Do you want to get good at playing notes or playing music?If you want to get good at playing notes, play Hanon. If you want to get good at playing music, play Chopin, albeit musically. Now, there are some people that can translate their Hanon skills into musical playing, but more often than not to do that you'd have to play Hanon musically, and if you were going to do that, why not just play actual music?That being said, Hanon does have its merits under proper instruction.While the method you describe does help (and to practice those I recommend Beethoven Sonatas since he loved his arpeggios for whatever reasons that are far beyond me), it's almost useless if you don't know WHY you're practicing like that.Think about what you're trying to achieve. Perfectly even arpeggios. (The C#diminished 7th one comes to mind on Appassionata Mov. 3) Instead of focusing on just "doing it," think about what your body needs to achieve to hit perfectly even arpeggios. You have to get all the hammers to strike at the exact same velocity, evenly apart in terms of time. Which means that for each finger, you need to attack the key at the same velocity, and at the same time intervals. Are you getting "stuck" on any of the keys? Sliding past any of them too fast? Putting excessive force or excessive weight in any of the fingers? Are your fingers not supported by the rest of your body? Are your fingers carrying your weight? Fix those problems, and "even" arpeggios might be easier than you think. ^^Also, another thing to note is that when you are traveling up on grand pianos, you'll have to make some adjustments to get an "even" sound because the lower registers are louder/last longer than the higher ones.
In 2012, Kobe Bryant was selected as a member of Team USA. During this time, one of the athletic trainer’s for Team USA, a man named Robert, was working with Kobe to prepare for the Olympics. In the story below, which was previously published on Reddit, Robert describes his first experience with Kobe and reveals one of the reasons the superstar has become so successful. From Robert, trainer for Team USA: I was invited to Las Vegas to help Team USA with their conditioning before they headed off to London. I’ve had the opportunity to work with Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade in the past, but this would be my first interaction with Kobe. The night before the first scrimmage, I had just watched “Casablanca” for the first time and it was about 3:30 AM. A few minutes later, I was in bed, slowly fading away, when I heard my cell ring. It was Kobe. I nervously picked up. “Hey, uhh, Rob, I hope I’m not disturbing anything right?” “Uhh, no. What’s up Kob?” “Just wondering if you could help me out with some conditioning work, that’s all.” I checked my clock. 4:15 AM. “Yeah sure, I’ll see you in the facility in a bit.” It took me about twenty minutes to get my gear and get out of the hotel. When I arrived and opened the room to the main practice floor, I saw Kobe. Alone. He was drenched in sweat as if he had just taken a swim. It wasn’t even 5:00 AM. We did some conditioning work for the next hour and fifteen minutes. Then, we entered the weight room, where he would do a multitude of strength training exercises for the next 45 minutes. After that, we parted ways. He went back to the practice floor to shoot. I went back to the hotel and crashed. Wow. I was expected to be at the floor again at about 11:00 AM. I woke up feeling sleepy, drowsy, and pretty much every side effect of sleep deprivation. (Thanks, Kobe.) I had a bagel and headed to the practice facility. This next part I remember very vividly. All of the Team USA players were there. LeBron was talking to Carmelo and Coach Krzyzewski was trying to explain something to Kevin Durant. On the right side of the practice facility Kobe was by himself shooting jumpers. I went over to him, patted him on the back and said, “Good work this morning.” “Huh?” “Like, the conditioning. Good work.” “Oh. Yeah, thanks Rob. I really appreciate it.” “So when did you finish?” “Finish what?” “Getting your shots up. What time did you leave the facility?” “Oh, just now. I wanted 800 makes. So yeah, just now.” For those of you keeping track at home, Kobe Bryant started his conditioning work around 4:30am, continued to run and sprint until 6am, lifted weights from 6am to 7am, and finally proceeded to make 800 jump shots between 7am and 11am.
Would learning Chopin Etudes for example, be practicing? If so, would it be good practice? Because they tackle techniques which would require an absortion and learning of those techniques in order to play them. So surely instead of Hanon finger exercises this would be much more effective but obviously very difficult. Another question is, what exactly is practicing? I've practiced and I've gotten better but my insecurity has me doubting my practice and has me asking this question over and over. For example, if I were practicing a right hand 4-note descending arpeggio, slowly with (perfect) timing between each note, efficient (correct) finger movement. Practicing with an accented first note, then practicing with an accented second note, and so on. And then variations in rhythm, like short, short, long. Long, short, short, ect. And then bunching the notes up in a chord and practicing blocked. That's practicing and I would be improving? And how long should I spend doing this? More practice advice is very welcome.
Topic: Is learning pieces, practicing? 