How to practise?

[mahojazz]

Hi all,
happened to read this thread and pick up some useful tips. I have just started learning classical piano and attending piano for adult courses. But i have some issues with my last finger being too weak. Is there anyway that i can strengthen it? I only have keyboard at home, which do have have any weighted hammer key as the piano i am learning with in music school. Is it better if i get a piano with weighted key?

Eric

 

[Cheez]

For classical piano, you need to practice on an acoustic piano. Even with weighted keyboards, it's still not the same. Finger exercises and scales is the answer to your question.

Something interesting - I grew up in the non-computer/typewriter era (yeah, I'm old...). I didn't know how much strength my fingers had until one day when I decided to help my dad type in his office with his typewriter (I was maybe about 10 years old). My dad found out that the paper I typed was peppered with holes. It appeared that I typed holes into the paper (the "o"s and "a"s etc - any letters with a "hole" in it ended up being punched right through!). Well, my dad was surprised, and never asked me to type anything again... Haha!

 

[mahojazz]

hi cheez, may i know what is an acoustic piano? isit those upright piano? I was thinking of getting a digital piano like yamaha p85 or casio px330. I am very noob in piano, just taken 2 lessons, but was feeling the lack of practice opportunities other than the 30mins each week. Guess i have to take it real slow, as i have no idea what scaling is.

 

[Cheez]

Yes, an acoustic piano is a "real" piano - upright or grand. Wouldn't suggest anything else for classical music. For the Yamaha P series, they use different keys for anything under "100" and everything above "100". P85 feels slightly lighter than P140. I'm losing where Yamaha is going - they now have so many variations of graded keys - GH, GHE, GHS - and they give no explanations to their differences. But they DO feel different. As for the Casio PX series, it's a tad lighter than usual for me (I've been playing the PX310 quite a bit for the past few weeks - not mine of course).

So...final advise. Get a real piano. If you can't for any reasons, get Yamaha.

 

[mahojazz]

thanks. will take that into consideration. Maybe i will think again after another term.

 

[michael87]

Here is a great article about this

http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/how-to-practice-piano-effectively-459294.html

Hope that help