Ideas for Practicing Piano Technique

Try as I might, some students just loathe practicing their technical exercises. You know the ones - scales, chords and arpeggios. I must admit that when I was their age, I wasn't too keen on practicing them either. However, if you want to "level up" and/or ace this portion of your music examination, you can't get away from it. You have to practice them. A lot.

If I have to ask my students to play a scale more than once in a lesson, I ask my them to play to play it differently. For instance, if a student played it legato the first time, they could play it staccato the second time.

But why stop there? Change the rhythm and make it sound like a real tune. Zig-zag back and forth so it doesn't sound like a scale. Change where you place the accents so that it's on every fifth note instead of every second or third.

The bottom line is that some degree of repetition is needed, so why not make it interesting for yourself?

15 Reasons Why Practicing Technique Can Improve Your Time at the Piano

Once again, Chris Foley posts another musical gem titled 15 Reasons Why Practicing Technique Can Improve Your Time at the Piano.

So folks, keep up with your scales, chords and arpeggios - they're important!

(c) 2008 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.

Piano Technique Links

With exams coming up, is it any wonder us teachers are asking to hear those pesky scales, chords and arpeggios more often?

Here are some useful links/articles to help improve your piano technique:

• Ironing Out Overactive Thumbs in Scales

• Technique Week

• Piano Technique

Feel free to suggest other sites as well.

(c) 2008 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.

Scales Help at Scaleindex.com

[February 5, 2013 update: Scaleindex.com is no more. Instead, check out this article on Freejazzlessons.com on the "10 Jazz Scales You Should Know"] I stumbled upon this site while trying to makes heads or tails out of the Lydian Dominant mode (jazz musicians are probably shaking their heads at this as they know very well what Lydian Dominant is). Scaleindex.com is a very thorough site, containing scale formulas, chord analyses, note names and audio clips of everything from our standard major and minor scales to the Bebop Dominant and Hindu scales.

My student R, who likes to compose, is excited about writing in some of these different keys while my student A is currently on a modal kick with her repertoire, so she is pumped about learning how to play modes. The funny thing is, neither student is in Conservatory Canada's Contemporary Idioms syllabus. Both girls are in the traditional stream of ConCan and RCM respectively.

As for my students who need to learn the Lydian Dominant mode for their Contemporary Idioms exam, they're just relieved to have the scale formula in an easy to understand format (as am I).

(c) 2007 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.

Adding Passion to your Technique

Today, my student L came to her piano lesson a little on the grumpy side. Blame it on her homework and group projects. We tried something today that was rather fun - we added a bit of passion to her technical exercises.

We focussed on two keys today - G major and its minor cousin E minor. We wound up staying in E minor since it sounds angrier. I asked her to play me some Angry Scales, Stressed Out Triads and Frantic Arpeggios. She was rather convincing in conveying her emotions of the day. The way she made her triads zigzag really sounded like a stressed out person running in one direction and rapidly turning to run the other way. Ditto for her arpeggios.

After venting her frustrations" through her technique, L's rendition of "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" was sufficiently tender, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" was perfectly boogie-ish, while Beethoven's "Ecossaise was positively perky.

Now I'm willing to bet that if I had her start with Can You Feel the Love Tonight?, it would have sounded like someone yelling.

I tried the same tactic with a few more students tonight to great success as I had quite a few students stressed out from homework. I think I'm going to give it a try with my own technical exercises.

At the end of L's lesson, I wished her well with her school projects and expressed my hope that within a few days, she'll be able to practice some Happy Scales, Excited Triads and Lazy Arpeggios.

(c) 2007 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.