Techniques and Practice

Summary: This page is home to many articles around practice, techniques and methods for learning the piano and other related topics. Further sub-sections will be created as the number of articles increases.

There are methods and principles that do work and others that don't. The articles I am posting here do either work and / or I agree to the stance taken. I am constantly researching, finding answers to questions and thoughts I have; in particular how things work: how to better memorise, how to better learn, how to understand.

Music does involve the brain significantly, depending on the current musical activity (sign-reading, playing, listening, etc.) it is either a right or mixed (involving both, left and right) brain. How the brain functions is for the better part still a mystery to human kind. Some of the information I am posting has either scientific origins with (limited) mainstream application and limited public dispersion or has generally accepted validity and is broadly applied.

The article Piano Technique and Kinesthetic Imagery from Lee Humphries is something I found most interesting, and curious as I am, I tried it. It works like a charm (it takes repeated practice). I am using this method to improve my understanding keyboard topography, more so developing precise finger and arm movements.
When I started with this technique it took some practice to see results. Silence and concentration is necessary. In less than 20 minutes I was able to depress the C–E–G chord from middle C and the next two lower octaves with my eyes closed, achieving both, locating the octave I envisaged and depressing the chord correctly, without slipping onto neighbouring notes.
So what is the point you may ask? Eyes do not need to be closed, and lights we've got. I think you can agree that finding the keys "blindly" means we do not need to waste time on thinking about and locating the locus of the notes being played.

Pulse Patterning from Charles Aschbrenner describes torso movements based on the  Feldenkrais Method. Pulse Patterning is likely to be of interest to just about anyone but especially those suffering from back pain. Contrary to the author's claim that no piano "schools" include torso movement as an aspect of the technique, the  Taubman technique does include specific torso movements for maintaining the optimal hand and arm positions. It is important to mention that back pain can often be caused by other technique problems, which can be resolved by retraining. Also, normal repertoire generally keeps you moving so that static sitting is usually avoided.

In General

I have learned in my life that many things do not show their full breadth and depth until I attempt to conquer or at least explore the specific topic. I am comparing knowledge or knowledge islands to bricks of a wall. The wall still holds together when bricks are missing, and if holes are filled, they connect with their neigbouring bricks or neighbouring islands of knowledge. The latter has the advantage of both, faster exploration and deeper understanding.

One could argue learning making music with the piano (or any instrument for that matter) is simply done by learning to sight-read, and to play the instrument. In my opinion there is much more to it!

Enjoy the articles… I expect this section to grow further.

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