Opinions On "Fundamentals Of Piano Practice" - Chu

I found a free book online titled Fundamentals of Piano Practice, by Chuan C. Chang. I have just started reading it and I thought it seemed to make sense; it's definitely very different than what I am used to. According to him I was educated in the "intuitive method": repeat, repeat, repeat... What are your opinions about this method, are you familiar with it, is there anything groundbreaking and should I spend the time checking it out? I'm definitely "in love" with Alan's method and I've started applying many of his advices, but if this book is any good it would be a good reinforcement, is there anything he says that goes against what Alan teaches? Any input is greatly appreciated, thanks!!

It is a great book, definitely worth investigating. There are some discrepancies between it and The Craft, (For example, Chang recommends eliminating mistakes by ensuring you are directly over the key you are going to play before attempting play it, so that you can't miss it. Alan recommends cultivating the ability to "sting" the keys.) However they both approach piano from completely different viewpoints, so there is also alot of information that Chang covers that Alan does not come close to mentioning, and vice versa. (For example, Chang goes over in great detail efficient methods for dedicating your practice time at the piano, but does not mention things like melodic inflection.) I think instead of going "This is Chang, and this is Alan Fraser", try "These are ideas on how to improve my ability at the piano" and look for what works!

I appreciate you taking the time to post your comment, I'm not very familiar with either method so that's why I trust the capable hands of you VETERANS!! I'll continue reading it and watching the DVD and like you say, it's all for improving my ability at the piano!!

I'm hardly a skilled veteran. I just enjoy dispensing advice of questionable quality on forums.

I myself unfortunately haven't read Prof. Chang's work. Someone posted something somewhere on this forum disparaging it but I can't remember what exactly was said. I think in any method, the most important thing is to understand not only what was said but what was TRYING to be said. A lot of what I do is attempting to clear up misconceptions from language that describes something accurately but is open to misinterpretation. Let me know your further impressions! AFF

Here is the link: There is some really stuff in there.

I've got a lot of stuff on my plate these days, don't really have time to look at that link. I'm counting on our forum members to take a look and extract some "goodies," things that particularly relate to the topics on this forum - over to you, guys and gals! AFF

Thanks for the link. Every little bit helps, even if it's wrong. I still think of an acquaintance, has doctorate in piano from Juliard. Plays very well, of course. Yet, his technique is to have the wrists at the top of the key slip, so the wrists have to break up to get his flat-fingered playing to the keys. Most would say that is very wrong. But it seems, at least for him and the area of the world he comes from (Eastern Europe) to be a cultivated style. And Juliard awarded him his doctorate, as well as him being a Horowitz scholar. go figure???

That's why I like my whole idea of skeletality - because there is no right or wrong in terms of position - it is all about FUNCTION. Look at how things are working internally, it's a complex action and there are many different musical and tonal requirements, thus of necessity many different configurations necessary. That's why your Juiiliard friend can have such great success with something so unorthodox - because there really is method to his madness, and a really good, palpable reasonable explanation as to WHY it works for him... AFF

I was the one who disparaged it. First off, with no disrespect at all, Chang is not a professional pianist, and not a professional musician as far as I know. I had some personal e-mail with him/her (forgot the gender, though) because I fully believed in the book many years ago. And the book ruined my techniques. If helpful at all, it is at least severely biased towards a few points which Chang finds useful. The only thing I find helpful is the idea that if you can't play fast by breaking it up into smaller bits, slowly speeding it up may never get you there because the way to play slow is very different from playing fast. That part is truly helpful. But other than that, Chang also emphasised "parallels", claiming that all piano techiques can be reduced to parallel playing and connecting them together. That, if taken to the extreme, may be correct but then Chang oversimplified piano techniques: exactly because not all passages are parallels that we've to practice!! And connecting the parallels is by no means a trivial task as skipped by Chang, let alone the fact that parallels themselves is better NOT played like a chord as Chang claimed!! You lose orchestration by playing parallels fast like a chord and then the broken chord. The idea that the thumb should NEVER be passed under the thumb is controversial, I've to be objective. But from my experience of following Chang's advice (of not passing the thumb even playing slowly, but move my hand to the next position without the physical connection which I found much later, and is never mentioned in Chang's book), I actually played much much much worse (my R-hand, anyway) until I found Alan's book. I may be the exception, but I don't want anyone to repeat my story.