Looking for Ideas on How to Practice Technique

[hoodrat]

We all somewhat dread having to practice technical exercises like scales, arpeggios, and the Hanon, etc..  I wanted to ask other members how they go about practicing their technique stuff.  One of the problems I have is that I feel compelled to practice all 12 major and minor scales EVERY day.  On top of that, if I'm working through the Hanon exercises, I feel compelled to play the ones I already have mastered EVERY day as well.  As you can imagine, this eventually becomes too much of a burden.  But if I stray from it, I feel guilty and as if I'm cheating myself.  I was hoping others could share exactlly how they manage to practice their technique stuff without getting bogged down like I seem to do!  Thanks, and looking forward to hearing your ideas and comments!

[omar_roy]

Are you doing your minor scales in all possible forms?  Have you tried doing your scales in 3rds, 6ths, and 10ths?  Octave scales?  Parrallel thirds and 6ths?  Butterfly forms?

And arpeggi, in all inversions?  Diminished arpeggi?  Dominant 7th arpeggi?  Again in all of the above forms.


How about different hands doing different keys?  Making your own exercises?

It's not just about doing the same thing over and over again.  Are you really paying attention to what you're doing or are you just flying through them?  Listen very closely for evenness of tone, do them in different touches with different crescendos and decrescendos, accellerandos and decellerandos.  The possibilities with these are endless.

It's not necessary to practice these all constantly, but it certainly doesn't hurt to check up on these things every once in a while to stay sharp.  They certainly shed light on technical deficiencies you might have, and from there you can develop your own exercises or use Hanon (or your exercise book of choice) to address them.  Using these combinations, I've never really felt the need for an actual exercise book, but I don't discount their usefulness in addressing specific problems.

Stephen Hough, in his blog, once mentioned trying Hanon exercises with a different key in each hand.  Try it, it's actually rather difficult!

[stevebob]

It's not true that "we all dread" doing the aforementioned technical work, because some (perhaps many) of us don't do it at all!  Whether or not it should be a consistent priority in one's regular practice routine probably depends in large part on such things as one's goals and how well-developed one's technique already is.

My feeling about the issue is that if you need it, you'll benefit from it—and if you benefit from it, then you need it.  Others, too, might get satisfaction from doing technical work for its own sake.  I just prefer spending my piano time on repertoire I'm learning and working out the technical problems within it, but I'm a middle-aged amateur playing for my own pleasure (and I learned the fundamentals well many decades ago).  Others who are differently situated must surely have different requirements.

[ted]

As I have posted in various places here, my technical training is somewhat unusual. I invent exercises for myself on my Virgil Practice Clavier, usually on around six or seven ounces, for about ten minutes first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I have done this for very many years and I consider it has been vital to my being able to play at all, especially during the years I was working and had comparatively little playing time.

I learned the hard way that it can be overdone and that discretion is necessary, but having seen that, and worked out my own disciplines, everything has been straightforward for a long time. I do need to work over the odd grip or passage at the piano now and then, of course, but thankfully the clavier reduces that to a bare minimum, enabling me to use the piano to make music. This is how I feel things should be.

Admittedly, I know of no other player who uses a clavier. There were two others in Auckland years ago but they have probably been sold as antiques or curiosities by now I imagine. Arrau, it seems, was very enthusiastic in using one but his is the only famous name I have come across in that connection.

Whether at the piano or the clavier, I have always found that taking pleasure and variety in physical movements helps greatly. Better to treat the process as a yoga than as an obstacle course.  

[Derek]

Ted, I may have mentioned this in another thread  , but your using a practice clavier is really interesting to me and makes me wonder if it is the weight that helps, or rather how the keys return pressure to the fingers. For example, some people call the clavichord a "practice instrument." In my case I'm playing it for its own sake, but going back and forth between it and the piano, I'm finding my technique far more agile than it was before even on the piano. I am wondering if the simplicity of the response of the clavichord, which is simply pressure of a tangent against a string, is somewhat similar to the simplicity of the response of your virgil practice clavier, and thus your brain might learn more about touch and finger dexterity from the simplicity of such actions than on the piano where the responsibility for the sound is eliminated as soon as the hammer leaves the action that throws it. Definitely food for thought!

*edit* I have TMJ in my jaws, due to grinding my teeth at night. Teeth are hard. I use a TMJ splint, made of soft rubber, at night...as a result, the TMJ is reduced or eliminated. Maybe muscles simply learn more about what is going on if there is variable resistance (as on the clavichord, the practice clavier, or this TMJ splint example) rather than a "hard landing" such as the keybed of a piano for example, or in this case, grinding teeth.

[ted]

The expression "hard landing" caught my attention. I cannot recall ever being conscious of "hard landings" or what some people term "keybedding" when I play either piano or silent clavier. Of course it probably happens in many vigorous situations in piano playing - no doubt about that - but it isn't something I am ever aware of, even less cultivate. I recall spirited discussions taking place on various forums about this matter and whether or not we should actively seek the sensation in our playing.

I do not have sufficient knowledge to answer that. Pushing against the key after it is fully depressed would seem to waste energy, but then so do a lot of movements I do not understand which are in common use by good players. I can say with certainty that I do not use "hard landings" on the practice clavier. There, it is more a case of training striking speed and accuracy, and involves no brute force resistance at all. Using brute force resistance deliberately is precisely how not to use the clavier and how people come to grief with it. The sensations are very hard to explain in words though, and a video wouldn't help much either because sensations are invisible.