Systematic Approach... for Piano?

[StupidBrassObsession]

Hey Everyone,

I know this is a pretty random question but bear with me here...

Do any of you play piano? And if so, are you familiar with any piano methods that are similar in approach and philosophy to Claude's teachings?

I play piano in a rather limited fashion, which is enough for my purposes, but it too is something I'd very much like to get better at and am wondering if a a "Systematic Approach for Piano Playing" exists and if anyone knows of it?

Any thoughts/ideas/suggestions?

I'm asking in the CG forum because if figure while it's not really trumpet or Claude Gordon related, you guys will understand better than most the teaching approach etc of what I'm looking for.

Thanks!

[bigdanv]

I don't know if this is anything like CG, but many pianists use the Hanon book to acquire technique.

[StupidBrassObsession]

Thanks for your suggestion, I think I found a good start with this:

http://pianoandorgantechnique.com/

[veery715]

[DWallace]

I play at the piano (there is a difference between playing and playing at) and I definitely play at the piano and I agree that the Hanon book is an excellent choice for improving technical abilities.
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[lh]

Great question. My answer is in 3 parts, with the easiest part first. Of course there are other technical books.... hundreds of them. If you want info on them, I can steer you towards the more familiar of them. The following are either systematic-style approaches to technique development on piano, or they afford themselves to modifications you can make that allow them to serve as systematic development courses.

Hanon - The Virtuoso Pianist

If you work out of Gordon's "30 velocity Studies", you will see Hanon exercises at work. If you only practice Hanon #1 (up and down), but do it MANY different ways, you will make amazing strides in your piano technique. It is written as a white key exercise, so it's diatonic in C major. Change that so you can start on any pitch and play diatonic to that major scale. When different fingers learn to evenly depress black keys as well as white (with their 1cm difference in starting height), your technical fluency can be applied to all musical situations. Further, combine this with all kinds of articulation patterns... combinations of staccato and legato. You can also use Hanon to develop tone quality and weight transfer, breaking your wrist and climbing back up in groups of 2, 4, and 8 notes.

Tankard & Harrison - Pianoforte Technique On An Hour a Day

Perhaps the best example of a "systematic approach". Organises technical practice for balanced development. Wonderful approach commonly used in the UK.

Dohnanyi- Essential Finger Exercises

Monster book from Hungary. This will get your chops in shape very quickly, but is quite intensive and demanding. Covers lots of advanced technique and strength in extended hand positions. After the others become automatic, give this a try.
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[StupidBrassObsession]

I don't want to seem ungrateful for the answers, as I am... but Hanon or finger-strengthening exercises wasn't really what I was asking about.

I can see that there would seem to be a similarity between Hanon and Clarke, especially with the direction "lift the finger high", but in terms of pianistic technique, from the concert pianists I've talked to, this is just plain wrong and will lead to injury.

I was talking to one of my friends whom is a concert pianist about it (Hanon etc) today - they weren't able to recommend a method or what have to like i've asked for here as they learned their technique from a teacher - and he told me that there was a real pedagogical shift in piano teaching in the early 1900s as the student lineage from Chopin and Liszt become more widely known and taught.

Apparently the idea of acquiring or developing finger strength is only very marginally relevant to piano playing.

Similarly with trumpet, CG doesn't talk about developing really strong chops, concert pianist today at least, don't focus their attention on finger strength as the power and dexterity comes from co-ordinating the fingers with the falling hand...
And I think Claude would approve of this because it is obeying the natural laws of the universe, in this case, gravity.

He also made an interesting point that Hanon might have worked okay in the 1800s when the piano action was much much lighter than it is today. However, using the fingers without the weight of the falling arm on today's Grands will quickly result in injury as the tendons simple don't work well that way.

He also doesn't know any concert pianists who do recommend or use or have used Hanon more than briefly.

This doesn't mean that Hanon can't be used to develop some amount of co-ordination if done careful and correctly, but beware the instruction and beware letting the fingers become detached from the driving force of the arm.
... That's the general gist of what I got from the conversation.

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Also, I showed him a few youtube excerpts and videos of the pianist who made the method I posted in my second post up top and his comments were along the lines of "If she can actually teach the technique she plays with in these videos I'd like to watch it too as it'll be great... She plays like Argerich!"

For those who don't know how freaking awesome Argerich is... this pretty much sums it up:
[youtube]http://youtu.be/x5VcfGkH4g4[/youtube]

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Again, I don't want to seem ungreatful with this post. I just want to make sure anyone else who does come along looking for what I was will be careful with Hanon if they use it.

Thanks guys!

[lh]

Let me clarify...

I said nothing about developing strength by using Hanon. The Dohnanyi is probably the book that could lead to significant strain if overpractised... either too much or too hard. Your discussion regarding what concert pianists have to say regarding arm weight transfer and Chopin/Liszt schools of technique are informed and aligned with much contemporary pedagogy. I think for the most part, we are singing from the same hymnal. Yet there are some differences.

The "lift fingers high, strike valves hard" that was one of Claude's pet phrases, accomplishes 3 things.... one, it does build strength and acceleration in the 3rd finger so it more closely responds like the 1st and 2nd.... two, it focuses attention on rhythmic coordination of finger combinations... and three, by lifting fingers high, it allows the springs to return the valves to the top of the stroke unimpeded by imprecise fingers. This doesn't apply to piano once the 4th and 5th fingers begin to approximate the other three in predictable behaviour.

You do seem to be talking about two separate things. One is whether there is a "Systematic Approach for Piano" which I believe there are several approaches that would qualify. But then you refer to Claude's "teachings" in this context, which I take to mean a similar approach to a balanced practice routine appropriate to the instrument... not trying to apply trumpet finger technique to a piano. That seems to be where I lose the plot.

Hope this helps with my earlier explanation a little bit.
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[StupidBrassObsession]

[lh]

I never practise lifting my fingers high on the piano. There are times I play with a light staccato motion in some literature, particularly ragtime, but never practise that way. Much of piano technique, once you establish basic coordination, is all about keeping the weight of your arm in the keybed, and learning to transfer that weight from finger to finger without lifting that weight out of the keybed with larger muscles of the arm.

Claude said a number of things that we often conveniently forget. One of them was about medicine, and being aware that in many cases a few drops will cure, and a teaspoon will kill. If you do pedal tones for hours, if you think SA part 2 would help you more if you do it 3x every day, if you practice loudly all the time.... there's your teaspoon. I think Hanon falls in that category as well... definitely Dohnanyi. Read about Robert Schumann and his finger exerciser and what it did to his hands. Tablespoons and shot glasses.

Everything in balance...
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[StupidBrassObsession]

[veery715]

I am surprised no one beat me to it, but a TEACHER can really help. OK, now I did it.
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veery715

Music is what feelings sound like.

[StupidBrassObsession]