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Fundamentals of Piano Practice

fundamentals-of-piano-practice.readthedocs.io

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Re: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

#81

Post by jedimastert »

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…

I think you're looking at this as an optimization problem, and while to a reasonably large extent it is, it's also a question of interpretation, because where you put your emphasis depends on where you start you're phrases and how you contour the phrase, and if there's multiple lines happening on a single hand what's the main line, if there is one?

Re: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

#82

Post by jedimastert »

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 think there are. But it may be so automatic that they don't actively think about them.

That is, unfortunately for someone trying to learn, the entire goal of learning to play piano in a way. To turn the entire process from looking at a sheet (or hearing it in your head) to sounds happening to become essentially instinct.

The best way to do this is repetition. This is what scales and arpeggios and excercises are for. By internalizing the scales you build up what feels correct, based on your hands, the length of your fingers, the different strengths and weaknesses of every single joint and bone and muscle and tendon. You have to use the repetition to find out what each transition and different motions feel like, and interpolate that to what's in front of you.

Re: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

#83

Post by zfier83 »

I’m an adult student. Started at 33 - just turned 38. Practicing 3-4 hours daily. Don’t get this book. Take music theory classes, learn harmony, and get an excellent teacher. Mine is from the Russian school and changed the way I approach the instrument. Also - you can become a good pianist if you start as an adult. You just won’t be attending Julliard as an instrumentalist. But who cares? Neither did Beethoven. My #1 advice: practice in perfect time. Build a natural sense of pulse. The dirty secret is it’s easier to play a piece in time than the converse, especially at high velocity.

Re: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

#84

Post by MrGando »

revolvingocelot wrote: post #76
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 d…

There's a specific thing I always remember about this book, which is that the author recommends the "thumb over" technique for scales. I would never, ever suggest a beginner to approach scales like that. Thumb rotation is super important to absorb and master. Of course, when you go for fast scales you do a "thumb over" which is not really that, but instead of the thumb rotation, you reposition your whole hand using your arm to keep going upwards (from reading the book, it feels like the author doesn't understand that, because he probably never really went through that process... which takes many many years of piano playing).

I clearly remember the first time I went through the book, being a bit shocked when I read this particular take.

Re: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

#85

Post by mgkimsal »

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…

> ... and the notes on the sheet music have these numbers.

I grew up with a piano in the house, have had sheet music for loads of instruments (played sax, piano, guitar, family had trumpet/clarinet/misc in house too). Have taken music theory classes, performed in bands in middle/high schools and college.

I've never seen sheet music have 'fingering' info ever.

Can someone point me to examples of what is being referred to here?

Re: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

#86

Post by AlbertCory »

eredengrin wrote: post #80
AlbertCory wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

Yeah, for sure. Scott is on The List (my term), those guys who've passed the test and can fill in for your sick Horn player. So he's played with almost every orchestra in the Bay Area.

He played at LucasFilm for a couple weeks, to build their library of sounds. He said for that one week, he made more money than his son in high tech.

Re: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

#87

Post by makeitdouble »

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…

> The hidden reason for this is, you don't want to hear some 9-year-old kid who plays better than you ever will.

A surprise I had is that 9 yo is an advanced age in musical spheres. There’s international young pianist competitions won by 10~11 year olds. They are usually bound to become pro players, so not the average kid in your local music school, but it’s a good frame of mind for thinking about how good a 10 yo can be.

Re: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

#88

Post by IWantToRelocate »

zfier83 wrote: post #83

I’m an adult student. Started at 33 - just turned 38. Practicing 3-4 hours daily. Don’t get this book. Take music theory classes, learn harmony, and get an excellent teacher. Mine is from the Russian school and changed the way I approach the instrument. Also - you can become a good pianist if you start as an adult. You just won’t be attending Julliard as an instrumentalist. But who cares? Neither did Beethoven. My #1…

started as an adult as well and couldnt stress this enough. anyone can play the piano with proper practice!

Re: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

#89

Post by aimor »

mgkimsal wrote: post #85
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…

> ... and the notes on the sheet music have these numbers. I grew up with a piano in the house, have had sheet music for loads of instruments (played sax, piano, guitar, family had trumpet/clarinet/misc in house too). Have taken music theory classes, performed in bands in middle/high schools and college. I've never seen sheet music have 'fingering' info ever. Can someone point me to examples of what is being referred…

When I was young and learning piano my teacher would use pencil to write in the suggested finger number above notes. Thumb=1 pinky=5. This was a good reminder when reading the sheet music of where on the keyboard my hands should be positioned.

Image search returns some examples: https://ddg.gg/?q=piano+sheet+music+fingering&ia=images&iax=...

Re: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

#90

Post by karmelapple »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #79
cloogshicer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I’m a little surprised to hear this as being somewhat unique to this book. I took lessons for years and this was a standard technique my teacher encouraged.
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