returning pianist after many years

[fmrecords]

Hello everyone. Happy to join your group. I have found sheet music I would never see again. There is a dearth of decent music stores around here.

I am returning to classical piano after a few years of trying out rock and blues and not getting satisfied..(insert relevant jokes here). I am looking for pieces to help me re-learn technique and that are not TOO hard as I didnt practise for a long long time. My biggest accomplishments so far are the Moonlight, some Chopin (I love the nocturnes) and I am using Mozart's sonatas for dexterity practise.

I am looking for fairly easy pieces to get "back into it" so to speak. I was trained to grade 8 then did what most teenage girls did ..... (Found boys). Now regretting the boys thirty years later  I am serious again. Will get a teacher once I feel a little less self conscious about my dreadful lack of practise for so long.

Suggestions?

[fmrecords]

Sorry. I realize I am in the wrong place with this.

[csindell]

Hi there.  This is my first posting on pianostreet.  Could relate to your posting.  Took lessons until I got a car!  However, I have a large collection of music accumulated by my mother, one of her friends, and my own collection.  I've had an upright since 1979 and just graduated to a grand as I have become the addicted adult piano enthusiast! I kept playing all these years but never anything more serious than sight reading.  I started lessons three years ago and am on my fourth teacher.  Finding the right fit is tricky. My current teacher is classically trained but not terribly knowledgeable.  The Julliard graduate was knowledgeable but let her three dogs bark through the lesson and talked on her phone during the lesson.  The jazz teacher was way over my head but I do understand 7-3 voicings even if I can't improvise with them yet.  It's quite an adventure.

I've spent most of the three years researching HOW TO PRACTICE!  I have found (don't faint) that Hanon done routinely has really helped my dexterity and speed.  Even Chuck Leavell, the great blues piano player, recommends it, of course, in every key! (Just kill me..)   I was never taught how to practice (or never paid attention) but everything I read says to take each piece hands separately very slowly, slowly get up to speed and then go beyond tempo. And practice perfectly to avoid the time relearning!  Hands together comes last and very slowly.  "The fundamentals of practice" is a very practical approach and is a free download.  Also, "How to win at piano lessons" by Dan Starr, (google his website) was worth the money. 

I am playing 2 Venetian boat songs by Mendlessohn and the Chopin Nocturne in Ab, Opus 9, No.2. Have played Bach's C major invention a million times and still miss notes but I am going on to the next one. It is in C minor with the harmonic minor scale, I think! Gorgeous! But I love blues because once I get the riff there is just the piano!  But they sure require work! 

So, how do we get into the student corner from here?  Perhaps respond to me in the "Student's Corner" and I'll look for your reply there.

[slow_concert_pianist]

Hanon is very good and there are several other finger dexterity exercises to aid trills, etc. The only thing to be careful of is decoming too mechanical in your approach. After 6 years of "an hour or more a day" of technical exercises my coach advised I had done enough.

[thalbergmad]

Hanon is very good and there are several other finger dexterity exercises to aid trills, etc.

This could well stir up a hornets nest as we have not had any "Hanon Wars" for ages.

The "anti hanonists" will not be able to resist replying to your post and will no doubt come armed with examples of people who have been so crippled with arthritis after using it for 2 weeks, that they spent the rest of their lives picking their nose with their elbow.

Personally, I am in the Hanon camp and find it most beneficial when i have not touched my piano for months.

Thal

[stevebob]

This could well stir up a hornets nest as we have not had any "Hanon Wars" for ages....

I had the same reaction to an unqualified assertion of fact like Hanon is very good.  My own stance on Hanon is that it's "good" if it's used judiciously and produces positive results.

Hanon was forced on me as a kid (with apparently no ill effects), and I, too, have found it beneficial for retraining responsiveness after I had been away from piano for many months (or even many years).  Were I to use Hanon for anything at all during periods when I'm fully engaged and playing competently, it would be for warming up—but that doesn't appear to be a necessary part of my routine.

Personally, I've always thought The Virtuoso Pianist was a goofy title.  It's misleading to those who assume it will transform them into such, and is oddly authoritative on the part of someone who's had no enduring reputation, so far as I'm aware, as a pianist, composer or even pedagogue outside this single work.  Other musicians with similar ambitions but greater reserve have certainly chosen less presumptuous titles for their technical exercises.

If I were interested in the kinds of exercises that are purely intended to develop technique, I would be far more likely to explore others—e.g., those of Cortot, Dohnanyi or Joseffy—where the principles seem better articulated, the goals more thoughtful and the presentation more cerebral.

[pianisten1989]

To go back to the topic, and help you, I'd suggest easy mozart pieces. You have a gold membership so go to Piano music in the menu. Then you find Mozart, and sort the pieces after rank.
Bach is also very good, but it tremedously boring if you don't like it. Maybe some of the slow Chopin preludes aswell?

[slow_concert_pianist]

I had the same reaction to an unqualified assertion of fact like Hanon is very good.  My own stance on Hanon is that it's "good" if it's used judiciously and produces positive results.

I can only speak from my experience(s) and not anyone else's. It must be presumed that everything issued is an opinion based experience or not as the case may be. Hanon has proved an exceptional tool and stepping stone to concert performance level for me. That is not to say that Czerny or Doknanyi wouldn't have done any better. Others feel they can manage finger dexterity in the pieces they rehearse. However all that did for me was reinforce my denial when I asserted that position years ago.

[stevebob]

"Concert performance level."  Who knew?   

[slow_concert_pianist]

"Concert performance level."  Who knew?   

That's what my coach who is a professor at Wollongong Piano Conservatorium tells me? Do you question his opinion. If so, why?

[stevebob]

edit:  nm

[indianajo]

I layed off 19 years after I went to college and did not have time, then did not have a piano. Army USO pianos were vile.  I came back into the Scott Joplin boom caused by the movies, and I found Magnetic Rag and Euphonic Sounds to be good at building up the 4th and 5th finger strength again.  I never lost the coordination I learned as a kid, but the strength decreased.  Maple Leaf is tougher, don't start with that.  Bach Inventions are good warmups at any level, #8 if you're elementary, the others have more black keys.  These come in a book together, my teacher bought me the Schirmer Busoni ed.  The Joplins all come together in a NY Public Library/Mills complete edition, or those two were in a rag book published separately by mills. My mother had me doing Czerny exercises for dexterity training, but these are really boring as an adult.   Forget music stores they have all died here in the midwest except at the extremely beginner level.  Everything is mail order, or order off this site (or others) and print it yourself.

[fmrecords]

Thanks to everyone for your replies. A little pneumonia kept me out of the loop for a while. Will google the Hanon thing. I will have to read all of your input.

[rmbarbosa]

You have a Bernhard post - August 16, 2004 - in Response to "Beginner piece like to give as repertoire" (August 15, 2004) - where Bernhard presents a wonderful list of pieces you may play in your returning to piano. Search Bernhard posts on the upper corner of this page and you`ll find. By the way, read the more than 5.000 Bernhard posts in this forum. Now he posts no more and we miss him. One day, who knows?, he may return.
Best wishes

[fmrecords]

Thank you so very much.