Need help on practice routines and piece selections (some background on me too)

[okansoylu]

Hello all

I have started learning the piano about 4 months ago. I live in a kind of a remote coastal town. It was very hard to find a teacher. I have found someone but he is not interested in classics as much as I am. After 3 months of following an instructive book and finishing about 30 lessons, he wanted me to play his compositions and popular songs. However, I am interested in playing classical piano. I am not motivated by popular songs or his compositions and I am not learning to show off but for my own joy mostly. I was most happy when the book had some etudes from Czerny. I loved playing them.

In the meantime I have found this website and became a member and started with recommended pieces. I can now "play" Bach's Minuet in G and Burgmuller's Op.100 No.2 as much as I can. Both gave me immense joy. Especially the Arabesque.  Working on hours to get it on its own speed was a big fun challenge for me. I wake up early and work for half and hour 6 days a week. Then about two half hour sessions when I am back from work. Weekends I try to spend more time at my piano but I work on Saturdays as well. I am 36 years old, I only played drums and percussion since high school and had no prior experience playing the piano. I also have bought a Kawai ca67 and I really like it.

Can you recommend me some practice routines and next pieces for me to work on. I have now all the Instructive Editions of recommended pieces on this website. Should I work on Hanon, Czerny or similar?

How should I divide my time between exercises, repeating pieces I have learned and learning new pieces. I would greatly appreciate any input and some examples of clear working schedules.

Thank you very much

[dedikandrej]

Hey, I'm playing for 4-5 years atm. and I'm having mild success with my playing (i'm 20 yo). I think there are a plenty of learning materials on internet (or on this forum), but I can tell you some "essential" tips for starters (for some1 who have never played piano):


- play classical music: Learn to love classical music. Classical music is simply put the best way to learn how to play piano. And form your post I can see you love it so thats just good for you.

- practice hands separately: The biggest mistake i did when i started was that i tried playing hands together at slow tempo and trying to ramp it up to higher speeds, which led to many mistakes. The right way to learn any piece is to play both hands separately first, and try to get them to full speed. It's a bit counterintuitive because you spend 2 times as much time practicing the same piece right? wrong: playing HS allows you to get to higher speed much more quickly then HT, resulting in more time spend playing the piece at tempo rather then just ramping it up from slower speeds HT. It also allows you to observe the music that comes from both hands, because usually when playing HT first, you kinda just focus on one hand's musical material, while neglecting the musical material of the other hand, which is shame and impromer way to produce music overall.

- analyze the piece you are about to study: before you start a new piece, listen to several performances of it, best with sheet music at hand (or youtube video with sheet music). Soon you will recoginze patterns and structures of which the piece consits. Especially the repeating parts are essential, since it shows you how much musical material you have to learn to play or memorize the whole piece, for example famous Chopin Valse in c#minor (op64 no2):
Whole piece has 194 bars, but after listening to it you can easily see (or hear), that it has three sections A (bar 1 - 34) B (bar 35 - 66) C (67 -98), some of which repeat themselves. The structure of whole piece is ABCBAB, meaning, to learn all 194 bars, you just need to learn all the sections. A (34 bars) + B (32 bars) + C (32 bars) = 98 bars, but it doesn't stop there, in the same way, you can cut individual sections into subsections, for example A can be split into sections a (bar 1 - 10) b (bar 11 - 17) a again (bar 18 - 27) and finally c (bar 29 - 34) so the A section is 9 + 7 + 7 = 23 bars long. In the same way you can find out that B section is only 10 bars long, and C has some repetition in it so its about 25 bars to learn. So to learn the whole piece, you just have to learn 23 + 10 + 25 = 63 bars, thats much less then 194 bars isn't it ?

- set your goals and practice one section at a time: For this you should have two things prepared in order to practice properly: A piece to play (obviously ) and segments of the piece (as mentioned above). Lets continue explanation with chopin's valse: So lets say you have one hour of practice time, plan ahead which section to work on (your goal) during that practice session, let's say you want to work on A' a subsection. Try to play each hand at slow tempo several times through the whole section, to get idea what given section is about. After you've done that, practice 2-3 bars repeating at a time, starting at tempo at which you can play comfortably, 30% for example. Keep alter between hands each time you finish the 3 bar section (you don't have to, but make sure you give each hand enough practice), and once you feel you can play at 30% with ease with each hand, increase the tempo to 40%, and do the same thing again and again until you can play HS at 70% / 100%. After that try to play HT at very slow speed, especially if you are begginer, and repeat the same process HT. If you struggle, try the following: You can always play the first beat HT without problem, so play them and struggle yourself towards the end of the 2nd/3rd bar. Next time try to play perfectly both hands on second beat, and struggle to the end of practice segment, and so on and so forth. That's the only thing i can't describe quite well ( how i put hands together), but eventually everyone find his own way to do so, its like doing two things at once. In no time, you can play 3 bars HT. Move on to the next bars and work your way through the whole "a" section. once you have theese  3 segments completed, try to connect them, you can do so by overlaping while practicing individual segments. Doing this should take about 1 hour, so in one hour you learned about 10% of the whole piece (roughly speaking ofc ). The next day you will find you can play the a section much better. After you done this with all the sections, the piece is basically "learned", and you are holding raw diamond in the hand, which you are going to polish with practicing through the time.

- listen to yourself: during practice, listen to your playing and find spots which doesn't sound right, and practice only that spot (even if it's less then one bar) over and over again HS. It's crucial that you do this as soon as you find such spot, because if not treated well, this spot will eventually turn into mistake which is hard to get rid off.

- to your question about how much time you should spend practicing old pieces and studying new pieces, is very individual question, but for me its 1/10 ratio. You are eventually going to forget older pieces, but that's not a problem because in generall it takes 10 times less time to relearn the forgotten piece than a new one, so it's really up to you

- and about the repertoire and excercises: Play what you like and what you are thrilled about. It's much easier to learn a piece that you cherish at the moment rather then playing Hanon for one hour (except if you are thrilled by Hanon o.O ). I generally dislike Hanon, because while yes - it improves your technique, it contains little to no musical material. Bach contains both, so why torture yourself with Hanon while you can play Bach instead? So if you have a list of compositions you want to learn (or you should learn), pick the one you are most excited to play, and learn that one. It's that simple

Hope you find this answer helpfull, if you agree/disagree, tell me what you think .

[okansoylu]

Thank you very much for the detailed and very well put reply. I think I will continue to work on pieces. I guess my next piece will be Bach's little prelude in C. I will play burgmuller and minuet to start my practices and then continue with the learning on the new piece. I will also try your advice on hs.

[okansoylu]

I have received First lessons in Bach and Burgmuller's Twenty five.

I will start on Bach book, any pointers or tips are welcome

[indianajo]

JS Bach, the rhythm should be very steady.  I don't have to use a metronome, but you may.
When doing runs with turnovers, it helps to lift the wrist the thumb is under then lower as it goes back to normal.  Your teacher should have shown you this but it doesn't sound like he is into that.
I spent about 5-10 minutes on my weekly assigned exercise when I was a student. I went through Edna Mae Berman exercises by the number for years before I ever got to Czerny School of Velocity.  We don't do Hanon in the midwest.  Each exercise has a teaching point, which your teacher doesn't sound competent to figure out and communicate to you. 
Learning to play chords and playing a melody over them is what commercial piano playing is all about. If ever you wish to take home free money for playing piano, you better learn to do this while you have a teacher that is competent at it.  All the ones around here with that talent are too into smelly drugs or booze for me to put up with them.  Pop may not be your pleasure, but it sure pays well in bars.
If you get the JS Bach 2 part Invention book it has enough material to keep you challenged for a lifetime. 
A little later, some of the Beethoven Bagatelles are not too hard.  Totally different style from Bach, and varying tempo and dramatic pauses are often in order with him. 
After Beethoven, you might be ready for some Chopin.  That guy can't write two measures in a row without speeding up or slowing down. 
Have fun. 

[okansoylu]

Ok, I studied Burgmuller 1 and 2
I can play 2 now (a little slower than it should be)
Working on 1, and I think I will be able to play it in a few more days (depending on practice)

Now, one thing I want to ask. How do I develop speed. I can play Arabesque without any hitch but can not play as fast.

[bronnestam]

Maybe you can find a teacher of your taste if you travel longer. This means you cannot see this teacher once a week or even biweekly, but even single lessons could be of great benefit - I have tried this several times! Don't be afraid of contacting even the "prominent" teachers even if you are a relative beginner. Your money is worth just as much as anyone else's.

The knowledge and tips from a real good teacher are worth so much and you will benefit from the advice for a long time afterwards.

I do not play exercises for the sake of them, but I try to make them in connection to the pieces I am studying at the time. If, for example, the piece is in B Major, I practice a bit with the B Major scale and then with the chord progressions in different combinations. Then there are always difficult parts of the piece and if you look at them in isolation, you can probably work out some exercises that will support you.

One thing I do not recommend is to learn a piece in ONE way - you start slowly and speed up in time and then you are done ... well, it works fine for very basic pieces but when you leave the elementary stage you need to be a bit more creative or you will find the work tedious and the final result might be a bit mechanic. Of course you should work a lot with separate hands, even when you CAN play the piece HT, but you can also try playing just the first note/chord in every bar or phrase, or play just the melody line, or whatever you can make up to really explore the piece from different aspects. If it is a lively piece, clap the rythm on the table with one hand and then two until you can do it really fast, so that you get a good grip of the rythm without bothering too much about the detailed finger work ... Sing or hum the piece while you clap.

The best advice I have got is that you should work with one issue at a time. Don't try to solve the fingering, the note reading, the accent, the rythm, the tempo etcetera at the same time. No, decide WHICH issue you are to work with right now, and skip the rest. Narrow the problem down to its atoms if you need to.

For increasing the tempo, there is a nice little trick called chord attack, have you tried it? Let's say a phrase is built up by arpeggios, meaning that two to five fingers move either up or down in a sequence. Play these arpeggios as whole chords, that is simultaneously, as long as you can reach them all. Then quickly move your hand for the next chord attack. Now you can play the section ultra-fast ... and you need to slow down instead of speeding up! So, this is an exercise in positioning of your hand. Don't worry if it sounds awful, this is an exercise and not the end result. (Turn the volume down ...)


PS. These were additional opinions. The advice you already have got above are very good, I think.

[visitor]

i would suggest working this up nice and slow, no tension, no rush, as slow as needed to play accurate. lots of good to be had from this one

[okansoylu]

Thank you very much for the ongoing support and the recommendations. I am now able to play Burgmuller 1 and 2 and I will be developing speed, articulation etc. with time.

I will be working on this Hummel Etude.