Piano Forum

Yeah.. so.. I'm not sure... I responded to your other post, highlighting why I don't think you should be dedicating too much time to these exercises, let alone trying to make your own unless it's addressing an issue you think you have while trying to learn a piece.

But lucky for you, I've got some spare time, so grab a coffee and let me tell you why you're wrong.

I assume at this point you don't have a teacher. I don't understand what your modification to the exercise is trying to achieve.

Here's the thing...Hanon; Born 1819, lived throughout the whole of the romantic period and even into early Impressionism.

He lived through composers such as Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Schubert and many more. Therefore there was no shortage of inspiration and opportunity to create great works.

However, in 1873, at the age of 54, his 60 exercises were published. This is all Hanon is really known for.

60 questionable exercises, that promise virtuosity from a man who presumably was never a virtuoso at the piano... or any instrument.

Does this not tell you anything? Admittedly I don't have too much information to refer to, but the information I could find suggests that Hanon, who not only wasn't really even a pianist (Trained as an organist) also wasn't truly even dedicated to music.

I have 2 questions to think about and a concluding point.

1. We have virtuoso's who have referenced and even promoted Hanon's exercises (Rachmaninoff for example referring to the Russian school) BUT, I think the real question is, could these pianists already have had the virtuoso ability within and simply required direction for development and, with that in mind could have used any collection of exercises or methods and still became as great as they were?

2. A follow on from my first question, There is a "window" for the right way to complete any movements at the piano. This is called technique. So for example imagine you're asked to play a C major scale at the piano as fast as you can, evenly and staccato.

There will be 1000's of different movements involved in trying to accomplish this task and how many of those movements you execute correctly within that "window" will determine your results. Now it is impossible to think of all the movements together but there are certainly some common movements that can be identified as more correct or more incorrect, some easier than others.

How do you sit at the piano? Close? at a distance? Do you lean into the piano, is your seat high? low? do your arms hang or scrunch into your body

For the staccato sound do you bounce your fingers? do you use your elbows to bounce your hands? do you just flick the wrist down and up?

How do you move your thumb under? Do you turn your wrist slightly out? in? Do you tuck your thumb or shift your whole arm?

Your fingers, how do you press the notes? Do you lift your fingers high? Do you tap the keys lightly or go for a heavy press?

Now just because something might feel right, or correct to you, doesn't make it so. And here, finally, my question.

If you are doing something wrong at the piano, and you do not know it, Do you think repeating that, in the form of Hanon will magically fix the way you're doing it to be the correct way?

And we go back to reference of my 1st question, say you take 100 non pianists, and give them the 60 Hanon exercises and 6 months to practice all at 2 hours per day.

Do you think the 100 will all be at exactly the same level  at the end of the duration? Or do you think that there will be people that will get stuck, and people that will exceed due to the 'window' in which some people are playing the exercises correctly and some incorrectly?

I hope my references make sense. And I hope my point is understood.

I can't find the clip, but a couple years back, a guy posted on this forum a video, with a question.

He advised that he was practising Hanon by himself and trying to play as fast as the tempo indicated but was getting stuck around half way and asked for tips.

The obviously notable thing was that after playing every note his finger stretched straight into the air so high it was almost painful to watch, and I remember people were asking why your fingers were so high up if you were trying to play fast, and he responded well in the Hanon book it says to "Lift your fingers high and hit the notes clearly"...