure I don't have the finger dexterity of an advanced piano player, I've never had a lesson piece that was a dexterity challenge. So on the one hand, practicing Hanon will do me zero good, because there is no opportunity to apply the improved technique that will presumably be obtained.
Actually, Hanon and similar exercises are not important at all. Beginners should be made aware of this so that they don’t fall into the “tradition” trap and blindly follow instructions without questioning them, wasting a lot of time in the process. It is easy to show how unimportant Hanon is: Hanon first published his exercises in 1873. There are plenty of keyboard virtuosos (Handel, Bach and his sons, Scarlatti, Liszt, Chopin, etc. etc. etc.) who acquired their techniqne well before Hanon published his book. I rest my case.
The easiest answer is to design exercises based on the piece’s passages and related to the necessary movements for those passages. There are of course many other things one can do when teaching beginners – none of which involves Hanon. For instance:https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,1867.msg14268.html#msg14268(Getting technique from pieces – several important tricks: hand memory, dropping notes, repeated note-groups)
I agree in part. I disagree that piano “exercises” become obsolete as one progresses. Any piece that presents any passage that is challenging/difficult/impossible will always present right there an “exercise” for the pianist. However, abstract exercises – that is not in any way related to a particular piece – (Hanon, Pischna, Schmidth, Dohnanyi, Cortot) in my opinion have no place ever in one’s practice.
https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,2192.msg21823.html#msg21823(How to teach very young students – the historical method, the pragmatical x logical method and total exposure as the best way for under-5s).... When they start learning their first proper pieces (using all fingers, right and left hand), to start with I let them use whatever fingers, positions they want. Then I show them an “easier” way. Correct fingering and hand position are “correct” exactly because they further facility. It should be easier and more natural to use the correct technique than the incorrect one. So there should be no problem for a child to switch from an incorrect to a correct technique. If there is a problem, then it is worth investigating if the technique you are trying to impose to a child is indeed correct, or if it is just a relic, a tradition that you were taught to be correct. (For instance, Hanon is completely incorrect – sorry, Hanon fans).
Now for the reason why Hanon (and like exercises) should be avoided (italics are quotes from Hanon himself):1, Hanon, basic anatomical premise is totally false: “The central problem of piano playing is to make the fingers equal and independent”.
lostinidlewonder : The idea of any excerises is NOT to increase the speed of your fingers, rather to improve the strength and balance of your fingers/hand as a whole. There lies a BIG difference, anyone can play notes fast but if it is balanced and controlled that is another question. The increase of speed/dexterity of your fingers are automatic as control/balance of notes in the hand increase.
What Hanon helped me with was relaxation. I was a tense play from the wrist guy before I discovered Hanon (found the book in my late mother's collection of music). I started working through them and hit speed wall after speed wall. Started taking a few lessons and my teacher was working with me on relaxing my wrist. I found it easier to practise that when doing Hanon then when doing actual repertoire. Once I understood the technique I was able to utilize it in my other pieces.So now when I do Hanon it's primarily as warm up and I find it useful to do things like play the 3rd exercise stacatto or use dotted rhythm. Hanon is just s set of patterns of dubious utility, but like anything it can be made useful and can serve unexpected purposes. I hope Bernhard doesn't tell me I'm crazy for using Hanon to warm up or that some other method would have helped my relaxation issues faster, because I'm happy with the progress I've made
It was interesting that the word tradition came up earlier, as i feel this is another reason why i use Hanon. When i was 5 years old i was told to use it and i have ever since.
It is true that i could have played the actual piece over and over again, but why should Brahms suffer, i would rather do the exercises.
The muscles in begginer pianists' hands have EXACTLY the same strength as virtuosos'.
What they don't have is the extra synapses in the brain that allows them to control those muscles. You only need to build your brain in order to gain technique because the muscle strength is ALREADY there. Hanon and other mindless excercises do not require thinking; therefore, they do not build synapsis, however playing repertoire does.[/b]
How does one know that something is unbalanced and lacks control?
lostidlewonder, I'm sure you train your begginer students to "listen" and "feel" what they play. At what point do you begin?
Why can't they learn control and balance, by working on sections that sound uncontroled and unbalanced, within the piece they are working on? If they truly are beginners then their pieces won't be more than a few lines afterall! ; and we give them a musical reason to work on their problem.
I am trying to find out if the benefit that people often ascribe to Hanon is deemed to be due to the exercises themselves or whether it is the particular attitude adopted to carry out the exercises. I lean towards the latter, because I don't believe that Hanon has found THE 60 exercises that will make a virtuosic pianist. There are many sets of exercises out there, and different people swear by different exercises. This indicates to me that it is not really the particular set of exercises, but some other aspect.
The exercises themselves do not necessarily prepare one for real pieces. Let's say, a beginner stumbles into a certain, simple, technical problem that is not explicitly covered by any of the exercises. From that point of view, the exercises are useless.
However, there are strong arguments in favor of "Hanon" as a general approach. The approach specifies that for any technical problem in a real piece, one can design an exercise that addresses the issue specifically in the given musical context. That is the approach that I myself use a lot, and I believe Bernhard advocates it too. And that is really also the gist of your post, if I am not mistaken. To solve those issues, a specific Hanon exercise may be useful or not. The teacher will be able to tell, but doesn't really have to, because the teacher can very quickly write down an exercise or explain the general idea, so that the student can come up with an exercise on his/her own.
When advocating or doing Hanon as a set of exercises, I would presume that both teachers and students are often simply lazy, hoping that this shotgun approach will cover as much ground as possible ("Take this book. Do it for a month. Come back then"). "Lazy" is meant to say that they are not willing to take the time to think about the music, so a lot of the pellets will miss their target.
When, instead, advocating or doing technical exercises as an approach to tackle specific problems in conjunction with pieces, and in the musical context, I would hypothesize, one will derive much greater benefits. In this case, it may be surprising how many exercises that would come in handy are NOT in Hanon's book. It may be worthwhile to design well thought-out musical exercises specifically for a number of beginner's pieces.
I've changed the rhythm (to dotted), I've changed the articulation (stacatto), I've added accents (always 4th and 2nd fingers). In that way I've made the exercises more interesting and heightened the challenges inherent in the exercises. If there's an aspect of Hanon that's perhaps a disappointment it's the lack of accidentals, who plays in C all the time?
SCales, arpeggios, chords, are very important. But Hanon? Few months with:Bach: Little preludes and fugues, (Bach, always Bach, until heaven)Clementi: sonatinas op. 36, 37, 38Mozart: Viennese sonatinasGriegare better than years with Hanon, Czerny 599, and the 'deaf pianos'.
Someone who hasn't played piano before, say a 5 year old child or an "unmusical" adult of 60 who never played an instrument in their life, will generally find playing easy selections of Bach, Clementi or Mozart in their first months of playing piano extremely difficult. Finger excersises still stand as the most easiest method to develop fingers then because they can be learnt instantly and improvements or inefficiencies of technique are very quickly noticed.
It's very important to have the guide of a teacher.
Although there's not much in the lower grades for classical that's much better than exercises from my pov [although I know that's subjective]
....it's a debate arguing about something that doesn't matter - "what to play" when the big problem from the pov of learning is finding a teacher that knows how to teach you "how to play" - whether they give you a piece, or Hanon or let the 60 year old pick one - his/her biggest problem will be staying alive long enough to find a good teacher.
I think what you're saying is at least returning back to sanity for those that haven't got the movements to the point where they don't need to focus on them [and haven't found the teacher like Bernhard who claims to teach it in 2 days or whatever it was]I'd sooner be playing some mundane exercise well, comfortably etc rather than some Bach or Mozart pieces badly [or worse, in pain]. I can learn to play Bach and Mozart badly for free quite easily by myself from the sheet music [or even find a teacher that'll sit there explaining what's wrong with the piece from the music pov [most of which I can tell anyway] but without really having a clue why it is wrong and what to tell me to do about it - which is pretty much something we both share ignorance of and the only reason for having a teacher in the first place]
I never did exercises - but i always feel perhaps i missed out?My technique was never my strong point when i was younger, but i feel its much better these days.I still think my left hand could be sronger.Could anyone recommend exercises for more advanced students - i mean i have various exercise books which ive rarely used, because i feel overwhelmed. There are so many out there, i really wouldn't know where to start - which exercises improve which technique?And i'm not sure what part of my technique i need to improve, but i feel i should be doing something!My current teacher says not to bother with exercises as i can learn through the pieces i'm studying. But i wouldn't mind having a look what's out there.
Beginners cannot pick or choose what the want to do musically. First of all the physical nature of playing is beyond them and must be trained. What is naturally uncomfortable to play on the keyboard has to be trained to become a natural action. Exerises drill unnatural movement where pieces only look at uncomfortable actions at the keyboard in small amounts. A piece which had say, 454 fingers all over it would be murder for a beginner, so teaching a hanon which develops 454 is much friendlier. It is asking too much of a beginner to play 454 musically in a piece if they can even physically do it in an excersise!
I don't have any more problem playing 454 than 121 though. But both are a problem. I can't play 4 or 1 or 2. Because I have no idea what to move to do it "properly" - fingers?, arms?, wrists?, shoulders?, forearms? rotate wrist?, move wrist up and down? let my fingers "just fall" [fall from where? do I lift my arm up first, from the wrist, from the forearm, from the shoulder or lift the finger by rotating the hand or not by rotating the hand?] or "use the whole weight of my body from the toes" etc etc etc.I'm baffled, completely baffled. And the more I read about it the more baffled I am
You've done what my teacher did [soon to be ex-teacher] [albeit you aren't teaching me personally here], but you've assumed what the problems are going to be.
You go on to make some good points however. Except for the Chess analogy perhaps, you don't need to wiggle your arms around in some mysterious unknown way to play chess, and pretty much every aspect of the game you could teach someone who wasn't physically present because of that - as a result it's pretty easy to find copious amounts of stuff w.r.t improving your game, how to play, puzzles and their answers [and in the same way maths and computer programming etc] That is true of piano playing for perhaps all aspects except for physically playing it at least from what I've seen.
There is only one physical problem and that is balance. If you can balance your hand and can "feel" this balance while playing a naturally uncomfortable finger combination you will somewhat make improvement in your ability to produce that action. This applies for anything, the simplest piece to the hardest piece in the world. If the fingers deform unnecessarily, moving away from the natural relaxed hand posture then we are acting against the natural way to play a passage.
I havent assumed anything. 545 is a weakness for most people starting out. If that isn't your weakness then I am sure I can find something else.
Why must there be a universal set of exercises? From every passage come a multitude of fantastic exercises, from mirroring to transposition, changing fingering, adding pedal points, etc. Doing exercises from a book sucks the fun right out of what could possibly be a very enjoyable experience.
Yes, hopefully you can now see how evasive and elusive this information is even in your own words [I can now add "balance hand" - whatever that means and "feel that balance" to the list of things I'm supposed to do ]
[As an aside, I note quite often there's only ever "one thing" in piano playing it's never the same thing though ]
What you're basically saying is people need exercises because they lack the discipline to study repertoire correctly. What I'm saying is extracting bits of repertoire and expanding or simplifying them to create an exercise is a more efficient and perhaps more pleasant use of time.
I guess that "exercise" could be part of a piece, as I said, I think "what to play" isn't the burning question. Pieces offer other problems for beginners that a teacher might think they are solving for you [and I'm sure they do], but those problems hide the problem in a sense, albeit it makes some of the other aspects [dynamics, timing etc] harder. So you never grok the piece fully. I've no doubt my teacher would move on to something else as we both got bored to death of the same piece, and then just rinse and repeat the same thing, never solving the actual problem.
The point / goal is playing the whole piece at the end, rather than an exercise well at the end. But this isn't really playing pieces in the sense that I think some teachers teach pieces or students might attempt pieces by themselves. Aside from anything else, it's not particularly fun, nor is it playing the piece per se and it relies on knowing what "correct" is.
Perhaps this is as much to do with why exercises aren't seen as useful in that method. Not just Hanon's comments, but also because the pieces really are exercises, even moreso than some have said bits of them can be. The whole concept of the way to practise and learn them is. But if you don't do that, you might see exercises as useful or even necessary, and playing pieces as more fun than doing exercises. But learning pieces with either method might not be fun.
The idea to "feel balance" while playing is not as simple as it seems.
I mean there are only two things you have to do when playing piano. Be relaxed and listen to yourself.
The idea to simplify pieces as you mention is a very good one especially when you teach jazz, simplifying chords, rhythms etc, but I like to make the student tackle difficulties they face in pieces, not simplify things and take an easy way through, especially for "classical" piano training.
The teacher cannot solve the students problems that is a big misconception. The teacher guides and tells the student where to focus their efforts, in the end it is up to the students own practice!
I couldn't imagine making sure everything was perfect before I moved on, I would never learn anything then!
Your idea of peices are better than excerises is true but not true for the beginner. Simply they cannot drill ideas of balance, control and fingering by learning heaps and heaps of peices. It is too much to ask a beginner to tackles many pieces so we give them one or two peices and excerises which develop the finger control.
Yes. [Later you say it isn't hard though, but no matter ]
I think you need to read Bernhard's posts to get the ideas - they weren't mine [they aren't all his aiui], it's not about simplifying the piece [although he has made posts about doing that in some circumstances]
This is just semantics. Yes, the teacher has to tell the student where to focus. e.g [again, although I appreciate you aren't teaching here] all that stuff you've typed repeating "balance" and saying it's two things "relaxation" and "listening" wouldn't help me.
The difference of opinion seems to be that you believe the piece or exercise is as you put in the thread title "VERY IMPORTANT" You've said beginners can't choose a piece of music or exercise. So, it seems you've spent years alongside whatever else you've learnt honing the skill to say "Hanon" and kudos to you for that ;o)But as a beginner, I'd be looking for a teacher who had spent years to get to the point where they know what the correct movements are and can demonstrate and teach them. So I know what the correct technique or method is and I can practise that. The piece or exercise is just handing over a piece of paper in either direction.
If developing balance and relaxation will not help you then you are beyond help.
Hmmm. I've been personally trained by some of the best pianists in the world and world famous teachers
You say, you would be looking for a teacher who had spent eyars to get to the point where they know what the correct movements are and can demonstrate and teach them. Well what the heck are hanon and excerises?
This is how child prodigies are able to play with virtuosity, they were born with the extra synapsis in the brain and did not need to build them.
Most of what you said is true but it says nothing about obtaining it
So my point was just that, saying you need to develop balance doesn't say how to, and I'm sure you can play Hanon incorrectly as much as anything else so I can't see how "playing Hanon" is how to achieve it either.
If all piano discussion required was stating that it's only "balance and listening" and that succinct phrase was sufficient to describe it, then there wouldn't be much more to say. I was just observing your own evidence to the contrary.
Whatever practical steps / means / description / demonstration is required, it isn't saying "you need to develop balance and relax" neither is it, imo, playing a particular group of notes.
In the context of this thread I'd argue that playing Hanon or a piece is similary not going to develop it by magic - thus my point "how to play" not "what to play" - if you know how and practise that with Hanon or something else you probably make progress. If I played Hanon now for the next x years without a clue how to do those movements I'll get nowhere.
Perhaps you read my comment as saying you couldn't or had only learnt to say "Hanon"? It wasn't saying that. It was the "Beginners can't pick a piece" but if they read this thread and picked your CEFG stuff and "Hanon" it would appear they have. Didn't take long to learn that did it? Although I think I buy the idea of picking 100 pieces to learn over n years, along with a teacher's guidance if the pieces are too hard / easy and their knowledge of repertoire in general is better.
They are sheet music.They don't demonstrate anything to do with physical movements or balance or control. They are just printed notes. Although the former does contain some commentary about raising fingers high etc, aiui much of that is largely refuted higher in the thread and elsewhere by know it alls who didn't learn I suppose
You make a good point though, but it's not me that "knows it all", I've just read a lot of stuff here from others that is a better argument than yours IMO and some of it seems to be different and opposing.
Similary, since I do understand your last post, I now "know" that playing the piano requires balance and a fairly lengthy explanation of what that means. I can discuss that, repeat it, agree or disagree with it. Albeit with absolutely no effect at all on my ability to physically play or listen.
For example? Who opposes hanon? Who says that it is useless for the beginner? Who can say that it does not train balance and finger control in the simplest way? Please explain for me so I can teach my students something easier than Hanon to describe balance, it would really be a revelation to me.
It is the same when you are taught by a teacher. They tell you this and that, show you how to physically improve yoru playing by doing this and that
Of course nothing you read will help you unless you apply it. That is just logical. But if you read something, say what the heck is that I don't agree but I'll give it a go, you can only learn something from it.
So if I throw the holy bible infront of you, you will say, that is nothing, it is printed words. Hardly. Same with Hanon, the dots mean of course nothing if you don't how to read it. Music is another language and means a lot, it is never just dots.