Fundamentals of Piano Practice

Honest question: Did you read my post and write that all by yourself? If yes, why are you so hostile to the idea that music can be effectively communicated through writing and reading? Yes, you can teach a beginner to strum a few chords without any context, but once you want to play with others you need some concepts to be able to communicate and when you have to learn those concepts writing them down is the easy part.

Your language course sounds really odd to me and I'm not sure if I should believe it actually happened.

I don't really get why you are so hung up with C major. Sure, if you play piano the first few pieces are probably in C major unless one of them is Chopsticks but the method books that I have seen have all exercises in different keys almost from the beginning.

- Yes I read your post, though I had the exact same question, as I feel we are talking past each other a bit :- (Yes, I wrote that by myself though that's a strange question to ask :)

- Yes that course was real. Two years of Latin, 1995, Prva Susacka Gimnazija u Rijeci. You can wake me up at 2 am and I can recite "Terra Terrae Terrae Terram Terra Terrae Terrarum Terris Terras Terris" in about 6 seconds (just measured:). And that's literally what our exams were for two years - conjugate this verb; recite declension of this noun; give me a list of propositions; at no point did we actually learn to speak it conversationally, or tested on reading comprehension or speaking skills. Extreme example but it exists!

Now let's see if we can productively engage on same topic together:

- I am not talking about "reading or writing" or "music theory" or "Communicating with other musicians in general". I am making claims very specifically about western music staff notation, being taught first or early, for casually interested potential musicians. Not that "communicating music is unimportant" or "professional musician doesn't need staff notation"

As such my claim specifically is:

- Staff notation is provably and demonstrably not necessary, and I claim not helpful, to either start learning an instrument or communicate with other musicians or learn advanced music theory; and further, a lot of fairly advanced fun can be had with music without learning staff notation.

That's it, that's my claim.

We need to arrive at better understanding of where we disagree. A LOT of very good musicians mentally, subconsciously do not distinguish between "Music theory" and "Staff notation". I am NOT claiming Music Theory is not helpful - I am enjoying it tremendously. Understanding what you're playing and how and why is great! But staff notation is completely lateral to learning Music Theory, as I mentioned above but may get missed.

Some examples that may help see where I'm coming from - You do NOT need Staff notation to:

- Tell your bandmate "hey, can you try doing a riff in E major pentatonic?"

- Understand keys, triads, chords, inversions, intervals, etc; or communicate them

- Learn a chord progression of a song

- Learn a solo, learn to improvise, learn to arrange

.... Whopsie, Sorry, kids are waking up from their nap, I'll write more in couple of hours, I'd be eager to continue this conversation, whether here or on Hangouts/Gmail/Whatsapp/Whatever :). But my central point here is - staff notation is perceived by some as necessary to a) learn music theory b) play an instrument c) communicate musical concepts, and today in 2021 there are plentiful counter examples to that, beyond theoretical discussion :)

Learning rotation is important and there are lots of Taubman videos on YT that explain it in detail, usually with scales.

In a nutshell, there is the concept of single rotation and double rotation. When finger-to-finger movement is in one direction, like 1,2,3, you use double rotations. When going from 3 to 1, a single rotation. The movements are highly exaggerated for learning and demonstration.

I think it's easy to get hung up on "how can I play piano if I'm rotating my hand all over the place?" In my opinion, a large part of learning rotation and how to use it for slow practice on difficult passages is about freeing your arm and hand so they are not unintentionally opposing movement. Playing with tension or unintentional opposition, especially if you play hours a day, is one way to get RSI (tendonitis).

Here are some excellent YT resources for piano I have bookmarked. Several of these have videos that talk about forearm rotation:

  https://www.youtube.com/user/cedarvillemusic
  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3vYz1SAtcbRhsatydObGQw
  https://www.youtube.com/user/PianistMagazine (Graham Fitch)
  https://www.youtube.com/user/SteveMass1101
  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr0BMA5yu3AS0alkR7kYwEQ
  https://www.youtube.com/user/aw4piano
  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLsMRd097KLJMvkNzC4rYAA
  https://www.youtube.com/c/DanielBarenboim/videos
  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6tpkZhNpJiTnlUgoiUe9QQ

Right now I’m working with a jazz/improvisation teacher and he has me play through a piece once strictly as it’s written, once again strictly but singing the melody, and then the third time through with improvisation on the melody. Sheet music is thrown away as soon as possible. Of course jazz compositions are much shorter than classical pieces, but I do think the premise of getting it down strictly and slowly opening it up is a great way to practice.

Fingering is largely a planning problem. If your RH thumb is on C and the next note is D, it's obvious you play it with 2. But if the next note is the B below, you'd have to do something awkward to play it. So having your RH thumb on C is wrong and you need 2 on that to play the B with your thumb. Unless the next note is the A below. :-)

If you look ahead a bit at a line of music, you can sort of anticipate how many fingers you'll need in the direction you're going and that helps plan which ones to use. But as others have said, knowing how to play scales contributes a lot to your planning skills.