Advice Needed on Starting Over

[Torp]

OK, here’s the deal.  If you’ve read my other post regarding my attempt at using Bernhard’s concepts you’ll know that I came to one fairly significant conclusion about my piano playing.  Despite having “played” the piano for close to 30 years I find that I am lacking in some basic technical skills.

I have been reading Gyorgy Sandor’s book and have begun to apply the concepts of that to my playing.  While conceptually the ideas are fairly easy to follow, I’m finding it is much easier to apply the ideas to Bach’s Menuett in G versus Beethoven’s Pathetique.  Additionally, I have worked on the Pathetique off and on for many years and I fear I have probably developed some bad habits in that piece.  It seems that it would be easier to “break” myself of these habits by learning new habits on other, less technically challenging pieces.

So…here’s my idea; I want to start over.  Yup, I’d like to start back at the beginning and go through the steps I never went through before.  I’d like to start with easier pieces and use steadily more advanced pieces to acquire technique.  The problem is I’m not quite sure how to logically sequence the pieces.

I have begun compiling a list, from other posts on this forum, of “easy” piano pieces.  I have acquired some of the works on the list but now I’m kind of stuck.  I don’t really know how to put together some sort of logical methodology to get myself technically competent to play the Pathetique or other works of similar difficulty.  At my current rate of learning that piece I might have it finished several years from now.  That’s OK, no big deal.  However, it seems that I might be better served to learn a myriad of pieces during that same time that will help develop the technique.  Once the technique is more fully developed, the learning curve on the Pathetique may not be so steep.

I am finding that my largest technical problems at the moment seem to be my left hand (i.e. left-hand jumps) and playing in 3/4 time.  I have spent a lot of years playing rock-based music where most of what I did was octaves in the left hand and it was also mostly it was in 4/4 time.  Just to make my case clearer, I find it more difficult to play Satie’s Gymnopedie 1, because of the left hand and its time signature, than I do to play the first several pages of the Pathetique.  Go figure.

I guess what I’m asking for is if anyone can provide me with a logical sequence of pieces to help me get to where I want to be.

I’ve probably left out some very critical information that you need from me so please ask if there is anything I need to clarify.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Jef

[lostinidlewonder]

There is not really a single way to go about improving yourself. But i have to say you cannot go wrong with Bach, so you should especially play preludes form his 48 preludes and Fugues. Preldues Bk1:1,2,3,6 and Bk2:6 would be a good start and they are not easy but have very good logical structure.

You mentioned Gymnopedie gave you so much problems in LH and this sorta rang a bell in my head calling for Shape of Chord observation.

Ask yourself what is your concept of chord FORM. How do you "feel" chords in the hand, and movement of them? Think of the shape chords make when held down.  For isntance.... C Eb F. is like a perfect upright triangle (draw an imaginary line from C up to Eb then back down to F, then connect C and F with a straight line). What about. C Eb Gb? It is like... a triangle attached to a larger rectangle. If you forget what notes to play you should remind yoruself of the shape and that will usually guide your fingers in the right direction. Often Chord progression is simply alteration of the shape observing that is improtant for your memory. Eventually you will just forget about the shape, you of course do not think about it when playing but it should always be there in the back of the mind and pulled out when you need it. If you need to read a chord because you forgot it, you must observe the shape more than just the individual notes. Reaffirm the type of shape then try to memorise it again.

These shape observation are critical if you are having problems with chord movement/progression if you cannot "feel" the chords in your hand. It is the particular feeling of the chord which is of course the basis for memory and "easy flowing" playing. Pianists memorise their music through this feeling in the hands, not the memory of the notes themselves. If you can observe the shape of chords or the feeling of a string of single notes as a group, then you will memorise the music faster. However if you are caught up with individual notes, and movement of them, then you have to question how are you observing what you are playing, question why you cannot "feel" what it should be like.

This may be a little childish for you, but Blue tac works miricles sometimes to memorise Chords. I have little students who use it religiously, it is like their little securty blanket lol. Cover the chords with the blue tac and then take one away every time you go through the practice. If you stuff up put it back on and continue the process.

[abell88]

I'd suggest you get something like the Royal Conservatory's syllabus...it gives lists of pieces at every level...or even get the books (currently called Celebration Series: The Piano Odyssey) published by Frederick Harris Music.

[anja]

Why not take some lessons from a piano teacher who can give you representative pieces for each of your technical difficulties at all levels?

[Torp]

Why not take some lessons from a piano teacher who can give you representative pieces for each of your technical difficulties at all levels?

Good question, let me see if I can elucidate.

This post has been up for almost a month.  This forum has 1000s of members.  I can't readily identify how many of those members are actually teachers but at least a significant amount of the posters here probably read the the Teachers forum section.  My reason for pointing this out is to show that in terms of collective knowledge this site has sigficantly more than the small city in which I live.  Here, we have a large university with some incredible piano teachers; all of whom are only teaching students that attend the university.  The next level of teachers in this town are the graduated students of the aforementioned teachers.  One of these is my current teacher.

I was not happy with the advice I was receiving so I decided to solicit advice from a larger body of knowledge.  So far, to date, here is the advice received:
Get a syllabus
Play Bach
Get a teacher

As a result of the first piece of advice I decided to embark on a project of making my own syllabus.  I gathered all (well maybe not all) of the postings on Piano Forum that indicated the specific levels of piano pieces and I compiled them into a spreadsheet.  This spreadsheet allows me to look up piano pieces by grade level (I made this spreadsheet available to the forum.  It's in the Repertiore Forum under the heading Graded Repertoire).  I am currently reviewing pieces from that list.  However, the shear abundance of pieces (currently numbering more than 1300) makes the task daunting.

As a result of the second piece of advice I have done nothing.  Not because I doubt that playing Bach is beneficial, on the contrary, I simply don't have the experience myself to identify WHICH Bach pieces would help me towards my goal of playing the Beethoven Pathetique.  This lack of musical knowledge about which pieces lead to which pieces is the reason I asked the question to begin with.

As to the third piece of advice:
I have come to the conclusion that there are very, very few teachers in the world of piano who can identify what the main technical challenges are of a piece and then know and understand what "easier" pieces could be played that help develop that specific technique.  Unfortunately, my teacher is not one of them.  This is exactly why I posted the question here in the first place.

I believe, Anja, that you have formulated the question more succintly than I did  so I will ask it again here:

I want to play Beethoven's Pathetique.
So far, in Movement 1, the most challenging parts for me are:
The LH octave tremelos
The hands crossing over
The section where both RH and LH are playing the broken chords in ascending/descending motion (don't know if that makes sense, I'll review the piece and give measure #s when I get home)

SO:
Let's assume that the Pathetique is a Grade 7.  Can anyone give me representative pieces for each of the above mentioned technical difficulties starting at Grade 1 and going through Grade 7?  And, in so doing, can you identify which technical difficulty each piece is addressing?

I am not interested in learning technique for technique's sake and am therefore not particularly interested in Hanon or Czerny.  Although, I have heard that Czerny wrote some of his "studies" to work on the technical difficulties of Beethoven's Sonatas.  If anyone knows which study ties to which Sonata that could be some very useful data.

Anyone??  Et tu Bernhard??

Thanks a million,

Jef

[bernhard]

Good advice from Lostinwonder.

The most important bit of information to tailor a repertory list to your case is impossible to reveal in a forum: the way you play. One would have to see you play in order to truly help you. (I guess you might conceivably post a video of yourself).

Nevertheless, here is a graded repertory (yes, all these pieces are worthwhile additions to your repertory – not exercises) in progressive order of difficulty addressing specifically the three areas you mentioned:

1.   Tremolos:

Vladimir Rebikov  - The Bear (grade 1) – You can find this piece in a number of collections for children, mine is from “More Romantic Piano Pieces – Book 1” – Edited by Lionel Salter (ABRSM).

Liszt – “Nuages Gris”(grade 5/6).

2.   Hands crossing:

Diabelli – Sonatina in G op. 151 no. 1(especially the second movement). (grade 3)
Benda - Sonatina in Am (grade 4) [Georg Benda: “12 sonatinas” – Easier piano pieces no. 47 – ABRSM]
Scarlatti – Sonata in C, K95 (grade 4/5)
Anon. (Leopold Mozart?) Allegro moderato in F (no. 32 form the "Nanerl Notebook") (grade 5)
Scarlatti – Sonata k27 (grade 8 )
JS Bach – Giga, from Partita no. 1 in Bb (grade 8 ).

3.   Broken chords in ascending descending motion.

Alkan – “The Bells” – Op. 63 no. 4 (grade 2)
Ludovico Einaudi – “Julia” (grade 4/5) – From “Eden Roc” (Ricordi)
Schumann – “Elfe” – from Album-blatter Op. 124 no. 17 (grade 6)
Schumann – “Stucklein” – from Bunte Blatter Op. 99 no. 1. (grade 6)
Liszt – “Schlummerlied” (Slumber song) – S. 186 no. 7 (grade 7) [see especially bars 41 – 52] This will also be good for hand crossings.
Mendelssohn – Song without words no. 7, Op. 30 no. 1 (grade 7 - this is actually more difficult than the passage you are referring to in the Pathetique).

Nothing prepares better for a Beethoven sonata than an easier Beethoven sonata. Try op. 49 no. 2 (grade 4/5), op. 49 no 1 (grade 5/6) and op. 79 (grade 7/8 ). After this you should be ready for the Pathetique.

By the way, first (and third) movement of Pathetique is advanced (well beyond grade 8 ). The second movement is grade 7.

There are loads more. Just the tip of the iceberg.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[Torp]

Bernhard,

Thanks a million, this is exactly what I was looking for.  I printed out the Scarlatti K95 last night and sight read through it.  That will be a fun one...especially at speed!!

I'll let you know how I'm progressing.

Jef

[bernhard]

Bernhard,

Thanks a million, this is exactly what I was looking for.  I printed out the Scarlatti K95 last night and sight read through it.  That will be a fun one...especially at speed!!

I'll let you know how I'm progressing.

Jef

You are welcome