Technique and methods

Hi I keep meaning to ask this question but then I get busy with other things and don't remember. I occasionally go for a lesson from a pupil of Fanny Waterman who advocates when playing the melody to slightly ( in...

How do you proceed ? Gradually step by step from slow to fast ? Not gradually but springing up from slow to fast ? Very slow and very fast, very slow and very fast, etc. Other methods ? One example: Bee...

can swimming affect piano (or guitar or any other instrument's) tehnique? i go to the pool twice a week and do aprox. 30-40 laps. it makes me feel excellent bot physically and psychically but i wonder if on the long term...

Hi, I've been studying this piece for my RCM examination later this month, and I have some questions about it. I'd appreciate any help you guys can offer! My first question is about this measure: I'm having prob...

I have recently got back in to a rigorous practice schedule and have been experiencing fatigue. This is never pain but an inability to grab large cords or the missing of notes in fast passages that entail large stretches...

Hi, I am struggling with a piece in g minor that has a descending patter of 6ths. The top line is Eb, D, C and the bottom line is G,F,Eb. I am currently playing all 6th with fingers 1 and 5. It sounds fine but not...

Is it possible to change or effect the sound after you play a key? i think when the hammers stroke the strings, it is impossible to change the sound? IS IT POSSIBLE TO GAIN 2 DIFFERENT TIMBRES from 2 DIFFERENT PLAYERS...

I have been playing the piano as an amateur for a long time (24 years), but have not taken lessons for over 15 years. I have at home an old East-German upright piano, a Geyer, which suits me as it does not have enough so...

Hi, I have a few questions regarding the micropuase chapter of the DVD. 1) When playing notes within a legato phrase, does a micropuase effectively breaks the legato, or does it lengthen the last note of a group?...

Hi Alan, I purchased your DVD and I am enjoying it very much. Thank You! I started studying piano at the age of 15. I studied for five years with a student from the McGill Conservatory in Montreal. I had to stop...

Hi Alan, I contacted you last summer for help with my problem turning the right hand 4th finger over the thumb in descending scales and arpeggios (e.g., C to B-flat in a B-flat scale or a descending dominant 7th in th...

Dear Alan, I have a 7 years old student she is a beginner and her finger joints collapse. I have just started reading The Craft Of Piano Playing and when I reached the part that you telling about Fingerstands on the w...

I am able to play more relaxed now and my fingers stopped shaking almost completely. I think it's rather a muscular cordination problem than a neurological one. I still have several questions. I have many demo songs o...

Hi, I read about silent practice in two different places. One was an interview with David bar-Illan and the other a biography of Glenn Gould. The Gould biography says that it was a useful training method for voicing...

Hi Alan, On the video, when you begin to talk about rotation, you have a segment where your right hand 5th finger is on D#. Then by rotating of the hand to vertical you use finger 3 to come down & play the lower D#, m...

Hi Alan, I am struggling now with achieving a fast pianissimo accompaniment pattern for the left hand (16th notes of FCFC,GCGC, and other similar patterns where the hand doesn't need to move around the keyboard). Every...

Hi Alan, You demonstrate beuatifully in the DVD how inflecting the rhythm of the waltz brings out its character (play the 2nd beat a little early, and the 3rd beat a little late). Do these inflections typically apply...

Hi there I discovered that my right hand had already developed pretty well having been through the craft of piano techniqes and noticing that when I was doing things well already it was articulated on the dvd that I w...

Hi Ive been reading chapters on the interdependance of thumb and fingers and in particular in the "honing the pianstic..." 42.3 I think it was - the chapter on moving pylons and stability without going down to the key...

Hi I have the both the Cortot editions of op10 /25 etudes. All the suggestions of excersises as preliminary to each study seem favour the finger action school. I have tried a couple of the excersises (op10.no1/no2)...

Hi there I'm interested to know what people's experiences are with learning on your own instrument or the one you regularly try to play at a music school/uni and then being able to play on a completely different instr...

Hi all, and congratulations for this fantastic forum ! I wanted to open a new thread (hoping it's not already created anywhere>I didn't find...) about my pianistic discoveries. In a nutshell, I'm an amateur pianist (I...

This is a very simple and powerful idea that I discovered in a book about Busoni. Playing the piano like any complex task, requires us to group or chunk information so that we can execute fairly long passages with a sin...

Hi I just wanted to throw this question out about recording piano practice. My last real teacher always said I should record myself - it really shows up things both technically and musically. I did a recording of pr...

Hi Alan, I have just received "honing" and I am very excited about it. It is really fun to read and very informative. I really like how the first few chapters go back to the fundamentals in the DVD (which I thought I al...