Using Dohnanyi excerise #24 Example of Accountability

[stephenv]

Had I written this exercise I would have prefaced thusly.  (Accountability)

This is an excercise based on all the major/minor chords in all inversions,  plus Dim 7th.   Do not use damper pedal! At first...may use it later with the blocked chords..to practice pedal technique.

By practicing this exercise you can learn to play blocked chords evenly and distinctly.
You can also develop an awareness of the keyboard so that you will feel more secure in playing chords and be able to find the chords without looking at your hands..a necessity in sight reading!
 
This is a Multi Task exercise in that you will be not only playing blocked chords but then you will play them all in an arrpegiated pattern, and then in broken chord pattern..so you will be developing facility in blocked chords, arrpegiated chords and broken chords.

You will want to practice slowly at first, making sure to play each chord solidly. You should set the metronome at 60 or even slower....Common Time.  (4/4) 

Likewise in the arrpegiated chords..pay close attention to each note in the chord..strive to play each evenly and with equal volume..all the way to bottom of key.  Only speed up when you have this skill under wraps.  You might notice that your 4th finger in the left hand needs strengthening
One thing the exercise does is make you aware of where you are with finger "independence."

This exercise will enable you to play a variety (solid, broken, and arrpegiated)  of chords solidly and securely, in all keys.

I'm sure I left out some of the other benefits.....just wanted to give an example of what I meant by accountability when an author/musician  wirtes an exercise. 

[nyiregyhazi]

Had I written this exercise I would have prefaced thusly.  (Accountability)

This is an excercise based on all the major/minor chords in all inversions,  plus Dim 7th.   Do not use damper pedal! At first...may use it later with the blocked chords..to practice pedal technique.

By practicing this exercise you can learn to play blocked chords evenly and distinctly.
You can also develop an awareness of the keyboard so that you will feel more secure in playing chords and be able to find the chords without looking at your hands..a necessity in sight reading!
  
This is a Multi Task exercise in that you will be not only playing blocked chords but then you will play them all in an arrpegiated pattern, and then in broken chord pattern..so you will be developing facility in blocked chords, arrpegiated chords and broken chords.

You will want to practice slowly at first, making sure to play each chord solidly. You should set the metronome at 60 or even slower....Common Time.  (4/4)  

Likewise in the arrpegiated chords..pay close attention to each note in the chord..strive to play each evenly and with equal volume..all the way to bottom of key.  Only speed up when you have this skill under wraps.  You might notice that your 4th finger in the left hand needs strengthening
One thing the exercise does is make you aware of where you are with finger "independence."

This exercise will enable you to play a variety (solid, broken, and arrpegiated)  of chords solidly and securely, in all keys.

I'm sure I left out some of the other benefits.....just wanted to give an example of what I meant by accountability when an author/musician  wirtes an exercise.  

Not that I disagree with much of what you say, but how much of that needs to be said? Finger independence and the importance of evenness? If you were to analyse any Etude you could reference that. There would be a lot of tautology if you did every exercise this way, one by one. Similarly with starting slow and speeding up.

Isn't it just self evident that this exercise is in, let's say:

"familiarity with the specific types of harmony included and in developing control over every individual tone through arpeggiation."

What more needs to be said? This is the type of exercise that just is what it is. It trains you to do exactly what it asks you to do.

Regarding your general post about exercises from before, I think there are many bizarre exercises that use extremely unusual patterns that are unlikely to occur in music often, if at all. I see every reason to clarify these. But who needs a clarification of what practising standard scales, arpeggios and chord patterns etc. is to achieve? It's to achieve the ability to cope with scales, arpeggios and chord patterns etc. The exercises which need clarification are those that features unusual techniques that would rarely be seen in music. Perhaps most notably, those that feature overholding of notes.

[stephenv]

The explanation is directed to those of us who might not have the insight that a seasoned musician such as you have.    It is meant to encourage students who might not otherwise see the importance of this excercise. 

I never assume self evidence..it's a personal quirk.... something I leaned when studying music pedagogy many moons ago.   Guy Maier and Tobias Matthay were two  pedagogues who influenced my thinking.  I studied with their pupils.  Mr. Matthay never assumed self evidence, I can assure you of that...just read one of his books...exhaustive footnotes explaining the purpose and reasons.  Mr. Maier was a man of fewer words, but left nothing to be guessed at.  He gave a reason for all of what he was conveying technically and musically.  Angela Diller, also influenced my approach, never short of teaching the whys and wherefores, thoroughly. 

I do see your point and at the risk of being a "villiage explainer" I remain...StephenV

[nyiregyhazi]

"The explanation is directed to those of us who might not have the insight that a seasoned musician such as you have.    It is meant to encourage students who might not otherwise see the importance of this excercise. "

But it's for exactly what it contains. It trains you how to play the very chords that it asks you to play. How could anyone miss the fact that it's training you to improve your playing of the same chords that you are asked to play? It's a totally direct application- just as major scales train you to play major scales. The only thing that needs explanation is why they would be arpeggiated as well as played in blocks- but that can be covered in a sentence or two. Virtually everything else is best explained in a generic summary of how to practise exercises in general. To do that, you can only really either scratch the surface or write a whole book on general technique! I'm not saying saying you're wrong to want to explain it, but there would be a lot of repetition if you explained each exercise in that way. I think a general preface would be more appropriate. Most of Dohnanyi's exercises have far less obvious uses. I think it's far more interesting to analyse those. All of these chords would be expected in music. Quite simply, that's why the exercise contains them. Exercises that contain things that would rarely be found in music, if at all, are much more interesting to delve deeper into. It's very interesting to analyse why odd looking exercises lead to general benefits that apply in totally different circumstances.

[stephenv]

I just chose this example primarily because I felt I knew what Dohnanyi was up to when he wrote it.  Now as for some others he wrote included in his series...such as using the thumb on black notes in the chromatic scale...I think I understand his motive..not sure.

I know Mr. Maier always made a point of telling students that the thumb is one digit that we sometimes overlook in that it needs training.  Especially in relation to playing octaves with accuracy and fluency.  He lists several exercises in Thinking Fingers which address training the thumb. Really good stuff..and I can vouch that his exercises for this helped me gain facility Hopefully this is universal.   

But Im not sure this is what Dohnanyi had in mind.  Seems rather odd.   

Remarkably there is a series of exercises written by Terrence Rust, in THIS century (21) that have NO explanation whatsover..as to what to expect by doing them.  I practice them because I find them interesting..especially since he centers on intervalic relationships instead of the straight ahead 5 finger patterns.  Flexibility is one thing I'm quite sure he intends.  The pages in  his books are pristine and the notes are printed on a pleasant almond coloured paper.  I am doing them to explore and also help to keep flexible.  He has some challenging "extension" excercises.  All of this in the "intermediate " books...I'm starting at square one.
 

[nyiregyhazi]

"Now as for some others he wrote included in his series...such as using the thumb on black notes in the chromatic scale...I think I understand his motive..not sure."

Yeah, these are the kind of things where it gets interesting. There are sometimes direct applications for doing this in real music, but it's basically about getting the hand into a lot of different positions and learning to be able to function normally when squashed together and playing at the back of the keys. There are other issues you could list, but I'd put those as the main ones. Actually, even here it's still basically a case where "it is what it is". It's not quite so specifically as with scales or chords- but it makes you put your hand in closed positions and forces you to play between black keys. That's basically what it's for.


"Remarkably there is a series of exercises written by Terrence Rust, in THIS century (21) that have NO explanation whatsover..as to what to expect by doing them."

Sounds unusual. One thing though- do we necessarily need to know what an exercise if for? If we practise them right, we ought to find out what the benefits are through doing them. You could argue that explanation of what you need to think about that is specific to the exercise is the more important thing (as well as proper understanding of how to move in general). For example, there are a lot of things I did wrong while trying the overholding exercises, in the past. I think I know how to use them now. When I practised them wrong I did more harm than good. When I discovered how to approach them healthily, the feel for what resulted was a lot more vivid than any description on paper could be. The description would likely talk about "independence" but it's a very different kind of independence than anything gained though running five finger exercises etc. There were very specific physical issues I had to be aware of to get that, however. I think they would be hard to convey in a short preface.

[stephenv]

I found your remarks regarding the more unusual Dohnanyi exercises most revealing and enlightening.  This is the stuff of which I feel we need to know...that fact that Dohnanyi intends us to experience these somewhat awkard finger positions on the keys.  You mentioned playing toward the backs of the keys in order to play the exercise smoothly and precisely.  YES!  This is the very information I was looking for!  Well DONE!  What you wrote validated what I THOUGHT might be Dohnanyi's purpose.   

As for the holding note exercises I believe both Mr. Matthay and Mr. Maier both were very concerned that in doing these we did not resort to keybedding...i.e. holding the notes down with continued force all the way to the keybed, whilst attempting to play the notes with the "free" finger (s). They cautioned us to only hold the notes at surface level while playing with the free finger(s).  Takes a great deal of concentration, relaxation, and true finger independence to practice, I believe.   Mr. Maier called them exercises in finger inter-dependence, and was quite cautious is assigning them.  However, once I gained the ability to hold the notes softly at surface level...these exercises proved useful.  Oh yes and not to leave Hanon out....I believe in his stuff..but prefer the "harmonized" version by Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale, Hanon Revisited.
These reworked Hanon patterns seem easy on the ears and engaging.   

By the way I have some old  33 1/3 recordings of your namesake playing Liszt in a church here in the states..  Someone was walking past and heard him playing and thus the "rediscovery" took place.  Ultimately this "someone" recorded Mr. N's recitals and thus we can hear him today on record...I find the recordings haunting in many ways.... something about his tone and the way he played Liszt's music. 

 

[nyiregyhazi]

"You mentioned playing toward the backs of the keys in order to play the exercise smoothly and precisely.  YES!  This is the very information I was looking for!  Well DONE!  What you wrote validated what I THOUGHT might be Dohnanyi's purpose."

Hey, just trust your instincts! I'm sure you've got a good idea for most of them that you need not doubt.
  
"As for the holding note exercises I believe both Mr. Matthay and Mr. Maier both were very concerned that in doing these we did not resort to keybedding...i.e. holding the notes down with continued force all the way to the keybed, whilst attempting to play the notes with the "free" finger (s)."

Yeah, absolutely! This is the biggest issue of all for overholding exercises. You might find my most recent blog post on exactly that subject interesting though- and particularly the follow up that I'm still working on. Basically my next post is going to illustrate a simple practical proof of how Matthay's explanation was drastically over-simplified. I'm going to show just how misleading it can sometimes be as a result. Basically, there's a simple exercise that involves EXTREME pressure from the thumb (but importantly absolutely minimal weight or pressure from the arm itself) which can make a huge difference to the ease of thumb passing in scales. Matthay failed to accurately distinguish between the different styles of contact with the keybed. My former problems involved alternating between the worst forms of keybedding (where the arm digs in way too hard) and having hopelessly slack fingers that make woefully inadequate contact and barely keep the keys settled. For overholding exercises, inadequate contact between finger and keybed can actually be what forces the arm to press hard- causing the truly harmful keybedding. I want to define the positive and negative styles of contact far more specifically than Matthay and make it easier to understand. The problem with Matthay's explanation is that it depends almost entirely on a well-trained hand that has a prior instinct for how to grip the keys. Without it, the irony is that the sheer flimsiness of contact can inspire the arm into instigating the truly negative type of pressures into the keybed. The supposed treatment can actually make the problem worse! There are some very simple exercises to train the senses to distinguish what is what, that have recently done wonders for the physical stability at the keybed (yet which have only served to decrease excess arm pressure further still). Wobbling arms and wrists had always been a major problem for me and I've actually had to increase the sense of ongoing interaction with the keybed in a very specific way to fix that.


"By the way I have some old  33 1/3 recordings of your namesake playing Liszt in a church here in the states..  Someone was walking past and heard him playing and thus the "rediscovery" took place.  Ultimately this "someone" recorded Mr. N's recitals and thus we can hear him today on record...I find the recordings haunting in many ways.... something about his tone and the way he played Liszt's music. "

Yeah, it's great stuff. Don't miss the Faust Symphony on youtube!

[stephenv]

Man, this is amazing..that you are continuing the work Mr. Matthay set out to do...distilling it and adding such important information that takes it even further!!

YES....instinctively...I felt that keybedding was too broad a term. That sometimes in certain instances we need to anchor ..into the keys...down to the bed and other variations.  I am guessing that during the time of Matthay's first writing on the subject extreme forms of keybedding were common amongst pianists.  The world of "relaxation" was just beginning..also the concept of  "relaxation" became warped and misconstrued over time. 

Matthay's reaction to keybedding was sort of knee-jerk in a sense, thus Matthay's vehement objection.  Had he lived longer and witnessed the results of his work..on a universal scale, I think Matthay would have backed off the all or nothing approach.  But then, you're here to help further the cause by adding the insights and recognition that some forms of going deep into the keys is essential and a necessary part of playing the piano. 


Ironic isnt' it that Mr. Matthay worked so diligently and wrote such profusive footnotes in hopes of leaving nothing to the imagination when it came to following his teaching, and yet he left out some important points.   

[nyiregyhazi]

"I am guessing that during the time of Matthay's first writing on the subject extreme forms of keybedding were common amongst pianists. "

Not based on many of the historical films I've seen. I think it's far worse today. Ironically I actually wonder if Matthay made the problem even worse, by encouraging the instant "release". This effectively eliminates the mechanism for redirecting the momentum and also risks cutting off much of the energy input- meaning that the arm is going to want to push a good deal harder to make up for slack in the hand! I think he actually took attention away from  some of the most important issues of all an unwittingly encouraged many into disconnected prods rather than connected motions.

"Matthay's reaction to keybedding was sort of knee-jerk in a sense, thus Matthay's vehement objection.  Had he lived longer and witnessed the results of his work..on a universal scale, I think Matthay would have backed off the all or nothing approach."

Absolutely. He'd probably have been horrified to see some of the slack hands that flail around but almost never make a sustained contact with a single finger.

"Ironic isnt' it that Mr. Matthay worked so diligently and wrote such profusive footnotes in hopes of leaving nothing to the imagination when it came to following his teaching, and yet he left out some important points."

i think he had a good instinctive understanding of what he needed to do and likely taught very well in person, but it's hard to convey in words- and ultimately he simply didn't understand exactly what he was truly doing in certain respects. Using some basic mechanics has made it far easier to get to the bottom of many things, than simply trying to describe sensations. Clearly he made the assumption that after directing energy you "obviously" must have turned everything off again immediately not to dig into the keybed. What he didn't realise is that it's possible to redirect an ongoing activity and finish in a balance so easy it seems effortless- but it's just a continuation of the initial movement. When you look at how forces balance up, it makes vastly more sense than the idea of the rapid on/off approach. Sadly, virtually everyone still believes this highly improbable idea today. Hardly anybody teaches the role of using ongoing finger activity to stabilise in a healthy but comfortable way. The intent to relax to excess immediately after the sound often serves to make the arm extremely wobbly and forces it to stiffen tightly. A lot of people get stuck in practising slowly this way and have no hope in hell of ever getting to a point where their fingers can fly at rapid tempos. Although keybedding is a significant issue, the way he tried to explain it and the way many have continued with the idea has caused untold harm to a great many pianists, in my opinion.

[stephenv]

In his typical "American" way Mr. Maier wrote in the Etude Magazine during the 1940's:
"Re: the matter of tone production.  After you've examined 'The Riddle of the Pianists Fingers"
the scientific works of Ortmann, the interesting treatise by Levanskaya, the excellent book by Thomas Fielden, Matthay's volumes and all the rest-if then you are still in your right mind, you come to the conclusion that there are a few sound, simple, easily understood principles to work from:  (he lists several but I'm quoting only the first two).  #1 That the ONLY difference in isolated single piano tones played with the finger in direct contact with the key is quantitative not qualitative."  #2 That percussion noise made by finger, hand, forearm, striking the key from any distance radically alters the quality of a single tone.

I know it seems that Maier is stating the obvious..but he wanted to counter all the complexity that came with Matthay et. al.  and he wanted to strive for simplicity and clarity to make it accessible to all ...very American.   I do think his piano playing had beauty and charm..maybe not a Dame Myra Hess whose playing I hold dear..cherish her recording of Bee Op 109.  and the Schumann Symphonic Etudes!  oh my.   

[nyiregyhazi]

"#1 That the ONLY difference in isolated single piano tones played with the finger in direct contact with the key is quantitative not qualitative."  #2 That percussion noise made by finger, hand, forearm, striking the key from any distance radically alters the quality of a single tone."

Interesting. I agree with the latter, but not the former. It assumes that direct contact makes for a guaranteed nullification of extraneous noise. I believe that there are many ways to change the sound of keybed noise. I think this is big issue when the pedal is depressed, especially when playing loud. One post I've basically completed (but am saving for posting until I've published one with some explanations of hand actions) is about efficiency and energy loss during depression. There are many ways in which you can lose out on sending energy to the hammer yet have plenty hitting the keybed. This applies equally from contact as when dropping.

[stephenv]

I have found a book of exercises that satisfy my definition of "accountabiliy." 

I feel somewhat embarassed, because its been around since 1980!   

Published by Oxford University Press: (part of the Oxford Piano Method)  "Piano Technique" by Herbert Sumsion.

Sumsion, in my opinion, wrote these exercises and accounted for there purpose-the reason for practising them-as well as how to practise them.  What more could I ask???

Beautifully done!    I hope everyone will take a look at these and consider using them in your teaching.