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Fundamentals of Piano Practice

fundamentals-of-piano-practice.readthedocs.io

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Re: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

#71

Post by tracyhenry »

tunesmith wrote: post #38
tracyhenry wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having the same struggle as an adult learning piano. How do highly-skilled pianist come up with fingering? Are there any kind of rules? I think there are. But it may be so automatic that they don't actively think about them. On the other hand, if we have a large quantity of high-quality sheets with fingering labeled, we can train a transformer which is supposed to learn the implicit rules pretty well.

I have an undergrad degree in piano. The problem is that at higher levels it becomes more dependent on your own biology. Some of it is hand size, some of it is the layout of the tendons in your hands - some people get tendon click in ways that other people don't. Practicing includes the identification of the fingerings that can work for you. I don't think AI will ever get you all the way there. Sure, you can put in s…

Thanks for the insights.

For casual adult playing though, I'd never reach" high level" playing. All I want is to play easy songs I like (I'm sure there are plenty of people like me), for which I think an automatic algorithm is pretty likely to work.

Re: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

#72

Post by mkl »

cloogshicer wrote: post #59
jmchuster wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a preface by the individual who found this book only after years of research and then decided to post it online. This is not the author of the book talking about their own book.

Oh, you might be right. I downloaded the book a long time ago as a PDF from somewhere. It also included this sentence and it stuck out to me because it was so weird. The rest of the tone of the book felt in the same style to me so I never second guessed it, but you might be correct.

Probably from the canonical site, http://www.pianopractice.org/, where a more up to date edition is available for free. The second edition (that the submission link is based on) does contain that sentence, so it is from the original author. The third edition does not.

Re: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

#73

Post by revolvingocelot »

tunesmith wrote: post #42

One of my favorite piano practice tricks was using one hand to teach the other. Not like how this book describes it, but using inverted patterns. In the first movement of Apposionata Op. 57, there's a pattern that goes from hand to hand, in groups of five. Difficult for the left hand. So my teacher had me learn it in the right hand too, but inverted. So in the left hand it went Db Eb G Eb Db. In the right hand that w…

Ah Apposionata! Crazy dynamics, passing one's hands over one another, a great showpiece. For those that don't play piano, the parent is essentially bragging, and is entirely justified in doing so. I feel compelled to upvote because the implication that it was successfully learned

My favourite performance of it (not Lang Lang!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEptNFzLpjk

Re: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

#74

Post by AlbertCory »

rectang wrote: post #22
AlbertCory wrote: post #6

A good book. Although this statement: While writing it, I discovered that piano pedagogy had never been researched, documented, and analyzed properly is totally wrong. There's a Piano Pedagogy group just in the Bay Area, and lots of books on it. I was an Adult Beginner, which is sorta a Thing. My teacher had about 12 adult students, and we had separate recitals from the kids. The hidden reason for this is, you don't…

> She stopped at every mistake and "corrected" it, until you wanted to scream at her. I had a college instrumental performance professor yell at me to "sit still" because this was happening all the time at our weekly recital hour, it was driving me crazy, and I would jerk, or shake my head or hang it, or facepalm, or clench my fists. They were right to call me out because I was being rude and I toned down my reaction…

I know! It IS rude. But it's hard not to cringe.

Just think "poker face."

Re: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

#75

Post by iammisc »

tracyhenry wrote: post #27
dandotway wrote: post #20

Does this book cover how to figure out finger numbering for sheet music that doesn't have finger numbering? By finger numbering I mean the standard scheme where thumb=1, index=2, ..., pinky=5, and the notes on the sheet music have these numbers. This is the biggest mystery to me. I understand there is not a One True Canonical Fingering for a given sequence of notes. But some fingerings make the music much easier than…

Having the same struggle as an adult learning piano. How do highly-skilled pianist come up with fingering? Are there any kind of rules? I think there are. But it may be so automatic that they don't actively think about them. On the other hand, if we have a large quantity of high-quality sheets with fingering labeled, we can train a transformer which is supposed to learn the implicit rules pretty well.

I've played almost 25 years, including some professional.

To answer you... I don't come up with fingering. I just do what my hands do. The fingerings in printed music are guidelines for pedagogy.

Honestly I'm not even sure I explicitly practice fingering. It's just repetition. I frequently think I change it though.

That being said as someone whos played so long it's like an extension of my arm, don't take my word for it. Experts are notoriously bad at explaining their techniques. I do think it's just practice though. No secret

Re: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

#76

Post by revolvingocelot »

MrGando wrote: post #68

Have to chime-in here as a piano player since age 7 (so been going for ~28 now), who about 2 years ago got very serious about Jazz. I have stumbled across this book many times, I have read it. It's the single most controversial book that I've read about piano technique and playing that I've found. The author, is not even a player himself (!!!). There's a great summary of reviews about the book here ( https://www.pian…

I can't help but agree. I've been playing piano since childhood too, though in a desultory, non-Conservatory way. It's been great fun reading through this comment section and seeing Piano HN, but I'm really surprised that this is the first comment that acknowledges the skub-nature [0] of the book, and that the author doesn't actually play piano but in fact armchair-QBs it via observation and discussion with his two daughters' piano teacher.

That's not to say that he doesn't have any interesting insights, but IMO this is an entirely inappropriate book for an ab initio beginner. The value of his insights comes from another perspective on piano pedagogy, but it's an untrained one; better to learn the ropes as they're commonly understood before you seek the guy who's all about an unorthodox presentation of them.

At the bare minimum, get a teacher so you can learn how to hold your hands.

[0] https://pbfcomics.com/comics/skub/

Re: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

#77

Post by [deleted] »

MrGando wrote: post #68

Have to chime-in here as a piano player since age 7 (so been going for ~28 now), who about 2 years ago got very serious about Jazz. I have stumbled across this book many times, I have read it. It's the single most controversial book that I've read about piano technique and playing that I've found. The author, is not even a player himself (!!!). There's a great summary of reviews about the book here ( https://www.pian…

[deleted]

Re: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

#78

Post by pitspotter2 »

tracyhenry wrote: post #27
dandotway wrote: post #20

Does this book cover how to figure out finger numbering for sheet music that doesn't have finger numbering? By finger numbering I mean the standard scheme where thumb=1, index=2, ..., pinky=5, and the notes on the sheet music have these numbers. This is the biggest mystery to me. I understand there is not a One True Canonical Fingering for a given sequence of notes. But some fingerings make the music much easier than…

Having the same struggle as an adult learning piano. How do highly-skilled pianist come up with fingering? Are there any kind of rules? I think there are. But it may be so automatic that they don't actively think about them. On the other hand, if we have a large quantity of high-quality sheets with fingering labeled, we can train a transformer which is supposed to learn the implicit rules pretty well.

(1) Keep a couple of pencils on the piano to write your fingering on the manuscript, (2) Feel free to ignore the editor's fingering if it's clunky for you, (3) No premature optimisation. Play through sections multiple times before deciding on fingering. If there are two apparent solutions to some fingering problem you might need to try both and then sleep on it, (4) Once you've decided on a fingering, stick to it, because otherwise you risk tripping up by regressing onto a previous fingering.

Re: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

#79

Post by alfiedotwtf »

cloogshicer wrote: post #46
mtalantikite wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on what in it helped change your practice approach? I tried reading it a while back and I couldn’t really get past the style. I’m sure there is good advice in there, but it’s very off putting due to the rambling style.

The main takeaways for me were: - Do not try to practice the whole piece at once. Split it into pieces - Start by listening to the piece. If possible get multiple performances/recordings (usually easy with YouTube) to get a feel for different interpretations. - Take the piece and number each measure from 1 to finish. Figure out where the repetitions are, which measures are the easiest, which the hardest (this will di…

> Do not try to practice the whole piece at once. Split it into pieces

This has been my biggest ever piano hack. I now practice bar-by-bar and don't move on until I'm happy, and its taken my practice to a whole new level

Re: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

#80

Post by eredengrin »

AlbertCory wrote: post #58
eredengrin wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, fully agree. "researched, documented, and analyzed properly" is a very particular method of doing things, and much of the music pedagogy is pretty much "it worked for me and I'm good (or it worked for them and they're good), so it will work for you too". Which is true sometimes and very much not true other times. It's often a very conservative field (not in the political way, but in the sense of resisting change…

Just as an aside: a couple years ago I was hanging with a professional French Horn player at the dog park, and never having played one, I thought it would be amusing to try it. I had no aspirations of really being good. I was honest with him about my lack of ambition and he was fine with it. So I got one for cheap, and took a couple lessons from him. Damn, that thing is hard !

Very interesting, professional performers in the classical music world are relatively hard to come by since it's so competitive. It certainly takes a lot of practice to make it start to sound somewhat good and the professionals are on a whole other level. The amount of competition to get a job in a professional orchestra makes a google interview look like a piece of cake. Although I would say you probably got a bit unlucky with instrument choice, out of all the brass instruments, french horn is generally regarded as being the hardest. Haven't ever tried myself but I don't doubt it.
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