I've been spending more time on the bench lately. For some reason, I'm in the mood to do exercises.

This is totally out of character. One reason I stalled at my current level decades ago is that I lack discipline for mindless chores. Well, at the moment, "mindless" is all I've got in me.

Because I've always known I should do them, I own a number of exercise books. I've got Hanon, Jazz Hanon, and Czerny's School of Velocity, and I think I have more Czerny somewhere.

I'm disappointed with Jazz Hanon, in that there are no fingerings. I bought it on a whim, because I love to listen to jazz, but I'm lacking in theory, improvisational skills, and technique. I thought this book would address the technique, but I need fingerings on exercises.

Czerny is nice, because they're like musical pieces, but that makes it hard if I want to practice in all keys, mostly because of that lack of a deep understanding of musical theory, and also because being a pretty good sightreader makes me too lazy to want to struggle with all that.

Hanon is working well for me at the moment, but what is the best way to approach it? To get the most out of practicing them, I know I need to dig out a metronome or set one up on my phone or whatever.

Hanon's exercises are easy enough for me to play them in all keys, but should I do the whole book in C, then start over in D? Do one exercise in all the keys, then move on? Do one exercise until it's up to speed before I move on? (This might be TOO boring.)

My last teacher said to do them in different rhythms--triplet's, dotted-eighth-and-sixteenths, and so on. Or to just play them in the written rhythm but emphasize a different beat.

All the options are overwhelming. If I just sit down and do the exercise and key and rhythm that suits me at the moment, I feel like I'll never progress. Do any of you have a Hanon practice protocol? Or a Czerny protocol? Or do you like a different method?

I was disappointed in Jazz Hanon as well, I felt like I couldn't do anything with it on my own, that I would need a teacher. (and btw, I have had zero success with jazz teachers thus far, and have put my jazz pursuits on hold for the time being, but that's a different thread...)

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Do one exercise in all the keys, then move on?

I definitely recommend doing one exercise in all keys, then doing them in different rhythms, and then moving on.

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My last teacher said to do them in different rhythms--triplet's, dotted-eighth-and-sixteenths, and so on.

And yes, do the rhythms. I think it makes it more fun, but it also changes (for the better) how your fingers engage with the keys.

Do you have a sheet with the samples? If not, I do so let me know.

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Do any of you have a Hanon practice protocol?

I used to. I used to play Hanon and scales every day... Well, maybe more accurately, there have been times in my practice when I would spend the first 10 minutes or so of every practice session on exercises. These days I'm not doing that, but I'm sure I'll go back to it again. Anyway, when I've made Hanon part of my practice, I always aimed for evenness, speed, and then only 5-10 minutes before moving on to pieces.

Another thing I've done a lot is play scales in the key of the piece I'm working on. In that case, I would also do major and minor, regular and contrary motion, arps and cadences (i.e., not just the scale itself). I use the complete scales book for that.

The other thing I do is keep a desk calendar by the piano, and I write down what I play each day, what sticky parts are, and sometimes I'll leave a note "start with X" for the next day. This helps me move through more music, and helps me keep track of what I'm working and so on.

You could do that maybe see how many days you stay with one exercise etc.

P.S. I love piano talk!!!

Oh, my goodness. I envy your organization!

When I was cleaning out the garage, I found a cr*pton of like-new notebooks, so I'll see if I can motivate myself to...um...make a plan, any plan, that would help me practice better.

Yes, I do have all the Hanon exercises.

Thanks for the motivation!

I don’t have anything helpful to say, but Hanon was the favourite of my teacher as a child and as soon as I see the word I immediately can imagine the first Hanon exercise in all the forms I played it. It became my mindless warmup exercise and even years later I could still do it on automatic. I did all the keys and all the timings as well. I can’t remember how far I got into the book, but I came to enjoy the monotony of them.

I’ve never heard of Jazz Hanon (made me think of jazz hands).

What I’ve heard is to do Hanon in C and then C sharp and that should be enough. Though different rhythms are also a good idea.

FYI, there’s only one other Czerny book that famous teachers recommend. I think it’s Op. 740.

Just C and C sharp? That actually sounds doable.

There are all the other rhythm variations to add to that, so that would provide plenty of variety.

Interesting stuff. I have my Dad’s Hanon from the 30s or 40s. If I were to use it it would fall apart.

When I was better at exercises, I would do scales and then sight read a Scarlatti sonata. I would do different rhythms with the scales.

Just a couple of ideas:

1. Hanon in two different keys at the same time, each hand plays a different key. Or playing it a third, fourth, fifth, or sixth apart?

2. Hanon in contrary motion: both hands start from the same key, but move in opposite directions, like the hands are mirroring each other from the key you started?

At the moment, I'm doing some Hanon, sightreading the next Czerny (which I'm going to run out of soon sightreading-wise, but I'll just have to start over), then butchering a prelude and fugue from WTC 1.

I keep hoping that the Hanon will work some kind of magic and make the presludes and fugues better without...you know...actual work on my part.

I didn't inherit an old exercise book, but I bought some old sheet music to frame when I was decorating. (You've seen them.) One of them was a copy of The School of Velocity from the early twentieth century.

It had fallen apart into two pieces, and both halves were attractive, so I framed them both. (Two cool-looking things for the wall, and I paid $3 for the book. Score!)

The joke has always been that nobody in the house was doing their exercises, so I might as well frame them and hang them on the wall.

I have enough sheet music to wallpaper a gymnasium.
Can't play it, so I may as well use it for wallpaper.

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I keep hoping that the Hanon will work some kind of magic and make the presludes and fugues better without...you know...actual work on my part.

This has always been my wish, to find some exercises that will make it easier for me to play the pieces I want to be able to play....

I think Hanon is primarily good for finger health, speed, ease of movement... Which of course is very important, but I have come to think that it's not cognitively relevant for playing actual pieces....

For me, and it may not be relevant to you since I'm not playing preludes and fugues... but when I realized that, for a lot of the music I want to play, I could sightread through one had at a time, at a reasonable speed.

This means that 1) I could understand the score (one staff at a time), and 2) I have the technique to reproduce what was on the score (again, one staff at a time).

But when I would try to play new pieces hands together, the process would slow waaaay down.

I ultimately interpreted that to mean two things: 1) my sightreading skills were not up to snuff in terms of reading both staves at the same time, reading ahead in the music etc., and 2) my ability to apply music theory to reading was not sufficient. By this, I mean that I was probably reading the notes one at a time rather than recognizing musical patterns across both staves....

So I decided that Hanon is definitely not the way to improve in those areas, and in fact is probably close to irrelevant.

Instead, I felt that sightreading pieces was the most important things I could do, particularly pieces way below my level.

That's when I started working through all those Music for Millions books.

I suspect Czerny is good for you in this regard, butif your fingers don't feel rusty, then probably Hanon isn't what you want to spend time on.

How about some of the lower level Music for Millions books?

Also, having written all this, I would love to hear Jon's thoughts, bc I know his sightreading chops are very, very strong.

Btw which preludes and fugues are you playing? Bach?

Have you ever played Inventions? That would be really good practice too, I suspect.

Speaking of old sheet music...

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Listen to the World’s Oldest Sheet Music, a Mesopotamian Hymn Over 3,000 Years Old

https://mymodernmet.com/hurria...placement=newsletter

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Originally posted by CHAS:
I have enough sheet music to wallpaper a gymnasium.
Can't play it, so I may as well use it for wallpaper.

That works. A restaurant I've sometimes eaten in wallpapered their entire men's room (and perhaps the ladies' room as well, but I don't know) with old sheet music. I was slow to exit sometimes because I was reading lyrics.

A somewhat related strategy was a small shop on the second floor of a building that had wallpapered the staircase leading from the street to the shop with blueprints that they had somehow acquired. As an engineer, I was prone to lingering on the stairs looking at the drawings until someone else's arrival would force me to vacate the staircase.

Big Al