Piano TechniqueExercises, Tips and Ideas for the Beginner PianistHere you will get great ideas on piano technique drills, piano exercises for beginners, finger exercises and how to build your piano playing skills.What is Piano Technique?Piano technique is what you need to work on consistently, to be able to make musical choices as you play; quickly and effortlessly.
All of this could in a sense be called "piano technique", but we usually mean the study of exercises, etudes, scales, chords and arpeggios when we talk about technical studies. Building Strength and Flexibility
Over time, the demands for a certain technical skill on the piano (or its predecessors) have changed. This is of course because the instrument itself has gone through so many transformations.Not so long ago, piano teachers insisted on "curve-your-fingers-or-else...” with exaggerated curved fingers and resulting tension and pain. As well as to "helpfully" push the elbows of a student outwards, insisting they would be kept that way, with excruciating neck and back pain as a result. To avoid any neck or back pain it is vital to learn how to sit with correct posture when practicing the piano. Equally important is to develop a good hand posture , or hand position as soon as possible. Maybe the old way of thinking "No pain, no gain" had something to do with it...? Anyway, as in any athletic sport, or just good old gymnastics we now know that you can accomplish more, better and longer by gradually building up strength and flexibility. It also is a good idea to have a bit of knowledge of how our skeletal system works- with tendons, ligaments and all- and not trying to do things that our body wasn't made to do. "Listening" to our BodySure, our body is amazing. There seems to be almost no limit to our abilities. But it also has an inbuilt "alarm signal"; if it hurts badly, it is wrong! So we really need to learn to listen to our bodies. Read more about how to play piano pain free here. Technical advice of earlier times reflects its own time, and might not always be useful for the instruments we play today. Because of the ever increasing demand of technical and musical excellence (due to the enormous worldwide competition pianists face today), some of the advice from earlier than the 20th century might even be causing injury. That aside- there is so much we can learn from earlier technical advice on how to play keyboard instruments. For example it can be used at advanced levels of interpretation to give us a better understanding of how older styles of music were expected to be played.
The increasing repetitive strain injuries (RSI) among musicians today, has caused a lot of research into how to improve your piano technique without injury. And today a lot of the literature also focuses on how to work on mental awareness and The Inner Game of Music More Pages with Piano Technique Tips and Ideas:
Recommended Resources:An All-in-One Music Theory and Finger Exercise Program Essential Piano and Keyboard Technique Piano Playing Questions and Comments
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Technical Exercises
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to quote the authors Barry Green and Timothy Gallway, for a more “holistic” approach to performing music with less stress and anxiety. Here is a great video where Barry Green gives an introduction to what it's all about:
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