Query for information: best ways to play Hanon

[proustlydemon]

Not a debate on whether Hanon exercises are "good" or "bad" - I am convinced of their value despite the opinions of many on this forumn.

Are there any posts on the best ways to play hanon? the ways to develop finger speed, dexterity, and durability the best. Any books that adress the subject?

thanks
chris

[lostinidlewonder]

Besides generally keeping the fingers above their notes, know which fingers to accenuate. For example... the first one which is like.
C E F G A G F E
you would accent 1 and 5 in both hands.

Also take note of which fingers are being excersised.
for example. one hanon goes
C E A G F G F E
Which in the RH going up excersises the strength between the 3 and 4, and going down gives 2 3 a work out.
In this case i would accenuate 1 and 3 in the RH going up and  5, 3 going down.

It would also be useful to play them with different rhythms.

[Bob]

Play them in all keys.

[Brian Healey]

By far the best way to practice Hanon is to take three steps:

1. Close the book.
2. Put it on a shelf somewhere.
3. Forget that the book even exists.

 

I totally agree with Bob, though. The way Hanon is set up, it won't actually improve your technique very much at all unless you transpose the exercises to other keys.


Peace,
Bri

[steinwayguy]

Are there any posts on the best ways to play hanon? the ways to develop finger speed, dexterity, and durability the best. Any books that adress the subject?

There are no good ways to play Hanon. Why would you even consider it, it leads to mindless "finger strengthening" with absolutely no musical value. Technique is music, not noise.

[anda]

i don't let my students do hanon - because i consider them too young and unexperienced to do these correctly (and thus benefit from).

however, you could practice hanon same as you practice scales: fast command, and launched attack (poor english translation...) just make sure you divide the exercise correctly.

[orlandopiano]

Besides generally keeping the fingers above their notes, know which fingers to accenuate. For example... the first one which is like.
C E F G A G F E
you would accent 1 and 5 in both hands.

Also take note of which fingers are being excersised.
for example. one hanon goes
C E A G F G F E
Which in the RH going up excersises the strength between the 3 and 4, and going down gives 2 3 a work out.
In this case i would accenuate 1 and 3 in the RH going up and  5, 3 going down.

It would also be useful to play them with different rhythms.

I do all kinds of variations with Hanon. I shift the accents over by one 16th note, play with dotted rhythms, play in different keys, and combine all of these at the same time.  One variation I like is RH staccato over LH legato, and vice versa.

There are better technique builders than Hanon, but since I was brought up on it I still use it for my students. In their natural form they don't do much, but the variations help. It won't help you learn Gaspard, but it does well with RH/LH coordination.

[ujos3]

I think that at the beginning the best way to play the first 30 exercises of Hanon is to concentrate on relaxation.

For example, if you are playing exercise 1, you should play the first note, focus on whether you have the rest of the fingers, wrist, shoulder, etc. relaxed, then play the second note and so on. Be patient. It is very important.

After a while you can increase speed. If you focus on relax you will notice you can use some little wrist rotation movements to play this exercise, and have a free and fast hand. The same for the rest of exercises.

I use to play these exercises with the fingers just on the notes before pressing them (not lifting fingers or very little). If in some works (Baroque for example)  I need  an articulate style I lift a little bit more the fingers. It is not necessary to lift high the fingers to have a louder sound, so you should not follow Hanon advice IMHO. You would have a poor, harsh sound.

Instead of looking for speed try to focus on playing absolutely free and relaxed. Speed will come if you do so. If you play fast and tense, even if it is clean and articulated, may be you are doing a bad job .

For the rest of the exercises, each one has a different technique (octaves, double thirds, etc.)

[Hmoll]

There are no good ways to play Hanon. Why would you even consider it, it leads to mindless "finger strengthening" with absolutely no musical value. Technique is music, not noise.

If you play it mindlessly, and make noise, then yes, there is no musical value to Hanon.

Practice Hanon - like everything else - creatively. Play in rhythms, different keys, different articulations, etc. Use the exercises to work on specific technical problems. In that way they can be very useful.

[orlandopiano]

I will say this: The best excercise book I've ever studied is the Complete School of Technic by Isidor Philipp.  It is much much more varied than Hanon, and has more real world technique- stuff you might actually encounter in a real piece.

[johnnypiano]

I agree with Brian.  The best way to deal with Hanon is to treat him as an unwelcome visitor and lock him out!  Life is much too short not to be learning wonderful pieces and devising exercies from them to help our technique.

[janice]

I do all kinds of variations with Hanon. I shift the accents over by one 16th note, play with dotted rhythms, play in different keys, and combine all of these at the same time.  One variation I like is RH staccato over LH legato, and vice versa.

YES!!!  And I liked Bob's idea--different keys.  Unless every piece you play is written in C major! 

[DarkWind]

By far the best way to practice Hanon is to take three steps:

1. Close the book.
2. Put it on a shelf somewhere.
3. Forget that the book even exists.

 

I totally agree with Bob, though. The way Hanon is set up, it won't actually improve your technique very much at all unless you transpose the exercises to other keys.


Peace,
Bri

I disagree completely. The best way to practice Hanon is:

1. Grab a lighter.
2. Take lighter and Hanon book outside.
3. Use lighter to burn Hanon book.
4. Curse for wasting money on this book.



Hanon is pretty useless. It might be good to take a look at it once every other month or something, but really, if you are working on some pieces, that's more than Hanon will ever do for you. Thing is, Hanon only teaches finger technique, and Hanon leads to dependence on finger technique. Yet, piano playing requires the whole body. You never need more technique than the piece asks for. As you play more and more etudes and other pieces, your techiques will improve and vary, until playing through Hanon is just way too easy and laudable at best.

[musik_man]

Asking for tips on how to play Hanon on this forum is like going to a neo-Nazi forum and asking what constitutes appropriate attire for Temple. >_>

I disagree completely. The best way to practice Hanon is:

1. Grab a lighter.
2. Take lighter and Hanon book outside.
3. Use lighter to burn Hanon book.
4. Curse for wasting money on this book.

A book of Hanon can serve many purposes, doorstop, paper weight, holding up an uneven table leg.  Burning it would be a waste.

I'll have to agree with the general sentiment on this forum, that there's not really a good way to practice Hanon.  But as long as you don't practice it the way Hanon recommends, the only thing you'll lose is time.

[johnnypiano]

Good idea, DarkWind, though there won’t be enough lighters to go round.

Here’s my idea: send all your Hanon books by elephant to the highest mountain top.  There would be thousands of these animals but grouped in threes - Beginner, Transcendental and Virtuoso, and they will walk in alphabetical order to the summit.  Once there, DarkWind, with his single lighter and a few tons of Macdonald’s highest-fat burgers to aid in combustion, will set light to what will become the biggest bonfire in Christendom.

Viewing this spectacle from space, the aliens will decide that mankind has taken a giant leap towards civilization.  However, they won’t be impressed by the ghastly plumes of pollution generated and neither will we.  Wouldn’t it be better if we simply recycled all this paper and gave the money to help the starving  millions?

We could send out a message to pianists everywhere:

Rid the World of Famon!     

[Piazzo22]

I don´t understand you guys. Why do you think a technical excercises´ book should be played musically, or contain music in it?

Technic is not music, it´s the mechanism! And Hanon is one of the best books out there!
You don´t need great technique if you would play music in your imagination. But I don´t think that´s the purpose of playing the piano. You play for others, and you need a depurated mechanism for others to understand your musical imagination.

[kilini]

I disagree completely. The best way to practice Hanon is:

1. Grab a lighter.
2. Take lighter and Hanon book outside.
3. Use lighter to burn Hanon book.
4. Curse for wasting money on this book.

NO! Go sell the book at Amazon to some dummy who thinks this book of mindless repetition can improve his/her technique!

seriously. If you want hanon, look at Bach. That's where hanon copied loads of his --- from anyway. Learn the Inventions!

[argerich_smitten]

I don't think hanon is some miraculous cure for a bad technique or anything like that, but I think dismissing it so quickly the way most of you guys are is a little rash. 

Some people think technical exercises as a whole are bad, since one could just learn a piece and absorb the technique in it.  I used to agree fully with this statement, but now not quite so much.  Many great pianists thought that the 'dirty laundery' should be done seperately (Liszt most importantly), and then when the pianist runs into a particular difficulty they have studied, they don't need to take the time to learn the technique required.  I used to say "why would I ever do exercises in thirds when I could just practice opus 25 # 6, or "I want to improve my octaves; today it'll be hungarian rhapsody 6 and Don Juan", and though I don't think there is anything horribly wrong with that, I am confident I did not save time learning the technique at the same time as learning the piece.  If you are trying to 'absorb' technique, might it not be better to devote your concentration fully on the technique?

If you play it mindlessly, and make noise, then yes, there is no musical value to Hanon.

Practice Hanon - like everything else - creatively. Play in rhythms, different keys, different articulations, etc. Use the exercises to work on specific technical problems. In that way they can be very useful.

I fully agree with this.  Learning technique doesn't lie in the mindless repetition it takes to 'strengthen your fingers', it lies in the understanding of how you are playing, how your mechanism works, what you need to do to overcome a difficulty.  If mindless repetition is the way you use hannon, I see why it would seem useless since you could pretty much accomplish the same thing at a desk or on a table.