Problems with eveness and playing scale passages

[andrij]

Hi,
I am amateur pianist and I would myself categorise as slightly advanced or upper intermediate( I have been playing for 10 years and I have been thaught by 3  piano teachers too). Sorry for my english I am not a native speaker of english. I have a major problem and I would like to know your opinions on that, I have been strugling for several years with passages playing. I can not play scale passages with perfect eveness I mean passages for example of mozart turkisch march or clementi gradus ad parnassum first 2 etudes from tausig edition. These thinks are really hell for me, albeit I have less problems with octaves or chords or double notes by now I play this study by Czerny and I find i more easier for me

than

I have played this study and it was hell for my or the second one is this

it happens to me not only in these studies, that my thumb or second finger are bit louder than other fingers or that one other finger is randomly louder. I have recently obtained Tägliche Technische Studien by Oscar Beringer to solve this problem. Do you think it is a good choise or a bad one ? The second think I would like to ask you is if it is necessary to stress the first note of each bar when you play a piece ? even I had to play each section of a bar with a stress(I do not know english name for that I mean when I have 3/4 time signature I hat to stress the first note of each three sections of the bar) or all notes must be even. I have to play this way( with accents)  because my teacher told my so but I do not know if this is only exercise or final version .And I ask you because he is a type of teacher, that changes his mind whatheaver he wants and I do not really know what is correct or incorect at piano playing. Thanks for you suggestions

[indianajo]

Everybody in the beginning has trouble with notes being too loud on fingers 1,2, and too soft on fingers 4,5.  If one has the patience, one can start on exercises right at the beginning, aiming at playing all the notes at the same volume.  I learned evenness starting age 8 on Schmitt exercises, that are available for download from Pianostreet.  I did ten minutes of these exercises a day the first year. In fact the goal of  my starting piano was to train me to use my third finger RH that the fingertip had been cut off.  So evenness of finger strength (or use) was the primary goal of my piano lesson.  
But many teachers are afraid of discouraging the student with too much boring drill, and won't give young students these exercises.  After all if the student quits, the teacher doesn't get paid.  But there is no substitute for practice, and these boring exercises give it to you. I recently stumbled on a Hanon first book (as selected by Schaum) and these exercises seemed to be similar to the Schmitt.  I'm not familiar with the german language exercise book you have selected, I hope it is similar and as good as schmitt in creating evenness and flexibility.  
As far as accenting the first beat always, last year at my first piano lesson in 51 years, the teacher insisted I play the first movement of Moonlight Sonata with the first beat of every measure accented.  I did it her way during the lesson, but I think that makes Moonlight sound like the lovers are riding a Swiss lake steamboat in a crowd at 2 PM, instead of sculling across Lake Como in the dark in a small boat alone together. Sculling is a motion where the movements are very even.    I'll never play Moonlight with the first beat accented again.  
Playing to win competitions, and making art in music, are different tasks, IMHO.  Accenting the first beat always is imperative in military band marches, where that cue is part of getting the soldiers to march together.  Not all art is a military march.  

[brogers70]

Just about the issue of stressing the first beat. You should do it. Once you are sure you can do it consistently, then you can back off until the stress is barely perceptible, if you want to. You said you were having trouble with evenness, which is a way of saying you cannot precisely control how much stress you give each note. So you need to be able to stress the first beat very much, just a little bit, or not at all, depending on what you want. My guess is that if your teacher is insisting, it is because you were not able to control the stresses and were getting no accent at all or accents on the wrong beats. So I think you should start playing it with a good stress on the first beat until you can do that, regardless of what finger is playing the note that falls on the first beat. Once you can control it, then you can ease off, so you don't sound like a drunken tuba player playing an oom-pah-pah oom-pah-pah waltz.

[brogers70]

Sorry, forgot something. If you are not doing this already you should have your teacher watch you do some scales every week. The little details of how your arms and hand are positioned, how the thumb crosses, what angle the wrist is at, all though things can have a big effect on whether your scales are bumpy or smooth. Also, when working for evenness, start doing scales one hand at a time. Also, don't be afraid to practice them extremely slowly, once your teacher has checked that your motions are correct.

[andrij]

As far as stressing first note is concerned I would like to ask you If the final version for performance have to be stressed not for purpose for exercise, especially Mozart sonatas .  Both Hanon and Schmidt I have played yet. Schmidt 6 years ago and Hanon recently. But I think that I have messed up Hanon, because I was told by my teacher I should stress the first note. but I find it more easier then playing all notes evenly I have not any problem with that.  I have played the first movement and the third of moonlight too(third only without teacher) at that time my teacher(another one) insisted on playing all notes even
The book with german name is Daily Technical Studies for Piano by oscar Beringer
https://books.google.sk/books/about/Daily_Technical_Studies_for_Piano.html?id=l-BrM-t2UTUC&redir_esc=y
is resambles me of Hanon but Hanon is more easier.
My teacher told me that I should not study  scales and he criticised me for that but I think he is wrong and he help me not. I think that large studies by Czerny are not for me, especially scales studies such as the a minor study, I have played it for one half year and it helped me not on the contrary. I think I should concern myself with playing scales and eight measure exercises but he respects me not. I think that this problem I have should be solved now because the harder thinks I will be play the more complications I will have, because eveness is the most important think I have told him that but he ignored me .

[bronnestam]

Work a lot with your posture - your teacher must help you - and don't forget to BREATHE evenly and relaxed. You describe the typical result of building up too much tension in your body, which will lead to jerky (uneven) movements. And later on to injuries and pain.

Play a lot with your hands separated and observe yourself and your muscles carefully. Experiment a lot, but do it in a controlled manner. Those technical exercises are a big waste of time if you are doing them mindlessly, but they are very useful when you are working with specific problems and really want to explore how you control your movements and touch. I know people - and I was one of them once - who dutifully do their twenty minutes of technical exercises every day "as a warm-up" and this usually consists of rushing through different exercises as quickly as possible and working through the circle of fifths.
I think this is a really bad idea.

I also know professionals who can spend half an hour just experimenting with control of the 4th and 5th finger, hitting the same key over and over again in as many was as possible. And that is what really pays off.

I think you have a good attitude as you want to really work with your problem, instead of just concluding "oops ... uneven again. Silly me!" and not try to really fix it. I don't know about the exercises you bought, but I suppose they are good if you use them in this very conscious way.
After all, the whole point with exercises, including scales, is that they are so simple that you don't have to LEARN them before you can play them. You just use them in order to study yourself and your movements.

[michael_c]

My thoughts on this:

First, you need to cooperate with your teacher. If you really feel that you cannot understand him, or he does not take your questions seriously, it may by the moment to look for another teacher.

In the 20th century the discoveries of piano teachers such as Dorothy Taubman demonstrated that the basic premise behind exercises such as those of Hanon and Beringer is in fact false. The idea of these "5 finger exercises" is to strengthen the weaker fingers so that all 5 fingers will be equally strong. In fact we don't need that much strength to play the piano: what we need is coordination of the different parts of the body. When you have learnt to put the weight of the arm behind each finger, correctly coordinating arm and finger movements, playing evenly will come naturally.

[andrij]

I will play play mechanical exercises but not mechanically.  Anton Rubinstein should have adviced his pupils to do it so. or so I read it. What surprised me too he should have give his pupils play easy mechanical patterns in many ways. I do not want to weak or strenghten my fingers I just want coordinated playing. I was sometimes dissapointed when I had to realise that I was not able to play easy scale exercises for beginners

[hfmadopter]

Yes but often it's the easy music that is most transparent, there are not a lot of notes to hide any flaws ..

As to your scales, slow them way down, play each note deliberately until you get a feel for the evenness you are desiring. Then slowly bring it back up to speed. Do this as an exercise.

[indianajo]

In the 20th century the discoveries of piano teachers such as Dorothy Taubman demonstrated that the basic premise behind exercises such as those of Hanon and Beringer is in fact false. The idea of these "5 finger exercises" is to strengthen the weaker fingers so that all 5 fingers will be equally strong. In fact we don't need that much strength to play the piano: what we need is coordination of the different parts of the body. When you have learnt to put the weight of the arm behind each finger, correctly coordinating arm and finger movements, playing evenly will come naturally.

If that quote is correct, IMHO Dorothy Taubman is full of ****.  When they gave me Schmitt exercises, nobody said anything about strengthening anything.  They told me to play so every note sounded the same volume. The building the strength part happened naturally as part of practice.  As far as not needing strength to play the piano, maybe if the student has arms like Horowitz or JoAnne Castle.  I have very slight arms and hands (8.5 cm wrist) and after years of practice, still don't have the strength to play a grand piano for very long.  Only my featherweight console, which I bought because in part it had the lightest action of any piano in the store. If I squeezed rubber balls or something to strengthen the fingers, I'm sure the tendonitis and arthritis pain I'm already experiencing after 90 minutes practice, would be worse and come sooner.  And that is on a general aerobics program, which pumps my body so full of endomorphine I can't feel the bone spurs in my cartledgeless knees. 

[michael_c]

As far as not needing strength to play the piano, maybe if the student has arms like Horowitz or JoAnne Castle.

Look at all those child prodigies. There's quite a vogue for them on YouTube: 6, 7, 8, 9 years old but they can whizz through their Chopin or their Beethoven. Many of them practice several hours a day. They're no bigger than other children of their age and they don't seem to have super-muscular arms. I don't think they'd come far in a weightlifting competition. Yet they can play fast, loud, virtuoso music on a grand piano.

How do these kids manage it?

I have very slight arms and hands (8.5 cm wrist) and after years of practice, still don't have the strength to play a grand piano for very long.

Wrists are measured by their circumference. An 8.5 cm wrist would be about normal for a newborn baby...

[andrij]

Look at all those child prodigies. There's quite a vogue for them on YouTube: 6, 7, 8, 9 years old but they can whizz through their Chopin or their Beethoven. Many of them practice several hours a day.

I think it is because their brain works other than one of an adult. When I was a child (6 years old). I learned almost all traffic signs without studiing them. I just asked people what that sing should mean when I saw it in book or a street. I argued with one of my classemate in Kindergarten because he named one traffic sign wrongly.  At that I invented my traffic signs too I think today I were virtuoso pianist If should have began to play piano at age of six, what almost happened but I began to play at age of 12. Children are more creative and they consider playing piano for game, that is why they are better at that. Chopin managed to play Bach's WTC perfectly at very young age I think he was  from 6 to 10 years old

[michael_c]

I think it is because their brain works other than one of an adult.

It can be interesting to reflect on what goes on in children's brains, but that is not what I was talking about. I was talking about the purely physical aspect. A six year old girl certainly doesn't have the strength of an adult, but you can find six year old girls capable of playing physically difficult music on a grand piano.

What is going on here on a muscular level? Why can these little kids with their skimpy arms and slight muscles produce all that fast, loud music from a piano for hours on end, while certain adults who have much stronger arm and finger muscles will complain of aches and pains after half an hour of playing?

The answer: the aches and pains are not caused by fingers being too weak. If your fingers are as strong as those of a six year old child they are strong enough! What those gifted children have is a natural coordination of hand and arm muscles. Others, to whom this coordination doesn't come naturally, must learn it. But don't despair: it is possible to learn it, and when this coordination has been learnt you will be able to play evenly or put accents just where you want them.