Piano Technique Strategies

[ssarin]

Hi Everyone,

I've been teaching myself how to play off and on for the past five years (I am 24, and I started with extensive musical experience in violin but am now focusing on classical piano), and in the last year have gotten more serious. I practice about 2 hrs per day on average. Of course, I still feel limited in my ability, but I have been building up just through playing pieces. So far I have played Chopin Raindrop Prelude, Gershwin's Prelude 2, and the Chopin Minute Waltz. As you can imagine, it takes me a lot of time to work through the piece, but slowly I can build up speed to mastery, as I have with these.

I am curious if this is a good strategy (to continue to play pieces to build up my skill), or if I should get a technical skill book to work through as well. I was intrigued by the Hanon, but there are diametrically opposed views on working through it. Should I start going through it? Also are there suggestions you all have for what pieces I should look at next?

Thanks!

[keyboardclass]

Tankard's Piano Technique On An Hour  A Day is an excellent book.  How well did you play the violin?  Was your left hand free enough to loosen the tone rather than strangle it?  That is, did you only use enough pressure to get the tone you wanted?   That's how you play the piano.

[ssarin]

Thanks for the book suggestion and your reply. Yes, that is a similarity that I have been noticing between the two. Conceptually and musically, the transition has been easy. But the part I need work on is I think strengthening my hands and playing at high speed.

[keyboardclass]

Don't lose sight of the music.  That's why I don't like Hanon/Czerny.

[m19834]

All you have to do is think about how you want to play, relax, and then play -- oh (!), and listen while you play.  Always listen !

[ssarin]

All you have to do is think about how you want to play, relax, and then play -- oh (!), and listen while you play.  Always listen !

Haha  I have been trying to do that, but at some point my fingers don't know how to do what my mind is trying to tell them to do. So far, I am thinking to just keep going through (really slowly and picking it up) pieces that I enjoy playing with passages that will improve different parts of my technique.

[perelea]

I recently started playing the piano again after nearly 3 years (since I quit the conservatory) and I have to say that Hanon has been helpful at times. I don't go piece by piece however, I usually just pick those pieces that exercise the fingers and movements that I need, to play some specific piece of music.
Ironicaly, Hanon has to be practiced really slowly (fast in the end ofc...). It aims to perfect your fingers agility and nothing else. If you'd play em fast just to go through them, then in my opinion, don't do that.
It only really makes sense to play Hanon if you really master a piece in such a way that every finger perfectly presses the key by itself - with absolutely NO help from your wrist or arm. The wrist is only to move across the claviature but it shouldn't assist the fingers with strengh/pressure. The fingers alone need to manage the piece, which is a difference from "real" piano pieces where you also utilize wrists, arms, body... and even different from most Etudes (Czerny, Liszt) which are not exactly just practices for technique. The Hanon, on the contrary, is solely finger exercise and that is how it should be played else it's pointless.

But anyway, if you intend to play em, don't play em too much else you'll sound like Valentina Lisitsa lol


edit: oups, that'd be almost 4 years since I quit the conservatory...

[m19834]

Haha   I have been trying to do that, but at some point my fingers don't know how to do what my mind is trying to tell them to do. So far, I am thinking to just keep going through (really slowly and picking it up) pieces that I enjoy playing with passages that will improve different parts of my technique.

Yes .  Actually, my current personal experiment is to see how many questions I could possibly answer with the one I gave you, and that answer being correct (it is always the goal), but to have it be actually almost perfectly useless as an answer !  It's kind of like saying "Let there be Peace on earth" ... well, what that really means is something like "let's have earth-wide education, shelter, food/clothing, healthcare".  "Peace" is too vague when elements that may bring about peace are what we're really after.  Peace is just the result.

In any event, there are a bunch of differing opinions about what you are wondering.  My opinion is, basically, that some exercises are really great along with a varied type of repertoire (meant to serve different purposes).  There are some basic elements/principles to playing and understanding the piano (though they can be fine-tuned for life), and the way you go about becoming familiar with and good at those is not as important, necessarily, as getting good at/familiar with them.  

[brogers70]

"Yes .  Actually, my current personal experiment is to see how many questions I could possibly answer with the one I gave you, and that answer being correct (it is always the goal), but to have it be actually almost perfectly useless as an answer !  It's kind of like saying "Let there be Peace on earth" ... well, what that really means is something like "let's have earth-wide education, shelter, food/clothing, healthcare".  "Peace" is too vague when elements that may bring about peace are what we're really after.  Peace is just the result."

Whether an answer like that is useful or useless depends entirely on who hears it and what they've been doing before they hear it. If someone has been struggling with exercises to allow them to play different dynamics in different hands or different fingers of the same hand, getting no results except tight hands, it may be very helpful to say "just focus on the voice you want to emphasize, stop thinking about what your hands are doing." To someone who has no idea how to play a smooth scale, just saying "relax and visualize a smooth scale" will probably not help at all. Whenever you give any advice, you have to make all sorts of assumptions about what people know already, what they want, what they've been doing, what they've tried already. Out of context, some of it will certainly sound wrong, pat, or incomprehensible.

[m19834]

Whether an answer like that is useful or useless depends entirely on who hears it and what they've been doing before they hear it.

You're right, of course -- your point I don't deny.  I apologize that perhaps my little kick of posting that may seem like a bit of a superpoke towards you.  I guess you could think of it that way.  However, reading your post the other day just struck me in a funny way, that's all.  Anyway, i'm not around here enough anymore that you should feel the need to defend yourself, you'll probably be posting more than me and establish yourself in no time just as it is.  At this point it seems I come here for a bit of fun and/or small change of pace.  Carry on ! . May this thread be blessed with Queenerifficness !!

[Bob]

[Disclaimer:  There is no Queenerifficness on this post.  If there was, it's been stripped out.]

Hmmm.... (Bob is intrigued by the idea of not just a regular poke, but a 'superpoke.'  Bob experiements with 'superpoking' stuffed animals in the stomach with a stick, although only  a regular stick and not a superstick, to wake them up.)



You can make your own exercises up.  Tailored to the pieces your working on.  Or the opposite of what you're working on so you don't lose those other skills or don't lose out on pushing them.  

[ssarin]

Thanks for all your great thoughts and suggestions. Does anyone have any suggestions for what pieces I should look at tackling next? I think the ones I am intrigued by I am far from able to play. Or should I take a hard one that I like and start off extremely slowly, devoting most of my practice time to it and not worrying how long it takes to master?

[Bob]

I've never liked monster pieces that you can never really finish and spend six months plus on.

I'd vote for medium difficult and have it finished completely in six months.

My personal philosophy is to play different styles from different composers.  That way you hit a lot of eras and styles.  I haven't played too many pieces from the same composer doing that though.

[keyboardclass]

G B Sammartini is hard to get but the original early classical.  Otherwise I'd go for JC Bach.

[jessicamaybury]

I don't know if this site is widely known by anyone, but there's lots of free sheet music on it! https://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page

It might help when you're looking for pieces to play.