Beginner practice routine advice

[thomas82]

I am a working adult learning piano at age 34.
i am already quite comfortable in playing 5 finger piano pieces.
I found that i did not have a good finger technique and good piano practice routine which i found my
self diffculty in playing pieces above that.
DId i need to play the Hanon,Czerny,Beyer exercises to improve my fingers?
Which one should i start with and how many minutes should i devote to this?

Every weekdays morning,i only half an hour to practice,while for weekends i can practice up to
3-4 hiours.

Please advise.
Thanks.

[adodd81802]

Firstly, above all else instructions, Piano is at the least a hobby, of which in any situation fundamentally requires a Piano teacher to give you the must accurate advice. 5-10 lessons with a teacher can send you leaps and bounds to the ambiguous answers you could receive on here.

Your questions make it clear that you lack not only practical ability but theory knowledge on piano playing as well (obviously as you said you're a beginner)

That said, it should be noted that the theory of the piano is equally as important as the practical.

Questions to your questions-

1- How do you know you did not have good technique?
2- What do you honestly hope to achieve from the exercises you have mentioned? Do you believe that repeating an endless array of 5 finger patterns suddenly makes your ability to play more difficult pieces better?
3- Practice routines are personal, only you can know how much time to devote to different exercises and pieces before you are confident you have accomplished the point of them.

Summary -

What piano teachers offer, that only after years of research you can find yourself is a structured and balanced way to progress at the piano, whilst methodically revising and restructuring piano improvement as we know it to make it personal to you, based on your strengths and weaknesses.

[marial]

Hello!
It seems you have already a good program for when and how much to practice. This is the first step; finding regular times when to practice and then sticking to it. Devote at least 20-30% of that time to improving your technique.

Start with easy exercises, like the first part of Hanon, some of the easiest Czerny, (op. 599 for ex.)

Also make sure to learn all major and minor scales, chords and arpeggios. This is to "ingrain" the basic and most important musical patterns and fingerings you will encounter, and it will make it easier to learn new repertoire. You could follow the graded levels of RCM for a step by step approach.

Next, notice what you have trouble with in the pieces that you're playing. Then find exercises that focus on that problem. Let's say you have trouble with thirds in a piece. Check out for ex. Isidor Philipp (free scores here: https://pianoexercises.org/exercises/philipp/) for exercises with thirds and work on them as you work on your piece.

I hope this was of some help to you.
Happy practicing!

[visitor]

https://imslp.org/wiki/First_Lessons_in_Bach_(Bach,_Johann_Sebastian)

[keypeg]

In terms of not having good "finger technique" - is there actually such a thing as "finger technique"?

[louispodesta]

I am a working adult learning piano at age 34.
i am already quite comfortable in playing 5 finger piano pieces.
I found that i did not have a good finger technique and good piano practice routine which i found my
self diffculty in playing pieces above that.
DId i need to play the Hanon,Czerny,Beyer exercises to improve my fingers?
Which one should i start with and how many minutes should i devote to this?

Every weekdays morning,i only half an hour to practice,while for weekends i can practice up to
3-4 hiours.

Please advise.
Thanks.

First, if you gently warm your hands beforehand, you can squeeze in extra practice time in early morning.  It makes a difference.  Additionally, enclosed for your perusal is a prior post on the basic five finger technique:

["With all due respect to those who have posted, I have noticed that there is no specific mention regarding any method of "key attack." This references how one/pianist strikes a particular key or a set of keys.

1)  I was taught, by my late teacher Robert Weaver, that one should (without stress) normally arrange their hands, with fingers "resting" on the keys, in a standard five finger position, at "Middle C" (and a corresponding octave below in the left hand).

2)  That also  means you are sitting erect, not stiff, but relaxed at the keyboard, with a full but relaxed arm weight.

3)  Then, practice playing (super slow!) 1-5 in a very soft staccato fashion with little or no movement in either hand (super still!).  Remember, as the late concert pianist Earl Wild was taught by Egon Petri, always strike from the surface of the key.

4)  After one has mastered this, the same modality should be effectuated with broken chords and dominant seventh and diminished arpeggios, accordingly."

5.  Using the Taubman/Golandsky technique, transfer the weight from finger to finger as you play the chord, allowing the rest of the hand to collapse.  This is called the "walking hand."  Whatever you do, do not play with a flexed outstretched hand, as every pianist in the world has been taught."]

If you desire further information, please contact me for free by PM.  And, for the record, adult beginners is the highest percentage group of new piano new students in the world.

Congratulations.

[tenk]

Ignore Louis, well-established fraud.

All other advice you've received so far is spot on.

[outin]

In terms of not having good "finger technique" - is there actually such a thing as "finger technique"?

I think there is. Where it originates and how it is achieved is another question...

[lostinidlewonder]

I am a working adult learning piano at age 34.
i am already quite comfortable in playing 5 finger piano pieces.
I found that i did not have a good finger technique and good piano practice routine which i found my
self diffculty in playing pieces above that.
DId i need to play the Hanon,Czerny,Beyer exercises to improve my fingers?
Which one should i start with and how many minutes should i devote to this?

Every weekdays morning,i only half an hour to practice,while for weekends i can practice up to
3-4 hiours.

Please advise.
Thanks.

You need a teacher to give you some direction and ideas and to show you what repertoire is out there that you can study. You can always go to google and type "free easy piano sheet music" and go from there, find out what you can and cant do. It is not so easy to do this on your own and why most people opt to get a teacher to guide them through this process. Focus on learning many many pieces if you already have much experience with 5 finger position playing go look for more music of this type but which moves out of this position now and then.

Here are some pages you can explore:
https://makingmusicfun.net/htm/printit_piano_sheet_music_index.htm
https://www.music-for-music-teachers.com/beginner-piano-music.html
https://www.easysheetmusic.com/
https://www.letsplaykidsmusic.com/
https://www.pianosongdownload.com/freemusiclevels.html

[louispodesta]

I think there is. Where it originates and how it is achieved is another question...

Very well said.  That is why the Chair of the Keyboard Division at Juilliard is a former personal student of Dorothy Taubman.

Taubman's teachings, and that of her successor Edna Golandsky, should be actively explored, in my opinion, by any serious student of the piano REGARLDESS OF THEIR PARTICULAR PERFORMANCE LEVEL!

Just today, I utilized the five finger approach that I alluded to in another post.  It combined a Taubman/Golandsky approach, which was coupled with the Alexander Technique of my current coach Thomas Mark.  And, this was the Schumann Piano Concerto.

So, this advice of get yourself to a good teacher, who can teach you all of this at one time:  Good luck with that because no such person exists.

If it was that easy, you would not have broached your original question in the first place.  After all, it is 2016!

[bernadette60614]

I would add, as an adult student:

.  Spend some time at each practice session sight reading.  It could be a piece at a skill level lower than your current one, but just to get that experience of being able to shake off the nerves at the sight of a new piece.

.  When you begin a new piece, take a moment, and note the month/year you started learning that piece. Sometimes it is hard to get a sense of progress. However, I can look back at pieces I played a year ago, and what I'm playing now and realize that I have made progress.

Enjoy!

[bernadette60614]

Also, I like this as a sequence for practice:

New piece first.

Technical exercises (I do Hanon...don't tell anyone here, cause Hanon is more contentious than the recent election results)

Review of established pieces

Sight reading

All of what I play is classical, but for the sight reading, I'm doing jazz standards, since not only am I sight reading, but I'm also doing some improvisation.