18 ms·

Fundamentals of Piano Practice

358 points by delib 5y ago

DaniFong 5y ago
any hackers interested in piano should check out serenepianist.com https://www.instagram.com/serenepianist/ https://www.instagram.com/serenepianist/ serene was a hacker at google/tor/cmu and then went deep into piano and is an amazing concert pianist. she loved this book!
jacquesm 5y ago
This is a prettified version of the original which is available here: http://www.pianopractice.org/ http://www.pianopractice.org/ , suggest a link change.
- nuclearnice1 5y ago
  What do you see as the advantage of the “ugly” version? More up to date?
  - kzrdude 5y ago
    More canonical
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    HN as a rule tries to link to the original source of something when it is available.
  - mkl 5y ago
    http://www.pianopractice.org/ http://www.pianopractice.org/ has the third edition from 2016, but this version is based on the second, from 2009. The third edition has many additions.
arxanas 5y ago
This book has a lot of useful techniques regarding piano practice, but it's light on details about technique itself, such as finger positioning or how to engage which muscles. Does anyone have good resources towards this end?
- wildrhythms 5y ago
  A book will never teach you which muscles to engage to play an instrument. Find a piano teacher if you want to learn correct posture and exercises to prevent injuring yourself and play properly.
  - arxanas 5y ago
    The piano teachers I've worked with don't seem to know enough about kinesiology to explain the muscle activity. On the contrary, it seems like the mental models they use to explain posture and exercises are primarily correlative, rather than causative. They can tell me that my posture is incorrect and what it should look like, but not what muscles to engage or why, or what angles to apply force at, and so on. I enjoyed reading a text about weightlifting exercises once. It's not a substitute for carrying out the exercises or having an observer comment, but the underlying principles could be used to explain my performance (or lack thereof) and extend to other exercises. I have my own notes on piano kinesiology which I've built up, which I refer to as necessary, but it would be easier if someone else had already done it, as it's clearly not the case that a book can't teach you which muscles to engage.
    - palimpsests 5y ago
      this is partly because the muscles you engage, the angles at which you apply force are going to have slight or large differences from another player due to differences in biology and physiology. we are not all the same shape nor strength. so of course the mental models are correlative _as well as_ causative e.g. "if you keep slamming your finger into the keys you will likely develop RSI and you will have drastically impeded your ability to control your tone or dynamics" <--- doesn't get much more causative than that. furthermore, what you've asked for sounds like it would be receiving instructions like, "contract your pronator quadratus to 17%, rotate 34° to strike G3 at a 48.5° angle with your L ring finger, and here's all the angles and associated muscular tensions associated with each phalange that you'll need to master: ...." ? Is that what you mean? I have yet to meet someone who is unable to receive postural feedback if it's not framed in terms of anatomy. Human movement locomotion does not come from conscious direction to move individual muscles, it's a much more integrated experience (e.g. "extend your right leg" -- want to guess how many coordinated actions of muscles and neurons are are involved in that?
cloogshicer 5y ago
It's sad that this book is written in such a self-validating tone (the very first sentence is "This is the best book ever written on how to practice at the piano!" for crying out loud), because the content is excellent. I read it a couple years ago and it completely changed how I approach practicing.
- rossjudson 5y ago
  I agree; it is surprisingly good. And conceited...which is an acceptable tradeoff ;)
  - rossjudson 5y ago
    I'll also point out (to myself!) that the third edition is a considerably better read. It's available for free at the author's web site (http://www.pianopractice.org/ http://www.pianopractice.org/).
- amelius 5y ago
  > "This is the best book ever written on how to practice at the piano!" for crying out loud It fits with the current zeitgeist, where clickbait is everywhere, even in respected newspapers.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    It was written long ago.
    - amelius 5y ago
      Yes. But maybe it explains why it resurfaces now.
  - rackjack 5y ago
    People have been doing this for decades, probably centuries... there was a book on shorthand (Eclectic shorthand) I found on the Internet Archive and the first couple of pages were extolling its virtues compared to the others. The difference is that you're seeing it.
AlbertCory 5y ago
A good book. Although this statement: While writing it, I discovered that piano pedagogy had never been researched, documented, and analyzed properly is totally wrong. There's a Piano Pedagogy group just in the Bay Area, and lots of books on it. I was an Adult Beginner, which is sorta a Thing. My teacher had about 12 adult students, and we had separate recitals from the kids. The hidden reason for this is, you don't want to hear some 9-year-old kid who plays better than you ever will. Almost all of the other adults had played as a child and given it up. Many teachers won't take adults like me because they have unrealistic ideas about how good they're going to be. The truth is, you are not going to be very good, and lots of people who are orders of magnitude better than you can't make any real money playing piano, because that level of skill is so common. The interesting thing about how our brains work is: I could memorize effortlessly, but I couldn't sight read worth shit. There are other people who are the exact opposite. Lastly, one thing they said really resonated with me: The first thing that must be done is to eliminate the habits of stopping and backtracking (stuttering), at every mistake. The best time to develop the skill of not stopping at every mistake is when you begin your first piano lessons. OMG, in the recitals there was one lady who just had to play every note correctly, no matter how many times she had to try. She stopped at every mistake and "corrected" it, until you wanted to scream at her.
- narag 5y ago
  The truth is, you are not going to be very good, and lots of people who are orders of magnitude better than you can't make any real money playing piano, because that level of skill is so common. This isn't so much of a problem if your intention is not playing professionally. Learning easy and intermediate pieces is a lot of fun. Also making your own music using a MIDI keyboard and a DAW.
  - catlikesshrimp 5y ago
    It does help to compose game music if you feel more comfortable around a synth. For people who like learning new abilities!
    - 5y ago
tritones 5y ago
I came across this shortly before beginning my degree in music and it completely changed how I approached learning new pieces. When I tried to explain the technique to another pianist, they were confused as to what was 'new' about it. I guess they never had a teacher say "play it over and over until you can play it without mistakes". Now, my wife is completing her education degree and I see a lot of this approach being implemented in K-12: identify and focus on weaknesses; use your strengths to enhance your weakness; spend time on the big problems; balancing holistic approaches with concise methods, etc. All seem obvious and yet I didn't have a single teacher in music or otherwise suggest any of them to me.
- wildrhythms 5y ago
  I find it hard to believe a pianist (or any trained musician) has never heard of playing something over and over again without mistakes...
  - nkuttler 5y ago
    This attitude contributes to the problem: many teachers at a higher level don't even bother to teach this stuff because they think everybody already does it.
  - tritones 5y ago
    You misunderstand. Their teachers used better methods than just "do it again but better".
Waterluvian 5y ago
I’m going to try this out. I’m excited. I’m a piano beginner and my lingering anxieties are: 1. Am I building bad habits? 2. Am I learning in first gear without realizing it?
- packjaddison 5y ago
  The most deadly bad habits are learning shortcuts that cause you to destroy your flexibility as a musician (example on piano: practicing a piece always at the same volume, so you would be unable to change the dynamics of the piece if it strikes you during performance), playing with tension (I have given myself multiple types of tendinitis and can attest to this), and repeating a mistake (more on this at the bottom). As for learning in first gear, don't be afraid to make mistakes, as long as you are thinking about the mistakes and analyzing them, rather than blindly repeating them as "a thing that is hard so I will work in it later while I approach the parts of the piece that I enjoy." The way to improve is by hurling yourself at something too difficult for you, and then slowly improving your technique once you are able to analyze why a particular bit of music you're working on is beyond you. To play a piece *perfectly, it is like wiping a glass window. You want to play the piece perfectly, every. single. time. So as you build the piece in your head, you cannot leave the equivalent of 'you missed a spot.' If your technique manages to be perfect, clear glass, the listener can 'see' through it to the music. It is dangerous that you already know the piece in your head, because your memory of the music can trump the mistake even as you are making it, because you hear 'how the piece should be' rather than how you're playing it. It's imperative to listen to recordings of your work as you polish it; only at the level of mastery does this become a superfluous tool. By listening to it back, you effectively can 'see' all the spots on the window that you are trying to wipe away. Finally, there are only two types of playing the piano: practice, which involves deliberate and labored cleaning-up of your weaknesses and mistakes, and playing, which is the exhibition of your efforts to make something beautiful and perfect. The book does address this; most amateurs enjoy playing more than they practice, so they play a lot and fool themselves into thinking they are practicing (I am very guilty of this) and rarely practice, so their playing sounds like they need more practice :)
- scottious 5y ago
  Getting a teacher will without a doubt help with both of those things. Learning to play the piano is like trying to summit Mt. Everest while blindfolded. Technically speaking, you can do it alone but it's orders of magnitude easier with somebody guiding you. Sometimes all it takes is a nudge in the right direction. Other times they need to tell you specifically how to execute or understand an idea.
maroonblazer 5y ago
From the last section in Chapter One, titled "Jazz, Fake Books, and Improvisation": > In summary, the process of learning this genre consists of practicing the chords and scales sufficiently so that, given a melody, you can “feel” the right and wrong chords that go along with it. That's only scratching the surface and will not get you playing jazz. Listening to and copying the greats - Bird, Monk, Evans, Coltrane, Rollins, et al. That's how you learn to play jazz. >It is clear that this genre is here to stay, has great educational and practical value, is relatively easy to learn, and can be a lot of fun. Relatively easy to learn??? Clearly the author hasn't or isn't playing jazz.
- andkon 5y ago
  Hmmm, what parts feel harder or not described above? In my experience it really is just about learning the scales and the chords, like the author mentions. Then you just have to let yourself make the connection. That can be really hard. But it’s kinda about trusting that you know the necessary parts - which notes are playable.
  - the_cat_kittles 5y ago
    are you a professional jazz pianist? there is more to jazz than pitches... theres time, vocab, rhythm, tone, etc etc which are the things you work on your whole life lol. and then theres the whole issue of playing with other people
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- catlikesshrimp 5y ago
  Remember, different capacities. The author might be super talented compared to you. He might find easy what you call difficult, or his definition of easy is different to ours. Might~
  - oriolid 5y ago
dandotway 5y ago
Does this book cover how to figure out finger numbering for sheet music that doesn't have finger numbering? By finger numbering I mean the standard scheme where thumb=1, index=2, ..., pinky=5, and the notes on the sheet music have these numbers. This is the biggest mystery to me. I understand there is not a One True Canonical Fingering for a given sequence of notes. But some fingerings make the music much easier than others. Wish some HN coder genius would write a program that given sheet music as input, outputs the top 1-3 recommended fingerings for that music with explanations for which rules were applied.
- tracyhenry 5y ago
  Having the same struggle as an adult learning piano. How do highly-skilled pianist come up with fingering? Are there any kind of rules? I think there are. But it may be so automatic that they don't actively think about them. On the other hand, if we have a large quantity of high-quality sheets with fingering labeled, we can train a transformer which is supposed to learn the implicit rules pretty well.
  - pitspotter2 5y ago
    (1) Keep a couple of pencils on the piano to write your fingering on the manuscript, (2) Feel free to ignore the editor's fingering if it's clunky for you, (3) No premature optimisation. Play through sections multiple times before deciding on fingering. If there are two apparent solutions to some fingering problem you might need to try both and then sleep on it, (4) Once you've decided on a fingering, stick to it, because otherwise you risk tripping up by regressing onto a previous fingering.
  - aluminum96 5y ago
    It appears to be experience -- highly skilled pianists have played similar passages for pretty much any sheet music you could give them, and select fingerings from experience. This breaks down for music that's deliberately difficult to finger, or has usual repetition (think Ravel's Ondine, or Islamey).
    - 5y ago
bananabiscuit 5y ago
This book changed how I practice piano and also pretty much any other skill. I also really enjoy the tone of this book. I think the author might actually be manic. I can't find it now in this online version, but in my decade old printed edition I remember in one of the sections he describes a problem his book might cause in the world where by teaching people to tune their own pianos so well, you might be concerned that it would lead to putting piano tuners out of business. He then insists you should not worry about this imagined problem because his piano teaching method is so great, that there will be orders of magnitude more piano students thanks to his book, which would lead to ever higher job security for piano tuners/technicians as not every student will have the time or interest to actually tune their pianos, despite now knowing how to do so very well thanks to this book. Amazing stuff.
andrepd 5y ago
Starting a book by singing one's praise is already dubious. Then you come across this >(...) Mental Play (...) It is almost unbelievable that such an essential skill has been mostly neglected by piano teachers. which is a top "crank red flag".
- DixieDev 5y ago
  In the context of practising a piece initially much slower than it's intended to be played: > The probability of playing incorrectly is nearly 100%, because there is almost an infinity of ways to play incorrectly but only one best way. I'm sure this book has some useful information within, but my 5 minutes spent checking out different parts have so far left a very poor impression. Combined with its verbosity, it's hard to justify giving it serious attention...
- arxanas 5y ago
  The book uses a lot of hyperbolic wording, but the techniques in the book are generally sound. Mental practice in particular is an established pattern for top performers across sportive disciplines.
- packjaddison 5y ago
  Astoundingly, I have never heard another source advise doing this, and this includes professors at Juilliard. I don't work on all my pieces using pure Mental Play as frequently as I should, but trying to 'play on phantom limbs' without being at the instrument is like trying to remember the exact details of a painting you have looked at. Though there are many parts of the book that are a bit more... cranked.
tejohnso 5y ago
I would like to see the best book ever written on how to practice at the guitar. Any suggestions?
- m0zg 5y ago
  There are a lot of different genres within guitar, and a lot of different variations in instruments, and ways of playing the instrument (fingers, pick, hybrid, tapping, legato, slide, combination thereof), heck even within picking there's also "economy", "sweep", "downstroke", and "alternate" picking, so you'd need to narrow it down by a lot. For rock/prog I think Rock Discipline by John Petrucci is the best book available if you're prepared to put in a lot of work and, well, discipline. The name is not accidental: it's hard AF, so if someone is looking for a silver bullet, keep looking. But at least for guitar a book is not a replacement for a good teacher, and it can't be: there's too much nuance and too many ways to screw things up. Screw up your right wrist movement, and you won't be able to play fast. Screw up your left hand position, and you won't be able to do legato (hammer-ons and pull-offs) and chords will be difficult as well. Synchronization is hard too, especially in hybrid styles, where not every note is picked. Screw up muting and you won't be able to play clean. And the worst part is, you don't even hear yourself as you're playing, if you aren't recording, because your mind is struggling to control and synchronize your hands, which takes more effort than it does on a piano because the left hand does something completely different from the right. That's not even considering that music theory is much harder to learn on the guitar than it is on the piano. Even some established guitarists don't really know how to play properly (Kirk Hammett or Slash are perennial examples), and a lot of those that do know how to play don't know the theory. They've just learned the technique and a few licks, and that's enough if you don't have to learn someone else's music and don't need Petrucci's levels of sophistication. But knowing theory really opens up the instrument and makes it a lot easier to learn pieces, since you get to see the "grammar" of the thing.
- packjaddison 5y ago
  I'd be happy to give you some advice to get you started.
tunesmith 5y ago
One of my favorite piano practice tricks was using one hand to teach the other. Not like how this book describes it, but using inverted patterns. In the first movement of Apposionata Op. 57, there's a pattern that goes from hand to hand, in groups of five. Difficult for the left hand. So my teacher had me learn it in the right hand too, but inverted. So in the left hand it went Db Eb G Eb Db. In the right hand that would be Eb Db A Db Eb, an octave up. Mirror image. You'd play both at the same time. It sounded awful (and then kind of cool after a while) but it worked really well.
- revolvingocelot 5y ago
  Ah Apposionata! Crazy dynamics, passing one's hands over one another, a great showpiece. For those that don't play piano, the parent is essentially bragging, and is entirely justified in doing so. I feel compelled to upvote because the implication that it was successfully learned My favourite performance of it (not Lang Lang!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEptNFzLpjk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEptNFzLpjk
  - rossjudson 5y ago
    This was insanely good. Thanks! She is remarkable.
  - tunesmith 5y ago
    I plead humility, I never learned the third movement all the way. :) EDIT: A couple notes about the above performance, for those interested: First, the section I was describing above is at 3:09. Second, and purely trivial - she has a mistake that is extremely common among pianists. Everyone copies each other and they miss details. At the top of the figure that starts at 7:53, measure 219, there's an 8th rest, not a 16th rest before the last three notes. Same with the following patterns. Both the Dover and Schnabel editions clearly show these eighth rests, but no one plays them. I suppose it's possible that Dover and Schnabel are both wrong and there's some autograph edition out there somewhere that has the 16th rest, but accidentally changing it to an 8th rest (and adjusting the following note values) in multiple places would be a really weird mistake to make in printing.
BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 5y ago
As somebody who has been trying to play harpsichord for many decades on and off, I immediately jumped to the chapter on tuning. My longstanding opinion on ET is that any key is simply a shift of x semitones above and below C. Since publication when electronic aids were expensive, there's apps you can put on your phone for little or no money. Pitchlab Pro is excellent, but there may be patent issues in your jurisdiction. Also you now have to go through Amazon. These days YouTube offers different interpretations of just about everything. It gives you something to aim for.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
codr7 5y ago
I used to take lessons, very classical with a skilled teacher, had my own digital piano at home; but couldn't find the motivation to practice. Several years later I bought a cheap 49-key midi keyboard and fired up YouTube, still going and improving every day. Just do it, really; sit down and learn how to play something you like, your way.
MrGando 5y ago
Have to chime-in here as a piano player since age 7 (so been going for ~28 now), who about 2 years ago got very serious about Jazz. I have stumbled across this book many times, I have read it. It's the single most controversial book that I've read about piano technique and playing that I've found. The author, is not even a player himself (!!!). There's a great summary of reviews about the book here (https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=38247.0 https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=38247.0), if you're starting into piano, stay away, get a decent teacher.
- revolvingocelot 5y ago
  I can't help but agree. I've been playing piano since childhood too, though in a desultory, non-Conservatory way. It's been great fun reading through this comment section and seeing Piano HN, but I'm really surprised that this is the first comment that acknowledges the skub-nature [0] of the book, and that the author doesn't actually play piano but in fact armchair-QBs it via observation and discussion with his two daughters' piano teacher. That's not to say that he doesn't have any interesting insights, but IMO this is an entirely inappropriate book for an ab initio beginner. The value of his insights comes from another perspective on piano pedagogy, but it's an untrained one; better to learn the ropes as they're commonly understood before you seek the guy who's all about an unorthodox presentation of them. At the bare minimum, get a teacher so you can learn how to hold your hands. [0] https://pbfcomics.com/comics/skub/ https://pbfcomics.com/comics/skub/
  - MrGando 5y ago
    There's a specific thing I always remember about this book, which is that the author recommends the "thumb over" technique for scales. I would never, ever suggest a beginner to approach scales like that. Thumb rotation is super important to absorb and master. Of course, when you go for fast scales you do a "thumb over" which is not really that, but instead of the thumb rotation, you reposition your whole hand using your arm to keep going upwards (from reading the book, it feels like the author doesn't understand that, because he probably never really went through that process... which takes many many years of piano playing). I clearly remember the first time I went through the book, being a bit shocked when I read this particular take.
zfier83 5y ago
I’m an adult student. Started at 33 - just turned 38. Practicing 3-4 hours daily. Don’t get this book. Take music theory classes, learn harmony, and get an excellent teacher. Mine is from the Russian school and changed the way I approach the instrument. Also - you can become a good pianist if you start as an adult. You just won’t be attending Julliard as an instrumentalist. But who cares? Neither did Beethoven. My #1 advice: practice in perfect time. Build a natural sense of pulse. The dirty secret is it’s easier to play a piece in time than the converse, especially at high velocity.
- IWantToRelocate 5y ago
  started as an adult as well and couldnt stress this enough. anyone can play the piano with proper practice!
- is-is-odd 5y ago
  How do I go about finding a good teacher? Are google maps reviews trustworthy enough?
  - wildrhythms 5y ago
    Look up your local/city orchestra; in my local philharmonic they keep an entire page on their website updated with local teachers for every instrument.
telesilla 5y ago
I struggle with learning pieces by heart. It's my greatest regret that I need sheet music to enjoy the piano, some 40 years later since lessons began in typical classical format. My sight reading is impeccable. Any advice welcome.
- scottious 5y ago
  I envy the fact that you can read music so well! I'm the opposite of you: I play by ear and I am mediocre at reading music. I started piano lessons 9 years ago when I was 27. I had a background in marching band where we were not allowed to carry sheet music with us on the field for 4 years in college I think that experience with marching band really forced me to develop my ear and learn to memorize music. Also I was terrible at reading music so I used my ear (which also wasn't that good) to fill in the gaps. Eventually I became proficient enough at this that I could just listen to the other saxophone players and play what they were playing. I didn't know anything about keys, chords, intervals, or anything. I just played what I heard because I had no other choice. Perhaps putting yourself in similar situations would be helpful. For example, I'm now a keyboard player in a band and I have to be able to learn a song that I've never heard at a moment's notice. That kind of pressure would force anybody to develop their ear because sheet music is just not as useful in that kind of setting.
hilbert42 5y ago
Stunningly useful even if you're a proficient pianist. Moreover, Chang's a techie—an experienced scientist—so there's no bullshit or unnecessary padding here. As such, he'll appeal to many HN readers who tinkle the ivories from time to time and who'd like to improve their technique. P.S.: I found his piano tuning info/techniques most interesting. As a hacker who couldn't leave well enough alone and who managed to put my old upright well out of wack and sounding like bar piano out of an old Western movie, this info would have been absolutely invaluable.
jimmyvalmer 5y ago
This book claims to be the answer to "I am a diligent student so why do I suck?" Having skimmed the first thirty pages, I can assure you the question remains unanswered (the author, being talented, really doesn't get it from our plebe view).
chkaloon 5y ago
Just read the section about temperament. Several errors just in that short section. Pretty much a mess of writing.

358 points by delib 5y ago

any hackers interested in piano should check out serenepianist.com https://www.instagram.com/serenepianist/ https://www.instagram.com/serenepianist/ serene was a hacker at google/tor/cmu and then went deep into piano and is an amazing concert pianist. she loved this book!

jacquesm 5y ago

This is a prettified version of the original which is available here: http://www.pianopractice.org/ http://www.pianopractice.org/ , suggest a link change.

nuclearnice1 5y ago
What do you see as the advantage of the “ugly” version? More up to date?
- kzrdude 5y ago
  More canonical
- jacquesm 5y ago
  HN as a rule tries to link to the original source of something when it is available.
- mkl 5y ago
  http://www.pianopractice.org/ http://www.pianopractice.org/ has the third edition from 2016, but this version is based on the second, from 2009. The third edition has many additions.

arxanas 5y ago

This book has a lot of useful techniques regarding piano practice, but it's light on details about technique itself, such as finger positioning or how to engage which muscles. Does anyone have good resources towards this end?

wildrhythms 5y ago
A book will never teach you which muscles to engage to play an instrument. Find a piano teacher if you want to learn correct posture and exercises to prevent injuring yourself and play properly.
- arxanas 5y ago
  The piano teachers I've worked with don't seem to know enough about kinesiology to explain the muscle activity. On the contrary, it seems like the mental models they use to explain posture and exercises are primarily correlative, rather than causative. They can tell me that my posture is incorrect and what it should look like, but not what muscles to engage or why, or what angles to apply force at, and so on. I enjoyed reading a text about weightlifting exercises once. It's not a substitute for carrying out the exercises or having an observer comment, but the underlying principles could be used to explain my performance (or lack thereof) and extend to other exercises. I have my own notes on piano kinesiology which I've built up, which I refer to as necessary, but it would be easier if someone else had already done it, as it's clearly not the case that a book can't teach you which muscles to engage.
  - palimpsests 5y ago
    this is partly because the muscles you engage, the angles at which you apply force are going to have slight or large differences from another player due to differences in biology and physiology. we are not all the same shape nor strength. so of course the mental models are correlative _as well as_ causative e.g. "if you keep slamming your finger into the keys you will likely develop RSI and you will have drastically impeded your ability to control your tone or dynamics" <--- doesn't get much more causative than that. furthermore, what you've asked for sounds like it would be receiving instructions like, "contract your pronator quadratus to 17%, rotate 34° to strike G3 at a 48.5° angle with your L ring finger, and here's all the angles and associated muscular tensions associated with each phalange that you'll need to master: ...." ? Is that what you mean? I have yet to meet someone who is unable to receive postural feedback if it's not framed in terms of anatomy. Human movement locomotion does not come from conscious direction to move individual muscles, it's a much more integrated experience (e.g. "extend your right leg" -- want to guess how many coordinated actions of muscles and neurons are are involved in that?

cloogshicer 5y ago

It's sad that this book is written in such a self-validating tone (the very first sentence is "This is the best book ever written on how to practice at the piano!" for crying out loud), because the content is excellent. I read it a couple years ago and it completely changed how I approach practicing.

rossjudson 5y ago
I agree; it is surprisingly good. And conceited...which is an acceptable tradeoff ;)
- rossjudson 5y ago
  I'll also point out (to myself!) that the third edition is a considerably better read. It's available for free at the author's web site (http://www.pianopractice.org/ http://www.pianopractice.org/).
amelius 5y ago
> "This is the best book ever written on how to practice at the piano!" for crying out loud It fits with the current zeitgeist, where clickbait is everywhere, even in respected newspapers.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  It was written long ago.
  - amelius 5y ago
    Yes. But maybe it explains why it resurfaces now.
- rackjack 5y ago
  People have been doing this for decades, probably centuries... there was a book on shorthand (Eclectic shorthand) I found on the Internet Archive and the first couple of pages were extolling its virtues compared to the others. The difference is that you're seeing it.

AlbertCory 5y ago

A good book. Although this statement: While writing it, I discovered that piano pedagogy had never been researched, documented, and analyzed properly is totally wrong. There's a Piano Pedagogy group just in the Bay Area, and lots of books on it. I was an Adult Beginner, which is sorta a Thing. My teacher had about 12 adult students, and we had separate recitals from the kids. The hidden reason for this is, you don't want to hear some 9-year-old kid who plays better than you ever will. Almost all of the other adults had played as a child and given it up. Many teachers won't take adults like me because they have unrealistic ideas about how good they're going to be. The truth is, you are not going to be very good, and lots of people who are orders of magnitude better than you can't make any real money playing piano, because that level of skill is so common. The interesting thing about how our brains work is: I could memorize effortlessly, but I couldn't sight read worth shit. There are other people who are the exact opposite. Lastly, one thing they said really resonated with me: The first thing that must be done is to eliminate the habits of stopping and backtracking (stuttering), at every mistake. The best time to develop the skill of not stopping at every mistake is when you begin your first piano lessons. OMG, in the recitals there was one lady who just had to play every note correctly, no matter how many times she had to try. She stopped at every mistake and "corrected" it, until you wanted to scream at her.

narag 5y ago
The truth is, you are not going to be very good, and lots of people who are orders of magnitude better than you can't make any real money playing piano, because that level of skill is so common. This isn't so much of a problem if your intention is not playing professionally. Learning easy and intermediate pieces is a lot of fun. Also making your own music using a MIDI keyboard and a DAW.
- catlikesshrimp 5y ago
  It does help to compose game music if you feel more comfortable around a synth. For people who like learning new abilities!
  - 5y ago

tritones 5y ago

I came across this shortly before beginning my degree in music and it completely changed how I approached learning new pieces. When I tried to explain the technique to another pianist, they were confused as to what was 'new' about it. I guess they never had a teacher say "play it over and over until you can play it without mistakes". Now, my wife is completing her education degree and I see a lot of this approach being implemented in K-12: identify and focus on weaknesses; use your strengths to enhance your weakness; spend time on the big problems; balancing holistic approaches with concise methods, etc. All seem obvious and yet I didn't have a single teacher in music or otherwise suggest any of them to me.

wildrhythms 5y ago
I find it hard to believe a pianist (or any trained musician) has never heard of playing something over and over again without mistakes...
- nkuttler 5y ago
  This attitude contributes to the problem: many teachers at a higher level don't even bother to teach this stuff because they think everybody already does it.
- tritones 5y ago
  You misunderstand. Their teachers used better methods than just "do it again but better".

Waterluvian 5y ago

I’m going to try this out. I’m excited. I’m a piano beginner and my lingering anxieties are: 1. Am I building bad habits? 2. Am I learning in first gear without realizing it?

packjaddison 5y ago
The most deadly bad habits are learning shortcuts that cause you to destroy your flexibility as a musician (example on piano: practicing a piece always at the same volume, so you would be unable to change the dynamics of the piece if it strikes you during performance), playing with tension (I have given myself multiple types of tendinitis and can attest to this), and repeating a mistake (more on this at the bottom). As for learning in first gear, don't be afraid to make mistakes, as long as you are thinking about the mistakes and analyzing them, rather than blindly repeating them as "a thing that is hard so I will work in it later while I approach the parts of the piece that I enjoy." The way to improve is by hurling yourself at something too difficult for you, and then slowly improving your technique once you are able to analyze why a particular bit of music you're working on is beyond you. To play a piece *perfectly, it is like wiping a glass window. You want to play the piece perfectly, every. single. time. So as you build the piece in your head, you cannot leave the equivalent of 'you missed a spot.' If your technique manages to be perfect, clear glass, the listener can 'see' through it to the music. It is dangerous that you already know the piece in your head, because your memory of the music can trump the mistake even as you are making it, because you hear 'how the piece should be' rather than how you're playing it. It's imperative to listen to recordings of your work as you polish it; only at the level of mastery does this become a superfluous tool. By listening to it back, you effectively can 'see' all the spots on the window that you are trying to wipe away. Finally, there are only two types of playing the piano: practice, which involves deliberate and labored cleaning-up of your weaknesses and mistakes, and playing, which is the exhibition of your efforts to make something beautiful and perfect. The book does address this; most amateurs enjoy playing more than they practice, so they play a lot and fool themselves into thinking they are practicing (I am very guilty of this) and rarely practice, so their playing sounds like they need more practice :)
scottious 5y ago
Getting a teacher will without a doubt help with both of those things. Learning to play the piano is like trying to summit Mt. Everest while blindfolded. Technically speaking, you can do it alone but it's orders of magnitude easier with somebody guiding you. Sometimes all it takes is a nudge in the right direction. Other times they need to tell you specifically how to execute or understand an idea.

maroonblazer 5y ago

From the last section in Chapter One, titled "Jazz, Fake Books, and Improvisation": > In summary, the process of learning this genre consists of practicing the chords and scales sufficiently so that, given a melody, you can “feel” the right and wrong chords that go along with it. That's only scratching the surface and will not get you playing jazz. Listening to and copying the greats - Bird, Monk, Evans, Coltrane, Rollins, et al. That's how you learn to play jazz. >It is clear that this genre is here to stay, has great educational and practical value, is relatively easy to learn, and can be a lot of fun. Relatively easy to learn??? Clearly the author hasn't or isn't playing jazz.

andkon 5y ago
Hmmm, what parts feel harder or not described above? In my experience it really is just about learning the scales and the chords, like the author mentions. Then you just have to let yourself make the connection. That can be really hard. But it’s kinda about trusting that you know the necessary parts - which notes are playable.
- the_cat_kittles 5y ago
  are you a professional jazz pianist? there is more to jazz than pitches... theres time, vocab, rhythm, tone, etc etc which are the things you work on your whole life lol. and then theres the whole issue of playing with other people
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catlikesshrimp 5y ago
Remember, different capacities. The author might be super talented compared to you. He might find easy what you call difficult, or his definition of easy is different to ours. Might~
- oriolid 5y ago

dandotway 5y ago

Does this book cover how to figure out finger numbering for sheet music that doesn't have finger numbering? By finger numbering I mean the standard scheme where thumb=1, index=2, ..., pinky=5, and the notes on the sheet music have these numbers. This is the biggest mystery to me. I understand there is not a One True Canonical Fingering for a given sequence of notes. But some fingerings make the music much easier than others. Wish some HN coder genius would write a program that given sheet music as input, outputs the top 1-3 recommended fingerings for that music with explanations for which rules were applied.

tracyhenry 5y ago
Having the same struggle as an adult learning piano. How do highly-skilled pianist come up with fingering? Are there any kind of rules? I think there are. But it may be so automatic that they don't actively think about them. On the other hand, if we have a large quantity of high-quality sheets with fingering labeled, we can train a transformer which is supposed to learn the implicit rules pretty well.
- pitspotter2 5y ago
  (1) Keep a couple of pencils on the piano to write your fingering on the manuscript, (2) Feel free to ignore the editor's fingering if it's clunky for you, (3) No premature optimisation. Play through sections multiple times before deciding on fingering. If there are two apparent solutions to some fingering problem you might need to try both and then sleep on it, (4) Once you've decided on a fingering, stick to it, because otherwise you risk tripping up by regressing onto a previous fingering.
- aluminum96 5y ago
  It appears to be experience -- highly skilled pianists have played similar passages for pretty much any sheet music you could give them, and select fingerings from experience. This breaks down for music that's deliberately difficult to finger, or has usual repetition (think Ravel's Ondine, or Islamey).
  - 5y ago

bananabiscuit 5y ago

This book changed how I practice piano and also pretty much any other skill. I also really enjoy the tone of this book. I think the author might actually be manic. I can't find it now in this online version, but in my decade old printed edition I remember in one of the sections he describes a problem his book might cause in the world where by teaching people to tune their own pianos so well, you might be concerned that it would lead to putting piano tuners out of business. He then insists you should not worry about this imagined problem because his piano teaching method is so great, that there will be orders of magnitude more piano students thanks to his book, which would lead to ever higher job security for piano tuners/technicians as not every student will have the time or interest to actually tune their pianos, despite now knowing how to do so very well thanks to this book. Amazing stuff.

andrepd 5y ago

Starting a book by singing one's praise is already dubious. Then you come across this >(...) Mental Play (...) It is almost unbelievable that such an essential skill has been mostly neglected by piano teachers. which is a top "crank red flag".

DixieDev 5y ago
In the context of practising a piece initially much slower than it's intended to be played: > The probability of playing incorrectly is nearly 100%, because there is almost an infinity of ways to play incorrectly but only one best way. I'm sure this book has some useful information within, but my 5 minutes spent checking out different parts have so far left a very poor impression. Combined with its verbosity, it's hard to justify giving it serious attention...
arxanas 5y ago
The book uses a lot of hyperbolic wording, but the techniques in the book are generally sound. Mental practice in particular is an established pattern for top performers across sportive disciplines.
packjaddison 5y ago
Astoundingly, I have never heard another source advise doing this, and this includes professors at Juilliard. I don't work on all my pieces using pure Mental Play as frequently as I should, but trying to 'play on phantom limbs' without being at the instrument is like trying to remember the exact details of a painting you have looked at. Though there are many parts of the book that are a bit more... cranked.

tejohnso 5y ago

I would like to see the best book ever written on how to practice at the guitar. Any suggestions?

m0zg 5y ago
There are a lot of different genres within guitar, and a lot of different variations in instruments, and ways of playing the instrument (fingers, pick, hybrid, tapping, legato, slide, combination thereof), heck even within picking there's also "economy", "sweep", "downstroke", and "alternate" picking, so you'd need to narrow it down by a lot. For rock/prog I think Rock Discipline by John Petrucci is the best book available if you're prepared to put in a lot of work and, well, discipline. The name is not accidental: it's hard AF, so if someone is looking for a silver bullet, keep looking. But at least for guitar a book is not a replacement for a good teacher, and it can't be: there's too much nuance and too many ways to screw things up. Screw up your right wrist movement, and you won't be able to play fast. Screw up your left hand position, and you won't be able to do legato (hammer-ons and pull-offs) and chords will be difficult as well. Synchronization is hard too, especially in hybrid styles, where not every note is picked. Screw up muting and you won't be able to play clean. And the worst part is, you don't even hear yourself as you're playing, if you aren't recording, because your mind is struggling to control and synchronize your hands, which takes more effort than it does on a piano because the left hand does something completely different from the right. That's not even considering that music theory is much harder to learn on the guitar than it is on the piano. Even some established guitarists don't really know how to play properly (Kirk Hammett or Slash are perennial examples), and a lot of those that do know how to play don't know the theory. They've just learned the technique and a few licks, and that's enough if you don't have to learn someone else's music and don't need Petrucci's levels of sophistication. But knowing theory really opens up the instrument and makes it a lot easier to learn pieces, since you get to see the "grammar" of the thing.
packjaddison 5y ago
I'd be happy to give you some advice to get you started.

tunesmith 5y ago

One of my favorite piano practice tricks was using one hand to teach the other. Not like how this book describes it, but using inverted patterns. In the first movement of Apposionata Op. 57, there's a pattern that goes from hand to hand, in groups of five. Difficult for the left hand. So my teacher had me learn it in the right hand too, but inverted. So in the left hand it went Db Eb G Eb Db. In the right hand that would be Eb Db A Db Eb, an octave up. Mirror image. You'd play both at the same time. It sounded awful (and then kind of cool after a while) but it worked really well.

revolvingocelot 5y ago
Ah Apposionata! Crazy dynamics, passing one's hands over one another, a great showpiece. For those that don't play piano, the parent is essentially bragging, and is entirely justified in doing so. I feel compelled to upvote because the implication that it was successfully learned My favourite performance of it (not Lang Lang!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEptNFzLpjk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEptNFzLpjk
- rossjudson 5y ago
  This was insanely good. Thanks! She is remarkable.
- tunesmith 5y ago
  I plead humility, I never learned the third movement all the way. :) EDIT: A couple notes about the above performance, for those interested: First, the section I was describing above is at 3:09. Second, and purely trivial - she has a mistake that is extremely common among pianists. Everyone copies each other and they miss details. At the top of the figure that starts at 7:53, measure 219, there's an 8th rest, not a 16th rest before the last three notes. Same with the following patterns. Both the Dover and Schnabel editions clearly show these eighth rests, but no one plays them. I suppose it's possible that Dover and Schnabel are both wrong and there's some autograph edition out there somewhere that has the 16th rest, but accidentally changing it to an 8th rest (and adjusting the following note values) in multiple places would be a really weird mistake to make in printing.

BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 5y ago

As somebody who has been trying to play harpsichord for many decades on and off, I immediately jumped to the chapter on tuning. My longstanding opinion on ET is that any key is simply a shift of x semitones above and below C. Since publication when electronic aids were expensive, there's apps you can put on your phone for little or no money. Pitchlab Pro is excellent, but there may be patent issues in your jurisdiction. Also you now have to go through Amazon. These days YouTube offers different interpretations of just about everything. It gives you something to aim for.

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codr7 5y ago

I used to take lessons, very classical with a skilled teacher, had my own digital piano at home; but couldn't find the motivation to practice. Several years later I bought a cheap 49-key midi keyboard and fired up YouTube, still going and improving every day. Just do it, really; sit down and learn how to play something you like, your way.

MrGando 5y ago

Have to chime-in here as a piano player since age 7 (so been going for ~28 now), who about 2 years ago got very serious about Jazz. I have stumbled across this book many times, I have read it. It's the single most controversial book that I've read about piano technique and playing that I've found. The author, is not even a player himself (!!!). There's a great summary of reviews about the book here (https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=38247.0 https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=38247.0), if you're starting into piano, stay away, get a decent teacher.

revolvingocelot 5y ago
I can't help but agree. I've been playing piano since childhood too, though in a desultory, non-Conservatory way. It's been great fun reading through this comment section and seeing Piano HN, but I'm really surprised that this is the first comment that acknowledges the skub-nature [0] of the book, and that the author doesn't actually play piano but in fact armchair-QBs it via observation and discussion with his two daughters' piano teacher. That's not to say that he doesn't have any interesting insights, but IMO this is an entirely inappropriate book for an ab initio beginner. The value of his insights comes from another perspective on piano pedagogy, but it's an untrained one; better to learn the ropes as they're commonly understood before you seek the guy who's all about an unorthodox presentation of them. At the bare minimum, get a teacher so you can learn how to hold your hands. [0] https://pbfcomics.com/comics/skub/ https://pbfcomics.com/comics/skub/
- MrGando 5y ago
  There's a specific thing I always remember about this book, which is that the author recommends the "thumb over" technique for scales. I would never, ever suggest a beginner to approach scales like that. Thumb rotation is super important to absorb and master. Of course, when you go for fast scales you do a "thumb over" which is not really that, but instead of the thumb rotation, you reposition your whole hand using your arm to keep going upwards (from reading the book, it feels like the author doesn't understand that, because he probably never really went through that process... which takes many many years of piano playing). I clearly remember the first time I went through the book, being a bit shocked when I read this particular take.

zfier83 5y ago

I’m an adult student. Started at 33 - just turned 38. Practicing 3-4 hours daily. Don’t get this book. Take music theory classes, learn harmony, and get an excellent teacher. Mine is from the Russian school and changed the way I approach the instrument. Also - you can become a good pianist if you start as an adult. You just won’t be attending Julliard as an instrumentalist. But who cares? Neither did Beethoven. My #1 advice: practice in perfect time. Build a natural sense of pulse. The dirty secret is it’s easier to play a piece in time than the converse, especially at high velocity.

IWantToRelocate 5y ago
started as an adult as well and couldnt stress this enough. anyone can play the piano with proper practice!
is-is-odd 5y ago
How do I go about finding a good teacher? Are google maps reviews trustworthy enough?
- wildrhythms 5y ago
  Look up your local/city orchestra; in my local philharmonic they keep an entire page on their website updated with local teachers for every instrument.

telesilla 5y ago

I struggle with learning pieces by heart. It's my greatest regret that I need sheet music to enjoy the piano, some 40 years later since lessons began in typical classical format. My sight reading is impeccable. Any advice welcome.

scottious 5y ago
I envy the fact that you can read music so well! I'm the opposite of you: I play by ear and I am mediocre at reading music. I started piano lessons 9 years ago when I was 27. I had a background in marching band where we were not allowed to carry sheet music with us on the field for 4 years in college I think that experience with marching band really forced me to develop my ear and learn to memorize music. Also I was terrible at reading music so I used my ear (which also wasn't that good) to fill in the gaps. Eventually I became proficient enough at this that I could just listen to the other saxophone players and play what they were playing. I didn't know anything about keys, chords, intervals, or anything. I just played what I heard because I had no other choice. Perhaps putting yourself in similar situations would be helpful. For example, I'm now a keyboard player in a band and I have to be able to learn a song that I've never heard at a moment's notice. That kind of pressure would force anybody to develop their ear because sheet music is just not as useful in that kind of setting.

hilbert42 5y ago

Stunningly useful even if you're a proficient pianist. Moreover, Chang's a techie—an experienced scientist—so there's no bullshit or unnecessary padding here. As such, he'll appeal to many HN readers who tinkle the ivories from time to time and who'd like to improve their technique. P.S.: I found his piano tuning info/techniques most interesting. As a hacker who couldn't leave well enough alone and who managed to put my old upright well out of wack and sounding like bar piano out of an old Western movie, this info would have been absolutely invaluable.

jimmyvalmer 5y ago

This book claims to be the answer to "I am a diligent student so why do I suck?" Having skimmed the first thirty pages, I can assure you the question remains unanswered (the author, being talented, really doesn't get it from our plebe view).

chkaloon 5y ago

Just read the section about temperament. Several errors just in that short section. Pretty much a mess of writing.