questions on importance of technique

[skt1991]

I started playing the piano about 1 and a half years ago.  I don't take lessons so I am wondering if i should be learning scales, arpeggios, etc. I don't plan on pursuing any musical career or applying to a college of music. All I want to do is be able to play the pieces i want to play. By doing technical excercises will i be able to learn pieces faster? For example, when i first started learning the piano I loved the third movement of the moonlight sonata. i tried to learn it and obviously did horribly but still i was able to learn the first page and brought it up to a decent speed within 2weeks maybe around 30 minutes to 1 hour practice a day. if i tried learning that same passage after learning all the scales and arpeggios well, will I be able to learn that same passage within 2 or 3 days?

also is technique a gradual thing or will i be able to improve it drastically within the first month or so of doing technical excercises?

[rc]

I started playing the piano about 1 and a half years ago.  I don't take lessons so I am wondering if i should be learning scales, arpeggios, etc. I don't plan on pursuing any musical career or applying to a college of music. All I want to do is be able to play the pieces i want to play. By doing technical excercises will i be able to learn pieces faster? For example, when i first started learning the piano I loved the third movement of the moonlight sonata. i tried to learn it and obviously did horribly but still i was able to learn the first page and brought it up to a decent speed within 2weeks maybe around 30 minutes to 1 hour practice a day. if i tried learning that same passage after learning all the scales and arpeggios well, will I be able to learn that same passage within 2 or 3 days?

also is technique a gradual thing or will i be able to improve it drastically within the first month or so of doing technical excercises?

Yes, they will help.  You will run into similar patterns all the time, if you've already got it in your subconscious then you'll already have that part out of the way.  I also find them excellent in cultivating good practice and performance habits, such as concentration/focus/attention, directed practice, thinking ahead, recovering from flubs, listening skills, kinesthetic ease...

Find you own balance of how much to practice technique.  Recently I've been focusing a lot on it, because I'm not doing a lot of performing right now, so I don't have much need of an ever expanding repertoire, I don't like learning something and then forgetting it before having a change to share it.

Technique is like learning any new skill - you will experience drastic improvement at first, then be on a plateau for an indeterminate time until your ready for another spurt of drastic improvement.  Be prepared for that, don't be discouraged by plateauing, it's normal, something to be savored.

A good idea is to also practice improvising with the techniques you learn.  Keep it simple, managable, and fun.  Use improv session to be explorative and creative, it will give context to the techniques you're learning, making it more enjoyable for it's own sake - which is also conductive to good learning.

[lazlo]

I've  been playing for almost a year, and I can say that I credit scales and arpeggios as being the most important factors technically for me. If you think about it, all music breaks down on some really basic level to scales and arpeggios. If nothing else, they help tremendously with finger agility and speed. Just my thoughts.

[molto-marcato]

Why do so many self tought beginners and semi-beginners work on Beethoven Moonlight 3rd mvt. ? This is like a kid learning to walk starting with a marathon. You are arguing about the importance of scales and arpeggios which qualifies you as a beginner and a Beethoven Sonata is not suited for beginners imo. I'd suggest you find a teacher. He will actually be able to determine the pieces best suitable for you.

Did you ever practice the more common and somewhat easier Beethoven pieces like für Elise or maybe even Moonlight first mvt. What about Schumann Album for the Young, Grieg lyric pieces, Mozart sonata facile, maybe Chopin Mazurkas.....if you can play these well you can think of advancing in complexity but stepwise.

Best regards

[gruffalo]

Building a good foundation for the ability to memorize your pieces (mentally,  not just by playing the pieces everyday) will improve your ability to guide your hands around the piano, therefore developing accuracy. to improve the ease of which your hands can move around certain technical obstacles ie. octaves, thirds, leaps, comes usually with the development of memorization, learning repertoire, learning etudes and some technical studies here and there (but only if they have a purpose. no point drillling hanon every day for no single purpose). you will find that if you grasp the mental concept (which is harder, but quicker), you will save a lot more time than you would be hammering away at technical drills. so evidentally, this would be the better path for you to work on seeing as you are not looking for a career as a pianist and therefore have other things to be working on at the same time.

[gonzalo]

By doing technical excercises will i be able to learn pieces faster?

Do you know of the book by Hanon " The Virtuoso Pianist"? It's a book with technical exercises. The author assures you that it will improve your technique and make you a virtuoso pianist if you do the exercises everyday.
He also says that the objective of the book is to increase your technique so that the only problem for learning pieces will be to learn which fingers go where .

Take care,
Gonzalo

[skt1991]

Why do so many self tought beginners and semi-beginners work on Beethoven Moonlight 3rd mvt. ? This is like a kid learning to walk starting with a marathon. You are arguing about the importance of scales and arpeggios which qualifies you as a beginner and a Beethoven Sonata is not suited for beginners imo. I'd suggest you find a teacher. He will actually be able to determine the pieces best suitable for you.

Did you ever practice the more common and somewhat easier Beethoven pieces like für Elise or maybe even Moonlight first mvt. What about Schumann Album for the Young, Grieg lyric pieces, Mozart sonata facile, maybe Chopin Mazurkas.....if you can play these well you can think of advancing in complexity but stepwise.

Best regards

when i first started playing piano the moonlight sonata sparked my interest so i wanted to try. i obviously know now that it is quite beyond my level but still wanted to try. i did learn most of the moonlight sonata first movement i think before attempting the third.

thanks for all your comments. im gonna start learning all the scales, arpeggios, etc and ill also look at hanon books.

[gruffalo]

thanks for all your comments. im gonna start learning all the scales, arpeggios, etc and ill also look at hanon books.

dont put all the focus into these. technical exercises should be a very small part of your focus, both short-term and long-term. i say, learn the scales and arpeggios (only if you haventone them already) to develop keyboard familiarity  within the different keys. if you have done them before, re-visit them again just to be completely confident that you know the configurations inside out and naturally. after this, there is no need. dont think of them as physical exercises. try to understand the patterns and remember the patterns. the physical part will then come naturally. once you have learned them, you shouldnt have to keep using them as a daily  technical regimen.

try a bit of hanon, but again dont make it a habit or a daily toil. dont be fooled by the title. they are helpful, but only if you choose them for a specific purpose. ie, if you find  you are having trouble with trills or tremolos in a piece, then go practise the hanon a few times. if you practise the exercises for an hour daily like Hanon says, then you are likely to cause yourself injury and ruin your quality of tone.

[rc]

I came here to suggest an idea, but I might as well disagree with Gruffalo too

I say it's fine to use technical exercises as physical exercises, actually I consider that the bulk of technical exercises.  Knowing the patterns and theoretical concepts is easy, but that doesn't mean one can actually play a scale.  Playing piano is a physical activity, very delicate athletics of the hand!  The difference between a right note and a wrong note is a fraction of an inch, so why wait and let the physicality come on it's own, or worse - haphazardly.  We can use these technical exercises to teach our fingers to consistantly get to the right place at the right time.

We don't want to spend hours everyday for the rest of our lives working on exercises!  But if someone can't play a scale cleanly, better work on it.  It doesn't take too long to begin to master the skill to where you no longer have to think about it when you have to play a scale, it becomes second nature, every scale you come across in music is playable.  From that foundation, one could begin to practice variations on the scale, so that stacatto scales are second nature, and crescendos/diminuendos, in 3rds, etc...

A student could get these things directly from pieces, the physical work has to be done one way or another.

Anyways, my suggestion was, if you have a digital piano, to practice exercises w/o sound...  After you've figured out what to do (with sound, so you know it's right!), then why bother listening to these repetitive figurations over and over again, if you can help it?

[Bob]

Piano teachnique is something that develops gradually.  The drastic improvements happen slowly.  At least for me.  I notice I've improved since last year.  Occasionally I see a big leap if I have been paying attention for awhile.  It's more like watching water boil than flipping a light switch.

If you've been playing a year and a half, I would keep working with a teacher on pieces.

But throw in some scales/arps and some theory.  It's just the basics of music that are good to know regardless of what you do in music.

Once you've got more technique, you can do more things.  You would work at a higher level.  You might accomplish the same in two days as you used to do in thirty, but you'll also want to add more after you've done those two days of work.

[alzado]

I don't play scales or exercises or Hanon or any of that.

I play about 1-1/2 hours per day.

I find my own material to play.  I have a pretty good sense of what is within my reach, and what is too ambitious.   I spend quite a bit of time searching out material that I can play and that I enjoy.

I do take a weekly lesson and my teacher does assist me to find my way.

I learned to play octaves by playing octaves.  I learned to sight read difficult scores by sight reading difficult scores.

I do hope you find your way.  Frankly, I can't stand those wooden exercise books. 

[skt1991]

hmmm. i have been reading through the comments and have been seeing mixed views but overall it says you should do the scales and stuff but not overdo those excercises. i am still unsure of the answer to the question i have in my head but i am unable to fully explain it in words.

ok lets try this way. what grade (ABRSM) is the average student on after about a year of playing the piano? i read somewhere that you can progress to a grade 8 technical skill in 1 year. In about 1 year i progressed to a relative grade 6. If i mixed in a decent amount of technical studies in there would I have been able to advance to a grade 8?

another question. When i was looking through other posts, I saw many new pianists wanting to play pieces such as chopin etudes and FI, but others said they should wait a year or two before playing them. Does this mean a year or two of studying the necessary components of these pieces, or throughout the years of studying common technique and scales, you will acquire technical efficiency to play the piece. This part somewhat branches back to my first question.