does talent determines the speed of picking up keyboard ?
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Mr_KeyboardMan
New member
The gripmaster doesnt help, bought it last year at swee lee, only helps if you play bass or guitar to warm up, but not piano.
Hanon doesnt really help either. I used to practise a lot of it till my hands gets numb.
You dont really need much finger strength to play the piano. You just need to learn the proper hand coordination technique and use the arm weight.
here's some resources to help you with that
http://www.pianofundamentals.com/
or get yourself mastering piano technique by seymour fink DVD and the book.
Hanon doesnt really help either. I used to practise a lot of it till my hands gets numb.
You dont really need much finger strength to play the piano. You just need to learn the proper hand coordination technique and use the arm weight.
here's some resources to help you with that
http://www.pianofundamentals.com/
or get yourself mastering piano technique by seymour fink DVD and the book.
Cheez
Moderator
Arm strength must be used with caution. It wouldn't help much for most running passages.
I still find finger exercises like Hannon to be key to this. My is just starting piano (1 year). And his left hand 4th and 5th fingers are the weakest - obviously. But his skills progressed to be able to start finger exercises (not Hannon-level yet...), his left hand 4th and 5th fingers strength and coordination improved drastically. I see the improvement virtually with each day of practice.
Queer. When it was me practicing, I never tend to notice. Now that I'm teaching my son, it's quite obvious.
And as for gripmaster, I think it actually hurts piano playing rather than help. Tried it in my younger days. Increased my gross finger strength, but destroys my fine motor finger skills, which is key for piano playing.
I still find finger exercises like Hannon to be key to this. My is just starting piano (1 year). And his left hand 4th and 5th fingers are the weakest - obviously. But his skills progressed to be able to start finger exercises (not Hannon-level yet...), his left hand 4th and 5th fingers strength and coordination improved drastically. I see the improvement virtually with each day of practice.
Queer. When it was me practicing, I never tend to notice. Now that I'm teaching my son, it's quite obvious.
And as for gripmaster, I think it actually hurts piano playing rather than help. Tried it in my younger days. Increased my gross finger strength, but destroys my fine motor finger skills, which is key for piano playing.
Mr_KeyboardMan
New member
I used to be a firm believer in hanon and Czerny exercises too. If some of you remember my earlier post i recommend to do hanon as practises. But last year I noticed that my hand start to feel numb and painful esp on fast passages when practising hanon.
Playing piano doesnt really require finger strength it is more of using the whole body and use of arm weight.
After learning the proper technique and relearning to play the piano again. My playing is cleaner and I can play piano for hours without feeling painful on the wrist and hand.
This is taken from the book fundamentals of piano practise:
Hanon is possibly the prime example of how intuitive methods can suck entire populations of pianists into using methods that are essentially useless, or even harmful.
1. Hanon makes some surprising claims in his introduction with no rationale, explanation or experimental evidence. This is exemplified in his title, "The Virtuoso Pianist, in 60 Exercises". Upon careful reading of his introduction, one realizes that he simply felt that these are useful exercises and so wrote them down. It is another prime example of the "intuitive approach". Most advanced teachers reading this introduction would conclude that this approach to acquiring technique is amateurish and would not work. Hanon implies that the ability to play these exercises will ensure that you can play anything -- this is not only totally false, but also reveals a surprising lack of understanding of what technique is. Technique can only be acquired by learning many compositions from many composers. There is no question that there are many accomplished pianists who use Hanon exercises. However, all advanced pianists agree that Hanon is not for acquiring technique, but might be useful for warming up or keeping the hands in good playing condition. I think there are many better pieces for warming up than Hanon, such as etudes, numerous Bach compositions, and other easy pieces. The skills needed to play any significant piece of music are incredibly diverse - almost infinite in number. To think that technique can be reduced to 60 exercises reveals the naiveté of Hanon and any student who believes that is being misled.
2. All 60 are almost entirely two-hand exercises, in which the two hands play the same notes an octave apart, plus a few contrary motion exercises in which the hands move in opposite directions. This locked HT motion is one of the greatest limitations of these exercises because the better hand cannot practice skills more advanced than the weaker hand. At slow speed, neither hand gets much workout. At maximum speed, the slow hand is stressed while the better hand is playing relaxed. Because technique is acquired mostly when playing relaxed, the weaker hand develops bad habits and the stronger hand gets stronger. The best way to strengthen the weaker hand is to practice that hand only, not by playing HT. In fact, the best way to learn Hanon is to separate the hands as recommended in this book, but Hanon never seems to have even considered that. To think that by playing HT, the weaker hand will catch up to the stronger hand, reveals a surprising ignorance for someone with so much teaching experience. This is part of what I meant by "amateurish" above; more examples below. Locking the two hands does help to learn how to coordinate the hands, but does nothing to teach independent control of each hand. In practically all music, the two hands play different parts. Hanon doesn't give us any chance to practice that. Bach's Inventions are much better and (if you practice HS) will really strengthen the weaker hand. The point here is that Hanon is very limited; it teaches only a small fraction of the total technique that you will need.
3. There is no provision for resting a fatigued hand. This generally leads to stress and injury. A diligent student who fights the pain and fatigue in an effort to carry out Hanon's instructions will almost surely build up stress, acquire bad habits, and risk injury. The concept of relaxation is never even mentioned. Piano is an art for producing beauty; it is not a macho demonstration of how much punishment your hands, ears, and brain can take. Dedicated students often end up using Hanon as a way of performing intense exercises in the mistaken belief that piano is like weight lifting and that "no pain, no gain" applies to piano. Such exercises might be performed up to the limit of human endurance, even until some pain is felt. This reveals a lack of proper education about what is needed to acquire technique. The wasted resources due to such misconceptions can mean the difference between success and failure for a large number of students, even if they don't suffer injury. Of course, many students who routinely practice Hanon do succeed; in that case, they work so hard that they succeed in spite of Hanon.
4. The Hanon exercises are devoid of music so that students can end up practicing like robots. It does not require a musical genius to compile a Hanon type exercises. The joy of piano comes from the one-on-one conversations with the greatest geniuses that ever lived, when you play their compositions. For too many years, Hanon has taught the wrong message that technique and music can be learned separately. Bach excels in this respect; his music exercises both the hands and the mind. Hanon probably excerpted most his material from Bach's famous Toccata and Fugue, modified so that each unit is self cycling. The remainder was probably also taken from Bach's works, especially the Inventions and Sinfonias. One of the greatest harm that Hanon inflicts is that it wastes so much time. The student ends up with insufficient time to develop their repertoire or acquire real technique. Hanon can be harmful to technique and performance!
5. Many pianists use Hanon routinely as warm-up exercises. This conditions the hands so that you become unable to just sit down and play "cold", something any accomplished pianist should be able to do, within reasonable limits. Since the hands are cold for at most 10 to 20 minutes, "warming up" robs the student of this precious, tiny, window of opportunity to practice playing cold. This habit of using Hanon for warm-ups is more insidious than many realize. Those who use Hanon for warm-ups can be misled into thinking that it is Hanon that is making their fingers fly, while in reality, after any good practice session, the fingers will be flying, with or without Hanon. It is insidious because the main consequence of this misunderstanding is that the person is less able to perform, whether the fingers are limbered up or not. It is truly unfortunate that the Hanon type of thinking has bred a large population of students who think that you have to be a Mozart to be able to just sit down and play, and that mere mortals are not supposed to perform such magical feats. If you want to be able to "play on demand", the best way to start is to quit practicing Hanon.
6. There is little question that some degree of technique is required to play these exercises, especially the final 10 or so. The problem is that Hanon gives no instructions on how to acquire these techniques. It is exactly analogous to telling a penniless person to go earn some money if he wants to become rich. It doesn't help. If a student used her/is "Hanon time" to practice a Beethoven sonata, the student would acquire a lot more technique. Who wouldn't rather play Mozart, Bach, Chopin, etc., than Hanon exercises with better results and end up with a repertoire you can perform? Even if you can play all the Hanon exercises well, if you get stuck at a difficult passage in another composition, Hanon will not help. Hanon does not provide any diagnostics for telling you why you can't play a given passage. The parallel set exercises provide both the diagnostics and the solutions for practically any situation, including ornaments, etc., that Hanon does not even consider.
7. What little advice he does dispense, have all been shown to be wrong! So let's look into them.
1. He recommends "lifting the fingers high", an obvious no-no for fast
playing, since that will be the biggest source of stress. I have never seen a famous pianist in concert lift the fingers high to play a fast run; in fact, I have never seen anyone do that! This advice by Hanon has misled an enormous number of students into thinking that piano should be played by lifting the finger and plonking it down onto the key. It is one of the most non-musical and technically incorrect ways to play. It is true that the extensor muscles are often neglected, but there are exercises for treating this problem directly.
2. He recommends continuous practicing of both hands, as if piano technique is some kind of weight lifting exercise. Students must never practice with fatigued hands. This is why the HS method of this book works so well - it allows you to practice hard 100% of the time without fatigue, because one hand rests while the other works. Stamina is gained, not by practicing with fatigue and stress, but by proper conditioning. Besides, what most of us need is mental stamina, not finger stamina. And his recommendation totally ignores relaxation.
3. He recommends playing every day, regardless of skill level, all your life. But once you acquire a skill, you don't need to reacquire it over and over; you only need to work on technique that you don't already have. Thus once you can play all 60 pieces well, there is no need to play them anymore -- what will we gain?
4. He is apparently aware of only the thumb under method, whereas the thumb over method is more important.
5. In most of the exercises, he recommends fixed wrists which is only partially correct. His recommendation reveals a lack of understanding of what "quiet hands" means.
6. There is no way to practice a majority of the important hand motions, although there are a few wrist exercises for repetitions.
8. The Hanon exercises do not allow for practicing at the kinds of speeds possible with the parallel set exercises described above. Without the use of such speeds, certain fast speeds cannot be practiced, you cannot practice "over-technique" (having more technique than necessary to play that passage - a necessary safety margin for performances), and they do not provide a way to solve any specific technical problem.
9. The whole exercise is an exercise in waste. All the editions I have seen print out the entire runs, whereas all you need are at most 2 bars ascending and 2 bars descending and the final ending bar. Although the number of trees cut down to print Hanon is negligible in the broader picture, this reveals the mentality behind these exercises of simply repeating the intuitively "obvious" without really understanding what you are doing, or even pointing out the important elements in each exercise. "Repetition is more important than the underlying technical concepts" -- this is probably the worst mentality that has hindered students most in the history of piano. A person who has 2 hrs to practice every day, playing Hanon for 1 hr as recommended, would waste half of his piano lifetime! A person who has 8 hours to practice, on the other hand, doesn't need Hanon.
10. I have noticed that teachers can be classified into two schools according to whether they teach Hanon or not. Those who do not teach Hanon tend to be more knowledgeable because they know the real methods for acquiring technique and are busy teaching them -- there is no time left for Hanon. Thus when you are looking for a piano teacher, choose from among those that do not teach Hanon, and you will increase the chances of finding a superior one.
Sorry for the long post. Hope this is useful
Playing piano doesnt really require finger strength it is more of using the whole body and use of arm weight.
After learning the proper technique and relearning to play the piano again. My playing is cleaner and I can play piano for hours without feeling painful on the wrist and hand.
This is taken from the book fundamentals of piano practise:
Hanon is possibly the prime example of how intuitive methods can suck entire populations of pianists into using methods that are essentially useless, or even harmful.
1. Hanon makes some surprising claims in his introduction with no rationale, explanation or experimental evidence. This is exemplified in his title, "The Virtuoso Pianist, in 60 Exercises". Upon careful reading of his introduction, one realizes that he simply felt that these are useful exercises and so wrote them down. It is another prime example of the "intuitive approach". Most advanced teachers reading this introduction would conclude that this approach to acquiring technique is amateurish and would not work. Hanon implies that the ability to play these exercises will ensure that you can play anything -- this is not only totally false, but also reveals a surprising lack of understanding of what technique is. Technique can only be acquired by learning many compositions from many composers. There is no question that there are many accomplished pianists who use Hanon exercises. However, all advanced pianists agree that Hanon is not for acquiring technique, but might be useful for warming up or keeping the hands in good playing condition. I think there are many better pieces for warming up than Hanon, such as etudes, numerous Bach compositions, and other easy pieces. The skills needed to play any significant piece of music are incredibly diverse - almost infinite in number. To think that technique can be reduced to 60 exercises reveals the naiveté of Hanon and any student who believes that is being misled.
2. All 60 are almost entirely two-hand exercises, in which the two hands play the same notes an octave apart, plus a few contrary motion exercises in which the hands move in opposite directions. This locked HT motion is one of the greatest limitations of these exercises because the better hand cannot practice skills more advanced than the weaker hand. At slow speed, neither hand gets much workout. At maximum speed, the slow hand is stressed while the better hand is playing relaxed. Because technique is acquired mostly when playing relaxed, the weaker hand develops bad habits and the stronger hand gets stronger. The best way to strengthen the weaker hand is to practice that hand only, not by playing HT. In fact, the best way to learn Hanon is to separate the hands as recommended in this book, but Hanon never seems to have even considered that. To think that by playing HT, the weaker hand will catch up to the stronger hand, reveals a surprising ignorance for someone with so much teaching experience. This is part of what I meant by "amateurish" above; more examples below. Locking the two hands does help to learn how to coordinate the hands, but does nothing to teach independent control of each hand. In practically all music, the two hands play different parts. Hanon doesn't give us any chance to practice that. Bach's Inventions are much better and (if you practice HS) will really strengthen the weaker hand. The point here is that Hanon is very limited; it teaches only a small fraction of the total technique that you will need.
3. There is no provision for resting a fatigued hand. This generally leads to stress and injury. A diligent student who fights the pain and fatigue in an effort to carry out Hanon's instructions will almost surely build up stress, acquire bad habits, and risk injury. The concept of relaxation is never even mentioned. Piano is an art for producing beauty; it is not a macho demonstration of how much punishment your hands, ears, and brain can take. Dedicated students often end up using Hanon as a way of performing intense exercises in the mistaken belief that piano is like weight lifting and that "no pain, no gain" applies to piano. Such exercises might be performed up to the limit of human endurance, even until some pain is felt. This reveals a lack of proper education about what is needed to acquire technique. The wasted resources due to such misconceptions can mean the difference between success and failure for a large number of students, even if they don't suffer injury. Of course, many students who routinely practice Hanon do succeed; in that case, they work so hard that they succeed in spite of Hanon.
4. The Hanon exercises are devoid of music so that students can end up practicing like robots. It does not require a musical genius to compile a Hanon type exercises. The joy of piano comes from the one-on-one conversations with the greatest geniuses that ever lived, when you play their compositions. For too many years, Hanon has taught the wrong message that technique and music can be learned separately. Bach excels in this respect; his music exercises both the hands and the mind. Hanon probably excerpted most his material from Bach's famous Toccata and Fugue, modified so that each unit is self cycling. The remainder was probably also taken from Bach's works, especially the Inventions and Sinfonias. One of the greatest harm that Hanon inflicts is that it wastes so much time. The student ends up with insufficient time to develop their repertoire or acquire real technique. Hanon can be harmful to technique and performance!
5. Many pianists use Hanon routinely as warm-up exercises. This conditions the hands so that you become unable to just sit down and play "cold", something any accomplished pianist should be able to do, within reasonable limits. Since the hands are cold for at most 10 to 20 minutes, "warming up" robs the student of this precious, tiny, window of opportunity to practice playing cold. This habit of using Hanon for warm-ups is more insidious than many realize. Those who use Hanon for warm-ups can be misled into thinking that it is Hanon that is making their fingers fly, while in reality, after any good practice session, the fingers will be flying, with or without Hanon. It is insidious because the main consequence of this misunderstanding is that the person is less able to perform, whether the fingers are limbered up or not. It is truly unfortunate that the Hanon type of thinking has bred a large population of students who think that you have to be a Mozart to be able to just sit down and play, and that mere mortals are not supposed to perform such magical feats. If you want to be able to "play on demand", the best way to start is to quit practicing Hanon.
6. There is little question that some degree of technique is required to play these exercises, especially the final 10 or so. The problem is that Hanon gives no instructions on how to acquire these techniques. It is exactly analogous to telling a penniless person to go earn some money if he wants to become rich. It doesn't help. If a student used her/is "Hanon time" to practice a Beethoven sonata, the student would acquire a lot more technique. Who wouldn't rather play Mozart, Bach, Chopin, etc., than Hanon exercises with better results and end up with a repertoire you can perform? Even if you can play all the Hanon exercises well, if you get stuck at a difficult passage in another composition, Hanon will not help. Hanon does not provide any diagnostics for telling you why you can't play a given passage. The parallel set exercises provide both the diagnostics and the solutions for practically any situation, including ornaments, etc., that Hanon does not even consider.
7. What little advice he does dispense, have all been shown to be wrong! So let's look into them.
1. He recommends "lifting the fingers high", an obvious no-no for fast
playing, since that will be the biggest source of stress. I have never seen a famous pianist in concert lift the fingers high to play a fast run; in fact, I have never seen anyone do that! This advice by Hanon has misled an enormous number of students into thinking that piano should be played by lifting the finger and plonking it down onto the key. It is one of the most non-musical and technically incorrect ways to play. It is true that the extensor muscles are often neglected, but there are exercises for treating this problem directly.
2. He recommends continuous practicing of both hands, as if piano technique is some kind of weight lifting exercise. Students must never practice with fatigued hands. This is why the HS method of this book works so well - it allows you to practice hard 100% of the time without fatigue, because one hand rests while the other works. Stamina is gained, not by practicing with fatigue and stress, but by proper conditioning. Besides, what most of us need is mental stamina, not finger stamina. And his recommendation totally ignores relaxation.
3. He recommends playing every day, regardless of skill level, all your life. But once you acquire a skill, you don't need to reacquire it over and over; you only need to work on technique that you don't already have. Thus once you can play all 60 pieces well, there is no need to play them anymore -- what will we gain?
4. He is apparently aware of only the thumb under method, whereas the thumb over method is more important.
5. In most of the exercises, he recommends fixed wrists which is only partially correct. His recommendation reveals a lack of understanding of what "quiet hands" means.
6. There is no way to practice a majority of the important hand motions, although there are a few wrist exercises for repetitions.
8. The Hanon exercises do not allow for practicing at the kinds of speeds possible with the parallel set exercises described above. Without the use of such speeds, certain fast speeds cannot be practiced, you cannot practice "over-technique" (having more technique than necessary to play that passage - a necessary safety margin for performances), and they do not provide a way to solve any specific technical problem.
9. The whole exercise is an exercise in waste. All the editions I have seen print out the entire runs, whereas all you need are at most 2 bars ascending and 2 bars descending and the final ending bar. Although the number of trees cut down to print Hanon is negligible in the broader picture, this reveals the mentality behind these exercises of simply repeating the intuitively "obvious" without really understanding what you are doing, or even pointing out the important elements in each exercise. "Repetition is more important than the underlying technical concepts" -- this is probably the worst mentality that has hindered students most in the history of piano. A person who has 2 hrs to practice every day, playing Hanon for 1 hr as recommended, would waste half of his piano lifetime! A person who has 8 hours to practice, on the other hand, doesn't need Hanon.
10. I have noticed that teachers can be classified into two schools according to whether they teach Hanon or not. Those who do not teach Hanon tend to be more knowledgeable because they know the real methods for acquiring technique and are busy teaching them -- there is no time left for Hanon. Thus when you are looking for a piano teacher, choose from among those that do not teach Hanon, and you will increase the chances of finding a superior one.
Sorry for the long post. Hope this is useful
Cheez
Moderator
keyboardman, you numbness in your hand (if I recall, you got carpel tunnel syndrome) is not due to Hannon but to your practising technique. I can get injury by practicing anything, not necessary Hannon. Repetitive stress is the cause, not the piece of music.
The person who wrote that book is strangely negatively biased towards Hannon, based on what you copied in your post. When somebody makes a claim towards that kind of degree (calling others "amateurish") makes my alarm bell ring. There is truth in what he said, but much assumption is made on his presumption on many things. Take for example his criticism towards Hannon saying that the exercises are mostly 2 handed thereby causing limitations. I recall my piano teacher always making me play them single-handedly and with both hands. Hannon may not have given clear instructions on how to use his materials, but that doesn't make his material "amateurish". The "guide" (ie teacher) is the key to giving the instructions.
His statements unfortunately lack professionalism. As a professional (in another field other than music), the last thing I would do is to announce my colleague (even if I don't know him) an amateur no matter how well or badly he does in his work.
Anyway, despite this, I do not doubt that he has written good materials that is undoubtedly helpful to pianists. But I would not hold on to one view, particularly when a view is so skewed to one end. I would use his materials but I would use it with discretion, just like how I would use Hannon with discretion.
The person who wrote that book is strangely negatively biased towards Hannon, based on what you copied in your post. When somebody makes a claim towards that kind of degree (calling others "amateurish") makes my alarm bell ring. There is truth in what he said, but much assumption is made on his presumption on many things. Take for example his criticism towards Hannon saying that the exercises are mostly 2 handed thereby causing limitations. I recall my piano teacher always making me play them single-handedly and with both hands. Hannon may not have given clear instructions on how to use his materials, but that doesn't make his material "amateurish". The "guide" (ie teacher) is the key to giving the instructions.
His statements unfortunately lack professionalism. As a professional (in another field other than music), the last thing I would do is to announce my colleague (even if I don't know him) an amateur no matter how well or badly he does in his work.
Anyway, despite this, I do not doubt that he has written good materials that is undoubtedly helpful to pianists. But I would not hold on to one view, particularly when a view is so skewed to one end. I would use his materials but I would use it with discretion, just like how I would use Hannon with discretion.
Mr_KeyboardMan
New member
Ha ha ha, It's ok I respect his opinion as well. Don't wanna start the hanon and anti hanon argument here. This has been around for so long, among piano teachers. To each of his own i guess
It's just that my personal experience is playing hanon repetitively caused me to get Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and thanks to few trips to physician, I'm ok already. But then, I start to look around for alternatives for building technique other than hanon and now I found it.
I found out that you dont really need lots of finger strenght to play. I can play for hours now and faster than before without hanon. It feels effortless now. I learnt that to play fast your objective is not to train move your finger faster or make them stronger but actually to find the right movement for it. It'll be like forcing yourself to walk faster rather than getting into the position for sprinting. So now that I have learnt how to run, I enjoy playing more than ever now.
___ Edit__
Ok just to get on to the topic, one of the best way to improve,
You need to find a way to track your own progress regularly and plan your practise. Just come up with a practise planner that records your own achievement for the day. Not only you will feel sense of accomplishment at the end of the practise but also you will feel more motivated to practise more and look forward for the next practise.
Remember, Practise doesnt make perfect only perfect practise make perfect. When you practise, you also need to have a clear objective of what you want to achieve in that particular practise.
I feel practising in short burst works best eg: I practise 45 min then get myself a break, listen to music or do other stuffs and then continue.
Best if you can make your practise session regular, morning after exercise would be best time to practise. Now that i took up two instrument I practise piano in the morning and bass at night. But this is just an example, try applying it to your own schedule.
Ear training, having a fairly good relative pitch will bring your music further, if you intend to self-study on your own, you need fairly good relative pitch to figure out melody in a song or even chords different than perfect pitch where it is more of colour hearing, but developing both can accelerate your learning 4 times faster.Books by David N Baker or even David lucas burge stuffs are excellent resource on these topic, . After all your music is only as far as your ear can take you, isn't it?
But most importantly, you need to have a clear view of what you want to achieve musically in general. Only then you will start to see results of your practise.
It's just that my personal experience is playing hanon repetitively caused me to get Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and thanks to few trips to physician, I'm ok already. But then, I start to look around for alternatives for building technique other than hanon and now I found it.
I found out that you dont really need lots of finger strenght to play. I can play for hours now and faster than before without hanon. It feels effortless now. I learnt that to play fast your objective is not to train move your finger faster or make them stronger but actually to find the right movement for it. It'll be like forcing yourself to walk faster rather than getting into the position for sprinting. So now that I have learnt how to run, I enjoy playing more than ever now.
___ Edit__
Ok just to get on to the topic, one of the best way to improve,
You need to find a way to track your own progress regularly and plan your practise. Just come up with a practise planner that records your own achievement for the day. Not only you will feel sense of accomplishment at the end of the practise but also you will feel more motivated to practise more and look forward for the next practise.
Remember, Practise doesnt make perfect only perfect practise make perfect. When you practise, you also need to have a clear objective of what you want to achieve in that particular practise.
I feel practising in short burst works best eg: I practise 45 min then get myself a break, listen to music or do other stuffs and then continue.
Best if you can make your practise session regular, morning after exercise would be best time to practise. Now that i took up two instrument I practise piano in the morning and bass at night. But this is just an example, try applying it to your own schedule.
Ear training, having a fairly good relative pitch will bring your music further, if you intend to self-study on your own, you need fairly good relative pitch to figure out melody in a song or even chords different than perfect pitch where it is more of colour hearing, but developing both can accelerate your learning 4 times faster.Books by David N Baker or even David lucas burge stuffs are excellent resource on these topic, . After all your music is only as far as your ear can take you, isn't it?
But most importantly, you need to have a clear view of what you want to achieve musically in general. Only then you will start to see results of your practise.
Cheez
Moderator
That I agree! 45 minutes practice is good. My son does 30 minutes - if he can sit down without being distracted! I'm fortunate if I can do 20 minutes - if I don't get distracted by my younger kid climbing over me...
Don't worry bongman - just friendly discussion on what an article!
lavivacampeon
New member
hours of practise
I do agree that practise makes perfect.
cheers
I do agree that practise makes perfect.
cheers
jeremyspk
New member
I beg to differ a little. Practise on something for 24/day (which is impossible literally though :mrgreen
sure get you some where, I believe. 
those kids whose parents force them to take classical piano lessons and their slave-driving teachers hold a cane to make sure they practise, in the end, we have snobbish above-middle-class teenagers who can play Chopin's pieces but know little about improvisation and composition (scoreless music). But mind you, at their stage (being able to play Chopin's), they most probably have superb aural skills (press a chord at any portion of the keyboard, they probably can tell you every single key you've pressed simultaneously). What are all these? Hardwork.But will they go far? Probably not. Their passion is to AVOID being caned and to MEET EXPECTATIONS of their parents. When they grow up, probably they will be IMMUNED to cane and as for EXPECTATIONS, probably to meet the boyfriends/girlfriends instead of the parents :mrgreen:
Hmmm... if u ask me, talents include both the ability to appreciate and create, and the passion to keep going. So if you have both, as Coppola mentioned, one will unlikely "not go anywhere".
But ya, i think it's true, if you got talent, you probably pick up instruments real fast. But, perhaps only pass beginner's, or at most intermediate level? Hmmm.. To go pass that, one will have to practise practise practise.
2cents worth
pf
New member
Why do I keep hearing classical piano teacher being portrayed as maniacs? Examples from my friends are...teacher wack her hand with a metal ruler, placing an eraser on the back of the hand and not allow her to have it fall off...
Anyways, I think talent plays a part in picking up the keyboard fast. Although I don't think I'm talented, nothing's gonna stop me from giving it my best shot.
Anyways, I think talent plays a part in picking up the keyboard fast. Although I don't think I'm talented, nothing's gonna stop me from giving it my best shot.
DoubleBlade
New member
Classical music requires perfection. Hence the maniac syndrome protrayed by the teachers.
With talent things will go easier. I have a friend who rarely play music... in fact he does not have the instruments at home ... but in his mind he can know quite exact the beat, how to play, how to improve playing on this part, that part .. His listening, timing is way better.
I find out that I can spend a lot more time playing... but in the end, what my head is visualizing music still far worse than his ... only my fingers can move here and there faster ...
I think that partly separates the talent with the non-talent.
I find out that I can spend a lot more time playing... but in the end, what my head is visualizing music still far worse than his ... only my fingers can move here and there faster ...
I think that partly separates the talent with the non-talent.
Cheez
Moderator
This is an over-generalisation. No difference from those who are classically trained and see "others" as "inferior".
I believe there is a misunderstanding between the 2 groups.