Technical exercises regimen?

[pover]

People have always told me that I could benefit from incorporating some sort of technical regimen alongside my repertoire pieces. I have almost always worked on technique whenever I encounter something in a difficult passage or piece.

Lately I've been entertaining the idea of using etudes (by Moszkowski or someone else, but NOT CZERNY!) instead of technical exercises per say, but I wanted your opinions. I've been messing around with Moszkowski's etude on double notes No.2 (G minor), whenever I have extra time in the day. What usually happens is that I dedicate a particular number of practice sessions on pieces, taking into account the time I'll have available the next day, because I like to brush up on what I've learned one day immediately the next day, and not get back to it in like 3 days. So I don't want to have a lot of practice sessions spent on pieces on one day and learn a lot of material, but not have enough time to go over that the next day. I hope I'm being clear.

So with that in mind, I want to use the extra time available in a day to "develop technique". I don't know, however, if it would be better to do this by working on scales/arpeggios, etudes targeting specific challenges (and I could take some recommendations on this), or technical exercises like the ones you find in books and such. I'm just worried that if I do some sort of technical thing over and over, I'd be doing it incorrectly and ingraining bad habits. This has not usually been a problem for me, but since I want to dedicate time (especially in the Summer - when I don't have uni at least -) to improve my technique, and go to the next level if you may - even though I know that 'next' level isn't exactly leaps and bounds away, lol - I want to make sure that I'm using my time effectively and that I'll gradually see results, because I could be learning repertoire instead.

So anyway, what do you suggest I do? How would you go about it if you didn't have a lot of time to dedicate specifically to technical exercises. Would you even do this or just continue working on pieces/solving problems as I face then and practice technical issues as they come?

I value your opinions, and thank you in advance! 

[chopinlover01]

If you haven't already, master all your 12 major and 36 minor scales, and their arpeggios. Then, do diminshed block chords and arpeggios.
If you haven't done that, get cracking!
If you have, the video below has some exercises listed in it (if it doesn't, check the second episode).

[fifthelegy]

Hi there,
I always prioritised my technical studies over my learning my pieces (because I know that to be able to play the pieces that i want to play I need to have the technique to do so). Moszkowski etudes are great, a good lead up to the Chopin etudes. Aside from etudes you could look at purely technical exercises for e.g. Pischna 60 progressive exercises or Liszt technical exercises which have a wide range of exercises for specific technical challenges. Even spending just half an hour a day doing these and an etude would definitely help,it doesn't need to take up a huge part of your day. I find that when I don't do them my fingers don't feel as 'well-oiled'

[pover]

Alright, thanks for the tips guys!

By the way chopinlover01, I really love Josh Wright's videos! 

[chopinlover01]

Did you watch them before I showed them to you, or did you just discover them?
Not important I'm just curious He's one of the best young pianists alive IMO, not least for his humility. In his videos he will often say "I discovered this concept from ____. I'm nowhere near as good as him/her, but I'm grateful that I got to learn from him/her." or along those lines.
He also, just this March, won 5th place in the US Chopin competition, and the award for best Mazurka, and was invited to play in Warsaw's preliminary rounds (a special recommendation from the judges).

[ted]

Whatever discipline you adopt, beware of habituating a restrictive series of prerequisites for yourself. You see it so often: before I can do A I must learn to do B, before B I really should be able to do C. Then pretty soon you find yourself spending most of your time doing D and have shot yourself in the foot with the starting pistol before the race has commenced, with A more distant than ever.

I know I have to take care in dishing out advice because my own approach to playing is abnormal and probably ought not to be generalised. However, surely the purpose of it all is art, to make music, or at least to shine a new light on that created by someone else. Nothing gets better by not actually playing it.

[Bob]

Don't be afraid to make up your own.

Or pick a piece you want to play later.  Then pick out the technique used in it.  Different chords, different keys, left and right hand, and combinations of all that.... It's easy to vary things and get 30+ different places in to do repetitions.

[ted]

Don't be afraid to make up your own.

Dead right, Bob, that is the best of all, and is what I have done most of my life, for a number of obvious reasons. You can tailor the exercises to suit your own special problems and your own musical ethos. You can constantly vary them from day to day, avoiding the pitfalls of monotony and drudgery.  If your tastes are modern, or highly individual, you avoid locking your mind into old-fashioned keyboard patterns and modes of execution designed for music two centuries ago, the sound of which you might not like.

[pover]

Thanks for the advice Bob and Ted.

Sometimes I just don't know if the exercise I'm doing is effectively helping me conquer a specific passage. I used to only use exercises for technical challenges when I faced a particular problem in a piece, but now I'm thinking of using exercise in general like Dhonanyi or something since I hear that a lot of people benefit from them

[Bob]

Interesting... I wonder if there's a way to change a technical routine that's kind of static and thoughtless by itself.

An easy example would be doing something and switching the key each day.  My stuff is more basic though...

If there was a way to lay something that doesn't take much thought or memory of what you did on a previous day...  You could get continual change without really trying that way.  (Without putting your attention into varying things I mean.  You're attention could go into the exercises themselves.)

Loud/soft  -er
fast/slow -er
Patterns -- up/dn ; dn/up  opposite up/dn; opposite dn/up
For repetitions

[brogers70]

Obviously there are lots of exercises out there. I have found Cramer's Etudes, edited by von Bulow to be very helpful. They are musically a lot more interesting than Czerny (not a high bar) and, at least according to my teacher a good prep for the Chopin Etudes later. I also enjoy the little tidbit that von Bulow was the court pianist for Mad Ludwig of Bavaria and probably did his editing of the Etudes while living in that technicolor Disneyesque castle.

[perfect_playing]

You can develop technique by learning repertoire that's just beyond you. Difficult pieces force us to find little tricks and new methods of practising to overcome technical obstacles. As the technical challenges in a diffcult piece are of a wide variety and are somewhat randomly spread out throughout the piece, you won't get bored. Also, you won't just be training technique, you'll also be developing musicality as you're playing actual repertoire, not just exercises; always bear in mind that technique is simply a gateway to creating the musical images we have in mind.

[louispodesta]

You can develop technique by learning repertoire that's just beyond you. Difficult pieces force us to find little tricks and new methods of practising to overcome technical obstacles. As the technical challenges in a diffcult piece are of a wide variety and are somewhat randomly spread out throughout the piece, you won't get bored. Also, you won't just be training technique, you'll also be developing musicality as you're playing actual repertoire, not just exercises; always bear in mind that technique is simply a gateway to creating the musical images we have in mind.

Extremely well put, this is great advice, which I practice every single day.

And for the record, since I went with Thomas Mark as my coach (www.pianomap.com), I haven't "warmed up" with any scale, arpeggio, or any other technical exercise.  At the age of 63, I have spent decades playing what I now know as worthless exercises.

The key word, and I use this as a pianist/philosopher (which is what Thomas Mark is), is translational.

That means, there should be a direct "causal" relationship between your exercise and your specific piece "dynamic."  If not, then you have, as millions of others before you, fallen for the oldest propagandized music conservatory trick of all time: THE CONSERVATORY METHOD!!