[kashunstva]

Professional pianist here. They are boring but that’s hardly the biggest issue with Hanon, unfortunately. The biggest problem is the instructions that the composer leaves for the student, which includes the insistence that the student lift the finger high off the keyboard with each note.

I can think of practically nothing more injurious to good technique and nothing more likely to induce tension than this.

Hanon could have some value if teachers and students would employ the concept of weight transfer from finger to finger with constant contact with the keyboard. But his idea of finger calisthenics is a relic of the 19th c.

[jraph]

My piano teacher uses the Hanon for warmup, and it does seem to help train the fingers. We have never looked at the instructions, I didn't know it recommended this. It seems painful. Instead, she gives rhythms to follow, there's also one exercise consisting in accentuating times.

I guess it can (should) be used like this: keep the scores, disregard the instructions, add your own exercises on top of the scores.

I do find it a bit boring, but it seems it makes sense to warm up before playing and to strengthen the fingers / hands (although I have no evidence of this whatsoever). I guess warming up also helps moving your focus from whatever you were doing to the piano.

What other ways do pianists use for this?

[mtalantikite]

Practice your scales in parallel and contrary motion through the circle of fifths. Then pick a few four part chords and play through their 10 forms and inversions.

If you’re looking for exercises, check out Dohnanyi’s book: https://arhtisticlicense.com/2017/01/21/how-to-practice-pian...

[oriolid]

Playing scales and arpeggios is one common warmup. For practicing technique, there lots and lots of etudes by Czerny, Burgmüller and others that have copyright expired.

[pclmulqdq]

I played a lot of Hanon as a teenager, and I confess that I never read the instructions. It does appear to get results in terms of strengthening your fingers and getting you used to specific patterns of movement.

A couple of piano teachers suggested reading stuff while doing Hanon, and apparently Liszt was known to do that.

[kaidon]

> practically nothing more injurious to good technique and nothing more likely to induce tension than this.

Oh my goodness yes. I started playing on January and followed the Hanon instructions with the sheets. I have been trying to release tension, especially around my flying pinky… and realized that this way of playing Hanon was making it worse. I am in the process of fixing this now, and am enjoying less tension.

[solarengineer]

Are there any exercise books or videos or schools that teach this concept of weight transfer that you speak of?

I am a one-finger pianist at the moment.

[vunderba]

The taubman technique explores the practical aspects of piano playing from an "ergonomics first" set of principles and is highly recommend it if you can get any of Golandsky's videos. Unfortunately, it's one of those techniques that can be difficult to learn theoretically, and you may need a teacher to be able to guide you through the movements.

[alfiedotwtf]

Literally the Hanon set of books will teach you this :)

But if you’re a hunt-and-peck for piano, I would recommend stop what you’re doing and go back to the very beginning and relearn everything properly so that you don’t have any bad habits.

As for other resources, this app looks like a good bet!

[sixo]

No they don't teach this, that's the problem! The exercises are good but the right technique is v different from what Hanon describes.

[lioeters]

> one-finger pianist

That reminds me there are people who type on the (computer) keyboard with two fingers, searching for each key and pecking at it. I was fortunate to have "blind typing" classes as a child, including a fun game where you type to shoot at words falling on a city. That skill has been really valuable over the years.

I wonder if there are similar concepts for learning to play on the piano keyboard, like "blind" playing to learn where the notes are without even looking; or games where you can practice playing melodies. Even the idea of "weight transfer" seems related to computer keyboard, like typing without lifting your fingers too high.

[oriolid]

Yes, there are gamified learning apps like this. Some of the more well-known ones are Simply Piano, Yousician, Skoove and Synthesia and various clones but just searching "piano" on iOS app store gave me longer list than I cared to scroll through.

The nice thing is that you have to learn to play without looking at your hands because your eyes are fixed at the screen. The less nice part is that especially with Synthesia style it is difficult to play without the app.

[lioeters]

Thanks for the recommendation. Ah yes, Synthesia looks familiar - I've seen YouTube videos of people playing fast compositions with colors flying by in 3D.

Good point about the game interface, how getting too used to playing with the color indicators does not translate to sheet music during performances. I think I'll prefer to look at sheet music during practice too.

I'm checking out the other apps you mentioned. So interesting to see successful implementations of the "gamified learning" concept, with piano and other instruments. I can imagine a similar approach might work for other areas of study, like language learning.

[oriolid]

Yes, the giant in the language learning area is Duolingo and there are probably too many to list smaller ones. I wrote one word quizz app for myself when I was in high school, too bad startups weren't a thing back then.

[flemhans]

There are some games like that, e.g. Synthesia.

[sixo]

It's subtle and best learned with a good (expensive, unfortunately) teacher. It's worth it, even for just a few lessons.

[domharries]

A good teacher is definitely best, but I found the book "The Foundations of Technique" by Murray McLachlan very useful.

[localfirst]

The purpose of Hanon is to build muscles into typically weaker fingers like the fourth and fifth. The exaggerated movements are specifically designed to build memory muscle and power.

Hanon is battle tested and all the great virtuoso have gone through it whether they like it or not.

The problem with modern apps and paid learning online is the idea that the boring and hard parts can be skipped with some clever marketing.

If this was true then we would be churning out new pianists at faster rate but its falling but the age is dropping

[oriolid]

> and all the great virtuoso have gone through it whether they like it or not.

It would be interesting to see some citations about this.

> If this was true then we would be churning out new pianists at faster rate but its falling but the age is dropping

I suspect that these days people are smart enough to ask why should new pianists be churned out and is there something more valuable these people could do with their time.

[spoonfeeder006]

> people are smart enough to ask why should new pianists be churned out and is there something more valuable these people could do with their time.

Being a classical pianist would have been a dream career for me if I had started early enough

Some of the deepest fulfillment I have gotten was teaching myself how to play Bach

[oriolid]

Yes. The problem is that the field is insanely competitive, as in there are so many beginner pianists and so few paying gigs. Yes, there are many people who have made it as concert pianists, but concerning childhood dream careers, it is far easier to become an astronaut or formula 1 driver instead. Even the fallback jobs playing bars or accompanying when full orchestra is not available are going away.

[spoonfeeder006]

Perhaps there's too much of an obsession on stardom and fame rather than talent? And hence the number of "openings" for concert pianists is reduced, while the demand on the stars is increased

And thus those who are equally talented simply didn't get their chance to shine as well as learn and grow from opportunities

I believe if Martha Argerich hadn't been absent from a concert, Yuja Wang (now famous) who replaced her that time wouldn't have had her big break