How to practise and some random questions

[andersand]

Hi.

I am so excited about playing and I just want to learn all the great pieces as fast as possible :-) Sometimes i think it takes forever to learn a piece, and i wonder if i am practising the right way. What is the best way to learn a new piece?  Is it best to learn the right hand first, then the left hand and finally try to mix the whole thing together? Or is it better to just take one note at a time with both hands slowly. Also... is it best to learn one page at a time and then move on? (or maybe even smaller parts). I would like to know how you are doing it?

Another questions. In my sheets there are these long (arc)lines above the notes, i wonder what they are there for?

About the hands... Is it best to relax in the hand/fingers while playing or should i keep em real tight? (it might be a silly questions... but anyway :-)).  Ive noticed that some players hold there hands really high above the keys compared to others that are almost under the keys (i hope you know what i mean). Is this just a matter of preference?

Thanks :-)

[penguinlover]

Andersand,
    I noticed this is your first post, welcome to the forum.  Do you have a teacher?  A teacher would be able to answer your many questions.  I will try the best I can to answer some of them.

   The lines you refer to are probably phrasing marks.  This helps to interpret the music, and shows you the musical phrase the composer had in mind.

   At all times, keep your hands as relaxed as possible.  Keep your wrists loose.  Relax your shoulders and arms.

   You should only practice small segments at a time.  There is much written on this subject here on the forum, check it out.  Bernhard has some great practice tips, read what he has written on the subject.  Practice hands separately, doesn't matter which hand.  Work until you can play a small segment with one hand perfectly, then go to the other hand, then put them together.  Don't waste your time playing through the entire piece, just segments at first.  When you get one segment down, start on another.

   This is more important the more difficult the piece.  Of course, a beginner piece wouldn't take as much to learn, but learning to practice is important, even on easier pieces.  Does this make sense? 

    Again, welcome and enjoy!     Penguinlover
   

[penguinlover]

There is a good discussion in the students' corner on relaxation and tension, you may want to check it out.

[danny elfboy]

Hi.

I am so excited about playing and I just want to learn all the great pieces as fast as possible :-) Sometimes i think it takes forever to learn a piece, and i wonder if i am practising the right way. What is the best way to learn a new piece?  Is it best to learn the right hand first, then the left hand and finally try to mix the whole thing together? Or is it better to just take one note at a time with both hands slowly. Also... is it best to learn one page at a time and then move on? (or maybe even smaller parts). I would like to know how you are doing it?

Another questions. In my sheets there are these long (arc)lines above the notes, i wonder what they are there for?

About the hands... Is it best to relax in the hand/fingers while playing or should i keep em real tight? (it might be a silly questions... but anyway :-)).  Ive noticed that some players hold there hands really high above the keys compared to others that are almost under the keys (i hope you know what i mean). Is this just a matter of preference?

Thanks :-)

Welcome!
Now, I know others will tell I'm getting obsessive with this but ... first of all think of your piano as a specular image of a choir
If you've seen a choir sheet you know you have 4 lines.
From the lower: bass, tenor, alto and soprano

That's what you have in your piano.
Starting from the extreme left to the extreme right
The grand-staff (the piano staff treble-bass line) represent the four lines of a choir sheet fused together. The grand-staff too from the lower position to the higher position is a specular image of your piano keyboard

You probably know that in a choir every group of choristers (the bass group, the tenor group, the alto group and the soprano group) studies its melodic line.
When they eventually will sing together all the melodic lines will fuse together harmonically, but each melodic line has been learned indepedently

With the piano it's like you have all the groups in your hand but the process is the same: each line is melodically independent and you have to learn it independently
When you will join the lines they will remain independ but will harmonically fuse with the other lines

So that means that not only you have to practice each hand separately but you have to practice each line separately. Which means that when you have pieces with more than two parts (two parts in one hand or both hands) you have to practice each melodic line. So if with two parts you learn RightHand and LeftHand and then you join them together, with four parts you learn "first melodic line of RightHand and second melodic line of RightHand" and join them together and "first melodic line of LeftHand and second melodic line of LeftHand" and join them together. Then learn/practice the "complexive RightHand" and the "complexive LeftHand" and join them together.

The same process that happens in a choir

Remember that just like in a choir you're not "singing a whole piece" but "you're singing independent melodic lines that fuse together harmonically with the others"
The difference is big and it's the reason why it's wrong to think of the bass line and the treble line as "unified by their nature"
So if you have a C-D-E at the right hand and a F-G-A at the left hand
you don't have to think of them like C-F  D-G  E-A, but as independent melodic lines

The long arc lines are phrases
You have to think of them a sentences of a discourse
When you read a book you have , ; : ... " " and so on and they allow the flow of words to be divided into phrases. That's what those arc lines are for. What's in where the arc line begin till where the arc line ends belongs to a phrase (just like this sentence between braces belong to this phrase)

The way I suggest you to practice is to sightread slowly the piece first hands separate
This isn't done to learn "movements to play" but to become familiar with the structure of the piece

While you're doing this first "territory exploring" you mark those bars or passages that seem the hardest for your current technique.
Those marked spots are your "problems" and your practicing is what you do to "solve those problems"

So you keep "correcting problems" till you have a perfected and good-sounding left hand melodic line and right hand melodic line. Then you start joining the two melodic lines remembering to keep them independent

As for those "problems"
First you must use an analytic approch to them
In order words ask yourself "what's the problem?"
Is it a change of position? Is it a strange fingering? Is it a sloppy finger? Is it a wrong subdivision? Is it movements that are too large? Is it the rythm?

Then you must remember that if you can't absolutely play that passage even after many repetitions: you need to cut the passage in a half.
Keep making it smaller till you "restrict the area and target the problem"

There are several ways to overcome specific problems

With jumps for example you need to practice moving fast from one note to another but wait a second or two before playing it. In order words you divide the jump in two processes: aiming and playing and make a pause between the two

With hands joining you may need in hard passage to add two-three notes at a time over a playing melodic line. That's it your left hand is playing and you add two or three notes of the right hand without making a mess of your left hand and so on

With moving from one position to another of the keyboard you may need to just practice moving the end to the next place in the keyboard in time and ignoring the other notes for the moment. In other words practicing the "main beats" and know where the hand should be/go at each main beat

With rhythmic problems you may need to play the passage with various rhythmic variation or with pause between the notes or with pause between two note (and three notes and fours notes and so on) or to repeat each note four times, then three times, then two times ....

Your hands should be relaxed but not "dead"
Stand still with you arms completely relaxed at the side of your body
Make sure your arms are totally relaxed and there's no muscle contraction
Observe your forearm, wrist and hand

This natural position of the forearm, wrist and hand is the position you need to maintain when playing.
Observe how the forearm, the wrist and the first phalanges (what we improperly call the "hand" and consider separated from the "fingers) are a straight line.
Observe how below this line a natural arch is formed

The arch is the best structure to transmit weight
When romans used arches to build their dams they knew that was the best structure possible for resistance because the arch naturally trasmits the weight to the floor
Your body too trasmit its weight to the floor through arches: the hip arch (pelvis bone) the tibia arch (leg bone) and the foot arch

The essence of piano playing is trasmitting the weight of your upper body from the torso to the arms. The fingers just need to "articulate" but they don't need to absorb such weight as all the weight-word is done by the arms.
This is also the essence of controlling dynamic, power and volume

Think of your arms as levers for the hands
The arch below your wrist and hand transmits the weight of the arm to the keys
This fast process allows tone production
During the tone production there's a quick contraction of the arm to stabilize the weight and maintain the alignment which is followed as quickly by an instant release of all muscular contraction

Try this while you're now reading this post at your desk

Your upper arms should hang from your shoulders and be totally relaxed and close to the sides of the body. Relax your forearms and let them hang at the sides of your chair
Observe the natural position and alignment that you need to maintain
Just lift the forearms above your desk keeping them as relaxed as possible
Feel the weight of your upper body trasmitted through the torso to the arms and let them fall on your desk so as to fall on the tips of your fingers
When there's the impact with the desk contract the arms muscles for a fraction of a second so as to stabilize the alignment of the hand, wrist and arm
Immediately release the contraction (send the weight back to the torso) and feel the whole arm and hand as relaxed as when it was hanging at the sides of your body

In order to maintain this alignment at the piano you need to adjust the heigh of you bench. The right height allows you to let your upper arms hang at your sides and leaves the forearm level with the floor when you're in the natural playing position in the middle range of the keyboard. The right distance is the one that allows your elbows to rest without effort about at the center of your body where your ribcages end

You need to ask a friend to observe you trying different bench heights till he or she can see that the tips of your elbows (when in playing position and with your upper harms hanging) are on the same plane of the top of the white keys

This is the correct playing position:



You can see all the chacteristics I listed.
The forearm, elbow and first phalanges (the hand) are a one straight line
The forearm is parallel to the floor
The tip of the elbow is in the same plane of the top of the white keys
The elbows rest near the center of the body

Observe the fingers
They're in the same natural position you can observe when you keep your arms totally relaxed and hanging at the side of your body
There's no tension or muscular contraction in the fingers (after all the muscles that move the fingers are in the forearms and connected to them through long and fragile tendons)  so they're free to move.
But remember the fingers movement are small
You should never lift your finger high
Your playing fingers are the one you contract the moment of "tone production" while the fingers that don't play are the ones that you relax totally at the moment of sound production.

What you also can observe in the pic is that the arm follows the direction of the radio bone not of the ulna bone
The difference is that the radio is the only bone that really connects to the hand and can trasmits weight. The ulna is a fragile and thin bone that don't absorb weight and don't connect to the hand

When the tip of your little finger points toward the black keys you're in alignment with the radio. In this position the tip of the thumb points toward north-west
When the tip of your thumb points toward the black keys you're in alignment with the ulna. In this position the tip of the finger points toward north-east

You can see yourself how hard and slow are movements when you're aligned with the ulna. Place your hand on the keyboard in playing position and make sure the thumb is covering the key with the side and is parallel to the white key with the tip pointing towards the black keys. In this position with the other fingers pointing north-east try to move the other fingers in scale patterns. Can you feel how it's hard to move them?

Now place your hand on the keyboard in playing position and make sure the little finger covers the white part key and is parallel to the white key with the tip pointing towards the black keys. In this position all fingers point toward the black keys EXCEPT the thumb that point toward north-west. In this position you can't play with the side of the thumb but just with the tip. Try now to move the other fingers in scale pattern. See how the movement is fast, easy and relaxed.

That's the position you should maintain and this means that when playing in the C central zone your hands will point towards north-west rather than north
Sometimes you need to deviate to the ulna position but you must come back as soon as possible to the natural radio alignment

The most important thing is that you never destroy the natural arch of your hand (with happens when you play with a low wrist for example)

I hope this helps

[nightingale11]

the most effiecent way to practice has Bernhard discussed in his many posts. So take same time reading through his posts:

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,5767.msg56133.html#msg56133
(huge collection of links)

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,9159.msg92755.html#msg92755
(m1469s index of the forum)

But however it's not enough to just read them through you need to find a teacher with the same approach(look for a ''taubmann'' teacher they use a similar approach)that can help you. But i'm affraid that will be very difficult since most human beings on this earth are ignorants.

so start by reading through his posts then get a good teacher.

[andersand]

Thank you so much all. Great answers. All that information was just what i wanted.

I had a teacher a couple of years ago, but i didn't like playing, so i stopped. Now I regained all the motivation, so maybe i should get a teacher :-)

[cjp_piano]

Yeah, find a teacher.  It's so much easier for someone to show you how to practice, especially because there are so many ways, depending on the piece.