Tracing your pianistic/technical footsteps

[m19834]

Hello, I am currently reading "Famous Pianists and Their Technique" by Reginald R. Gerig, and this got me thinking about the various ways of conceptualizing technique, which I have had phases with over the years.  I thought it would be useful to my sense of awareness to trace back through the years, with the benefit of hindsight vision, what my predominating thoughts on pianism have been at various stages in my development.

I am not currently at home and I am writing from my phone for the weekend, so I am not going to start with my own outline, however, I have become very interested in your tracing of footsteps along these lines, if you would. What I would really like to know is this :

1.  What were (or are) the predominating concept(s) on technique at various stages of your development ?

2.  Generally stated, what or who (teachers, books, friends, a particular experience, etc.) most influenced these concepts/stages of development for you ?

3.  What repertoire and/or exercises were you working on at these stages, and how did it affect your practicing ?

4.  What were your experiences; emotionally, physically, etc.. In other words, what was the result or what came of these particular concepts ?

Thanks, I know this might be a big post for you to make (or maybe not ?), but I will be *extremely* interested  to read .      

[thalbergmad]

Hello, I am currently reading "Famous Pianists and Their Technique" by Reginald R. Gerig development ?

Big coincidence, as I have just finished it.

A bit tough going sometimes and a lot to take in, but worth the effort in the end. Took me a month to read it.

I will give some thought to your questions.

Thal

[birba]

Bravo! One of the most interesting posts seen here, yet.  Yes, it is a bit tough to put into a few words our pianistic evolution over the years.  And I can tell you, being one of the older crowd here, it really never ends.  Just recently, I came back to the Wanderer after 40 years of giving up on it, and it was like putty in my hands.  Of course, the real revelations come early on, but I'm always "learning" complete freedom at the piano.
I, too, will think about this and answer!  and I MUST get that book!

[bellywelly]

hmm...to be honest, i'm still a 'beginner' at piano, im my opinion. i just finished 8 grade, and in my teens with limited experince, therefore, im not a 'great pianist' or anything near.
but- i'll have to say, most of my techniques was passed down by my teacher and some from my sister, who also plays piano. i also watch/listen to any recordings to music performances (not just piano) and great versions of performances really inspires me.
scales were a great help the years before, but now im working mainly on sight reading, which needs to improve for my next exam. i've just been grabbing nearby music sheets and randomly sight-reading for the last couple of months.
i personally think owning quick 'smooth' fingers are essential. scales help, but, in my childhood of scales, i've always complained about the boringness of them. i even had a massive argument which caused tears with my teacher once- when i was 7yo.
one of the peices im working on is Brahms op188no3 right now, and it requires such power and strength, something i do not own with my weak thin fingers. i still have not found something that's help me recieve strength in my fingers- help anyone?

[arumih]

This is quite an interesting topic indeed...

I've been playing almost three years now, and I consider myself 'intermediate' if that means anything. I've had two teachers over this time-one was of the school that once your fingers reached where they were supposed to, things were alright. The other was a lot stricter about technique, so it's from her my whole approach to technique developed sort of. She was the first one to introduce me to the concept of arm weight and an approach to playing the piano that meant incorporating the whole body and not just the fingers. Up to today I'm still trying to work on being more relaxed, and using arm weight/arm rotation when needed. Bernhard's posts on here also gave a lot of food for thought on technique e.g. crossing over the thumb (which I still don't fully get) and the usefulness of technical exercises.

I think right now I'm concentrating on speed, comfort, accuracy and efficiency of movement in terms of technique.

Funnily enough, one of the first pieces to highlight technical problems was Clementi's sonatina, Op 36 no 1. This was the first time I was playing whole scale sequences in a piece and the whole passing of the thumb was problem. My scales weren't smooth and every time I had to a 1231 finger movement it was quite noticeable. So that meant going back to my scales and practising just 12312 over and over to eliminate that problem. At that time I was also working with part 1 of Hanon, which just seemed to prove the uselessness of the exercises for me at that time. Here I was doing these five finger exercises to 'improve' my technique, but the first 20 exercises didn't relate to the issue I was having at the time! At that time also I was playing invention no. 4 in d minor with those long trills...another big technical issue...couldn't get them even and I tired while playing them. This is where I realised the important of relaxation, and arm rotation. A lot of practice on just trills ensued, but I still didn't get it perfect.

A big part of the problem was my thought process though, anticipating the perceived 'difficulty' of the upcoming trills and then tensing up leading to problems playing the trill. I've come a good way since then though and I'm a lot more relaxed when playing trills.

The technical problems of today though lie in playing quick passages (scales, broken chords etc). I can't relax enough and I seem to have a lot of unnecessary movement which seems to be hindering my speed. I'm currently working on Solfeggietto-I can play it at quarter note=120 comfortably, but I'm treating it as a technical exercise to try to increase my speed (and relaxation) when playing it. My limit right now seems to be 132 but with a good few mistakes along the way...I'm also working on Czerny op 299 no 3 to try to help with all of this, but progress is slow, steady but slow. Right now I'd love to learn more about the Alexander technique and Taubman's technical approach, but finding a teacher along those lines would be next to impossible in my country. I'm also looking into Chang's approaches, but I seem stumped as to how to use these in Solfeggietto! Maybe I need to take another read...

I'm not exactly sure if this post covered everything you asked, and I know I rambled a bit, but this is a big topic, and not one I get to speak about a lot! (the trouble of having family/friends not interested in piano!)

[ted]

1.The predominating concept for me is, and has always been, that I have sufficient physical facility to get my ideas out at the instrument. Playing of pieces is for me an enjoyable, but secondary activity.

2.I owe most of my technique to my Virgil Practice Clavier, which I acquired from my teacher forty years ago. Most technical advice given to me by teachers and experts since I have found to be spurious at best, and I wish I had relied on my own judgement much earlier in life than I did.

3.I haven't done anything resembling technical practice at the instrument for years. All physical training I transferred to the silent clavier, set on six or seven ounces, for five or ten minutes at the beginning and end of each day.

4.I have no particular emotional associations with it aside from lamenting time wasted following various teachers' instructions about technique and getting nowhere. No doubt they meant well but I should have had the confidence to follow my own inclination and common sense.

   I think the Virgil Practice Clavier was a wonderful invention, and I wonder why nobody has marketed a much cheaper, much lighter modern equivalent. Digital pianos don't do the trick; even their heaviest resistance is far too light. At various times I have read a great deal about technique in a great many books but either I have completely failed to understand what they are talking about or it just hasn't worked for me.

[birba]

My first five years were completely wasted - a singing teacher, an "aunt minnie around the corner".  Came into contact with music at the age of 11 with a starving female dutch composer, Marga Gortmans.  Taking lessons in her tiny tiny one room apartment (with a common bath on the landing) were revelations for me.  Haydn sonatas were my czerny clementi and hannon.  From the school of Deppe and Mattay, she insisted on complete freedom of the arm and "weight touch".  But it was the music!!  I even composed some little romantic pieces that I thought were WONDERFUL!  (fortunately they've been lost).  At the age of 15 we moved to the east coast and I studied with Mme. Eva Oncken von Knorring, a student of Breithaupt in Berlin.  Again "weight touch", but even more so.  I remember practising the Bach d minor first movement at 1/8th note = 60 raising my wrist and dropping the weight of the arm on every note.  But up until now, no one ever really talked about finger technique.  But lessons were music music music.  Tales of Busoni (walking on his hands in the classroom and announcing his marriage or something like that), Ansorge, Breithaupt, Carreno, etc.  And being taken to concerts in New York.  Rubenstein, Arrau, Novaes, Serkin, Michelangeli, etc.  Two performances were vitally important to me:  Michelangeli performing Gaspard de la Nuit, and Kempff playing the Davidsbundler.  It was the absolute esoteric magic of the first and the complete natural almost improvised quality of the second.  I wanted to attain these two qualities in my playing.  But I had no real technique.  Sure, I won some concerto competitions and MEA auditions and played in Judson Hall (Now Cami, I think) but I just couldn't connect to the music, especially when there were lots of notes involved.  I tightened up the shoulders and the "weight touch" went out the window.  I moved to Italy.  I wanted to find MIchelangeli!  But his famous classes were interrupted and he wasn't teaching anymore.  I found a teacher who was a student of Vitale, the piano guru at the time.  Moved back to square one, and for 6 months practised his 4 and 5 finger excercizes.  Not even scales.  I began to get the hang of it and my teacher gave me the Chopin scherzo, no. 1.  I practised it for weeks at 1/8th note = 48. Arms completely free, weight in the tip of the finger and individual "automatic" striking of the key.  And it just came to me one afternoon.  I played it at a supersonic speed, all the notes rattling out like a machine gun with absolutely no tension in the arms and shoulders.  Talk about enlightenment.  At the age of 23, I felt like I had finally acquired a decent technique.  Then I started to try and find that communication with music via the piano that I had so longed for.  And I'm still trying today...

[m19834]

1.The predominating concept for me is, and has always been, that I have sufficient physical facility to get my ideas out at the instrument.

Do you feel that you are achieving this to your satisfaction ?  And, if there are times when you feel you must discover something new, do you always discover what you need ?  I would be interested in learning what that process is like for you, if it happens at all and you think that you could put it into words.  

Thanks to those who have responded in any way already. I am in the process of writing my stuff down and I think that the initial draft is going to be insanely long, as I am coming to realize that I have needed to do this in some way for years now, to get these thoughts out of my head and more or less sorted out in writing.  I won't post the first draft but I will weed things out and try to post a kind of outline at some point.  

[ted]

Technique frequently gives rise to new music and new sounds frequently demand new technique. The two form an ongoing feedback loop of the type which seems to lie at the heart of much creative activity. No, I never feel I must discover something new per se; I am quite content just to let things develop and enjoy whatever happens. The work at the clavier is different each day and I do not let it become drudgery or a drill. Everything is part of one syncretic, organic process. Forty years ago I separated, classified, analysed, struggled with "shoulds" and "ought tos" and so on - because I didn't know any better and thought teachers were always right. It's just the perennial  story about not being able to put an old head on young shoulders.

In short, the "feedback loop" idea is the answer to your question. That's the nearest I can come to putting it into words.  

[alhimia]

In my view (a result of a quite long, intensive proces), all musical, technical and physical problems - as far as you can separate those at all - could be reduced to this:

The central problem in piano playing is not that it is difficult but, on the contrary, extremely easy to play the instrument and bring the keys down and exactly this easiness attempts to dissociate one from what is really difficult to do.

Best wishes,
Alhimia

[csharp_minor]

What an interesting topic, I couldn’t resist posting!  

I thought it would be good to contribute to this topic as my piano playing experience is still in its infancy so I can hopefully give you a detailed account on my development so far as it’s fresh in my mind.

I’ve been playing for almost two years and would say I’m roughly at the beginner/early intermediate stage. I’m only grade 2 officially but I’m in no rush to do the grades quickly. My goal at the moment is to increase my repertoire and at the same to develop technique with the same pieces.

At the moment I am finding pieces I like the sound of that concentrate on particular aspect of technique (touch, fingering, 3rd playing etc.) or contain an ornament I am unfamiliar with, or have a time or key signature I haven’t had much experience playing in. To me it’s important I don’t waste time on pieces I hate no matter how beneficial they may be, but find piece I like the sound of that are just as usefull. So I’m not a big fan of technical exercises to be honest!

I have been recently been working on the short simple pieces by Beethoven, Bach: Anna Magdalena note book, easier preludes by Bach, and easier pieces by Chopin, some pieces from Burgmuller 25 studies Op 100, bits from Schumann’s album for the young, and Beethoven's easier bagatelles. I don't like to work on arrangements of pieces.

I didn’t have a piano teacher in the beginning and had been teaching myself for about 9 months straight before I got lessons. I used a beginner book aimed at kids first! Then got one aimed at adults ( John Thomson’s adult prep piano book), the adult one was much better as it progressed faster and showed you the basics of technique, like legato playing, slurring notes and different kinds of attack. At about 9 months I tried my hand at Beethoven’s moonlight sonata 1st mvt and almost finished it, but played it to death and stopped playing it. Quite how I moved from an adults prep book to that I’m not really sure.

The prep book did have their own version of Hannon exercises in it and I worked on them almost every day, I was also learning scales too. I am sure that this must have had some benefit to my progress as it made me become more aware of how your hands, wrists, arms etc are used in piano playing. and that it is much more than just finger power alone.

I think also observing performances on TV or the internet, or in concerts of good pianists have helped me a lot. The basics like how to sit at the instrument, hand, arm movement, attack, touch, fingering can all been seen at work by watching a good pianist. And the thing I noticed about the good ones is that they are so relaxed in the way they handle the keyboard. I try to apply this attitude to my own way of playing.    

In a way this understanding and an awareness of relaxation, posture whist playing have been influenced by my interest in martial arts, I used to do Aikido. And in a way maybe I have an attitude that is similar to the Alexander technique, but I don’t know hardly anything about this teaching method!  

Chopin’s ideas on playing the piano have also helped me and have confirmed my own ideas about playing. I read a few months ago: Chopin Pianist and teacher, it has lots of information on Chopin’s own teaching methods and ideas about playing. Most noticeably making it comfortable for the hand at all times. This has infuenced my way of approaching fingering I always try it was written on the score but if its not good for my own hand I change it to make it comfortable for me.

Doing grade 2 was good for my progress as it made me learn and memorise scales and sight read (something I didn’t work on before I had a teacher!)  

And of course my teacher has helped a lot with my progress. Its amazing how many subtle things you can learn from having someone in the know sitting next to you observing your every move. If I’m not sure about something a musical term or the best way to execute a passage I always ask and she always shows me. Most of what I have learned has been from watching her play the technical difficulty I’m having and then copying, usually I get the problem sorted out straight away. She’s is not a strict teacher she is easy going but sharp with anything I’m doing wrong  
I think it’s very important to have a teacher you get on with that is good at their job.
I think it can strongly influence your progress.

I thing hindering my progress now is the instrument, I only have a digital piano so a lot of things like learning pedalling on a real instrument, using the uc pedal, developing touch and tone colour, even doing a decent sounding trill! Are not possible in the digital piano.

Hope there is some usefull infomation for you to read through Karli! I haven’t posted for ages!

[artsyalchemist]

Hello, I am currently reading "Famous Pianists and Their Technique" by Reginald R. Gerig, and this got me thinking about the various ways of conceptualizing technique, which I have had phases with over the years.  I thought it would be useful to my sense of awareness to trace back through the years, with the benefit of hindsight vision, what my predominating thoughts on pianism have been at various stages in my development.

I am not currently at home and I am writing from my phone for the weekend, so I am not going to start with my own outline, however, I have become very interested in your tracing of footsteps along these lines, if you would. What I would really like to know is this :

1.  What were (or are) the predominating concept(s) on technique at various stages of your development ?

2.  Generally stated, what or who (teachers, books, friends, a particular experience, etc.) most influenced these concepts/stages of development for you ?

3.  What repertoire and/or exercises were you working on at these stages, and how did it affect your practicing ?

4.  What were your experiences; emotionally, physically, etc.. In other words, what was the result or what came of these particular concepts ?

Thanks, I know this might be a big post for you to make (or maybe not ?), but I will be *extremely* interested  to read .      

Whoa, this is a long one.  I'll try to answer as best I can.

1) I don't remember what my goals were at the beginning of my study (if I had any), but I always strived for the music to be as perfect and as intentional as I could make.  Now, it's not only to have a firm foundation on technique but to express the pieces musically.

2) All my teachers were somewhat different in their approach to technique.  Some didn't even cover it at all while others made sure I did my scales and arpeggios consistently with my music.  As for what I play now, I think I got the ideas from a book I used throughout the years. That probably had the biggest impact on me technically.

3) As for repertoire associated with technique, one could argue that every piece played has some form of technique that needs to be worked on.  With one teacher, Burgmuller and Czerny exercises were the main focus, and I've done a little bit of Hanon with another.  Otherwise, it's trying to find what technique needs to be addressed in each piece I've played and practicing that separately from the typical piece rehearsing.

4) I was always the weird kid who always enjoyed scale exercises when I was younger, so it really never affected me emotionally.  Now I can't stand them, lol.  I'd much rather dig into pieces and find out what needs to be worked on there, like I mentioned above.  However, I won't deny that knowing scales and arpeggios are a firm foundation of understanding the more advanced piano pieces, and probably should be at least known of by the pianist.

[lostinidlewonder]

Nice questions Karli!

1.  What were (or are) the predominating concept(s) on technique at various stages of your development ?

These probably where the most important developments of technique (of the mind and body) for me;

Age 3-5 : Learning how to coordinate 2 hands to play together, LH predominantly supporting a RH melody. Exploring basic rhythmic devices, basic chords, scales (what they sounded like and how to play them). Learning how to control passing fingers to go up and down the piano with one hand.
Age 5-10: Learning how to listen to music and how to transfer what I hear in my head to notes on the piano. Sheet music was tough to get back in the 80s so I learnt a lot of my music from cassette tapes and yes the old LPs lol.
Age 10-13: Learning music that was too difficult for myself, usually loud and hard music! Playing difficult technical acrobatics with inefficient technique. Helped give me a broad understanding of piano technique as a whole which was a good experience.
Age 13-17: Developing efficiency of technique (not wasting energy while playing) and improving sight reading.
Age 17-present: From the age of 17 onwards I felt I had the learning tools to tackle pretty much anything I wanted to in the piano repertoire. I started to question myself why more difficult works take longer to learn and worked on solving this issue. Developing practice methods to help teach myself and others, improving sight reading/memory work and sheet music/keyboard pattern observation and efficiency of physical technique.

2.  Generally stated, what or who (teachers, books, friends, a particular experience, etc.) most influenced these concepts/stages of development for you ?

You can never learn enough from other people, but in the end, the person who most influenced these concepts and stages of development was myself. Teachers only ever where around for a very small part of the week (1 hour in a week!), the other countless hours of piano practice by myself outweighed this significantly. When anyone learns a musical instrument they should be confident to explore the insturment themselves, make mistakes, learn from the mistakes, to do everything in the correct manner all the time takes away from the fail/succeed learning process I believe which has been so important to my development. However, I have to say that my teacher during my early teenage years was most helpful, to control my over ambitious and arrogant approach to music.

3.  What repertoire and/or exercises were you working on at these stages, and how did it affect your practicing ?

Age 3-5 : Scales, Chords, pieces such as: Chopsticks, Sound of Music, Traditional Songs such as Greensleeves, Minuets from Bach, early Czerny pieces.
 
Age 5-10: Some method books from teachers, I can't even remember what they where. Bach WTC, melodies from Beethoven Sonatas and Mozart Piano concertos. A lot of music experience came from singing in school choir, I was also a part of an advanced singing group for my school which competed in state competitions and won a lot, we got to sing in the Perth Concert Hall (West Australia's main concert hall). Even though this had little to do with piano, it developed musical concepts as a whole. Singing and connecting singing with learning piano was very helpful for me, it made hands know what sound it would produce and you could imagine the note in your head or sing it as you play. I could also listen to recordings and then go back to the piano with the sound in my head, listening to all the notes, if I couldn't find a particular note I would sing it until I found it on the piano. Singing helped also a great deal with rhythm and pitch training. I also dabbled with a program on the old computer Commodore 64, Music Shop, and could for the first time in my life see notes and hear it being played out to me as I wrote them down. I played with this program a lot when I was around this age and it really helped me to hear the notes in my head when reading music.

Age 10-13: Lots of popular "show off" pieces. First experiences with Hanon, given to me from teacher.

Age 13-17: Beethoven Sonata's, Chopin/Liszt Etudes, Spanish composers Albeniz, De Falla, Lecuona.

Age 17-present: too many pieces to list. I think Ravel and Debussy had the most inspirational effect on me, I really like their style and way with the piano Hold great respect for many Russian composers which are not as well known as the famous ones, such as Kapustin and Liapunov.

4.  What were your experiences; emotionally, physically, etc.. In other words, what was the result or what came of these particular concepts ?

Most concepts start out as an idea which is applied, tested and you realise if it helped, hindered or did nothing. I always had this thinking process with me even as a young child. However as a child it was not thought about so much, just tried out, if it worked I would do it again, if it failed I would try to change it without thinking about what I am changing, just trying not to make the same error.

As a teenager I started to think about more intelligently about my decision makings, still there where things I just did without bothering about focusing on the exact problem, just do it and if it worked most of the times that was good enough. I began to categorize my piano knowledge into three types of learning which could be intellectually thought about as well as physically practiced; conscious, muscular and sound.

As an adult I have a clear understanding of how I personally learn music, if something is not working I want to extract the culprit, analyise it, consider if I have to modify my approach or if my application was not effective. Anything that changes or adds to my concepts is an immediate revelation to me. Some pieces with unusal fingerings or expression for instance, or something I have never done before, the muscular/sound movement feels so unique and peculiar that it jumps out at me as something new. The brain thirsts for this, especially if you have the feeling that everything you do looks the same (which happens once you play a lot of piano).

[opus10no2]

Simplification, purification and renewal of focus has been the general direction of my pursuits over the years.
I think being a late starter gives one a sense of needing to find a shortcut in order to catch up with peers, certainly for me it has spurred a tenacity and steadfastness to conquer.

The eccentricity of my practice style has actually increased along with the direction of my pursuits as I have increasingly been determined to risk producing something terrible at the avoidance of producing something average, normal, mundane.

[m19834]

Bumpity.  Okay, I have *not* forgotten about this thread !  And, I would seriously like to thank the individuals who have contributed, especially if you have contributed in detail !  I have read everything but will probably go over it again.

I started writing out an outline of my own thoughts and focuses from over the years, but it got complicated in my mind and I stopped  .  It all started twisting together and, even though I have had some pretty definite ideas at certain stages in my life, it's for some reason really difficult for me to isolate them in a way where I can actually write them down as though they were a truly isolated idea.  It just bothers me to do so ... haha !  It just looks SO different on paper than how it actually exists inside of me !  Being a person who does like to devour things though ( ), it is immensely interesting and helpful to me to read your thoughts !!

Thanks !

[m19834]

Technique frequently gives rise to new music and new sounds frequently demand new technique. The two form an ongoing feedback loop of the type which seems to lie at the heart of much creative activity. No, I never feel I must discover something new per se; I am quite content just to let things develop and enjoy whatever happens. The work at the clavier is different each day and I do not let it become drudgery or a drill. Everything is part of one syncretic, organic process. Forty years ago I separated, classified, analysed, struggled with "shoulds" and "ought tos" and so on - because I didn't know any better and thought teachers were always right. It's just the perennial  story about not being able to put an old head on young shoulders.

In short, the "feedback loop" idea is the answer to your question. That's the nearest I can come to putting it into words.  

Hi Ted, I have come back to this thread and your post for now after tossing some stuff around for a while.  haha, I don't really understand myself in the respect that, I seem to have some sort of "filtering" system in how I go about wrapping myself around concepts, and it sometimes takes a while before I get some clean(ish) water out of the system that I feel I can do something with.

Initially, I came back because, ever since you posted this post, I have had especially the part about "teachers always being right" echoing in my head (in your voice).  Upon coming back to your post and reading the whole thing, it all came together for me in a particular way.  I was initially going to simply say that, for awhile anyway, I believe that in order for a student to really start sorting through all of the information "out there" and to start understanding what they themselves in fact are understanding, in a sense a student simply must take what a teacher says as "right" and aim to find the truth in it.  It's so easy to put in a half-bottomed effort into a concept, decide it doesn't work (and the half-bottomed effort WON'T work), and then throw the entire idea out before it really ever had a chance to be used properly.  I am not saying that is your story, but I am considering this more for myself from the standpoint of being a teacher and a ongoing student of music.  That is really I guess a big subject all of its own, of course.  Of course, not every teacher is always right or maybe some are even seldom right, and as is human nature, there are probably not any teachers that are always right (no disrespect intended, btw).

Upon reading your post again though, and reading again about the idea of a feedback loop, it illuminated something for me that I have been thinking about this morning.  Basically, I definitely feel that the "tools" I am gaining to "build" sound at the piano aid in my decision process about what the possibilities of tonal art can be.  If, for example, I were told to make a particular passage sound like a piece of candy (hee hee), if I have a few options in my pocket as to what that sound CAN be, I feel I can make lucid and concrete decisions on an abstract idea.

The only way I have reached any inkling of gaining "tools" with which to build sound is by believing (at first) that my teacher is right and then putting in the effort it takes (and continues to take) to really find the truth in it (or not) for myself.  

Well, heh, I should go back and read my initial post at some point (and I will) because I know you were responding to that, and this much later I am simply responding to you as though you stated a point kind of all by itself ... hee hee.  Pardon me  .

Bye bye .

[m1469]

OMG!!!  What in the world sorts of questions are these, anyway???!  It's taken me THIS long to put together what I am about to post, only to find out upon reading the original poster's questions that I haven't formally answered all the questions, though some of it's there.  What in the world?!    I'll come back occassionally and edit this post, perhaps.  I've had thousands (maybe literally) of "smaller" thoughts and adjustments over the years, but here is a start on some of the bigger ones for now:

1999-2002  >  University

*  First time in whole life to seriously practice everyday
   *  Hugely inspired
   *  Developed enormous anxiety over the past, present, future
   *  No formal idea on posture
   *  No technical routine
   *  Didn't know chords, scales, arpeggios
   *  Began w/scales, then on to chords and arpeggios for a few months in senior year for recital prep.
   *  Had no idea what technique meant = no particular focus in "technical routine" -- always felt lost and out of place = fed anxiety
   *Started developing practice strategies -- didn't know which direction to go, didn't really understand what was helpful and what was not, nor where anything in particular led.  No perspective on progress or not.
    *Some Czernys -- no sense of direction with these
    *Specific way to practice/use pedalling

During this time, my instincts always told me that something didn't feel right fundamentally, it always always felt like something was missing no matter how I played (and if I ever did do something well, it felt like an accident or as though I cheated death or something ... heh).  Doing things well by accident or by the skin of my teeth didn't feel fulfilling to me, partly because there wasn't anything for me to link the success to, most of the time.  I had no real idea on why something would go well and why it wouldn't (though, I can look back now and have some answers).  It's literally as though I felt like I was missing something to stand on (yes, my technical foundation) and I think this really fed my anxiety about everything at the time.

2002 >  Recital -- completely blew my whole world -- not just my mind-- as I knew it.

02-03 >   Developed HUGE list of music to study with absolutely no idea how to go about learning all of it, and therefore ANY of it.  Completely overwhelmed.

03-04 >  Life-altering personal experience =  No practice nor lessons nor singing for months.

2004 >  Found forum and read as much as possible
   * Special focus on teaching and practice strategies -- still overwhelmed and anxious, lost, depressed, irregular and hazy practicing.

2005-2008

   *Improv.
   *"Finger Independence"
   *Posture, balanced and centered seating/sitting on bench
   *Joint alignment over key alignment
   *Forearm rotations -- complete obsession and transformation of entire technique
         >Disconnect with music and repertoire
   *Circular motions and patterns -- clockwise and counterclockwise motions
   *Angles and lines at on the keys ... efficient motions/paths
   *Starting to know what "Full arm" means
   *More bodily awareness -- starting to consciously discern tension vs. relaxation
             -- starting to reverse physical affects of huge anxiety from before, still not feeling connected with the music, repertoire; my own personal musical desires starting to seem very, very far away and out of reach.

2008-2009

   *Intro to "Pianistic Motions" as tied to musical text
   *Special emphasis on dexterity and new sense of "finger independence" and articulate sound
   *How to strike key and then immediately release/relax muscles
   *Lift-play-release -- obsessive focus
                    *Same sound, no lift then same strategy on staccato
   *2 main Czernys w/specific direction
   *start on serious rep. again since years
   *re-alignment with the keys, but this time without tension
   *supple wrist w/articulate sound -- articulate sound without unnecessary tension
   *Complete reworking of general technique OUT of all forearm rotations and non-key alignment

2009-2010

   *Focus on rep. w/pianistic motions
   *New expectations in accuracy
   *Scale work
   *Octave Czerny etude and one other Czerny w/ specific direction
   

2010-2011

   *five-finger patterns in Major and minor covering the entire keyboard
   *Scales, chords, arpeggios
   *New "fundamentals routine"
   *"gesture" in motion
   *Carryover of Bel Canto physical technique
      *awareness of ribs leading to sound
      *Using core muscles
      *weight distribution
      *new awareness of back, legs, and feet
      *further awareness of arm usage/position
      *further awareness of hand positions, finger balance, joint and key alignment
      *entire bodily involvement, from toes to head
   *new practice strategies and confirming practice strategies
   *Developing new perspective on shapes, angles, lines, motions, sound, listening
   *focus on rep. and fundamentals routine
   *connection with entire keyboard at once -- connection with voice


Also, I've been singing the entire time I've listed here and have carried over ideas from that, and progressively moreso in the past few years, especially.