Graham Fitch shows how Hanon’s exercises can be used creatively as a blank canvas to experience and develop movements encountered in real music.
A Better Way to Play Faster
Pianists often find that a piece falls apart beyond a certain speed. This article offers a more effective method than using a metronome to play faster.
Finding and Choosing Piano Fingering
The only correct fingering is the one that works for your hand! This blog post provides some tips and suggestions for finding and choosing piano fingering.
Improving Your Left Hand
Do you feel that your left hand is weaker than your right hand and is holding you back in your piano playing? We all have a dominant hand, and for most of us it is the right hand. However, research has shown that even in left handed players, the right hand still shows a higher level of motor control! The left hand is often neglected in our practising for various reasons. Our ear can be so focussed on the right hand that we don’t always listen attentively to what is going on in the left. Even if we do try to listen, we cannot be sure we are able to hear whether our left hand is playing in a controlled way. Perhaps we are playing unevenly, or missing some notes – we can’t quite figure out what’s wrong, but know something is amiss. Focussing on the left hand Practising the left hand by itself is of course an option, and something I recommend doing regularly anyway. However, this won’t show us what is actually going on when we add our right hand. I have another solution for addressing this problem which involves playing a passage with the left hand on the keyboard as normal but with the right hand mining its notes on the surface of the keys. By miming the right hand in this way, we are effectively playing both hands together still, but since we won’t hear any of the sounds the right hand would be making, we are able to really hear what the left hand is actually getting up to (rather than what we think it is doing). The process can be very revealing! Exercises and studies A secure left hand technique is essential for […]
Creative Ways to Practise Scales
Practising scales and arpeggios is important but often associated with drudgery. In this blog post, graham Fitch gives some ideas to making practising them more fun and effective!
Clara Schumann’s Prelude and Fugue, Op. 16 No. 2
This week’s blog post features Clara Schumann’s Prelude and Fugue in B-flat which is currently included in the new ABRSM 2021 & 2022 Grade 8 syllabus.
A Balanced Approach to Exercises and Studies
A balanced approach to using exercises and studies to solve specific pianistic problems.
Top Tips for Starting a New Piece
Last week I launched a free email course on how to start learning a new piece and lay solid foundations from the outset (click here to find out more). The following is a summary of some of the tips and practice tools from my course which will help you get started on the right track: One (or two) read-throughs is enough to get the gist of the piece – aim for a rough sketch at this stage, leaving out surface detail you cannot manage. Taking the time to practise hands separately is incredibly valuable, not only in the note learning stage but regularly thereafter. Practising separately doesn’t only apply to hands alone, but also to strands. It can be useful to deconstruct a score and play voices separately and then together in different combinations. Working on a piece in small sections at the Speed of No Mistakes ensures accuracy from the start and helps you avoid embedding careless errors that may be hard to fix later. By identifying and marking tricky spots in a piece upfront, you can begin each practice session with a step-by-step sequence of activities designed to solve the problems. Dividing the piece into manageable, meaningful sections helps us structure our practice and ensure that all parts of the piece are equally solid and secure. If you would like a more detailed explanation of these tips and tools, plus examples and other resources then please do sign up for my email course! The course is entirely free, featuring seven video lessons ranging from three to twelve minutes in length. The videos are accompanied by downloads, notes and exercises to help you follow and implement each stage of the process.
How to Start Learning a New Piece
Sign-up for our free email course on how to lay good foundations from the outset when learning a new piece.
Tips & Tools for Learning New Pieces
When learning a new piece from scratch, there are a number of tools we can use to get the maximum benefit from our practice time and to lay the foundations for a secure and successful performance.