Fundamentals of Piano Practice

[CC]

Sorry, I haven't kept up with you guys because I have been spending a lot of my time adding stuff to my book.  I have now printed an updated book, Feb/06; the last printing was Aug/04, which is now way out of date.  The book now has quite a bit on "mental playing" which was the last really major missing concept.  This concept is so basic and affects practically everything (memory, performance, nervousness, perfect pitch, etc), that I had to modify almost half the book. The Piano Tuning section has also been cleaned up.  For those not familiar with my book, go to:

https://members.aol.com/chang8828/contents.htm

Of course, there will be more additions, but the basic framework seems complete.

[lucasdopandeiro]

Thanks, Chang, your book was (and still is) very important for me.

You can't imagine how my playing evolved sibce my first reading.

Thanks one more time,
Lucas Reis

[frederic.lu]

Many Many thanks to Chang !! This book really save my piano life !! Even it's too much late for me to read this book. But it's really helpful! I also share this book to almost all of my friends who play piano. You can image how many positive feedback I get !!

[gilad]

thanks chang, i'm relatively a beginner, i found your book very helpful.
i showed it to my teacher who's really advanced and he's loving it.

[CC]

Thx for your expressions -- and the daily emails I get, give me the motivation to keep going. 

My next immediate projects are to describe LVB's Moonlite 1st movement and Wolfies's Rondo Alla Turca because Chopin's FI is too difficult for some (where I placed it in the book).  Also, that will round out the set of "most popular music" that I had originally intended to cover, as many students often try to learn these pieces and do not get enough guidance to learn them properly.

I will also keep refining the section on Perfect Pitch because, by tying it to mental play and memorizing MUSIC instead of single notes, I think that now anyone can learn PP very quickly.

[timothy42b]

I will look forward to the two new pieces.  They are on my list to learn, and probably on the list of most of us relative beginners, so they are ideal choices.  (I don't even like the FI <g>) 

[lucasdopandeiro]

Chang, I remember that you were thinking of making the book a Wiki book also. I've been using wiki a lot lately, and wonder what you think of it now.

Lucas Reis

[CC]

Chang, I remember that you were thinking of making the book a Wiki book also. I've been using wiki a lot lately, and wonder what you think of it now.

Lucas Reis

I am seriously thinking about that, because at least most of the major components are now complete, and maybe I can ask for additional sections that I can not write now, such as theory, fake books, and improvisation.  Also, I am curious if the book will go up, down, or stay same in quality. If someone makes changes, is there a quick way for me to find where the changes were made?  I will probably start by posting part of the book; I believe the book is already mentioned in Wiki.

[leahcim]

Also, I am curious if the book will go up, down, or stay same in quality. If someone makes changes, is there a quick way for me to find where the changes were made?

Yes, with most wikis you can see the pages that have changed. Some use RSS to show changed pages without having to keep looking at the actual site.

For each page, you can see the edits made and revert back to a previous version if need be.

You can also mark pages as immutable, so no one [except the admin of course] can edit them. For editing you can have some registration requirement with username / password before edits can be made.

[abstractentity]

A Wiki would be nice, especially to add other practice techniques like repeated note groups.        Also, a section on general practice organization would be nice and more specific discussion of technique problems of various repertoirery.