Piano no no no no

[frankie82]

OK. Here's the question. I really really REALLY dislike Dozen a Day. But my teacher thinks otherwise. Is it really necessary to do technical exercises (I can hear you all shouting YES at me), or can you become a competent pianist just by learning pieces and picking up skills as you go? I'm soooo much more motivated to learn by playing "proper" basic pieces rather than the Dozen a Day mega boredom!

[possom]

Well I never really did any technical exercises apart from scales until I was around grade 8, even then I didn't feel they were any help. As far as i'm concerned, there are enough pieces out there with technical difficulties in them to sort out without Dozen a Day

[caz]

Can't say I make my pupils do any technical exercises - we exist mainly on a diet of Pamela Wedgewood!

[Steve Hopwood]

caz said:

Can't say I make my pupils do any technical exercises - we exist mainly on a diet of Pamela Wedgewood!

I second that. Students will practise if they like the stuff they were playing.

I don't know how familiar you are with the piano concerto repertoire. If not, imagine that playing Brahms 2nd and Rachmaninov 3rd is like climbing Everest with your eyes shut - something of an achievement.

I have given live performances of both these idiotic concerti. The last time I did a technical exercise was when some idiot of a teacher tried to make me play Czerny when I was 16. At the time, I was learning Beethoven 3 for my first concerto performance; there was no competition. ;D

So, mindless boasting apart the point I am making here is; yes, it is perfectly possible to build a stunning technique simply by playing the repertoire - the interesting way. I have no doubt it is possible to build the same technique by playing endless exercises; yawn.

[frankie82]

Thank goodness, the exercises bore me to tears, I'm only grade 2 ish level and when I think about sitting and doing Dozen a Day it puts me off wanting to sit at the piano and do anything. We've done easy versions of Beethoven/Bach stuff and it's such a joy to do, and I really could sit there all day and do that, but when it's the exercises that I have to do (which have no melody or excitement to them whatsoever) it drives me insane...feel the same way about scales BUT I don't think I can get out of them quite so easily...

[Steve Hopwood]

Frankie, not all piano teachers attended a top music college then went on to fashion a successful career based purely on playing and teaching the piano.

That does not make them poor teachers; indeed many of them are brilliant. What they lack are the insights gained through playing the most demanding repertoire and developing the technique required to play them. This can limit their horizons and cause them to teach what they were taught, because that is safe and comfortable. They usually understand the need to develop a student's technique but do not always equate technical development with pleasure. Often they think the only way to do so is through mechanical repetition of exercises and scales.

They will say, quite rightly, that you cannot play pieces until you have the technique to do so, but not see that practising the instrument automatically develops technique. In their own minds, technique and musicality are separate things. Intellectually, they think they understand that expressing music and the technical means to do so are one and the same thing; their stunted pianistic development means they do not actually understand the concept.

I am not saying that students should never do exercises; some actually enjoy them. Those that do not should not be forced to play them.

Scales have a place, but the AB are wrong in forcing reluctant students to play so many in exams. One scale learned thoroughly and played beautifully adds value to the player. 50 scrambled through and murdered technically and musically are counter-productive.

So, Frankie, to benefit from scales: learn one scale at a time; learn it fluently; learn to play it in quavers to a metronome mark of about 160 over four octaves with both hands together. When you can do that, drop it and go on to the next. When you have learned the lot, go round again; relearning will take very little time, so you could experiment with dynamic contrasts, and articulation.

The law of diminishing returns applies to scales. Once a player can whizz up and down four octaves at top volume and cataclysmic speed, that's it. Players who clam, say, that they do every scale 10 times a day are confusing the benefits of musical development with physical exercise. What they are actually enjoying is the release of the 'happy hormones' into the bloodstream that physical exercise brings.

I get the same effect from playing Mozart sonatas, one of the reasons I love them so much. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

[kerioboe]

stevehopwood said:

Players who clam, say, that they do every scale 10 times a day are confusing the benefits of musical development with physical exercise. What they are actually enjoying is the release of the 'happy hormones' into the bloodstream that physical exercise brings.

I have to confess to being one of those people who finds scales therapeutic . I am an outwardly calm, introverted person and I find I can take out the day's aggression pounding up and down four octave scales in a way that I can't if I'm playing a piece. I used to find once I'd got the stress out of my system I could then go happily on to play music I liked.

Unfortunately no one else in the family sees it the same way and I have rather given up on scales since having children.

One use you forgot to mention, which was important to me as a teenager - loud scales are a great way of preventing your sibling in the next room from watching their favourite programme on TV. ;D

[Steve Hopwood]

sophie said:

stevehopwood said:

Players who clam, say, that they do every scale 10 times a day are confusing the benefits of musical development with physical exercise. What they are actually enjoying is the release of the 'happy hormones' into the bloodstream that physical exercise brings.

I have to confess to being one of those people who finds scales therapeutic . I am an outwardly calm, introverted person and I find I can take out the day's aggression pounding up and down four octave scales in a way that I can't if I'm playing a piece. I used to find once I'd got the stress out of my system I could then go happily on to play music I liked.

This is using scales for a positive purpose; I am all in favour of this. I am merely not in favour of scales for their own sake. ;D

Unfortunately no one else in the family sees it the same way and I have rather given up on scales since having children.

You can use them to introduce the kids to the concept that the worls is not actually laid on for their individual pleasure, and that there are some aspects of life with which one just has to put up with. ;D Who knows what beneficial effects such a 'tough love' policy might have? ;D

One use you forgot to mention, which was important to me as a teenager - loud scales are a great way of preventing your sibling in the next room from watching their favourite programme on TV. ;D

Ahead of you here, I am afraid. When advocating a practise strategy to a play-it-straight-through-one-million-times-until-it-comes-close-to-being-right child, I always point out that the alternative detailed practise I am suggesting will also drive the rest of the family nuts.

[jod]

Interstingly I use both scales and A Dozen a Day. I encourage pupils to use them for a few minutes at the start of their practice session to get their fingers loostened up. Unless they are working for an exam, the chief point of doing scales is to teach pupils to recognise keys. So for example if the pieces a pupil is working on are in e minor and D Major, then those are the only scales they are given to practice, and they do both melodic and harmonic versions of the minor scale whether they are Grade 1 or Grade 8. (Grade 1 pupils do hands separately, the hands together and 8ve requirements increase as per the grade). Thus the scales reinforce the pieces and don't work against them.

I actually like "A Dozen a Day" and have seen rapid improvement in my pupils who use it. However the focus must be on repertoire. One Grade 4 pupil I teach is currently enjoying a diet of "Jazzin About", "Upgrade 3-4" and The right "Hours with the Masters" book, A grade 2 pianist has been playing her way through "Classics to Moderns" Book 1 and " Really Easy Jazzin About" (she's now working her way through the turquoise book and will be taking grade 2 in the summer). I like scales and exercises, but if they don't lead onto repertoire, what is the point?

[anacrusis]

Something I've found from exercises I've played...they do teach you how to do the exercise competently, but proper music is full of different demands, with different sets of notes. How will slogging through four octaves of F# major scales and arpeggios help unless you have same four octaves in a piece? And how boring would the piece be if it did? What actually happens is that a composer will nick a chunk of an F# major scale and paste it into other much more interesting stuff, the approach and egress from the chunk of scale will be different, may need different fingerings, and will almost certainly need to be learnt in its own right. Is it then not more efficient to go ahead and just learn the chunk plus its neighbouring notes in the piece being studied, and not bother with how ever many more octaves of the thing required for music exams? Sure, knowledge of keys is useful, but that doesn't require four octaves to find out.
I'm certainly finding that the more I learn difficult music - another instrument, I know, and not to be compared lightly - the more I'm in a position to learn other difficult music reasonably readily.

I vote for the pleasure in playing camp, too .

[kerioboe]

stevehopwood said:

sophie said:

I have to confess to being one of those people who finds scales therapeutic . I am an outwardly calm, introverted person and I find I can take out the day's aggression pounding up and down four octave scales in a way that I can't if I'm playing a piece. I used to find once I'd got the stress out of my system I could then go happily on to play music I liked.

This is using scales for a positive purpose; I am all in favour of this. I am merely not in favour of scales for their own sake. ;D

oouf

You can use them to introduce the kids to the concept that the worls is not actually laid on for their individual pleasure, and that there are some aspects of life with which one just has to put up with. ;D Who knows what beneficial effects such a 'tough love' policy might have? ;D

I could try, but they would probably point out that they already have to put up with me playing the oboe.

In reply to Anacrusis. For me there is something about four major scales on the piano which I have never found on other instruments. I do play scales on the oboe as part of my warm up (over the whole range of the instrument rather than from key note to key note) but, whilst I don't dislike them, they definitely don't have the same therapeutic effect as the piano.

[Steve Hopwood]

anacrusis said:

What actually happens is that a composer will nick a chunk of an F# major scale and paste it into other much more interesting stuff, the approach and egress from the chunk of scale will be different, may need different fingerings, and will almost certainly need to be learnt in its own right. Is it then not more efficient to go ahead and just learn the chunk plus its neighbouring notes in the piece being studied, and not bother with how ever many more octaves of the thing required for music exams? Sure, knowledge of keys is useful, but that doesn't require four octaves to find out.

Oh anacrusis, where were you when I was battling the, 'scales are everything' brigade on TOP. It was like talking to the wall.

Actually, it wasn't. The wall gave more intelligent responses.

[anacrusis]

Thought I'd posted a reply already, but it seems to have been eaten by the scale monster.

Just to say, I'd better not let anyone here or in TOP hear my memorised scales, then... ;D


Kerioboe - I did play the piano a long time ago, and got as far as failing grade 7 - the scales on a keyboard seem so much more logical and predictable than on a wind instrument...

[jod]

Scales certainly aren't everything, but they do loosten stiff fingers, thats why between exams the only scales that students play are the ones relavant to the piece they are learning. My students enjoy their dozen a day exercises, but if they were not spending the lion-share of their practice session on pieces I'd be concerned. Playing the piano should be fun, learning exercises and scales is a tool to enable pupils to have fun by learning repertoire.

As a singer I use difficult passages, or bits from pieces to build exercises to build my technique, Pianists can do the same. Maybe I should start lifting bits from pieces ( a turn for example) and write a technical exercise based on that.

I hated scales as a child, but I now see the point. I would however, have appreciated it if my teacher could have found me some interesting studies to build other areas of technique. I spent alot of my practice time on Hinke Elementary Studies on the Oboe. I now use them in teaching in addition to scales to enable my one oboe pupil to develop skills she can use in her pieces. A dozen a day may not be perfect, but those little exercises have helped the pupils who use them.

[kerioboe]

jod said:

I spent alot of my practice time on Hinke Elementary Studies on the Oboe. I now use them in teaching in addition to scales to enable my one oboe pupil to develop skills she can use in her pieces.

Interesting to see that you use this and (from the way you have written about it her) don't think of it as boring. I bought a copy of this off ebay (because everyone kept mentioning it) and my oboe teacher doesn't like it at all. He concedes that it does cover technical difficulties but thinks the pieces are not musical and encourage you to play notes rather than music. (Although somewhat illogically he also uses the Selmer fingering exercises which really are boring and which are the only things I really have to force myself to play and lack the will power to play at every practice session). He prefers Brod and then, for more advanced pupils, Ferling. Brod is more tuneful but Ferling I find too demanding to be thought of as an exercise.